Comment by fedupnow
7 hours ago
Im 35, Im screwed if they get their way. I'm not going to go to the trades, I quit construction when I was 27 because of how much I loved programming. I wanted to kill myself basically everyday working in the construction industry. I drank my twenties away because of how much it sucked. Ive been sober for years now entirely because of programming and actually loving what I do. But this company is stealing that from me, in many different ways.
I invested a ton of my life and my entire life savings into this transition. Now Im being screamed at everyday to go be an electrician because Anthropic claims they're going to solve the halting problem in some round about way, they dont even have to do what they claim. They just have to convince 20% of industry that they will, and guys like me will never get a chance to work long enough to retire.
I really don't think they'll suceeed, but if they do, Im going to be homeless coding from the public library because im not starting over again.
A lot of people think more jobs overall will be created from this. I sort of agree. However, our day to day has changed so much. The problems that I found fulfilling to solve are now handed off to LLMs, but at the same time I can build the things I want to build easier and faster. There are tradeoffs for sure. I'm trying to stay positive though.
> A lot of people think more jobs overall will be created from this.
Be sure to distinguish between "jobs" and "good jobs" (that are enough to survive and even prosper on). Jobs that pay pittances can be created til the cows come home.
Yeah, there are conflicting views in the industry about whether LLM's will make more jobs overall or kill off jobs. The ostentatiously virtuous thing is the ability for developers to make software faster.
I've built some tools that genuinely help me manage my life tasks that improve my quality of life irl, but a lot of stuff I've built has been built to allow me to build more things like itself faster... And I ask myself, for what? Haha
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Define developer in the age of LLMs
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I think the answer is: Think of yourself as a maker, not as a programmer, and you'll be good.
I feel like a good chunk of my skills that I honed over decades as a software engineer are obsolete: programming, debugging, navigating code. But there are other skills and especially experiences that, at least with the current level of tools, allow me to do much more than someone who doesn't have them: knowing what computers can and cannot do, or only inefficiently; distributed systems; deployment; CI/CD pipelines.
Hang in there! What you can build knowing how to code is drastically different from what promptards can build. Imagine trying to build a car without knowing anything about car building - you’d just get the most generic boring clunker anyone can design.
But anyone can decompile it, now, too.
I feel ya. I've been grappling with the fact how this field has been completely uprooted. On one hand, I see this as another layer of abstraction: I don't know assembly, yet I can command the processor to do stuff via python. LLMs can be seen as another layer of abstraction that allows us to write higher volumes of even more complex software. On the other hand, I can see how programmers can go the route of the chimney sweepers. I try to be optimistic but feel fearful as well.
Feel you bro, same age, same feelings. And even though AI won't replace me, the work is shit now. I like to code, not to babysit some retarded genius.
> I'm not going to go to the trades
I find it unrealistic anyway, that market will be saturated so fast, it won't make a difference for you or me, in the grand scheme of things.