alt Hacker NewsI wonder how many of the responses here bifurcate by age. The post resonates with me, but I am now in my early fifties. When I was in my 20's and 30's, I would have happily chased rabbits down all those holes, but now that time seems so brutally finite, I feel that anything encouring me to spend time on stuff other than what really matters is a strong negative. (Where "what matters" includes work, family, friends, and recreation).
When friends start dying within 10 years of your age, it's a hell of a wake up.
"I wish I'd made more throw away apps I never use" ... said no one on their death bed, ever.
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I think the bifurcation is between people who want to write code and people who want to have the end product of the code.
People who want to write code hate AI because it's doing the part they wanted to do.
People who want the end product of the code love AI because they want anything that helps them get to the end product faster.
The person who wrote this post feels oddly in neither camp. They like playing with the AI and seeing what comes out the other end. Some of the projects they boast about having built aren't even usable projects, like when they had it mock up a UI of a product and then got bored and moved on to the next before writing a backend.
Well, making throw-away things you never use could also be the definition of a hobby ... and hobbies are arguably good, and differ from "work" in that your goal is not to ship a product, but to scratch an itch. For some people AI assisted vibe coding scratches an itch. For others, not. Of course some hobbies turn into an unhealthy obsession, but that's not a new phenomenon.
Similar age here. And I have similar thoughts, although not about AI specifically. AI helps me get more done and not spend time on trivia and yak shaving, which is great. I do get more projects done, but those are projects I always wanted to do, just never had the time (or, sometimes the motivation, because of yak shaving tasks).
I think the biggest difference is that I no longer care about what people think about me and how I am perceived, so the motivation to publish my work went down to near zero. I used to build open source stuff, I no longer want to spend time on preparing stuff for publishing, making it available, dealing with people who will inevitably want something of me eventually. There just isn't enough time.
I can still be baited into responding on HN for some reason, and I am trying to work on that, because that is the ultimate waste of time.
Agreed with this until the last sentence, haha! I recently have been building throwaway apps and it has helped me scratch a bucket list itch I've had since childhood. Father is a programmer but I could never figure it out until vibe coding.
In my experience meeting people in real life, age wasn't the factor but programming experience. More seasoned developers tend to push back on letting LLMs run the full show. Less experienced ones are more open to it. Those with no experience at all, they are all in.
I'm also in my fifties, and sold my first software (6502 assemblewr) when I was 17!
My younger self was always excited when the latest tech came out, when the latest MSDN arrived, etc. But the last 15 or so years, I totally lost interest. I still love writing code but the desire for the latest and greatest had fade.
These LLMs were dogshit for a while, but I would keep returning to them.
Now I am excited again.
I work on a large web project with lots of legacy that is slowly being rewritten and copilot and codex are helping a lot by first writing tests for the old code, and then converting to the new.
I thought we'd never finish, but now I can see how we can do it.
It's brought a bit of the fun back into the game.
I don't understand the "deathbed" perspective. Are you going to wish you made more hackernews comments on your deathbed? Probably not. Does this mean you should stop using hackernews?
If you optimized for minimizing deathbed regret perhaps you'd regret that on your deathbed!
If I have cogent thoughts on my deathbed I expect they'll be along the lines of "I wish I wasn't dying" and not regretting the many ways I enjoyed my time on Earth (which includes vibe coding apps nobody uses).
Of course it is. Young people are always more eager to adapt new tech while older people yell at clouds. AI usage is MUCH higher among young people.
This lands for me. I’m pushing 40 and over the last few years I’ve definitely been eliminating distractions. Anything with scrolling or algorithms meant to suck you in is gone. Deleting apps and blocking websites on my phone to prevent distractions. Phones getting much less use. Just yesterday replaced my Apple Watch with a regular watch.