Programming Still Sucks

https://www.stvn.sh/writing/programming-still-sucks-fqffhyp

by jeromechoo • 3 months ago

726 325 3 months ago

jdw64• 3 months ago

This is absurdly well written.

I don’t know how someone takes the familiar anxiety around AI replacing developers and turns it into something this beautiful and funny.

Once again, the programming industry has robbed literature of a potential Nobel Prize candidate.

jeromechoo• 3 months ago

You knew. And you signed off anyway. Because the alternative was losing the job, and the job was the mortgage, and the school fees, and the visa, and the version of yourself who'd fix it later once things stabilized.

I felt the pang in my bones reading this. All of us peons are just wading through this brave new world trying to do what we know is right but ultimately having no choice but to give in to life's needs.

grahamjperrin• 3 months ago

anxiety around AI replacing developers

For the benefit of people who don't absorb the entire article (spoiler alert):

> … AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did. …

dktp• 3 months ago

As another commenter implied, the title a reference to this - https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks. Which is an incredible read as well

SaucyWrong• 3 months ago

This was beautiful. I also appreciated the backlink to Peter Welch’s spiritual ancestor to this essay, which I had forgotten how to find, and had the joy of reading again.

TacticalCoder• 3 months ago

The USB stick hints at a big problem in our trade though: how do you "reboot" your IT infrastructure if it literally burns to the ground? I'm not talking about Google-scale systems (which still couldn't restart from scratch IIUC but they're actually working on it?) but only about SMEs.

How does a medium-sized SME were all the payrolls depends on Sara and her USB stick do if, literally, their servers do catch fire.

You've got backups, then what? How automated is the reinstallation of your typical SME's infra?

The closest I saw to that scenario was some documentary where some little trading firm had just time to fetch the backup hard drives before leaving the building on fire after a plane crashed into it on 9/11. The CEO (I think it was the CEO) was explaining that had he not grabbed a HDD with the backups, the company was done (not that I advice onsite/offline backups on HDDs that you must not forget to grab when the shit hits the fan as a solution btw).

I understand the "just drink the cloud kool-aid" angle: but are SMEs typically doing that?

How many SMEs out there are depending on Sara's knowledge of the USB memory stick and how to use it?

I've definitely seen similar things. And I'm sure many of you did too.

Many houses of cards?

smitty1e• 3 months ago

How does a medium-sized SME were all the payrolls depends on Sara and her USB stick do if, literally, their servers do catch fire.

The SpecOps guys have the following bit of wisdom on offer: "Two is one and one is none".

AnimalMuppet• 3 months ago

And a backup you haven't verified you can restore from isn't one.

lmm• 3 months ago

How does a medium-sized SME were all the payrolls depends on Sara and her USB stick do if, literally, their servers do catch fire.

Like every job, we overestimate our importance.

What do they do? They pay everyone the same as last month as a temporary measure, ask you to talk to your manager if your pay should be more this month, warn everyone that they're going to recalculate the payroll and adjust any differences next month. Then they calculate everyone's pay from the inputs, which really isn't such a hard problem when the alternative is failure. Maybe they pay some fancy consultants or an SAAS provider for a few months. Maybe they have to cut a few corners. Maybe they even get fined by their state's DoL. Life goes on.

sqircles• 3 months ago

How many SMEs out there are depending on Sara's knowledge of the USB memory stick and how to use it?

I think at least in part, that is the point: orgs are missing the part of the equation where the institutional and organizational knowledge is critical. Sure, the code to accomplish parts B and C can be re-duct-taped together in a month or so by off-shore, or maybe an agent... but part A, its plumbing, and why it does what it does the way it does it due to historical failures and the knowledge behind that is probably what keeps it going.

Those things are learned starting at the ground level by bumping into them in the trenches.

pocksuppet• 3 months ago

The company just shuts down and its customers switch to competitors. This is economically efficient. The redundancy of a company is another company. It's a bit like how we don't insist on every server running two CPUs in lockstep in case one fails, because we have more than one server to handle requests.

ssl-3• 3 months ago

When I took charge of solving backups for the single important box with unique, irreplaceable data -- the accounting system -- at an SME a long time ago, I think I approached it with the right amount of correctness. Therein, losing a day or three of recent data would have been recoverable; losing all of it would have been catastrophic.

I devised a system to perform bare-metal backups onto an easily-swapped, external 2.5" hard drive, using Acronis. I provided a plurality of these hard drives, and they were to be rotated off-site. The system was tolerant of human error and would proceed with making valid, current backups even if the drives were rotated incorrectly, or if not rotated at all on any given day. The backup drives each had complete file history (yay shadow copies) from an ever-advancing date, so any given drive could be used as a time machine of varying resolution, and also as the single source from which to independently start fresh.

I'd watch the logs to see that it was done, and for the most part: Whoever was assigned to that role normally did it properly-enough.

I documented it and showed the other technical folks how it works.

Sometimes I'd wander back and make sure the backup drives weren't accumulating on-site (there should never be more than 2 on-site). I'd periodically test these backups by restoring them completely onto identical hardware, to make sure the system hadn't got crufted up somehow and that it still continued to perform its task of restoring a working system from zero.

It worked fine for years and years. We never had to use that backup, but I had every confidence that it would be useful if that ever became necessary.

Eventually, my role changed and those things rather officially became Not My Problem.

Later, they moved the accounting system from that lineage of stout Proliant boxes to a trash-tier small-form 1u Lenovo machine that someone found used, on eBay, for cheap.

