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Comment by rogerrogerr

7 hours ago

You sound like you're processing this well. I think I'm in the group of people you're talking about who aren't processing it well. What kind of conclusions have you come to regarding that list (what you work on and how, finances, kids, etc.)?

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rogerrogerr

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jvanderbot  6 hours ago

Observations:

* I made the classic mistake of assuming the present was permanent. It never is anyway, small changes always ruined the present. The accumulation of small changes over my career has changed the way I work probably as much/more than AI has changed it this year, if you can believe that.

* I discussed the family budget with my wife, and made a plan to halve our income requirements. It will require a race in the short term, but allows a coast later on. This is key for me - almost all my tension regarding this phase is about the future earning potential of our household. If that goes away, who cares how work changes?

* I made the other classic mistake of not remembering how much I have changed and adapted over time. The breadth of things I have worked on is pretty remarkable, and the things I have learned to do are crazy. While things are changing fast now, they aren't changing quite as negatively or immediately as some claimed they would. There's room to adapt.

* I stopped assuming I had to work the way people said I should. Aside from CEO mandates, there's a ton of wiggle room in how you produce code. I read changesets and make manual adjustments to the pattern, etc. I write my own parts when I want to. I specify a design that I want rather than asking for whatever the AI wants. I get to own everything but the typing that way, and my RSI is improving dramatically b/c of it.

* I use AI to set up programming challenges when I feel disconnected. It sets up a tangible problem, and acts like a coach only when I need it. I use this to preserve the feeling of sharpness. Earlier this year I challenged myself to write, in C, from man pages only, a "ping" and "traceroute" clone. I did so on a flight back from a work trip.

* And I started reaching out to friends to hang out more. It's hard to doom about AI when your friends and you are having a beer and playing Container or Captain Sonar. Life has always been what's "out there" not what radiates from your monitor.

  • booty  3 hours ago

    All of what you said is wonderful, and I want to particularly call out this:

        I stopped assuming I had to work the way people 
    said I should. [...] I get to own everything but 
    the typing that way

    I think this gets to the heart of my disconnect with the "I miss coding" crowd. I still get to do most of the stuff I found fun w.r.t. creating software.

    Typing the actual lines of code was fun, sometimes, but it was never the goal. I feel like I'm still solving the same problems.

  • rogerrogerr  6 hours ago

    Really appreciate it. You sound like a great friend to hang out with.

    • teekert  5 hours ago

      From a recent post here on HN, my agent stored it without the URL, it exists just as text for me to get philosophical with, I do that with insights such as above, so here is a quote:

      Derek Thompson, in "I Know Why the Mathematicians Weep": "If intelligence becomes less uniquely human, we may come to value more highly what remains uniquely human: our capacity to relate and to care for one another".

      Funnily my bot was called Cladius van der Bot, nice name ;)

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