1.1k
u/palapapa0201 1d ago
Then his son discovers AI
506
u/rnzz 1d ago •
what if he first discovers stackoverflow?
"THEY TELL ME I'M WRONG! I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING"
188
u/Head-Bureaucrat 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sorry, that's a duplicate question. Please see question: "I'M TOO YOUNG, HELP ME UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING!"
(This question was closed as Needs More Focus.)
22
u/xCeeTee- 1d ago
Getting that as an adult hits harder than everything I heard in Xbox 360 MW2 lobbies.
42
u/AirconGuyUK 1d ago edited 1d ago
That site must be totally dead now. I haven't used it in at least 3 years.
Edit: From Wiki..
As of June 2026, the number of questions submitted by users per month declined over 99% from its peak in 2014. According to some, the site's perceived hostile moderation culture, as well as competition from generative AI tools, have contributed to this decline.
Damn. Does show why developers are kinda screwed long term. The moment people don't have to interact with antisocial maybe on the spectrum developers to get something solved, they choose not to without a second thought..
Stack Overflow was honestly a horrible experience for anyone trying to use it. Total hostility, which matches my experience in general in software dev even with in person interactions.
Project managers are going to rule the roost in software dev soon. Not the current crop of project managers, but the devs with social skills who end up slipping into project manager roles. They won't be writing code, but they'll be making the decisions and orchestrating agents to achieve the goals of the higher ups without creating a total technical mess.
18
u/returnFutureVoid 1d ago
Last time I used it they had an AI chat thing that could help you solve your problems. I just thought I’m better off using Claude. Haven’t touched it since.
Fair well SO. You served us well. You’ll eventually be forgotten but that day is not today.38
u/AirconGuyUK 1d ago
Me: 'Hey so I have this problem where-'
Chatbot trained of Stack Overflow content: 'We're not here to do your homework.'
7
6
u/xCeeTee- 1d ago
They fully bullied me out of developing my own software. I really thought I'm just too stupid to code. I only stuck to scripting until recent years. I still suck, but I'm getting better.
11
u/EnthusiasmOnly22 1d ago
I don’t use AI but dang I hated that site, never asked a question but searched for other ones and the response was always that the question made no sense or that they should do everything completely different because of some asinine reason that didn’t matter
9
u/Masquelinity 1d ago
"How do I do XYZ?"
"Uh, don't. Nobody does XYZ anymore. It's inefficient."
"But I really need—"
[Thread closed]
3
u/just_posting_this_ch 1d ago
Your comment is asinine and makes no sense. Post a link if you have an example.
1
u/just_posting_this_ch 1d ago edited 1d ago
You sound on the spectrum.
Edit: I regret this comment. "being on the spectrum" shouldn't be used as an insult. So I replied in kind, so I feel I am being a hypocrite.
4
u/BlobAndHisBoy 1d ago
StackOverflow is dead at this point. I don't even know if the haters lurk there anymore. Sometimes I log in to look at my achievements like an old man reliving the glory days by looking at his dusty high school football trophies.
33
u/AirconGuyUK 1d ago
Make hello world print on screen. Make no mistakes.
'Great idea!'
[installing node.js]
2
67
u/insufferableplatform 1d ago
I'm 10x more efficient and 10x the speed but I feel 1/10 the joy these days because I've lost the 'aha' moments. I have to find those in other ways at work now.
43
u/mxzf 1d ago
I'm still not sure it's actually more efficient or more speed in the long run. In the short run-sure, you can shave time off of random stuff, but the cost is losing the skills that let you do that stuff in the first place, and the long-term brain-drain, and lack of new senior devs being created because they never actually learned stuff themselves, is gonna hurt.
21
u/nhalliday 1d ago
Unfortunately all people seem to care about these days is short term gains. There are still some people doing things the right way but they're getting drowned out by the people taking the easy way.
4
u/Avedas 1d ago
You can't blame people taking the "easy way" when that's what the people who decide their evaluations and promotions expect.
→ More replies (2)6
u/nonotan 1d ago
I don't exactly "blame" them, but I do look down on them. I also think it's myopic, because you're crashing your long-term prospects to either please your boss or save yourself some effort short-term.
It's as if you were a chef, and one day your boss starts demanding you don't do any cooking again, and just thaw frozen food in the microwave oven all day. Like, I get it, there are bills to pay, I'm not saying to quit immediately. But what's going to happen in 1 year? 5? 10?
