As someone with similar feelings in general and a similar history, I feel you are blaming only the latest and worse effects on tech and of tech on society.

I started my career in parallel with mobile devices and smartphones. The whole idea of new possibilities, new ways to interact with tech, miniaturization, etc., is what called me most as it was a huge field starting and I tried to find my path forward. I've seen from close, real close, how an incredible tech, full of possibilities has been slowly been captured by the market capitalists that inevitably always ended up controlling the direction of every company.

This is not caused by crypto, this is not caused by LLMs. The origin is greed and capitalism. Decisions being made to make number go up.

Really, crypto is a fascinating tech, it's not the fault of the technology that crypto-bros came to conquer everything and misuse it and abused it to make a quick buck.

LLMs are impressive, think about it, we have managed to completely break the Turing test. We have machines that sound so human that mostly everyone is in a constant suspicion that everything they see is made by an LLM. LLMs sound so human that they are full of confidence and mostly always full of shit. Just think about it, AI is just a representation of humanity, what we do with it just represents and highlights the issues in society.

The reality is that those two, have just suffered a faster, the fastest we've seen yet probably, tech lifecycle - growth, hype, plateauing, and eventually decline and enshittification of any service related to the tech.

Consider search engines, their demise is not because of AI, AI is just the last blow. I used to be very good at finding what I wanted, I knew how to use the tool to make the best of it. Slowly over the years much as I want, I cannot get the results I want without a lot of effort. I haven't somehow become shit at it, the tools and the tech have been modified and changed until it has become useless, the whole point is not finding anymore, but making you search as much as possible.

Consider the mobile hardware field as it is now, compared to the years when it started blowing up with all kind of devices and possibilities. The market has been captured, a few companies remain, releasing the same thing over and over with the latest and bigger number each year. Slowly the whole wild world we had of custom roms, has been captured so that if you get out of the fenced field your apps won't work because it is not safe. Apps check that you are using them in an unmodified and perfectly controlled OS where you own nothing. Apple has always been king of fenced fields, but now Google is doing all it can to imitate it, squeezing in and trying to capture as much of their open field into their very high fenced safe areas. They want to control the source of apps, the developers, and remove the freedom from the devices. It's crypto and LLMs at a slower pace. Working for so many years as a developer I can feel how I'm more and more tied up to the whims and wishes of companies that don't pay me the salary, I keep bringing this up and make a safer path for the future but the company that does pay my salary doesn't care, they just want the latest BS and hyped concepts.

People like you or me, we have a special vantage point. We know how we can still fight that, we know what are the alternatives, we know what the tech could become. We need to bring that knowledge to everyone, keep pushing for FOSS solutions, keep teaching everyone that tech is not difficult, it's not magic, but it requires learning and education. It requires not falling on the path of less resistance, and fight against lobbying and market capture. It's tough, when we just get so tired of constantly fighting it. What I think you find so tiring is not Crypto and LLMs but how tech is being guided to its demise, to become a tool for control and nothing more.

Hehe, I have been aware of suitcase model railways for a long time, probably about two decades or so, but never felt like I had the skill to build one before.

At the end of the pandemic I got hit with dual flat feet, dual heel spurs and a bad knee at the same time.

It was a bad time for me, every step hurt, to the point that I ate six paracetamols and a few ibuprofen every day just to cope, and when walking home from the bus after work, I cried hard due to the pain of every single step.

During this time, I snowed in on videos about making dioramas, especially this video stuck with me:

https://youtu.be/HEG3d0cMuv4

I loved the weathering and how real it looked.

Anyway, I got help for my feet and knee, and mostly moved on from the videos, but never forgot about the above video.

I got laid off at my earlier job and got this job, it is far more stressful, and I have been feeling depressed, so I have been looking for something to do.

I recently did some simple wood working stuff, and found I quite enjoyed it.

So I decided to give this a try.

I have a workbench at home, in a utility room in my apartment, it used to be occupied with a shit load of rum and other alcohol, but last weekend I went and bought a small Billy bookshelf at IKEA and turned that into an fairly elegant bar shelf.

(Just a quick note, just because I have a lot of alcohol at home and live alone doesn't mean that I drink a lot.

I mostly collect because I find it interesting to have a selection to pick from.

I drink alcohol maybe once every other month, often less.)

So now I have a workspace, I need to make room under the workbench, get a chair and some proper lights and I can start the project.

I just changed my interests to open source stuff, theres a world of cool stuff if you keep Digging around.

For example lately I have: Been editing with kdenlive and it’s been amazing. Playing with Meshtastic and thats been fun. Trying new things all the time.

Let me help you:

AI does create a lot of slop - but at the same time, a lot of people don’t know what capabilities exist and what’s just marketing/hyperbole.