Backups are handled by the clown, somehow. The last I heard anything about it, the person doing the talking was very pleased with the money they'd saved and that they'd no longer have to pay "extortion" to Acronis.

I have every expectation that nobody has ever restored these backups. They're probably relying on the sheer hope that they'll never have to restore them, much less from zero.

And I also hope they never have to restore them, lest they may find out exactly what that data is worth to them.

protocolture2• 3 months ago

The USB stick hints at a big problem in our trade though: how do you "reboot" your IT infrastructure if it literally burns to the ground? I'm not talking about Google-scale systems (which still couldn't restart from scratch IIUC but they're actually working on it?) but only about SMEs.

Maersk ground to a halt because it got done nearly 100% by cryptolocker. IIRC they went to hard copy records, called everyone, got all of IT together with some company credit cards to get new laptops and flash drives and shit and literally rebuilt their infra from scratch.

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/maersk-had-to-reinstall-all-i...

I read a better post mortem but thats the highlights.

How many SMEs out there are depending on Sara's knowledge of the USB memory stick and how to use it?

Part of my day job is finding, documenting and remediating these sort of issues.

"The CEO Coded this application in VB5 15 years ago, the entire business relies on it, theres no source code, theres no binary backups and the one computer it runs on just had its PSU fail"

"Theres a cron somewhere that compresses, zips and transports the payroll database interstate, outside of our network, before our weekly pay run"

"Theres been no documentation of this environment for 20 years, most of the hardware is that old, and the team that developed it just sold all their shares and left"

This shit is my life lmao.

Theres obviously some bias, because the good companies aren't asking me to do it for them. But I make a decent living examining, documenting and remediating this shit.

thisoneisreal2• 3 months ago

How did you get into that line of work? Sounds really interesting.

keyle• 3 months ago

Lovely writing!

... to which they nod before moving on to a lighter topic, like whether we're going to nuke Iran or not.
There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came.
AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did.

Love the sarcasm, it carries a cynical form of experience :)

nullhole• 3 months ago

When the applause fades, my employees, or reports, or "my team" when I'm feeling jolly

was good too

gregsadetsky• 3 months ago

Archive link as the site seems down - https://web.archive.org/web/20260507003341/https://www.stvn....

fooqux• 3 months ago

AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did. Same greed that moved factories to Bangladesh and keeps slaves in cobalt mines in the Congo, wearing a new mask. Tell the nephew to do something else. Anything. It won't save him either, but at least he won't have to pretend the thing destroying his life is a robot.

This hit me hard. This article is art. I think I need to sleep on this and read it again in the morning.

hsuduebc23• 3 months ago

Autor surely always could be journalist. He can write a exceptional story.

stackghost• 3 months ago

Yeah, I fancy myself a decent writer but I am not anywhere close to this good. Very engaging, you can tell they're writing from the heart.

bluegatty12• 3 months ago

Don't like to go against everyone but this not particularly well written.

It's a long winding absurdist metaphorical tale, that is really more or less a rant. It's not particularly well grounded.

It's a nice piece of personalized fiction, but it's not particularly good writing and nothing approaching what we'd think of as 'journalism'.

torginus2• 3 months ago

I mean he could be, though nowadays that's not really a recongition of skill some seem to think it is nowadays.

Besides this is an opinion piece, which contains passages comparing programmers who despite AI, make hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting at home or air conditioned offices, to bangladeshi indentured workers.

Even if we do away with hyperbole and take the 'Sara' example, programming are still one of the least physically demanding and best paid jobs out there, especially in the US, even compared to jobs needing hard qualifications. Compared to your hypothetical 'Sarah' keeping the payroll system alive, almost everyone in every profession does more work for less pay.

He also sells (I imagine not cheap) consulting on the side.

yoyohello132• 3 months ago

He really put in to words what I’ve been feeling lately. I love programming and I’m quite good at it, but this industry is a cesspit. I’ve already decided to go back to school to get one of those ‘real’ jobs. I’m tired of working in an industry hell bent on the destruction of society.

bluegatty12• 3 months ago

'The industry' is not hellbent on destroying society - this is just so unhinged it's hard to know how to make of it.

at-fates-hands• 3 months ago

> I’m tired of working in an industry hell bent on the destruction of society.

People will argue this point. However, when I look at all the things that tech has done thinking it was going to improve society; when in fact, it did the exact opposite is hard to argue. AI is just another item on a very long list of dystopian markers that writers/musicians have warned us about for years.

The scary part now is people denying its happening right in front of them.

socalgal22• 3 months ago

Greed does not take your jobs, progress does. People don’t hand wash clothing for money because we have machines to do that now. We don’t need people delivering news papers because the news is delivered digitally. AI is no different. “IF” your job can be automated away or made more efficient it will. That might not be a benefit for your but it’s a benefit to society at large

Note: the above is not claiming AI or LLM can do these jobs. it’s claiming “IF” they can then they will. No greed required

kiba3• 3 months ago

This is ignoring the people who capture the rent.

If technological innovation is to liberate us from poverty then it should be a celebration that everytime that a job is automated. Since that is not happening, it implies something deeply wrong about how we structure our society.

wavemode2• 3 months ago

People don’t hand wash clothing for money because we have machines to do that now. We don’t need people delivering news papers because the news is delivered digitally.

Those jobs aren't creative knowledge work.

The advent of digital audio workstations didn't reduce the number of musicians - it increased the amount of music.

Now that we can write code with AI, we (as a civilization) will simply write more code than we used to.

simgt3• 3 months ago

it’s a benefit to society at large

That remains to be determined. Most of the examples you'll likely come up with are made at the expense of the environment. We've never consumed as much oil and other limited natural resources as now, in spite of massive gains in productivity.