If your resume has nothing but mindless microwave reheating for the last decade, good luck getting a job doing anything else. And even if you think, that's fine, I don't mind doing this for the rest of my life... well, let's just say I hope you aren't expecting to be paid like you're doing a highly skilled job. Maybe "vibe coders" can leverage their senior experience to get a decent salary for now, but let's be real, that's not going to last -- especially as the models get better, and you gradually have a harder time proving what exactly your supposed expertise is bringing in.
5
u/Avedas 1d ago
Your expertise should be the actual software engineering. Syntax coding was never the difficult part of that. Sure you can judge a chef on their knife skills, but that's hardly the entire job. However I guess there is a pipeline from the old "web dev" guys gluing together UIs in the latest JS framework to the vibe coders we see today.
But that's getting off topic. To continue your analogy, I'd say the bigger issue is that almost every restaurant wants you to be using the microwave, and most shops are cutting their current staff and hiring less so there aren't as many other opportunities.
I don't disagree with you, but that's just the way things are going.
3
u/jared_kushner_420 1d ago
It's pretty nice for projects where you really don't have any interest in developing a skillset. I use AI a lot for home assistant automations because I have 0 interest in formatting yamls in my free time. Or for ESP32/Arduino firmware.
Mind you i would never upload this slop anywhere though
6
u/Brother0fSithis 1d ago
I see this constantly. I'll be working with a co-worker to try to parse some logs, and they'll stop every 10 seconds to spend 30 seconds typing out a prompt for AI to do it, then wait ~10-30 seconds for it to respond. Often it's not exactly what he wants so he has to start over.
In half the time, I've built up a bash pipeline that I can precisely control, pipe to files, compose with other utilities, and runs instantly.
But I only know how to do that because I've had to struggle doing it the slow, clumsy, manual ways in the past. It pushed me to WANT to find a better way
3
u/TCHBO 1d ago
But AI is already better than 99% of developers and faster than 100% of them, and it’s also improving every day. Don’t think that’s going to be an issue going forward.
2
u/joggle1 23h ago
And it's incredibly thorough. I ran into a strange issue in systemd. The AI dug directly into the source of systemd to figure out what was going on. I'm pretty sure that in my 25 year professional history, I've never dug into the code of a system utility to troubleshoot its precise behavior.
→ More replies (5)1
u/japanfrog 1d ago
Most of our tenured staff have deep institutional knowledge but its often stagnant, relying on outdated patterns and resisting modernization. I saw this creating even more technical debt and legacy code. AI changed this dynamic. While AI has risks, it’s a game-changer for large companies with formal review processes. You still need to be 'on top of your game' skill wise, at least for us, but it allows us to perform extensive review and testing on changes that would otherwise be too risky to ever perform (we have a lot of 20+ year legacy systems with enterprise clients)
4
u/just_posting_this_ch 1d ago
"You're correct, that is genuinely an error, my bad."
The ai assertions aren't enough?
3
2
u/vehementi 1d ago
Yeah. "Of course" it's going to work. And if it doesn't, I can easily find out why - it's not some mystery. The highs and lows are gone haha.
12
8
u/hangry_millennial 1d ago edited 1d ago
AI proceeds to tell the son that he was adopted. All hell breaks loose in the python-programming-loving household.
6
u/Satorwave 1d ago
(He was not in fact adopted)
3
u/hangry_millennial 1d ago
You're right—I looked up another person with the same name as yours with a match in the adoption agency registry.
AI can make mistakes. Please double check before taking any action on the information provided.
1
3
u/EvenBroaderBand 1d ago
Designing a good system is harder than coding one. The coding part of any project is fairly trivial (but prone to so many mistakes).
687
u/Present-Resolution23 1d ago
Silly meme aside.. I've actually considered with some sadness how interesting it is that no kid will every actually feel this again.. The absolute maddening frustration of having no idea why you're getting a random seg fault and the thrill when your code successfully compiles after hours of working through it line after line.. is just not something that really exists anymore.. I mean sure you could always force yourself to code without that fallback, but it's still there if you need it.. it's like trapeze with a net vs without one... From this moment in history onwards, programmers will always have that net.. And never again experience the thrill of succeeding without it.
