Comment by shoobiedoo
6 hours ago
I tried to look at it like cooking, or baking: I can make damn good croissants. They'll never be quite as good as someone with a dough sheeter and handmade cultured butter, but my friends and family would never complain.
The problem is, baking something and sharing it with others brings people together, there's smalltalk, catching up, other human stuff. Which in the end is kinda the point of it.
Like your post says, with programming, it's mostly just a race to what achieves the goal, with the exception of demoscene and retro programming, I guess. I started learning ARM assembly so I could make a lisp implementation in it. It will be useless, no one will use it, and an AI could bang one out in a few minutes, but overcoming that struggle to understand things in different ways has to be the goal with hobby programmers like myself, I guess.
> The problem is, baking something and sharing it with others brings people together ...
Honestly, I don't see how this is a problem.
> Which in the end is kinda the point of it.
Absolutely.
> Like your post says, with programming, it's mostly just a race to what achieves the goal ...
Unless the joy of whatever programming one does is found in the path taken.
> I started learning ARM assembly so I could make a lisp implementation in it. It will be useless, no one will use it, and an AI could bang one out in a few minutes ...
Who cares if anyone uses it or if some other tooling could replicate what you choose to do if, in doing so, you enjoy it.
Much like the "damn good croissants" you make, it doesn't matter what others could make. You make damn good croissants.
Your happiness is yours. Enjoy the path you take to find it.
They’re saying the problem is that programming doesn’t result in bringing people together. The problem is that the value of baking is not easily recreated in all hobbies.
> They’re saying the problem is that programming doesn’t result in bringing people together.
Why can't it?
People get together to do a ton of "worthless" things together for no good reason other than for the enjoyment of it. Like chess, basketball, book clubs, board games, video games, popdarts, etc.
Yes, my favourite programming project is a tetris clone my family and one or two friends have played.
The community you share with doesn't need to be online - your croissants aren't going out for delivery but I'm sure your friends and family appreciate them (and you). It can be the same with your software products, if you choose.
Well with programming there can be a creative aspect which is more like sharing art/music online... But unfortunately that's still affected. I've been putting out what I think are pretty banger projects, with a good level of polish, but it's like nobody cares anymore. Social media is saturated.
Yes, besides AI upending everything, it's been a long slow decline with internet communities in general for over a decade now. Instead of having to look for what we think is interesting and talking to people about it, an algorithm just decides what we're going to enjoy