So far it also looks like digital media is fast tracking us back into fascism, helped by the large concentration of capital that occurred during the transition.

Change and automation are not always societal progress, sadly.

wiseowise• 3 months ago

We don’t need people delivering news papers because the news is delivered digitally.

That’s where your idea breaks. There’s a big swathe of people who prefer the feel and simplicity of newspapers over digital hellscape. There’s also a reason why people prefer quality books like Folio Society over books printer on a toilet paper.

“IF” your job can be automated away or made more efficient it will. That might not be a benefit for your but it’s a benefit to society at large

You can automate away 80% of CEOs by Markov chains, and it would be a benefit to society at large. Yet it doesn’t happen, why?

Bendy• 3 months ago

It is greed; LLMs are progress but their cost, and the lies told about them wildly exceed their utility for most of the tasks that they’re otherwise expected to perform. The claims are fraudulent, fraud is a crime, and crime does not benefit society.

majorbugger• 3 months ago

Yes it does. Typical example - layoffs to make to stock perform better.

alaaalawi2• 3 months ago

it is that not that they will take, as they do not have will of their own. greed does put them to work

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF3• 3 months ago

Note: the above is not claiming AI or LLM can do these jobs. it’s claiming “IF” they can then they will. No greed required

"No greed required" doesn't seem accurate. One would not use an AI to do the job instead of a human, except for the motivation that they would have more at the end of the day.

krackers• 3 months ago

Note that as I understand the main claim of Marx is that the efficiency and productivity gains from automation don't actually go to the laborer, they're captured by the "capital owner". Example being how despite all the automation we're all still working 8 hr days, 5 days a week just to get by.

Now of course there's also jevon's "paradox" here, and the automation does allow us to support a larger population so in that sense not all the increased productivity is just "skimmed off the top" as profit. But on the flipside the crux of the other recent [1] HN post is that the wealth disparity is increasing. And if all the increased productivity directly translated to more "physical resources" in the world, that wouldn't be the case.

So something must be getting skimmed of the top, and intuitively you can feel the "rent seeking" layers in society have increased. Gains in efficiency are no longer resulting in surplus of physical products and decrease in prices.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48038307

011000114• 3 months ago

Society doesn't owe me over $500k/year for writing some instructions in a cryptic specification language. It's cool that I've been getting that, but I consider that luck and circumstance. When robots take my job I'll go find something else to do. I'm not going to blame evil rich people or some other boogieman.

ramon156• 3 months ago

Im a medior and I earn 42k/yr. It would be a privilege for me to earn this much, as I cannot afford a home.

ironmagma5• 3 months ago

Society doesn't owe anybody anything. So who's to say when you find something else to do, it will pay enough to live?

maweki• 3 months ago

Society doesn't owe me over $500k/year

No it doesn't. But as a human being, you and everybody still deserves a decent living. And our current system clearly does not provide that for a lot of people.

eggsandbeer• 3 months ago

Fuck the American Dream

eloisant2• 3 months ago

It also doesn't owe your CEO billions for hovering over a company where other people (like you) do the actual value creation.

1132• 3 months ago

You are the rich people.

coolThingsFirst• 3 months ago

No, but it owes you around 100K with a great work-life balance and job security because you spent years and years studying and honing your skills for it.

alaaalawi2• 3 months ago

is it like society does not owe any body money for puting sand gravel cement and water. we are talking about products not their assembly

CRConrad6• 2 months ago

If you've been getting over $500k/year for years, you are "rich people". So no wonder you're not going to blame yourself for anything.

keybored3• 3 months ago

Imagine you start on a trek to find the sage with the answer to why idiot sociopaths rule everything, why wars that don’t even benefit the aggressor are started, why there is enough food for everyone twice over but people are still starving... and much more. You’ve been pondering this question for years. You’ve read comments. Wikipedia. You already have a good idea. But you seek the wisdom of the sage.

You cross mountains. Marshes. You evade pirates, bandits. Help some fellow travelers. Finally, after scouring the land and asking hundreds for clues and direction, you find his location; a small plateau beyond the swamp and rainforest which hugs the southern shore of the great lake.

You notice immediately that the wind dies down. It is now completely calm. Weirdly serene, as if the sudden silence made you notice all the ambient noise, now absent. The sage sits between (edit: beneath) a cherry blossom tree, said to always bloom; the sage is an old man but his wisdom is the most permanent thing on the plateau.

You approach the old man. His eyes are closed. You make sure to exaggerate your approach, make some noise, so as to not startle this frail old man that surely must have seen more than ninety winters. You prostrate yourself, calmly introduce yourself, and sit down beside him.

You calmly breathe in and out. This is it. Don’t rush it. Any erratic movement, any slight irritation could prove fatal to his old shell.

“Venerable Opakaku”, you start. “I know some things about how the world works. Why the cruel rule us. Why the meek suffer. Why the brave die for nothing. Why those of brilliant mind mostly seem to serve the cruel. But my opinions are unimportant. Can you please tell me, Venerable Opakaku, why is the world in this state? And how do we solve it?”