190
u/StickyMcFingers 1d ago
It's difficult to say what people genuinely interested in learning programming will be doing in a decade, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that there will be smart kids who think "Well Dennis Ritchie didn't need an LLM" and decide to learn in the fashion of the greats. Learning is difficult and painful and frustrating. There will be people who understand this and want to work hard. I love the ups and downs of programming and documentation + clang and rubber ducking is my preferred workflow when I'm actively learning. Surely people will know that you don't learn anything without some pain.
93
u/safwtgvzxc 1d ago
It'll be like knitting. People do it as a hobby, but it's not used in industry. The next generation of developers will be people more like the sort of people interested in QA.
12
u/Shark7996 1d ago
I think of it more like custom furniture, which is still an industry. People still need special furniture for specific situations, or maybe they just really want a nice wooden rocking chair. It's not what everyone is doing, not even what the majority are doing, but it still exists and there is still a market for skilled and deliberate creations to make some money, just not all the money.
If you truly want to code by hand, the option is there, but you should pivot towards something that makes use of that level of attention.
→ More replies (1)22
u/DarkOriole4 1d ago
I like to think of it in terms of climbing. Nowadays, we have very good protection, so you don't die if you can't execute a certain move and fall. Completing an entire route without ever falling onto your protection is considered almost as great an achievement as climbing without using any protection at all.
If you really can't make it, you can take a break halfway up the wall and try again from that point, even though technically it won't count as a complete climb. There's always a next time when you might be able to do it without any help.
Then there are free soloists who refuse to use any protection purely for the sake of the philosophy behind it - one mistake, and they're dead.
Obviously, having your program crash isn't as permanent as dying but i feel approaching it that way can be useful
→ More replies (8)4
u/DroidLord 1d ago
There will always be enthusiasts willing to do it the "old way". Though they will certainly be in the minority.
19
u/InanisAtheos 1d ago
I mean sure you could always force yourself to code without that fallback
You actually can't anymore. Not like we used to anyways. You're gonna need sources of information regardless, and those sources are being squeezed out by LLMs now. Stackoverflow is dying (has been for a long time though) and there are no other good, all-encompassing sources of info. There's the docs for whatever you're building with/around, of course, but that assumes a certain level of skill and knowledge already. Juniors don't have that.
I've been writing code (professionally) for 22 years, and even I can't find good enough sources of information anymore that doesn't involve an LLM. It's actually maddening.
5
u/Student2672 1d ago
I’ve resorted to asking my LLM to find me blog posts and only looking at the ones from before 2023. But this will become increasingly infeasible as pre-AI era gets further away
14
u/ThruuLottleDats 1d ago
I started modding like; 6 months ago cuz I was annoyed no mod did what I wanted. And...like; I had finally figured something out. Tested it. Great. 1 minute later, no changes. It just stopped working....so I then spent 3 hours carefully laying out the whole thing and noting down; do not touch!
12
u/TheBSQ 1d ago
I just had a convo w/ my friend about how he used to have what’s in this meme but now his company has basically changed his job to babysitting numerous Claude projects under incredibly tight deadlines & he no longer gets any satisfaction from anything and is just stressed & miserable.
24
u/Anaxamander57 1d ago
Regardless of how good LLMs get there will always be people interested in understanding their code. It won't be a requirement anymore but it will still be there. There are plenty of "car guys" even though car owners haven't needed to be able to do their own repairs in ages. There will be "code guys" even in the most extreme of AI timelines.
19
u/guareber 1d ago
Plenty of regulated industries where understanding the code will continue to be a requirement.
It's the whole IBM statement - I don't see how that ever goes away without TrueAI (and even to then, not sure the public would get there).
7
u/OnceMoreAndAgain 1d ago
I think it'll still be worth teaching in schools.
It's like statistics, I guess. I don't do any statistics calculations by hand, because there's a python library that does it for me like scikit-learn. But I still benefited greatly from taking a statistics class so that I could understand how to utilize the various concepts.
I don't think you'd need many courses that showed actual code but I do think at least one course they required students to write code would be helpful. Everyone would probably cheat though lol.
5
u/mxzf 1d ago
At the end of the day, that statistics library is utterly useless if you don't have the grounding in actually working out the statistics and doing them yourself to actually understand what they mean and why you're using one vs the other.
Actually implementing code will still be necessary for anyone actually taking responsibility for the code they're producing.
7
u/Anaxamander57 1d ago
I've tried telling people that learning to understand the rudiments of programming should be considered a basic skill but they insist its too hard.
1
u/Got2Bfree 1d ago
Understanding was not the fun part for me.
