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ACCount37 | on: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
The divide seems to come down to: do you enjoy the "micro" of getting bits of code to work and fit together neatly, or the "macro" of building systems that work?

If it's the former, you hate AI agents. If it's the latter, you love AI agents.

ThrowawayR2 | parent | next
I'd say that the divide seems to come down to whether you want to be a manager or a hacker. Skimming the posts in this submission, many of the most enamored with LLMs seem to be project managers, people managers, principal+ engineers who don't code much anymore, and other not hands-on people who are less concerned with quality or technical elegance than getting some kind of result.

Bear in mind also that the inputs to train LLMs on future languages and frameworks necessarily have to come from the hacker types. Somebody has to get their hands dirty, the "micro" of the parent post, to write a high quality corpus of code in the new tech so that LLMs have a basis to work from to emit their results.

theshrike79 | root | parent | next
I want to "hack" at a different level.

What I want to do is create bespoke components that I can use to create a larger solution to solve a problem I have.

What I don't want to do is spend 45 minutes wrangling JSON to a struct so that I can get the damn component working =)

A quick example: I wanted a component that could see if I have new replies on HN using the Algol API. ~10 minutes of wall clock time with Claude, maybe a minute of my time. Just reading through the API spec is 15 minutes. Not my idea of fun.

Difwif | root | parent | next
I think it's pretty obvious what category you see yourself in.

I don't think you're a hacker. I think you enjoy writing code (good for you). Some of us just enjoy making the computer execute our ideas - like a digital magician. I've also gotten very good at the code writing and debugging part. I've even enjoyed it for long periods of time but there's times where I can't execute my ideas because they're bigger than what I can reasonably do by myself. Then my job becomes pitching, hiring, and managing humans. Now I write code to write code and no project seems too big.

But I'm looking forward to collapsing the many layers of abstraction we've created to move bits and control devices. It was always about what we could do with the computers for me.

raw_anon_1111 | root | parent
“Technical excellence” has never been about whether you are using a for loop or while loop. It’s architecture, whether you are solving the right problem, scalability, etc
guitarlimeo | root | parent
Performance critical applications (game engines etc) don't agree with that
raw_anon_1111 | root | parent
Most people aren’t writing game engines. Hell most people at BigTech aren’t worried about scalability. They are building on top of scalable internal frameworks - not code frameworks things like Google Borg.

The reason your login is slow is not because someone didn’t use the right algorithm.

Most game developers are just using other company’s engines.

While yes you need to learn how the architecture, the code isn’t the gating factor.

One example is the Amazon Prime Video team using AWS Step functions when they shouldn’t have and it led to inefficiencies. This was a public article that I can’t find right now.

(And before someone from Amazon Retail chimes in and says much of Amazon Retail doesn’t run on AWS and uses the legacy CDO infrastructure - yes I know. I am a former AWS employee).

kristofferR | parent | next
That is an amazing summary. It might not seem that amazing, but I feel like I've read pages about this, but nothing has expressed as elegantly and succinctly.
arcanemachiner | parent | next
I do love the former, but it's been nice to take a break from that and work at a higher level of abstraction.
nineteen999 | root | parent
Same. After 40+ years of typing code on a keyboard, my hands aren't as nimble as they were, a little pain sometimes builds up (whether it's arthritis or carpal tunnel or something, I'm not sure). Being able to have large amounts of code written with much less input is a godsend - and it's been great to learn and see what models like Claude can really do, if you can remain organized and focussed on the API's/interfaces.
fragmede | root | parent
Do you have WisprFlow or similar STT setup? It's a real Star Trek moment vocally telling my computer what to build, and then to have it build it.
nineteen999 | root | parent
I tried WisprFlow after you mentioned it and after spending ages clicking through all the dialogs only to find it didn't work out of the box with my terminal (I use Claude cli almost exclusively). Could have been something wrong with my terminal I guess, since I wrote my own.
teaearlgraycold | parent | next
I enjoy both. There’s still plenty of micro to do even in web dev if you have high standards. Read Claude’s output and you’ll find issues. Code organization, style, edge cases, etc.

But the important thing is getting solutions to users. Claude makes that easier.

kubanczyk | parent
> do you enjoy the "micro" of getting bits of code to work and fit together neatly, or the "macro" of building systems that work?

These are not toys. I want to make money. The customers want feature after feature, in a steady stream. It's bad business if the third or fourth feature takes ages. The longer stream, the better financially.

That the code "works" on any level is elementary, Watson, what must "work" is that stream of new features/pivots/redesigns/fixes flowing.