Why would you make this comment? Is it envy? They were able to do things only some people can do. They enjoyed what they did and it provided value. Now the fun has been taken out of it and you seem to be saying that they deserve to have no fun? What should they have done? Prove theorems while whipping themselves in case they might have fun? Maybe it's a puritan thing? Customer value is the only value.

The debate marches forward and will develop naturally. If you personally don't want to read it, then don't.

But of course the AI guys are preying on this anxiety in order to dominate. They are all over HN, either personally or with their bots. Which is why HN is no longer a place that you could go to get mainly unbiased anecdotes and experience. That is still available but it is being drowned out by FUD because the average HN user is now the mark.

Also this article is a good pre-cursor to the DSL article:

https://martinfowler.com/articles/what-is-code.html

> I sat out the TMT bubble until they quit using the term "information superhighway," and it saved me an 80% drawdown.

> I'm sitting out the AI / chip / SpaceX [AICSX, pronounced like the wrestling shoes?] bubble until they stop using the word "compute" as if it were a noun.

> I'm guessing I'll save myself a drawdown on a similar scale.

A comment under the original article.

Large codebases are the most complex things we have ever worked on and can easily become unmaintainable. I wanted people who really cared about code quality and consistency in order to offset this.

I think that it would be even more important to hire people like that now and even though we will need less programmers there were never enough of that type to go around anyway.

You compared them to humans. Humans live in the world, have a world model, meet people for lunch and exchange ideas. Agents read markdown files and code.

Simanwords, you spend a lot of time on HN promoting LLMs and being dismissive of humans in comparison. I have to ask:

Whose side are you on?

The compiler did exactly what you said because the programming language forced you to be exact. There was no room for misunderstanding.

This will never be the case with an LLM even if it becomes infallible (it won't). It's you who is fallible and sloppy until you force yourself to be precise. A programming language can help with that.

Just do some work with the code. If I go back and try to add a feature or fix some bugs on code that I have not worked with for a long time I find it much quicker to build up a mental model of it than code which I have never worked on previously.

(Don't worry, I know I'm rowing against the tide with this comment. The AI people have decided to destroy the commons for a few more millions on top of the billions they have already been given. It's a shame.)

> the perennially unprofitable venture-backed startup, for which faux productivity is connected to the generally immaterial nature of its high valuations, versus the game studio that lives and dies by the profitability of its products.

> In a sector of the economy where "it's not about how much you earn, but about how much you're worth," the labors of the companies whose workflows are built on the kinds of productivity apps that today comprise nearly 40 percent of Product Hunt's output are not actually directed at the creation of a thing, but at the appearance of the creation of a thing.

Maybe this is why Silicon Valley seems to have become obsessed with productivity and AI whereas the people in the industries you mention don't seem as excited. It's because they are actually making real things so they don't have to 'look busy' in order to justify themselves.

https://components.news/the-gamer-and-the-nihilist/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47235774