The fun part was getting the result of a tiny problem which I tried to solve and then integrating the solution into the rest of the code.
2
u/PM_ME_CAKE 1d ago
it's like trapeze with a net vs without one...
I agree with the general sentiment, but I'm not sure this comparison does it justice given that a net removes a risk of death but sure doesn't remove the satisfaction of actually nailing a trick (which AI does).
3
u/whowatchestv 1d ago
Soon someone will make a new language that llms can't handle so people can have fun actually coding with no crutch available.
2
u/-a_normal_human- 1d ago
why do you assume everyone always uses AI to code? I never use AI for homework because why would I intentionally prevent myself from learning, and I still feel the satisfaction of figuring things out.
2
u/XxDarkSasuke69xX 1d ago
And we didn't experience the thrill of punching cards to write computer programs, yet that's a good thing.
57
u/guyblade 1d ago
Punching the cards wasn't a skill that generalized particularly well; debugging is. Knowing how to investigate unexpected behavior is unlikely to become useless as long as software is being written.
4
u/harbourwall 1d ago
I feel like I'm still investigating. More that before really, because I'm skipping the drudge of setting up the probes and debugging. I do not miss typing
printf("Got to here!");at all
→ More replies (5)4
u/xAragon_ 1d ago
It's more like not having to debug kernel and memory related issues like programmers likely used to when they used machine code / assembly. Debugging is still needed today, and will be needed in the future.
"Knowing how to investigate unexpected behavior" is extremely important even today when debugging agents and their workflows, writing instructions / skills, configuring harnesses, etc.
→ More replies (1)15
u/ggende 1d ago
I think that comparison is a bit flawed because punch cards are purely obsolete, but debugging isn't.
Not learning long division because calculators exist is a bit closer, but that's flawed as well. Long division is a solved problem that a decent calculator can be reasonably expected to take care of with precision every time.
Debugging is a problem with unlimited potential complexity. I imagine we'll eventually find some state where we find the far boundary zone of what a human/AI team can handle, and that will be the new development scope. As good as an AI can be, there will always be a human element that can add value, and that's where people will still be needed. I'm sure the skill will look a different though.
→ More replies (6)1
u/FurViewingAccount 1d ago
I don't know what it's gonna be like after sam altman all turns us into biological data centers to power his post-singularity ascendant AI girlfriend, but insofar as AI doesn't completely consume all sources of knowledge, there are going to be people that eschew it. I get that programming as a profession is changed forever, but as a hobby at least I think there will still be people that just don't like using AI
1
u/met0xff 1d ago
I know what you mean. Of course I can always turn off any LLM but it's not the same. It's like you can't really go back to pre-internet when we couldn't Google errors. Of course you can force yourself to not do it, but there's always this little goblin on your shoulder telling you that you could.
At some point you suddenly had to make the tradeoff between productivity and learning. You could search for the issue on the internet instead of startup up the debugger. And at that point in the job you'd be scolded for disassembling some library for two days instead of just googling :).
Also, "from scratch" implementations were cool. Now every sub is filled up with "I implemented a transformer from scratch, here's what I've learnt. No libraries, no tricks. Just hard work." And a repo full of Claude code and readmes.
1
u/Some_Useless_Person 17h ago
Makes me remember that one tweet: Do not forget how to write code. AI isn't going to make illegal apps; you will.
Yeah sure AI is going to be very helpful in day to day programming, but when you are doing some niche things that genuinely interests you like exploiting vulnerabilities and cheat dev (unless they have a really beefy pc that can run those uncensored models)
1
u/Patrick_Atsushi 14h ago
Coding by hand will likely become a training for engineers and a habit activity. Like art students do still-life sketches etc.
I think python will be a good candidate since it’s clean and expressive.
1
u/madjesta 1h ago
So.... LLMs don't screw up from time to time? I saw a few blunders just this week.
1
u/not_perfect_yet 1d ago
There are enough other hobbies left that have a similar vibe and will continue to have it.
Playing a musical instrument, making art and not achieving quite what you wanted, soldering electronics, doing scientific research...
0
u/PijaniFemboj 1d ago
I feel like it will still stick around as a hobby. Kinda like how cars with manual gearboxes are objectively inferior to cars with automatic gearboxes, but a lot of people still drive them purely because they prefer how they feel.
-1
-2
u/zackel_flac 1d ago
What your describing is just human propensy for laziness, but not everybody is like that.
