Learn to code.
Discussion
Like... by typing commands and classes on a keyboard, directly into a file and compiling or interpreting that file.
I couldn't understand why everything is so buggy, but now I understand.
You had AI write your code and now you can't read what was produced, so you just abandon it and go on to build another buggy prototype, instead of maintaining the code.
I didn't get it, as I didn't learn to program on a code generator. I wrote Assembler and C by hand, in my exams, and did floating point arithmetic with a pencil and some graph paper.
Didn't realize that y'all are skipping the first two years of comp sci, so that you have to idea what is going on.
But... you have no idea, what is going on.
what's hilarious for me is i basically did my first year of compsci when i was 9 years old
so actually it wasn't a loss, that my school fucked me because i was determined to be right, and gleefully proving my stupid teacher's wrong, and stopped me getting into CS back in 1994
i was already past the second year in my actual skills anyway
and then i went to work as a freelance computer tech support guy, and i was doing well at that, but the taxes and bullshit drove me crazy and if i'd paid them i would have been unable to work at this job
yay australia, and yay socialist bullshit
My dad is a network engineer, so I was writing emails and programs in the 80s. 🤙
yeah, my father was a somewhat crazy would-be inventor except he couldn't navigate the academic system either
in parallel to me learning to write advanced algorithms he was teaching me chemistry and physics
he was so terrible, i mean, literally psychopath, at being a father tho, that i didn't bite at his parents offer to foster my CS skill development, because he was involved in it
we live in a fucked up world, one one side, the devil, and on the other side, the army of fallen angels
i wish my fiat mine cto would do that, it would help her a lot
They are all so weirdly helpless.
It's all so bizarre.
Like.... why are there no tests? Have they never written a test?
Well, no. They have never written a test. Nor have they ever seen one or know what they are useful for.
Don't ask them about their build server. Just... spare yourself the cringe.
wait, what? how do you get boosted to CTO without knowing how to code?
People who can code often get stuck doing the coding.
yeah but as CTO you are responsible for the technology and architecture choices of the company's software. how can you do that job effectively without having *a lot* of coding experience?
yeah, i know right?
i had a bad experience with a CTO before, who jumped in and did my job for me when i could have done it, at a much lower pay rate
he was a former physics researcher, and had solid coding skills
You just take notes in the meetings and then ask the senior dev about it, afterward, and "circle back".
yeah, and i'm the senior dev, and she is always hand hovering over the big red eject button because i'm not working fast enough even though the front end is not ready to integrate yet anyway, so it's a really unpleasant interaction i have with her that is actually reducing my productivity because i am feeling oppressed and that is not helpful for the mindspace needed to do senior dev shit
Sounds awful bro, hope you get a new gig soon
idk where to look tho, #golang jobs are few and far between because of the endless barrage of marketing for rust and javascript
i'm not comfortable with leaving a project midstream either, that's another facet of how retarded this person is
gonna deliver what i promised
my previous projects were all grant projects and they all won approval from the grantors. she only showed up recently and has done no due diligence about my ability to produce results, admittedly both prior projects were a week or two over deadline but come on, isn't that normal?
also in both cases i was slowed down by a little shithed CS grad whose parents were cranky at him for doing CS instead of medicine, and his attitude was pretty toxic and lazy, in both projects i was waiting for him to get this shit together for almost a month
I've been thinking lately that learning how to code is not the right approach anymore, now when a friend asks me how to learn development and code I give more importance to learning software and system design, architecture principles and so on. Code is the mechanical part of software development, wdyt?
I think you're doing them a grave disservice, TBH. I'm so good at the high-level stuff because I understand the low-level stuff.
That'd be like trying to become an artisan baker, without knowing anything about the ingredients. As soon as things become complex or don't go according to plan, you're out.
Things are changing, learning the basics of code is important and should not be avoided, but as I said, for the times to come I think it's more important to understand how software works, and of course how to read code, than to master a language or understand low level stuff. The history of software itself shows this, we can just look at how languages evolved from low level to high level, it was always about making the process of building software easier.
Yeah, that's fine, but if you only know as much as the AI, then the AI knows as much as you do.
I think there will soon be no professional market for people who don't understand computers. It's just gonna be real software and system engineers, designers (who will also be expected to know WTF is going on because design stuff is extremely fidgety), and vibe coders.
design stuff is next level above programming
design of algorithms usually requires understanding of advanced mathematics
design of architecture usually requires a lot of years of experience programming either learning architecture with the help of a nice language toolchain (eg go) or under a 5+ year veteran who has done the same thing or had a good lead to do the architecture stuff above them
Yeah, people think the higher-level stuff is easier, but it's harder. It only looks easier, on a superficial level.
This is already a problem. Explaining backend and architecture design choices to devs who only ever worked on a framework that wraps all kinds of internals is hard. Right now, senior devs that started before all the fancy stuff keep a lot of the teams afloat by understanding where it all came from and vetoing mad ideas.
Yeah. It's sorta weird being "the senior devs", but that's anyone over 24, at this point, since the Boomers made their great escape.
And that is still going to happen imho, experienced developers are going to be crucial, but the barrier to code have been lowered by a lot, basically now anyone can code even without any knowledge of coding or software development, so for that reason I think that for someone who wants to start in this world now is more important to have a strong foundation about architecture design, best practices and once you get the basics of how to think in software and how to structure a system go deeper in specific languages, but human written code is not a priority anymore. I really think that this year is the last year that a human will write code without assistance, I can see that trend clearly, and it's just the beginning. That can be seen as a problem, but it is the reality.
I think it's been decades, since anyone just sat down and typed in an entire program without software assistance. The IDEs are really powerful, and code -generators are not new.
New is that the people building software can't even comprehend they code created.
LLMs and LSPs are very different things imho
But that's true, for that reason I think now it's more important to understand what your code is doing and how it plays in your system than how to write it
And I'm the opinion that you can't understand it, as well, unless you've written some.
You can watch someone else ride a bike or write an essay or cook a soufflé, without ever gaining the ability.
I agree, I'm just saying that things are changing, and now it's like you can have some sort of chef next to you teaching you how to do the soufflé, I've never said that you shouldn't touch any code 🤷 anyways just opinions about what I can observe around
I’m trying to point out the issue of a potentially misleading sense of accomplishment. It’s hard to judge expertise in most circumstances and it’s harder to judge an AI. It’s possible to pick up bad patterns from it unknowingly especially as a beginner. Maybe the soufflé chef never actually made the soufflé before either and just makes it up on the spot.
But yes, writing code is already of relatively little value. And we are all guessing which of the related skills will stay relevant and how long.
Exactly this! Totally agree
They constantly hallucinate classes and functions, too. Drives me nuts. And then when I'm like, that isn't a thing, it starts arguing with me and I have to demand it rewrite and it'll rewrite three times the same crap and I have to just go in and hard-delete everything and force it to start from scratch.
People are learning to code from this crazy person who lives in my computer. 😂
Yes, but which languages.
Gotta be specific with this declarative statement.