The sage’s parched lips move. He has to wet his throat, it is difficult for him—such is the state of his shell—but he composes himself and opens his white eyes, staring just to the left of your head. His blind eyes widen as he is about to reveal the answer. “Greed!”

rramadass2• 3 months ago

On Greed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48046648

jamauro2• 3 months ago

Is this Gen AI or did you write it?

torginus2• 3 months ago

Does it? Why do those slaves work in the Congo? It's to produce materials that go into premium EVs in order to satiate demand in rich Western countries. If said demand never existed, or people would say 'yeah, but not at this cost', like you seem to imply the moral responsibility lies solely with industrialists, these mines would never exist.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

Is all demand equal? How is demand induced, by who and for what benefit?

tim333• 3 months ago

I've only done a bit of helping with computer systems but the gripes he lists - people not understanding the system, leaving, management trying trendy software and the like happen even without greedy capitalism.

emmelaich2• 3 months ago

And yet I'm sure that greed is pretty much a constant. The opportunities to exploit that greed may change.

artyom• 3 months ago

I was expecting another AI rant. I got really great writing instead. This escalated quickly.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

I'm sorry, or you're welcome :D

jrm42• 3 months ago

Yes. And the reason for all of this is the same as it's always been, and requires literally no technical knowledge to understand.

There is essentially zero accountability for harm.

There is no button on your toaster that blows up the toaster.

But there's a link in your email. And that's a button.

And no one has figured out how to punish Microsoft or Apple or Google for allowing that to continue, though we do this just fine elsewhere.

Someone or something has to be punished, regulated or otherwise hurt for anything to change here.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

I agree, but would dare you to go one step further: there is no accountability for harm because, being the "bourgeoisie" under neoliberal capitalism, capital insulates them from consequences.

jrm42• 3 months ago

Probably not wrong, and I mean, lots of economics words there (ah, my college major) but I personally just think that the path forward here is more practical and boring.

Gotta sue people and companies. Gotta get governments to do more regulation. I know this place is kind of allergic to that, but hey.

henry_bone• 3 months ago

Let me add to the chorus of admiration for this piece of writing. Poignant, accurate, appropriately cynical.

quxbar• 3 months ago

I don't agree with everything this piece concludes, but I do admire getting to read through a whole HN article without feeling the sheen of AI co-authorship.

dshacker• 3 months ago

You're absolutely right - this is not X, but Y.

----

I'm absolutely tired at work on how many people are writing with em-dashes with obvious AI prose. I feel a little bit insulted but then I remember we all participate in this charade.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

As a typography nerd, I am also mourning the death of typographic style. Em-dashes and ligatures <3

redfloatplane• 3 months ago

It’s funny you say that as about halfway through I was beginning to wonder if this was at least Claude-edited. Absolutely no shade to the author meant, I think it’s a thoughtful article, but I _did_ feel the sheen of AI co-authorship.

It raises the question of how much text I have read that I did not realise was LLM-generated. I think I have a decent nose for it but I’m not perfect, there must be false negatives (and false positives, as it certainly might be with this article). What will it mean when I can no longer tell the difference?

Edit: thinking on it a little more, I hope the author doesn’t feel insulted by my comment given the subject matter of the article at hand. Sorry, it’s early morning! I’m sure I am wrong about my assessment. Which now really makes me wonder about the above

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

Hey! I'm not insulted at all. My position is that of a Luddite: I think technology is neutral, but deployment is not. My critique is structural, and I don't blame people in or out of tech for adopting AI to be able to survive.

No AIs were harmed in the writing of this post, either physically or by the sharing of earlier (cringe) drafts.

pona-a2• 3 months ago

Pangram agrees with you. About 25% of the text trips the detection threshold, mostly towards the later half.

I don't want to make any accusations, just give some evidence to the above comment.

nz• 3 months ago

What will it mean when I can no longer tell the difference?

It just means that you will have to evaluate prose on its own merits (aesthetic, logical, etc).

The main problem with LLM-assisted writing is that effort-to-write is now much lower than effort-to-read -- the LLM-prose-style is simply an imperfection that can sometimes help the reader bail on a piece (and there might be false-positives).

Most people are already biased against reading long pieces, and seem to skim them more often than not. These people are _probably_ a little worse off than before, but they are not paying full-price for being hoodwinked. The people who end up paying full-price are probably going to become more sophisticated in how they choose what to read. I can't tell if this will be good/bad for publishers and/or advertisers.

chanux• 3 months ago

Later is never. We all knew that.

AI will do all the "later" things we could not do and the civilisation will flourish. :')

beemboy• 3 months ago

So good. I had this read to me by Eleven Labs' reader and it somehow very very good with conveying the emotion. 5 stars, will recommend

Waterluvian2• 3 months ago

I’m trying to piece together a thought. Is it right if my employer wants to “own” the gain in productivity from these tools?

I’m being paid the same. I’m still doing 40 hours. The huge gains in productivity are not mine to enjoy, it seems.

rileymat23• 3 months ago

Unless the method of increasing productivity increases it disproportionately for you or you find a way to outcompete in productivity gains, I am not sure that ever happens.

Edit: To put a finer point on this, generally,employed people don't get paid more for the excess value they produce, they get paid more for for the delta in perceived value between them and the next best option to fill the position (on a grand statistical scale for careers).

* There are exceptions to this in the form of commission based jobs.

Jensson2• 3 months ago

That goes for everything, you wont take a job that pays much less than the other jobs you can get, customers do the same with products they buy. In the end just a few percent go to profits for most companies, extremely few companies pay out more profits than they pay in salaries.

So all that productivity increase didn't result in higher profits either, end users mostly captured it by getting a lot of free services that previously used to cost money. International communication used to be extremely expensive but today I exchange hundreds of messages with people across the sea daily for almost nothing.

doug_durham3• 3 months ago

You can absolutely capture the value of your additional productivity. Strike out on your own. Start your own company or consulting firm. That has always been the answer. Why would you think it would be any different now?

rileymat23• 3 months ago

Of course, but not as an employee

viccis• 3 months ago

"Ah you textile workers are so whiny. If you're mad at your jobs being obsoleted by massive machine factories, why not just buy a few dozen such factories? Strike out on your own."