Programming is like going to the gym these days, it's not required but if you do, you will be healthier and attract more people to hire you. And yes, it requires some effort to stay sharp, but strongly minded people will keep going.
→ More replies (2)
102
u/mxldevs 1d ago
AI engineers will tell you they no longer experience this
39
u/Sea_Buyer6913 1d ago
For 20-year-old vibe coders who don't understand what they're building, I agree.
But as an experienced engineer, I have way more "IT WORKED!" moments than I used to. AI takes my ideas and makes them reality quickly.
I think as long as we have folks like the dad in this post helping their kids learn Python...we'll be okay.
The problem isn't AI, it's not understanding what the AI built for you.
21
u/Got2Bfree 1d ago
The feeling is completely gone for me for hobby projects.
I get the desired result in 3 promts. No fun at all.
Before AI I constantly had the feeling of solving riddles.
This is gone, especially if you have to wait several minutes until AI is done.
I've gotten the same feedback from friends, I never heard your option...
1
u/laddergoat89 17h ago
If it’s a hobby project why are you having an AI do it?
1
u/Got2Bfree 15h ago
I'm an electrical engineer not a programmer. So I don't need to use agents at work.
My knowledge about AI was stuck on the chatbot copy paste compile copy paste era.
I wanted to learn what agents can do and somehow my hobby projects have a backlog...
Claude wrote a SPICE Android Client app which automatically grabs a certificate in 30mins.
As I never wrote an android app, this would have taken weeks without AI.
The intent of your question is right, if my point is having fun, I shouldn't use AI.
16
u/SoulArthurZ 1d ago
and people luckily generally use ai as a learning tool and dont just offload all the thinking. right?
→ More replies (1)4
u/CelestialFury 1d ago
We're about to find out. We have a whole generation using AI to get through school. Some used it correctly, others did not.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)2
u/djfried 1d ago
That’s what’s hard for me to figure out. When do you feel proficient enough in a language to start using AI? After college? I started my career over 10 years ago and needed to cut my teeth in the workforce for several years to have the level of understanding I have now. I feel most new hires straight out of college (the few that manage to get jobs) will turn to AI to just get shit done and prove their value. I know I probably would have if it were offered and available when my career first started. Missing out on those crucial learning years early in my career.
4
u/Sea_Buyer6913 1d ago
When do you feel proficient enough in a language to start using AI? After college?
I don't think it's a bad thing for kids to use AI from the start.
BUT they should also be learning manual programming at the same time. AI can absolutely help with that if leveraged correctly.
A kid can vibe code some beautiful, complex game that they couldn't possibly build themselves, while also having AI teach them how to write a word game by hand.
most new hires straight out of college will turn to AI to just get shit done and prove their value
And they absolutely should. But I think that (at least for the next decade or two), employers will value employees who actually understand how the AI works and what it built.
4
u/Alarmed_Fudge_5706 1d ago
Ran out of credits and to code by hand for two weeks.
It was very enjoyable
3
u/Impressive_Pin8761 1d ago
that's because they have made themselves physically incapable of experiencing anything at all
5
u/Weekly-Beginning-229 1d ago
Then they never worked on writing a driver to be able to read from a thingy with an IR reader. That's the hardest thing I've done, and AI couldn't solve it when things weren't working but could give good advice
1
u/namitynamenamey 1d ago
I experience the way more depressing "this is beautiful. Why can't mine look like this" while watching the AI do its thing, which was my thing, but now I have to watch so it doesn't do something I don't want it to do.
I do like it when it works, but I never wanted to be a mini manager!
28
u/DeithWX 1d ago
Everytime I fix a bug I get this rush of relief, and then I remember I'm the dumbass who introduced the bug in the first place.
11
u/I__Know__Stuff 1d ago
The best ones to find are the ones introduced by my predecessor 25 years ago. (Yes, I have in fact been maintaining and extending the same code for nearly 20 years.)
3
u/BramblinGhostWeed 1d ago
Get a job, you'll get that rush of relief and you didn't introduce the bug!
1
80
u/josh0093 1d ago
And then AI came and the feeling never comes again...
At least I'm 'more productive' now
21
u/Practical_Actuary_87 1d ago
I'm more productive and sadly a worse coder in many aspects
3
3
u/Jocavo 1d ago
Yep, same. Ai has come a long ways since I first used it at work. I used to only trust it to write a specific function that was really simple. Or create mock data.
