IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

Control

Avatar of War Slayer
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Am I just a manager now and I should let go?
Congratulations on the promotion! (that you didn't ask for, want, or get compensated for!)
I'm not very much of a coder, mostly only when I have to to get something done, but I've always enjoyed it. At least after the fact lol. You poke some keys, fret about it, poke some more, and eventually something you wanted to happen happens! A bit silly of course, but it always felt a little like actual magic. Not in that I didn't understand what was happening, but that you can imagine something, do the correct gestures, and something from your brain comes into reality. Now I can tell claude to do it, complete 100x more stuff, still have the imagination-to-reality happen, but there's no more magic. No more feeling of accomplishment, just a bit relief that it worked and dread that I have to test it. Well, and then minor rage at the things it still can't do since having to do things manually now feels MUCH more like a slog than before since everything it can do moves so fast.
It feels like trading fulfillment for a very capable, distractible, and autistic employee.
 

Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
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I'm on the train, don't worry. At least somewhat. I upgraded to Claude Code Max last week so that I had the tokens to run automated test triage(fully replacing the idiot underling) while still having more than enough for the rest of my development work. Wrote my first skill a few days ago that spawns an orchestrating agent(so the implementor's context doesn't taint the review) which coordinates specialized review agents and then reports back to the implementing agent. This allows the implementor to keep its lock on the worktree as well.

Like, I'm making progress, tackling the problems I feel like I can. I just don't like looking dumb on code reviews and I don't know how to deal with it.
 

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
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Congratulations on the promotion! (that you didn't ask for, want, or get compensated for!)
I'm not very much of a coder, mostly only when I have to to get something done, but I've always enjoyed it. At least after the fact lol. You poke some keys, fret about it, poke some more, and eventually something you wanted to happen happens! A bit silly of course, but it always felt a little like actual magic. Not in that I didn't understand what was happening, but that you can imagine something, do the correct gestures, and something from your brain comes into reality. Now I can tell claude to do it, complete 100x more stuff, still have the imagination-to-reality happen, but there's no more magic. No more feeling of accomplishment, just a bit relief that it worked and dread that I have to test it. Well, and then minor rage at the things it still can't do since having to do things manually now feels MUCH more like a slog than before since everything it can do moves so fast.
It feels like trading fulfillment for a very capable, distractible, and autistic employee.
Funny thing is after ~15 years in the industry coding stopped feeling like magic. Everything started to feel really routine to me at least, like the coding part was the part where I never struggled with anymore like I used to fresh out of school. The fun for me has transitioned to architecting something novel, not knowing if it would work, and trying to squeeze it out of our capabilities. It's fun now just telling Claude what I'm thinking and shortly it can spin up my idea that I can test the same day.
 
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Fucker

Log Wizard
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2.png
 

Koushirou

Log Wizard
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I feel at this point I'm expected to just be phased out. 10 years I've been an SE, but after being stuck maintaining niche garbage at my old job, and AI completely exploding right after I got laid off and didn't get to adjust into it I just feel completely lost now and still just feel like a junior dev, and no one needs those anymore. I don't really have any other skills other than coding, and I'm not intelligent enough to move up into design or some other higher up space. I don't really know what I'm going to do whenever I end up getting replaced.
 

Fucker

Log Wizard
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It's fun now just telling Claude what I'm thinking and shortly it can spin up my idea that I can test the same day.
Kind of fucked up: I have an AI box that I wanted an app to monitor its CPU/GPU/RAM %/temp. Really shit app came with it and is really slow/crashes. I had Claude burp out a monitoring app a few minutes ago, and it works perfectly. My next version will sound an alarm at 80c with an echo for every minute for 5 minutes and resides in the clock bar area.

Next version was made while I went to the bathroom. It works on all my computers and cost me, what, 2 cents to make?
 
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Deathwing

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Funny thing is after ~15 years in the industry coding stopped feeling like magic. Everything started to feel really routine to me at least, like the coding part was the part where I never struggled with anymore like I used to fresh out of school. The fun for me has transitioned to architecting something novel, not knowing if it would work, and trying to squeeze it out of our capabilities. It's fun now just telling Claude what I'm thinking and shortly it can spin up my idea that I can test the same day.
Perhaps that's part of the difference between our reactions. I don't think I've ever been a good programmer. Just yesterday a colleague was explaining different ways to design logging solutions and I'm just like...print()?

Not that I don't understand the concepts when explained, I just don't think of them.

You'd think that should reinforce my adoption of AI. I frequently would get writer's block and AI has been great at mitigating that. The part I'm hung up on is that I have to own code that I feel I didn't earn.
 

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
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Perhaps that's part of the difference between our reactions. I don't think I've ever been a good programmer. Just yesterday a colleague was explaining different ways to design logging solutions and I'm just like...print()?

Not that I don't understand the concepts when explained, I just don't think of them.

You'd think that should reinforce my adoption of AI. I frequently would get writer's block and AI has been great at mitigating that. The part I'm hung up on is that I have to own code that I feel I didn't earn.
I gotcha. It may be that by writing C for 15 years I just got a lot of strong concepts beaten into me over the years. I don't think I'm a gifted programmer, I just don't find a lot of the things hard that I used to (we sometimes use triple pointers for instance).

Last 5 or so years though I've been a tech lead on a very complicated product and I have to work end to end (inception through customer field issues), so I picked up a lot of strong design traits along the way.
 
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TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Funny thing is after ~15 years in the industry coding stopped feeling like magic. Everything started to feel really routine to me at least, like the coding part was the part where I never struggled with anymore like I used to fresh out of school. The fun for me has transitioned to architecting something novel, not knowing if it would work, and trying to squeeze it out of our capabilities. It's fun now just telling Claude what I'm thinking and shortly it can spin up my idea that I can test the same day.
This is something I feel.

I have been a heads down SWE coding since 2012 when I entered the industry. There is no task in this space you could give me that would challenge me. It feels no different than chopping wood. Changing architecture and team processes and stuff is what interests me. Again dealing with people where you can't just code around them. That aspect has been interesting to me.