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ramon156 • today at 9:34 PM • 4 replies • view on HN

I spent a lot of my time on the internet because I was lonely in my teens and these connections were exciting. I learned software dev because I was a nerd that loved math and loved the concept of building software, having complete control on how it's done. That was the concept I signed up for.

Software dev today is sitting in front of a prompt bar, sometimes checking the IDE, sometimes some DevOps, but nothing about it excites me anymore. Even hobby projects are dull because they're done in mere days. Choosing not to use LLMs has little to no reward imo.

I'm slowly moving away from software dev because the rose tinted glasses I saw the job as are shattering


Replies

mjr00 • today at 9:52 PM

> Even hobby projects are dull because they're done in mere days.

This is only true if your definition of "hobby project" is limited to "initial prototype with basic functionality and a generic corporate-looking landing page".

Yeah, a lot of tools that would have made fun weekend projects can now be one-shot by Claude and aren't even worth sharing, because someone who needs that functionality can just use Claude too. But you can accomplish so much more now. Someone just did a hobby project to reverse engineer NVidia drivers and make them work on Windows XP. Dream bigger!

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soundworlds • today at 9:47 PM

Which is interesting, because I've always been a musician first and software dev as a side interest, and I feel like LLMs have made the software iteration loop fast enough that it feels as exciting as making music for me.

I wonder if there's some blend of software and other interest that might rekindle that novelty for you?

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hollowturtle • today at 9:51 PM

> Even hobby projects are dull because they're done in mere days. Choosing not to use LLMs has little to no reward imo. I'm slowly moving away from software dev because the rose tinted glasses I saw the job as are shattering

Try solving a very hard problem or a very good game. Or at least publish some very good polished software, they all sucks! This really is a paradox, all this doomerism and AI that has solved “coding” and it’s “very good now” and we don’t mot only have not good software, but it’s getting worse! Good lord how the heck we get out of this situation?