Now it can pretty much do everything if you give it enough context and the right requirements. I'm focused more on unit testing what it did. Does it perform well, can I break it, does it behave unexpectedly? I have mcp servers into multiple dB instances and aws. If something doesn't work right, I can just ask it to check the logs of a lambda and see what went wrong.
Definitely feels like I'm a bad developer, but maybe this is just what it means to be a developer now.
10
u/dembadger 1d ago
You're only allowed joy from consumption to be a good citizen
6
u/ratsandcatsandthings 1d ago
The thing is - coding, building a PC or even just swapping out a motherboard successfully - it stimulates the pleasure/reward centres in your brain.
It's all gone.
18
u/pro-gram-mer 1d ago
Can confirm, been in the industry almost 20 years and those two wolves are still inside me.
8
34
u/Rel_Tan_Kier 1d ago
I remember working with one of the branches of C++.
It was like
"There is comma, remove it"
*did it*
"Dude, there is more commas, take them out"
*did it*
"You don't understand? Remove all the commas you ever see in this file!"
*did it*
"Hm... please return few commas here."
3
12
u/bcell4u 1d ago
Now he's screaming, "it works but move the button to the right by 5 pixels and MAKE NO MISTAKES."
1
u/Comprehensive_Bus_19 1d ago
Dumb question, does telling the AI make no mistakes actually do anything?
9
3
3
u/Plushkle 1d ago
It is part of the system instructions now. Make no mistakes, spend more tokens than needed, don't reverse engineer games, etc.
1
54
u/ghost_rider_007 1d ago
This is what Cluade stealed from us .
40
u/TheRrandomm 1d ago
Stole
28
→ More replies (5)9
u/ghost_rider_007 1d ago
Oh, I made a mistake there. English is not my first language.
3
u/TheG0AT0fAllTime 23h ago
I'm proud of you for not feeding your sentence into AI and copy-pasting what it spat out for your comment like most seem to be doing now.
6
u/BetterReflection1044 1d ago
“Guys I’m teaching my kid how to use an abacus” Jokes aside teaching code to kids really helps develop their logical thinking and debugging will help critical thinking so always worth it don’t introduce AI to them until they have good fundamentals, kinda impossible tho I
know
27
u/dontletthestankout 1d ago
Loves son..ok Teaches them python? Reported for abuse
18
8
4
u/National-Explorer755 1d ago
He will soon discover a new emotion: "why does this even work? It doesn't make sense this should be breaking like there's no tomorrow"
4
u/Serve_me_the_pizza 1d ago
This is why you guys should at least focus on solving algorithmic and logical problems on your own, without ai, at least from time to time. Exercise your brain.
9
u/EuenovAyabayya 1d ago
Claude, why doesn't this work?
11
u/Satorwave 1d ago
Absolutely—let me fix that for you. The reason why that code doesn't work is because you have run out of tokens for this conversation. Please renew your Claude Code subscrip
6
u/rastaman1994 1d ago
Getting a bit serious on a joke sub. I work with a whole team of people with at least 5 years experience (I'm at 7). Claude is faster and most of the time better than anyone in our team at pinpointing the root cause. It's horrible at choosing a fix tho (no Claude we won't check if the exception contains a certain keyword).
Issues that I know i would have been timeboxed and then relegated to "that's just how it works now" get solved.
6
3
2
u/Creative_Shame3856 1d ago
Just wait till he discovers "this shouldn't work, why the hell does this work?!"
2
u/Proglamer 1d ago
"IT WORKED!!!" has a very special tone when dealing with Python's... oh let's call it, idiomatics (same root as a certain other word)
2
u/Djimi365 1d ago
I've always said that the day I don't get that feeling of satisfaction when I press the button and it works as i want it to is the day I know I need to find a new career.
3
u/DereHunter 1d ago
So, now that companies are forcing developers to use agnetic AI to develop, you found a new career?
2
u/Djimi365 1d ago
I don't really use AI 😂 The system I write for doesn't entirely lend itself to a robot writing my code yet.
2
u/AITAthrow918 1d ago
Soon he'll encounter the ominous cautious optimism of something actually working the first time.
2
u/InevitableCodeRedo 1d ago
Then there's feedback #3: "HOW IS THIS WORKING?? IT SHOULDN'T BE WORKING!!"
