Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?
ZH version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.
Seeing my career crumble in front of my eyes, seeing my identity as software engineer questioned in the span of a few years has been, to me, traumatic, and utterly alienating because non-tech people are not unaware of how world-shattering this technology is to our niche, and many of our fellow peers either collectively shrug, or are ecstatic not to have to write code any more.
I have been trying to reinvent myself, to set out on a path where I'm no longer a professional software engineer; where I will still enjoy coding software for myself, by hand, but the emotional turmoil at this radical change has not lessened, and I have been wondering if other people are feeling the same kind of alienation, and just feel lost and a bit aimless these days.
(Please, this is meant to be a serious post about emotions some of us might be going through, and we could do without comments saying this is just an overreaction and to just embrace the future)
Discussion (11 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
I reckon the last large piece of technology I have learned is Kubernetes, and I doubt I’ll ever go any further.
On the other hand, I’ve sought some comfort in digital art, and learned a lot about Blender, level design, architecture, but it’s hard to feel like an impostor, after seeing myself as a programmer since I was in my teens. I wish I could find the strength and recklessness to just jump into the unknown and embrace a totally new career. I would have done it in a heartbeat in my 20s, now that I’m reaching 40 years old it is existentially terrifying.
I was already getting annoyed with the profession and its CV-driven development, and mostly saw code as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, but that only means I've not lost a sense of identity: I am absolutely also struggling to figure out what to do next.
Is that not what writing code is for? achieving a need?
If I want to feel the art or gaze upon my code masterpieces, I'll do that in my own side projects, no?
Because I'm relaxed about which style is used so long as it's not actively wrong, I'm also fairly relaxed about LLMs making code in a style I find weird… so long as it's not actively wrong, which it sometimes still is.
2. Create agents to crawl the internet and invite anyone who has posted such sentiments
3. Best not to tell them that they were contacted via ai
More seriously if you set one up, it will likely attract many people.
On the other hand I definitely feel like AI makes developers lazier, and if they're not properly reviewing the code it can have some disastrous consequences. It seems to have calmed down a bit but we went through a phase of swimming in a deluge of AI slop, I guess the temperature has been turned down a bit as I no longer get three emoji-filled documents for every change I introduce. It definitely feels like the last 30 years of my career have been swept away, but the past is gone and we can't get it back, and I have a wealth of experience that is still useful.
I don't know about other companies and industries but certainly the message from our leadership is that AI is here, and it's staying, so it's either a case of get on board or look for another job. I'm currently building AI augmented tools to stay relevant and hopefully survive the next round of job cuts.