They read “AI will replace software engineers” and think that they can just talk to an AI and spit out working production level code.

Not saying that’s you. I don’t know your work.

1. It doesn’t know your machine unless it has local access. How will it know where you’re installing if it doesn’t know your directory tree?
2. it doesn’t know that it needs to import other modules or how separate functions need to interact. Not until you build it out and track what you’re doing and how the functions interact. It’s just documenting the work you do.
3. It defaults to basic framework from which to build - just like we would.

You don’t sit down and write 8,000 lines of code just one line after another. Shit - it could take me 3 days to figure WHERE to put 2 lines of code.

4. Claude web and Claude code can be split into dedicated projects or containers.

This allows specific contextual awareness. The more work you do in a project the more you can build off of it.

Organizing into context aware containers allows you to massively improve your code base because it actually accesses the code itself. Less guess - less slop. Not “no slop” just less.

It doesn’t replace everything, but recently I had Claude code evaluate ~43,000 lines of code. I verified its audits manually, and let it do its thing. I still had to make corrections on some assumptions it made but I fixed 110 critical bugs in an afternoon because of this system I’ve described.

If you’re expecting to say “build me x” it isn’t going to be successful.

Treat it like it’s a tool in the toolbox, not a replacement for good practices.

To your other note - the first time I tested Claude code I was blown away. Then the 2nd or 3rd time it took over… I felt like I lost my purpose. I need to be involved, not replaced.

<3

Funny that you say that as a sysadmin, because while I hate AI as an artist, mostly because I've spent years learning 3D modeling and photography and now AI can replace my skills, I find LLMs super useful for doing basic sysadmin tasks.

I no longer have to read manpages and documentation just to try to find simple options or commands, if I need a simple script or config, AI writes it for me, it makes administrating my systems much faster. It's like having an IT friend who's always online and knows every tech.

My guess is that you feel the same way about LLMs as I feel about image/video/3D generative AI.

Fuck yeah, friend!

That's on me, I meant the equivalent of a "trust me bro" , in this case an anecdotal "me and the people I know all say..."

showing Claude submissions is sufficient for analyzing code in the context I believe it is good

Yes, in the context you provided it makes sense, as a response to my question which specified examples of larger projects/workflows, it does not.

Im not here to argue either, I asked a specific question and your answer didn't really address any of it, i was just pointing that out.

I too find it frustrating but it seems for different reasons.

I really really dislike the way it's being sold as a solution for things it's in no way a solution for.

They do certain things fine, good even, but blanket statements like "their code is great" without appropriate qualifiers is contributing to the validation of these bullshit sales-oriented claims of task competency.

1: agreed

2: then I think you are missing the fundamental limitations of the current approaches, but we can agree to disagree on this.

3: see 2

I agree with jobs on the chopping block, though i think that's in large part due to poor due diligence and planing by management, but that's nothing new, the same thing has and is still happening with offshoring (throwing more people at a problem generally won't solve design and governance issues).

I also think the current systems aren't capable of being a viable replacement for anything above junior level stuff, if that ( not that that doesn't present it's own problems )

I think the difference in opinion comes from my belief that LLM's and the current tooling around them aren't fundamentally capable of replacing existing resources, not that they just don't have the power yet.

Putting increasing large compute in a calculator won't magically make it a spreadsheet application.

I feel you. My hobby is electronics. I will be designing some circuits with an old Arduino that I have...

You say that, but you have to remember that LLMs produce the average output of their training materials. Not the best, but the average. And there's a lot of code out there that is simple. Only the outliers have the magic combination of conciseness AND quality AND complexity.

LLMs also have no understanding of context outside the immediate. Satire is completely opaque to them. Sarcasm is lost on them, by and large. And they have no way to differentiate between good and bad output. Or good and bad input, for that matter. Joke pseudocode is just as valid in their training corpus as dire warnings about insecure code.

I read a comment once that still rings true - "Hallucinations" are a misnomer. Everything an LLM puts out is a hallucination; it's just that a lot of the time, it happens to be accurate. Eliminating that last percentage of inaccurate hallucinations is going to be nearly impossible.

I have a dozen hobbies, but don't know a way to make a living except IT. Haven't had a good job in nearly two years, don't give a fuck about tech any longer, so lost.

How did AI help linux noobs? Sounds interesting.

Machining always needs more bodies. Take that programming experience, translate it to g code and whatever software the shop is running for parts, and make that bank.

Honestly I doubt you'll hit a salary anything like IT but its rewarding work. I LOVE manual machining. Problem solving and working out complicated parts and features is a fun challenge from day to day.

Where once was a vast and lush landscape of innovation and ingenuity, now is only a desert of grift and profiteering. The optimistic nature of our youthful tech enthusiasm has transformed into a cynical and substanceless husk, aged too fast by the years of consistent disappointments.