Yeah man I don't know if mommy and daddy are paying your rent and healthcare (as I often see from people with this attitude). Or maybe you're one of the 45 year old tech workers whose mid life crisis involves a music project no one will listen to and going to work on some startups with your FIRE nest egg until you come crawling back to a big tech company. But for now I, like most millennial Americans, am reliant on wage labor to afford a dignified life in a tolerable town.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

under neoliberal capitalism? no. it's late, but not too late, to join a union.

011000114• 3 months ago

I don't pay for the tokens I use, so why would I expect to be compensated for it?

Hell, I paid for my own programming environment (SlickEdit) years ago with my own money and still didn't expect to get paid more. I did it because it helped me deliver higher quality work more efficiently and I was proud of that.

thrance• 3 months ago

Careful, you're dangerously close to rediscovering Marxism.

justin66• 3 months ago

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

crnkofe• 3 months ago

The way we got to 40 hours workweek wasn't really through productivity increase despite productivity increasing substantially in the era before less work hours became standard. It was due to rebellion by the workers and syndicates. I expect any further changes will require standing up to the elite who's been preparing for that moment by buying themselves islands and private bomb shelters.

The productivity increase religion has never really been about workers. Any increase in productivity is used to reduce the workforce count and to bleed dry existing workers who now have to overproduce in place of their fired coworkers. Its sad how occasionally some people obsess about their productivity on HN as-if they're unaware that they're buying into the very thing that will get them fired and/or burned out.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

oh shit haha hey y'all. i'm blown away. also my site is blown away, y'all killed my cloudflare account. maybe go to your room and think about what you did.

christianqchung• 3 months ago

Great post, thank you. At least AI won't reach this level of story quality for the foreseeable future.

alex_x• 3 months ago

been thinking about the same for a while but couldn't put this into words; thank you

jazzyjackson2• 3 months ago

is your shit not static? I've been using html files hosted in R2 buckets on the free tier, I think you get like a million reads a month for free, HN isn't that big is she?

moravak1984• 3 months ago

oh, YOU go to your room and think about what YOU did.

You can't (accurately, beautifully and incisively) show us the real culpable in a very engaging way without repercussions.

classified2• 3 months ago

Is the Sarah in your post the same as in the <<The end of "Just ask Sarah">> article? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952807

monkeyballs3• 3 months ago

The truth is, working in tech always sucked, and never really was what they thought it was.

This is just not true. Working in tech was awesome for me for at least thirteen years from 1988 - 2000. Probably well beyond, actually. The main reason it began to suck was due to business -- corporate acquisitions and mergers -- not tech. Working for a good company, solving fun problems, making meaningful software, and having happy customers was tech heaven.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

i'm glad you had a good time! i did too! the reason it began to suck wasn't that it began to suck, it's that you began to notice. technology isn't bad, the technology industry is bad. we were always bad to some people, now it seems we're just straight-up bad to everyone.

monkeyballs3• 3 months ago

I won't deny some of that truth, but even from my far-removed perspective the suckiness was quite limited when the leadership was technical and the goals were aligned. However, I will 100% acknowledge that the industry has been utterly exploitative of (in particular) young people who are passionate about their work, and it took me many years to realize that.

cobbaut• 3 months ago

What I remember mostly from working in that era, was that managers let engineers make the technical decisions.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

I can't speak for all managers obviously, but that's what we want. Now though, suddenly we're expected to contribute code again and C-level is completely ignorant about the tradeoffs they're making. Compounding this is the fact that the feedback loop for the tradeoffs is likely still a year+ away, far longer than their incentives take to materialize.

ChrisMarshallNY• 3 months ago

I had a Rip Van Winkle experience.

1983-1990, I had a few jobs, with varying levels of agita, but I always loved the tech aspect.

In 1990, I got a job at a top-shelf Japanese technology corporation, and stayed there for almost 27 years. I worked as a peer, with some of the top engineers and scientists in the world. My business card opened a lot of doors. There were lots of problems, too (it wasn’t Disneyland, by any means), but I was proud to work there, and resisted calls to leave.

In 2017, I was finally made redundant (long story, but it was expected, and I was prepared).

When I emerged into the new tech industry, it really sucked. There was a lot of money, sloshing around, but also, an awful culture. I was horrified.

Fortunately, I had the means to take my toys and go home.

I feel awful for the folks that never got to experience The Joy of Tech.

It’s a great article. Thanks, Steven!

wg02• 3 months ago

I guess working for tech became horrible from Web 2.0 era and the SaaS wave.

monkeyballs3• 3 months ago

The truth is, working in tech always sucked, and never really was what they thought it was.

This is just not true. Working in tech (starting 1989) was awesome for me for at least 20 years, and tolerable for quite some time after. The main reason it began to suck was due to business -- corporate acquisitions and mergers and tech-ignorant MBA decisions, for example -- not tech. Working for a good company, solving fun problems, making meaningful software, collaborating with committed peers, and having (and directly supporting) happy customers was tech heaven.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

i zoomed in on a specific aspect of the experience, that of course doesn't mean everything is bad across the board. i've gotten great joy from programming, especially with other cool people, for most of my life. i'm grieving the loss of that joy, and hopefully, inspiring a few people to start talking to their peers about it, rather than suffering in silence.

