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senordevnycyesterday at 11:47 AM2 repliesview on HN

I think it depends on what you mean by "the craft".

I understand the sentiments, genuinely. I do miss the feelings of carefully crafting a great piece of code. There was a genuine sense of accomplishment there. I still get a sense of accomplishment from agentic development, but it's different. It feels more similar to when you've steered a team of people who are actually doing the work, and then the final product gets delivered. I never touched the actual work, but my input / steering / taste / direction / etc. was a big part of what was delivered. And now we have the solution that we wanted.

If you got into this field because you like to hand-write code, and that's what you view as your craft, then yeah, I think you probably are in a tough spot. There's always the opportunity to do that on your own time, just like I'm sure the vast majority of woodworkers today are doing it for fun, not as their profession.

But if you're in this field because you have a passion for building things that solve problems (you know, engineering), if that's what you view as your craft, I don't think there's any shortage of opportunities to practice your craft.


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card_zeroyesterday at 12:48 PM

The hand-written code solves problems. Many of those are problems about how to write code. In your world, these are apparently invalidated as problems now, due to becoming less profitable: by "problem" you mean "profitable problem". Is chasing after profitable problems noble and special, I don't know, it serves demand, demand matters somewhat, fine then. But it's not the epitome of problem-solving.

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skydhashyesterday at 11:56 AM

> you have a passion for building things that solve problems

The AI hypers are more about “building things” than “solving problems”. When you analyze their comments and projects, they can barely articulate what the project’s purpose is about. Or even if it can be used by somebody else. It’s always about LoC, coding speed, and specs complexity.

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