Comment by xienze
5 hours ago
> most programmers and hobbyists could code without the need of a University or a Corporation.
I don't think so. Back then, the pool of people doing such a thing basically self-selected for intelligent, motivated types who were capable of learning on their own. The new "programmers" "programming" via Claude Code are going to be very different from those hobbyists you're talking about.
This is a comically self-absorbed perspective.
Why are people making things with Claude Code if not because they’re motivated?
I think the point is that you had to be deeply curious and more of a "hacker" or "computer nerd" type to be able to figure things out.
But I think the same applies to not just AI but various tools that have abstracted away the complexity of things over the years.
For example, I would imagine the average person deploying some sort of web app or API today knows far less about networking and infrastructure than someone doing it 10 to 20 years ago.
Yes, exactly. I'm reminded of the articles detailing how Gen Z has fewer computer skills than previous generations because computing has become so abstracted -- turn on iPhone, tap button. "What's a directory?" -- files just kind of exist on these devices without any real notion of _where_, as far as the user knows. Stuff like that.
Compare that to say 30ish years ago. If you wanted to do something as simple as play a computer game you had to know how to navigate a command line, know about device drivers, make a boot disk, etc. Users were a whole lot closer to the realities of what makes computing work. And no internet, at least as we know it now. You really had to have a certain mindset to be a developer.
It's a far cry from "hey Claude make an app."
Knowing that genuine, disincentivized creativity is exceedingly rare (especially in the West), you can assume that the answer looks something like a carrot or a stick.
Because it's "easy"?
Because it's "easy" (until they hit a wall)
Once they hit a wall, that is where you find out whether they are motivated or not
> Once they hit a wall, that is where you find out whether they are motivated or not
Yep. That has to happen first.