SpaceNoodled• 3 months ago

Same old story: it was fun and awesome when you started working in the industry, and twenty years later you're jaded and it sucks.

doug_durham3• 3 months ago

It sounds like the author shouldn't be in tech. For many, perhaps most of us programming is joy. It's why we started in our teens and have continued for 40 years. This is just a cynical post that adds no new value. We didn't kill the junior training mechanism. Juniors are still hired in the 100's thousands every year. There are valuable things to be said about the impact of AI. This isn't one of them.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

Programming gives me great joy. I wrote my first batch scripts when I was 6 years old. I got my first job in the industry when I was 20. I'm 41 now. The problem isn't the act of programming.

As to juniors, first time I heard someone brag about AI removing the need to hire juniors was in 2022. every junior I know is struggling to find work. It's not hard to find reddit threads with people sharing their experience to that effect. The fact that some do get hired is not evidence to the contrary.

rustystump2• 3 months ago

I remember being fresh out of school in peek free money era and couldn’t find anything. It was brutal. The only way i got out of it was by accepting help from an uncle who got me an internship at his company. After that one tiny bit of experience, i found a job at a php shop.

I dont think much has changed. It has always been who you know. I was fortunate enough to have an uncle.

Every single new hire i see is either the child of two fango mango parents or a visa. I rarely ever talk to someone with a different background.

In startup world, everyone had theater degrees or dropped out. It was amazing. I miss it.

eloisant2• 3 months ago

every junior I know is struggling to find work.

They also struggled in 2000, and in 2008. There was no AI at the time.

msie• 3 months ago

"I wrote my first batch scripts when I was 6 years old." - Wow, that's pretty amazing. What did you write when you were 10? Really curious.

011000114• 3 months ago

There are way too many people in tech who did it solely for the money. People worry about AI slop but these poseurs have been cranking out garbage for decades. A lot of my career has been cleaning up the mess they've made.

black3r• 3 months ago

The difference with AI is that now generating AI slop is much faster than carefully crafted code. So companies began to prefer AI slop.

lelanthran3• 3 months ago

There are way too many people in tech who did it solely for the money.

Well perhaps now, when AI halves your salary, and then halves it again, and the only people left are those who do it for some reason other than a salary, you'll be happier?

Madmallard• 3 months ago

"Juniors are still hired in the 100's thousands every year."

CITATION NEEDED

From my perspective it seems like they're just not hired basically at all anymore

doug_durham3• 2 months ago

Look at the Fed published employment numbers. Over 80% of new CS grads find employment in their field. That would be 0 if we were hiring none. We are still hiring juniors where I work.

jimbobbam• 3 months ago

Ya hit real hard. Are there people in tech that can really write like this? Wow nail on the head

gnabgib• 3 months ago

Com'on bot, don't talk about people like you know how it feels. Or am I absolutely right?

dwd2• 3 months ago

Oh man...

Really enjoyed it, and went back and read "Programming Sucks" which is also full of delightful nuggets like this:

"The only reason coders’ computers work better than non-coders’ computers is coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune diseases and we don’t beat them when they’re bad."

GoblinSlayer• 3 months ago

I kill any process that misbehaves.

socalgal22• 3 months ago

Person needs to go work at another company

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

I've worked at many over the past 20 years.

ytoawwhra92• 3 months ago

A few years from now, we'll wonder where all the seniors are.

Did we solve the ageism problem by mistake?

_pdp_• 3 months ago

The so called AI job loses are not due to AI. I don't think there is anyone out there to argue otherwise.

In a year but probably sooner, when software systems start collapsing, and they will, hiring in tech sector will skyrocket. In fact, I don't believe the world have enough developers to backfill for the AI deficiencies.

To me the math is obvious. Assuming humans touch a 1% of all software systems created, something we know it is simply never going to be true given the current state and upcoming regulations, the 47 million developers world-wide (and that includes all kinds of developers) are simply not enough.

However, although jobs will be back and it will be better payed, programming will "suck" even more and I don't think it will be for everyone. If you are not the kind of person that enjoys reversing a piece of tangled mess it might not be for you.

If AI is everything and AI is software then everything is software and everyone would like to have a piece of that software.

FrustratedMonky7• 3 months ago

"I don't think there is anyone out there to argue otherwise."

Meanwhile, millions are arguing otherwise.

fragmede• 2 months ago

I like the idea of that, but it hinges on the notion that AI won't be capable of that. From what I've seen I don't know that it won't.

hmontazeri• 3 months ago

lol

Please check back later Error 1027 This website has been temporarily rate limited

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

heh yeah the irony is not lost on me. should be fixed now.

fnoef2• 3 months ago

Isn’t it a bit ironic that a (presumably statically generated) blog post about “programming sucks” is being chocked to death by HN?

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

Yeah this was just a failure on my part, I was too lazy to go the ISR route and was on the Cloudflare free plan. I was not expecting any traffic haha.

fnoef2• 3 months ago

Get a VPS and host it there. Costs less than a cup of coffee a month, with tens of TB of traffic.

Nice article by the way!

BirAdam• 3 months ago

Not really, no.

As this post was inspired by "Programming Sucks," that the traffic generated by it made something break is quite on point.

vegaxarchitect• 3 months ago

Is that ironic at all or is it really helpful? Hard to say.

arian_• 3 months ago

Programming has always sucked. The difference now is that we have AI agents that can do the sucking for us, and somehow that made everything worse because now we have to debug code we didn't write, can't fully understand, and definitely can't explain in a code review.

fransje26• 3 months ago

Just use AI to explain the code to you. /s

firemelt2• 3 months ago

why do you think programming is sucked?

bronlund• 3 months ago

Funny and insightful! AI can't write articles like this :)

charles_f• 3 months ago

The previous captain started a fire because another captain explained internal combustion to him at Captainpalooza 2025, and he wanted to start iterating towards that.