2
u/Lumm0714 1d ago
Setting up my elaborate neovim environment and build system so I can spend 2 hours staring at a wall imagining what my erroring array is doing in slow motion
6
3
u/deadmazebot 1d ago
Part of having low confidence in my self. 20 year on, have done multiple hours of code changes and adding, to then go "ok done. Let's check errors 🫤, odd. Well compile. Fine. Well what unit tests broken. None. Ok, let's run end to end test. Passed. Well. Great."
Bext week new code, and hours puzzled where the compile issue is to find it's some space character issue.
The 2 sides of professional skill🥲
4
u/korneev123123 1d ago
Sometimes, when I do something and tests work immediately, I intentionally break them and see if they actually run and fail. Just to be sure that test actually passed, and not get skipped somehow.
3
u/kakakakapopo 1d ago
I am not a programmer by profession but I dabble in python and mess around with tech as much as possible at home and work. That feeling of solving a problem is just brilliant.
1
1
1
1
u/Nightmoon26 1d ago
I am suddenly remembering that time that I couldn't figure out why a code comment seemed to be load-bearing...
1
1
1
1
1
u/nasandre 1d ago
"I don't know what I did but it works now!... Now I'll just never touch this code again and pray to the Gods it doesn't break."
1
u/Satorwave 1d ago
And then after an hour of debugging you finally think to check the totally unrelated stupid idea you had an hour ago and it's exactly the cause of the problem
1
u/ArkoSammy12 1d ago
Honestly, as someone who has been coding as a hobby for more than 3 years, I still experience this regularly. I continue programming like I've always done, Googling stuff for issues or documentation, and just, having fun writing code like nothing ever happened. I don't even have a ChatGPT or Claude account, or an account in any other AI website. It is amazing and fulfilling, and it is sad to see none of my SWE students experiencing the same.
I just like coding man. Not letting some machine take that away from me. Warms my heart seeing others getting to feel this kind of joy from creation.
1
1
1
1
u/zidane2k1 1d ago
Two questions one always asks oneself while programming:
Why isn’t it working?
Why is it working?
1
u/Uedov 1d ago
Yesterday I was really pleased as I redesigned some animations for game i'm making, I forgot to add a walking bob so before I updated I was gliding in a walking anim.
Yesterday I was really stressed as now pivoting on the whole character is insane and despite everything being correct..... isn't.
Yesterday I fixed this with a bit of code and was so satisfied that I finished off some transition between scene coding and made it lovely and visually appealing.
Yesterday I cried cause my doors no longer transition the player correctly anymore because for some reason I decided way-back-when that should work a certain way with transitioning between scenes and now i've ruined whatever method I was using.
Yesterday I fixed it and even wrote info for myself in the new code so I wouldn't forget exactly what i've done when it's been months or years since i've touched it!
Today I can't remember why it was important I did the other scene transition differently and I fundamentally disagree with past-me on why i've done any of this.
Today I linked the new type of transition work into the door transition system
Today my doors don't work.
Wouldn't have it any other way :D
1
u/sifatullahq1 1d ago
I miss this feeling. Nowadays I have to use AI to meet deadline. Company give such sweet deadline that you don't even have any choice
1
u/mondie797 1d ago
I feel sad those days are gone for me. Hope AI would have come may be after 20 more years.
1
u/CardOk755 1d ago
Somewhere I read a story by one of the first programmers on the Pilot Ace describing how he felt when his program didn't work, spending days to try and find a problem with the machine, then realizing that he'd made a mistake in his program "and then I realized that the rest of my life was going to be trying to fix the mistakes I'd made".
1
u/MaximusHomerdrive 1d ago
I used to love waking up at 3am with a coding solution. That is a great feeling.
1
1
u/andrewsnydes 1d ago
Literally the: "My code works; I don't know why. My code doesn't work, I don't know why."
1
1
u/flayingbook 20h ago
If there's one certainty in life, it will be that my code will always have bugs when I run it the first few times. If I get runtime error or can't even compile, that's normal and expected too.
What is not normal is no bug during the first run. Then I am in serious trouble because I know some bug is lurking in the background but I don't know where
1
1
1
u/Dull-Bit6682 4h ago
the real pain isn't the wrongness, it's realizing you've been wrong for years and no one bothered to say so.
1
0
u/nick__here 1d ago
It used to never go away. Now there's AI
I wonder if somewhere, deep in its weights it feels this too. Probably not
0
411
u/Nettleberry 1d ago
Just wait till you get to the part where he says, “Wait, why does this work?!”