For the last 20 years or so I’ve been trying out a new way of programming, one that (surprisingly) doesn’t use any LLMs or AI coding agents at all. It’s just me, a keyboard, and an IDE or text editor, writing code line by line—literally typing things like functions and curly braces.
I realize this sounds eccentric. What am I, some kind of minimalist? Actually, I’m what you might call an “early adopter.
if you’re not constantly using the skills you’re offloading, are you not doing yourself a disservice?
I’d rather tackle these things myself and only if I get stuck would I want to press the big expensive “hint” button, and even then I’d first want to check documentation or forum posts
but what do I know? I’ve been “left behind” after all
Well, I look at it this way: my expertise as a coder, and in a sense my pride, is to produce good maintainable bug-free code.
When I code the traditional way, I constantly look things up I don’t know and I constantly “steal” from other people’s work. I take their knowledge and adapt it. I basically work to find the hints myself.
When I use AI, the AI companies have done the stealing for me and packaged it up into a model. The model contains the knowledge that I’d be looking for on the internet, and it can do the searching for me. It gives me the hints.
Similarly, I will point out that you’re using a compiler to generate machine language code. You’re not using an assembler. Why is that? Are you not doing yourself a disservice by not using your assembly-coding skills and delegating the job to the compiler?
Which way of getting the hints is better is as irrelevant as driving stick or driving automatic. And nobody bats an eyelid that modern cars don’t require you to adjust the ignition timing manually anymore. what’s important is driving well.
But I will say this: I’m fully aware that AI will take over my job eventually. At the moment, it’s too damn dumb to do any good without a real human coder doing heavy checking - something that is willfully ignored by bad engineers who think AI is trustworthy. But it will get better, and one day I won’t be needed and my job will disappear, just like taxi driver and truck driver will become a thing of the past when self-driving vehicles become overwhelmingly better than them.
That’s just how progress goes. At the moment, I enjoy the twilight of programming as a job - something I’ve done for 35 years - and I can still use AI as a super-fast search engine but call the code my own. But all that will be over in a few short years. Hopefully I’ll be retired before then 🙂
amusing that you think you will be left behind genuinely, while I think that my avoidance of LLM use may very well make me more skilled than you in the long run.
Yours, not mine. I’m old enough that I look forward to never touching a fucking computer ever again in my life in a few years. Sadly, I have to dive into this AI aggravation that I didn’t need to finish my career. I make the best of it until I don’t have to. And then whether my job disappears or not is a matter of total indifference to me.
if you’re not constantly using the skills you’re offloading, are you not doing yourself a disservice?
I’d rather tackle these things myself and only if I get stuck would I want to press the big expensive “hint” button, and even then I’d first want to check documentation or forum posts
but what do I know? I’ve been “left behind” after all
Well, I look at it this way: my expertise as a coder, and in a sense my pride, is to produce good maintainable bug-free code.
When I code the traditional way, I constantly look things up I don’t know and I constantly “steal” from other people’s work. I take their knowledge and adapt it. I basically work to find the hints myself.
When I use AI, the AI companies have done the stealing for me and packaged it up into a model. The model contains the knowledge that I’d be looking for on the internet, and it can do the searching for me. It gives me the hints.
Similarly, I will point out that you’re using a compiler to generate machine language code. You’re not using an assembler. Why is that? Are you not doing yourself a disservice by not using your assembly-coding skills and delegating the job to the compiler?
Which way of getting the hints is better is as irrelevant as driving stick or driving automatic. And nobody bats an eyelid that modern cars don’t require you to adjust the ignition timing manually anymore. what’s important is driving well.
But I will say this: I’m fully aware that AI will take over my job eventually. At the moment, it’s too damn dumb to do any good without a real human coder doing heavy checking - something that is willfully ignored by bad engineers who think AI is trustworthy. But it will get better, and one day I won’t be needed and my job will disappear, just like taxi driver and truck driver will become a thing of the past when self-driving vehicles become overwhelmingly better than them.
That’s just how progress goes. At the moment, I enjoy the twilight of programming as a job - something I’ve done for 35 years - and I can still use AI as a super-fast search engine but call the code my own. But all that will be over in a few short years. Hopefully I’ll be retired before then 🙂
amusing that you think you will be left behind genuinely, while I think that my avoidance of LLM use may very well make me more skilled than you in the long run.
Yours, not mine. I’m old enough that I look forward to never touching a fucking computer ever again in my life in a few years. Sadly, I have to dive into this AI aggravation that I didn’t need to finish my career. I make the best of it until I don’t have to. And then whether my job disappears or not is a matter of total indifference to me.
Fair point.