Hey, that's agile!

Such a great write-up!

anal_reactor• 3 months ago

You remember being the junior whose first PR got shredded by a senior who took the time to explain why.

No I don't. I remember flagging that a tool is bugged, my manager-but-also-engineer-himself telling me "why cannot you do this, just press this button here" and then my entire work for that week getting obliberated because surprise surprise, the tool was bugged. And his voice "What? This wasn't supposed to happen.".

You told yourself the seniors could absorb the missing hands, that the agents would cover the gap.

In every company I've been to the correlation between age, seniority, and skill, was very loose. I'll never forget going to my first job, talking to literally the oldest man there, and him telling me that smart pointers in C++ are silly and real men use bare pointers.

You knew what happens to a codebase when the people who'd catch the errors get pushed out, or learn to stop catching them.

Recently I thought that we as a society need to stop expecting everything digital to work 24/7. Adding more nines to availability costs exponentially more effort but the gains are minimal. Imagine a world where every year for two days we just shut down the internet - one day for Postgres upgrade, and the other just for chilling on the beach. Would the society collapse? I don't think so. Managers understand this, but they prefer faulty software over giving their overly eager programmers a break.

Of course, juniors weren't valuable for what they produced, they were valuable for who they would become: the senior engineer who knows where the bodies are buried.

Not all of them. Not even most of them. Very few would become valuable contributors, most of them would never make code better than AI does. That's the sad truth. I sit in a meeting with 6 seniors and we spend an hour discussing irrelevant shit and eventually postponing the decision until "later time" aka "we'll quickly do whatever once the situation becomes urgent". How is that better than vibe-coding a functionality?

When she dies, the thing that produces people like her is already gone.

Literally not a problem because if every single company is fighting the same issue, then your company isn't disadvantaged by also having the issue.

gitowiec• 3 months ago

"AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did. Same greed that moved factories to Bangladesh and keeps slaves in cobalt mines in the Congo, wearing a new mask." :((( that is sad and so true. Economical thinking should be regulated

abstractspoon• 3 months ago

Loved it. I'm retired

rramadass2• 3 months ago

On Greed;

“If greed were not the master of modern man--ably assisted by envy--how could it be that the frenzy of economism does not abate as higher "standards of living" are attained, and that it is precisely the richest societies which pursue their economic advantage with the greatest ruthlessness? How could we explain the almost universal refusal on the part of the rulers of the rich societies--where organized along private enterprise or collective enterprise lines--to work towards the humanisation of work? It is only necessary to assert that something would reduce the "standard of living" and every debate is instantly closed. That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of "bread and circuses" can compensate for the damage done--these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence--because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.”

― From the book, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher.

1) See wikipedia for an overview/links to the book etc. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

2) Small is Beautiful Revisited 50 Years On: A New Study Guide to Small is Beautiful - https://centerforneweconomics.org/envision/library/small-is-...

asoderlind• 3 months ago

Very well written article, joy to read, which is getting more rare these days.

Also I think it's always worth repeating the risk of losing long-term institutional knowledge when opting for AI as an explicit replacement for junior devs. Another tragic case of short-term gains prioritized over long-term success.

coldtea9• 3 months ago

AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did.

Sure. But when it comes to coding, even greed couldn't do it without AI. At best it could outsource, still giving it to humans.

sylware• 3 months ago

Computer languages cannot be trusted, even from ISO. You may have a chance with a simple preprocessor and simple assembler.

Don't forget, for most software out there, but not all, its development time is ridicoulus compared to its life cycle.

kondov• 3 months ago

I'm doing my best to mimic enthusiasm, but it's becoming harder and harder to do so. I was afraid I was turning into a dinosaur, so I tried to be excited about AI. We can do more with computers, we can build faster, we can prototype, etc. But when you have automation you get people with spreadsheets running the business and this is a little bit too close to an assembly line for my liking.

I guess I'll be in the industry until it eventually spits me out, but if the rippling effects of software being devaluated can be so big that I don't know what I'll even do once this chapter of my life is over.

imrozim• 3 months ago

Im 19 trying to break into teach and third exactly what scares me they killed the apprenticeship before i could get in how do you become Sara if there's no Ben left to learn from.

firemelt2• 3 months ago

I don't get the sentiment at all, to me all that make it sucks is just incompetent people not programming nor tech.

pjmlp2• 3 months ago

Oh boy, I can relate to the sentiment of the article, it feels like how it has always been in enterprise consulting.

techteach00• 3 months ago

It's one thing to have to cope with the stress of job obsolescence over a generation but the speed has picked up so much that people just feel rushed and paranoid. Never enough time to settle down and feel secure for a bit.

We all wanted gigabyte per second downloads not gigabyte per second life changes.

maxehmookau• 3 months ago

One of the best things I've read this year. Also one of the worst things I've read this year, actually. But also, I enjoyed reading it.

stevenlangbroek35• 3 months ago

Thanks man, that means a lot <3

JKCalhoun• 3 months ago

The sentiment of the article is spot on. I retired four years ago and it had already been going down hill for over a decade at that point. But…

The but is simply to remind people that programming can still be fun. Programming as a career? Not really.

If you don't believe me, that programming is still fun, go do some programming for your own personal project. (Still fun.)

