alt Hacker NewsOP and long time lurker here, I'm desperate and looking for honest-to-god advice on what to do.
I am one of those neurodivergent people who loves programming because it gives me the right stimulation.
I also enjoy drawing, gardening, and exercise.
I don't own a car because I love walking, and such.
So I'm wondering if it's time to call it quits with programming (for a living).
Luckily I have some savings and I have other interests from years of doing random jobs and businesses, and as much as I love programming, especially with others, I think very few of us still want to program.
I'm like the Last Samurai of programming while everyone is using AI-assisted gattling guns.
Is it time to let go?
Replies
No it's absolutely not time to let go. You are one of a limited set of people with pre-AI taste and intuition for good software. They aren't making any more of them. And you'll be a super valuable asset anywhere you go.
I mean, if you want to retire go ahead, but don't do it because of AI. AI is just a tool to generate code faster. It doesn't replace the work of actually making design decisions and knowing what will scale and what's better going forward vs what will work now but spiral into unmanageable spaghetti code soon (yes AIs also have a harder time managing messy code than neat code)
> who loves programming because it gives me the right stimulation
A small (and a bit tangential) personal story: I thought I am one of those people who care about the result, more then about the process.
But, I've recently played a game called "The Farmer Was Replaced" that someone mentioned in the comments in one of the posts here, on HN.
The game is basically a farming sim, except you farm by programming a drone using a Python-like language.
Of course, I didn't use AI, because where is the fan in this? In "normal life" (work, personal projects), it is very hard for me to convince myself to do anything manually, because generating code is more efficient. But in a game, using AI assistance would be like using aimbot in a shooter or a cheatcode in some other game. Yeah, it's much more efficient, but what is the point? There is no challenge and no fun that comes from overcoming the challenge.
So, anyway, I was writing code by hand for the first time in I-don't-even-remember-how-many years. And it was so much fun. I don't remember when was the last time I felt so engaged, so immersed, so "in the flow".
So, yeah. After all, maybe I'm not a ruthless pragmatic who only cares about the final result and doesn't gives a shit, how did he get there...