But if anyone at work asks, then yeah, sure, I'm really excited about the next iPhone or AI generated email signatures or whatever.

Your feelings are valid. The "rise" of "AI" has been a net negative for my subjective experience, too.

On my good days, I still enjoy programming, but I just ignore AI, and if it is too forcefully suggested, I just blacklist the purveyor.

On my bad days, I don't have enthusiasm for anything, but I still program because this project isn't going to get done any other way. I've tried throwing AI at other things, and it screws things up so badly it takes me more time to fix it. And, sometimes it "lies" and I don't catch it immediately.

I have a good selection of subscriptions on YT (and Nebula), communities on Lemmy, and Follows on Mastodon, and I start there when I just want to enjoy the web. I intentionally avoid following algorithmic suggestions of unknown quality (and defintiely turn off any sort of auto-play); I find I will spend time on that stuff nearly without bound, but it's less enjoyable than what I (or other humans) have curated.

I started programming in '85 as a child. I used to be a professional Haskell programmer. I'm open for work. (All I need is vim and some API docs and I can write anything from C to JavaScript to Lean.)

Hey me too!

I'm having way more fun buying up all the tech of the 2000s and relearning it all. Its just more interesting to me

For stuff not techy, climbing is very fun and affordable and a good way to meet people.

I feel your pain. I started IT in '94. Saw the excitement (AMD breaking the 1GHz barrier, High-speed internet, to name a few), then saw it go downhill just as fast.

I started a tiny bit before you, but close enough that we'd probably be considered the same cohort so to speak. My enthusiasm has largely waned, for sure.

For me AI and general fads don't play a big part in how I feel.

Don't crucify me, but for me it's a vocal (and seemingly large) part of the tech community itself that I'm burned out on. As a professional in tech, it's literally soul crushing to sit in front of a computer screen all day long. Yes, that's oversimplification, but being stuck indoors, mostly sitting in front of monitors or sitting in meetings, just has destroyed my mental health. But, it's the sterile corporate mind games and managers and project managers and crabs in a bucket mentality amongst developers that really act like a wooden stake to the heart.

Even after all that, I still had/have some tech related hobbies, and those same personalities are so off putting that I had to set them aside. Granted, the whole sitting in front of a screen in my "off hours" when I could be up, out and about, doing things is also a huge factor.

Won't get into the job aspect of things too much, but as an example from my hobbies: I'm so tired of people who feel compelled to yuck others' yum. I'm using the wrong version of Linux. Why would anybody ever choose X library when Y exists? Oh, you did something with AI, why do you hate humanity?

So, basically I'm tired of "you people" (not all of you, some of you, maybe even most of you are a blessing) in addition to the soul crushing aspect of being in front of a screen all day is what's killed my enthusiasm.

Then you'll be pleased to know it was.

I disagree with humans being the CNC machines. In both cases, humans instruct the technology to create the designs, but it is the machine which is digging into the product to create the visual patterns.

My first experiences with computers started when I was in Junior High around '79. It was a total nerd hobby, almost "underground ". Now I see it for what it is. Gadgets become necessities and we become enslaved to them. We have to stop chasing our tails

But as cars became more reliable and complex, fewer and fewer now know how.

There is also DRM and other shenanigans going on.

For example, just to replace your brake pads - something that most everyone should be able to do - requires, on most average modern cars made in the last 2-3 years, a $1,000,000 piece of software with a $6,000/mo subscription package.

Why? Because until the vehicle manufacturer authorizes that brake pad replacement, that vehicle will refuse to even turn on, much less move. It needs to obtain cryptographically-signed approval from the manufacturer for the work that had been done to it in order for it to even turn over the engine.

Now your average car owner isn’t going to have these means, so everything gets pushed off to manufacturer-authorized repair depots, invariably car dealerships, where everything can be nickel-and-dimed to maximum revenue.

This lack of repairability is one of three major reasons why I will never personally own a vehicle manufactured after 2006.

As long as you stay on your local system and dont browse the web or any modern apps.

It's fun if you're running Linux.

Humans are the CNC machines in your analogy here. Basically we are left to clean up after the sloppy material inputs to get reasonable outputs. It's just that techbros don't believe that is (or at least will ultimately be) necessary and that AI can do this step.

The jury is already in on current tech (techbros are wrong), and still out on coming tech in this space, but it seems very unlikely (past experience with tech bros says they are hype machines and full of shit).

So what we land on with AI acting as the CNC is this pseudo facade where the furniture it cranks out looking OK from a distance, up close it's pretty garbage but while everyone is starting (or forced) to sit on the chairs, it looks like they aren't really load bearing...

now... apply this to IT, Medical, Financial, Military and any other serious application and you don't have to wonder why people are concerned anymore.