(But, yeah, so glad to have left. I recall toward the end of my career, a coworker and I having lunch in Apple Park and sitting there, lost in thought watching a gardener tending the plants and trees in the center of the "park". When my co-worker started to say something about the gardener I knew instantly where his thoughts had also been going and what he was going to say next.)

biglost• 3 months ago

I love programming, i hate my work as a programmer or whatever shiny name people prefer like software engineer. It's the only thing i know, the only way to get money for my family, the only way my wife can work at something she loves to do, so her life it's not misserably as mine

livinglist• 3 months ago

Programming is definitely fun but not so much so when you have bills to pay and a salary that barely keeps up with the inflation…

FrustratedMonky7• 3 months ago

Amazingly Real.

Very good simple explanation for what is happening.

FrustratedMonky7• 3 months ago

Think this is very good article, and good to highlight with a link to an older one.

The Moloch article from Scott Alexander. Covers the broader themes.

Software just seemed immune from it for a couple decades, but Moloch caught up to it.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

stego-tech• 3 months ago

Damn. Phenomenal read. Just a really excellent piece of prose in its own right, topic be damned.

Yet the topic is also what makes it so good. It's written by someone who has also seen the vastness of impact technology has had, who has a firm grasp of the difference between technology and industry. Someone who knows the technology didn't get people addicted to social media and short-form videos and click-bait headlines and microtransactions, it was the industry that consciously chose greed and harm.

I love technology, and I'll keep wielding and mastering it until I'm dead in the ground. It's the industry aspect that I'm increasingly dissatisfied and disillusioned with.

oxag3n• 3 months ago

Great read. Got absorbed into few scenes. The scene with applauds played in my head as a silent movie with Charlie Chaplin presenting his perfect plans and crowd applauding unrealistically fast (due to under-cranking) with piano playing Super Mario theme in background.

realaaa• 3 months ago

good article ! guy should be writing instead of IT delivery

jrosenblatt• 3 months ago

"There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came. The machine does what they do now, but cheaper. Of course, juniors weren't valuable for what they produced, they were valuable for who they would become: the senior engineer who knows where the bodies are buried. We optimized for output, and abolished apprenticeship. A few years from now, we'll wonder where all the seniors are. We shot them. Nobody will remember."

is brilliant writing. It's such good writing that it might convince you it's true. But it's cope. By that point, all senior engineer jobs will be automated too. And companies with old unknown chron jobs and USB sticks will get replaced by ones that innovate.

JackSlateur• 2 months ago

This is dogma

michaelteter• 3 months ago

The problem is not AI. The problem is still very human: the humans in charge don’t know what they don’t know, and they believe that whatever they imagine is true.

They also often believe that anything they can think of must be easy - just a matter of a worker spending a little time. Or maybe an AI can do it.

Management rarely learns from group failures, because they naturally assume that since the project was “easy”, it must be a problem with the workers.

CEOs routines run companies into the ground and the switch to a new company, fist full of cash on the way out. Once in a while, one of those repeat failures ascends into politics.

TheOtherHobbes• 3 months ago

The whole point of social media/Web 2.0/ad tech is to create and propagate these illusions, because it's more profitable to confuse, manipulate, and distract humans than to educate, inform, and communicate with honesty and integrity.

So we've ended up with a low SNR culture where everything is noisy, nothing is real, and trends and fads created by grifters are more important than reality.

Obviously, this won't end well in any of the many different ways it's playing out.

cineticdaffodil• 3 months ago

Its the "Lets invade russia in winter" moment of the mbas.

invalidSyntax• 3 months ago

Wow some story. I forgot time reading it. It's fiction, Right?...

wg02• 3 months ago

You knew. And you signed off anyway. Because the alternative was losing the job, and the job was the mortgage, and the school fees, and the visa, and the version of yourself who'd fix it later once things stabilized.

The doll catches the fire.

The greed of gullible CEOs. I assure you there's a talent pipeline collapse that's in progress and you'll be hard press to find senior engineers in few years because AI output is not something a junior can ride easily and you killed that pipline of junior engineers today.

Slaying the goose that lays the Golden eggs in your corporate greed.

You'll pay pack with interest and then some.

Good luck.

seansh• 3 months ago

I wonder if the embedded programming sector has been relatively safe and unharmed by AI. Is there anybody here who can weigh in?

AntiUSAbah• 3 months ago

Not in my team and not in my code base.

Build it greenfield 7 years ago, everyting is well documented, everything special screams at you if it breaks and tells you how to fix it (if it even needs fixing).

We spend time on upgrading stuff because of external dependencies and otherwise add new features.

Programming doesn't suck.

m463• 3 months ago

So I've seen this pattern many times in software. I've been part of it too.

AI is just repeating the pattern.

You have a software group, and there's a young engineer that goes and tries some new technology. He spends weeks reading about it, and does a lot of stuff in his head, and then he does something for the group using it and shows it off.

And management wonders about it. If the technology costs money, they will quietly push it off because they have no budget for a $50 tool. If it saves money, they will quietly push it off because reasons. But if it saves headcount and they get to get rid of "annoying fred with the red stapler", they might show interest. And interest means they have quietly accepted it in their mind.

Thing is jr guy spent every waking hour on this thing, chose the problem carefully, and didn't talk about the impractical, the gotchas, or the things it affects that he doesn't know about.

Who knows, maybe I'm just imagining this and AI is different.

Chipshuffle• 2 months ago

I thought about Sara and the cron job and if this could be an interaction between a script and an AI agent.

When the script doesn't run and throws an error, it could trigger an AI that has some skill to reconfigure and rerun the script so that it can run again. Seems like the perfect fit depending on the complexity.

Programming Still Sucks

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