this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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The thing I hate the most about AI and it's ease of access; the slow, painful death of the hacker soul—brought not by war or scarcity, but by convenience. By buttons. By bots. [...]

There was once magic here. There was once madness.

Kids would stay up all night on IRC with bloodshot eyes, trying to render a cube in OpenGL without segfaulting their future. They cared. They would install Gentoo on a toaster just to see if it’d boot. They knew the smell of burnt voltage regulators and the exact line of assembly where Doom hit 10 FPS on their calculator. These were artists. They wrote code like jazz musicians—full of rage, precision, and divine chaos.

Now? We’re building a world where that curiosity gets lobotomized at the door. Some poor bastard—born to be great—is going to get told to "review this AI-generated patchset" for eight hours a day, until all that wonder calcifies into apathy. The terminal will become a spreadsheet. The debugger a coffin.

Unusually well-written piece on the threat AI poses to programming as an art form.

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[–] cdkg@lemm.ee 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (15 children)

I get when people say: "hey, this happened with every new tech..." But this one in particular gas many inherent problems: it's built on stolen material, it doesn't encourage critical thinking and it will create mini socio cognitive bubbles, distancing each other more and more. It's built that way because the people that makes it want it to be like that.

Edit: the stolen material includes the way artists executes it's art, say drawing (ghibli studios for example) or music, not just copyright

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[–] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 23 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

When you outsource the thinking, you outsource the learning.

Stealing this because it manages to put technical concerns into hand-waving manager speak.

And a pretty solid article. I think leaning on micro-enhancements to performance a little to hard at the end but the rest jibes with my experiences working in a large company where non-technical bloviators are leading the charge of changing the landscape of a field they don't understand and have no training in.

"We're bringing AI to OKRs!" they say hungrily, as their weak arms attempt to pull the rug.

"Sure you are", I say, pretending to stumble.

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 days ago

Hi, we still exist. I still build old shit to do things it's not supposed to do. We're not going away.

[–] Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 40 points 5 days ago (10 children)

Old man shakes hands at clouds.

You can still do things the old way, AI existing does not impact your ability to do so.

People still make mechanical watches by hand. People choose to carve things instead of 3D printing them. People choose to drive stick instead of automatic.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 42 points 4 days ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

I think at most of the disdain comes from the business side. Sure I can opt out of AI at home but at work I'm constantly getting asked how AI has helped my productivity and potentially "graded" on how much or how effectively I use it. Business doesn't care about your personal fulfillment, just your productivity, and if they grind you into dust to where you no longer find any joy or motivation in your work they'll get the next college graduate that's already used AI for 80% of their assignments and wonder why quality has tanked, integrations are failing, security breaches are up, and energy costs have doubled.

A coworker that regularly uses AI code assistants asked me to review 78 brand new files he made. That really puts my back against the wall. Do I spend a day going through everything "the old way"? Do I ask AI to summarize each function to bridge the gap in knowledge? Do I ask it, file by file, if it sees any issues? Or do I just rubber stamp it because I should trust the million-dollar product my boss thinks I should use more than Google or official docs?

[–] AdamBomb@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

PRs still need to be reasonable size for human review, regardless of how they were authored. IMO

[–] RagingRobot@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah but when you complain you are seen as slowing down progress. Your college wrote all of this useful code and now you are blocking it from being deployed? Our shareholders want to know that we are winning the AI race so we need to release this feature asap. How can we unblock this? I have added 3 new engineers to the team let's make sure this gets out today!!

[–] AdamBomb@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 3 days ago

The man-hour myth will never die in the management class

[–] sturger@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago

Tell your coworker to review it with his AI and then ship it.

[–] criss_cross@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Yeah like I’m a lot cooler on the AI hype than most but the articles argument is weak. This is the same shit people were saying when SO and Google were gaining traction. Surprisingly having one tool does not limit people from digging further into internals

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[–] Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca 21 points 4 days ago

It amazes me how often I see the argument that people react this way to all tech. To some extent that's true, but it assumes that all tech turns out to be useful. History is littered with technologies that either didn't work or didn't turn out to serve any real purpose. This is why we're all riding around in giant mono-wheel vehicles and Segways.

[–] plumbercraic@lemmy.sdf.org 19 points 4 days ago (8 children)

The thing I hate the most about the printing press and its ease of access: the slow, painful death of the scribe's soul—brought not by war or scarcity, but by convenience. By type. By machines. [...]

There was once magic here. There was once madness.

Monks would stay up all night in candlelit scriptoriums with bloodshot eyes, trying to render illuminated manuscripts without smudging their life's work. They cared. They would mix pigments from crushed beetles just to see if they'd hold. They knew the smell of burnt parchment and the exact angle of quill where their hand would cramp after six hours. These were artists. They wrote letters like master craftsmen—full of devotion, precision, and divine chaos.

Now? We're building a world where that devotion gets mechanized at the door. Some poor bastard—born to be great—is going to get told to "review this Gutenberg broadsheet" for eight hours a day, until all that wonder calcifies into apathy. The scriptorium will become a print shop. The quill a lever.

[–] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

The slow, painful death of technological privacy - brought not by war, not by scarcity, but by convenience of another app that saves you 3 clicks per transaction paired with the forced usage of certain functions within an existing environment

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[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 22 points 5 days ago

I'm more and more distancing myself with computers, it already was "use this library", then use this app, now it seems just ask the "AI".

I took up painting and chess, viable replacements I hope.

[–] Regenschauer@lemm.ee 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That rather sounds like it was written by an ai?

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 days ago

You're the only human Lemmy user.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

it's ease

well-written

You sure? We do not applaud the tenor who cannot clear his throat.

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