Yet another Hacker News

Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master – John Carmack

22 points dsubburam 4 hours ago 6 comments

glimshe 26 minutes ago | parent

We are going from the era of manual, line-by-line mental model transcription to one where software engineers can focus on data structures, software architecture and algorithms.

I love being able to quickly bring out the program that is already running in my head without having to worry about the grind of typing it into a format that the compiler understands. Dealing with API names. Syntax. Language quirks. Library gotchas. A sizeable portion of my successful career as a software engineer was spent on the tiresome process of interacting with a text editor/IDE to get a program to do what I wanted.

I was there when people were still coding assembly. A slow torture where the simplest things took forever to get right.

Once I've mentally solved the problem, the fun is mostly over for me. Pure vibe coding is dull and unsustainable with current technology for all but the simplest systems; AI-assisted coding, on the other hand, rekindled my passion for computers.

skydhash 11 minutes ago | parent

Have you tried live programming (smalltalk, LISP)? Or a proper Edit-Compile-Run cycle with a good editor?

A lot of people are bashing old practices, but from y standpoint, it always seems like a lack of proper (usage of) tooling to streamline the coding phase of building software.

corv 5 minutes ago | parent

I like your constructive outlook and I want to believe that we can now focus on the bigger picture, but I'm not really seeing it around me. Most everyone I know that's "AI-pilled" has spent the newfound capacity on throughput instead of altitude.

Is anyone actually seeing a shift towards improved structure rather than more code, faster? We seem to be living in the Gatling-gun version of the picture John Carmack drew when modernity also ushered into precision marksmanship...

CamperBob2 19 minutes ago | parent

https://xcancel.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2098443262214230095 for convenience

RunSet 6 minutes ago | parent

I understand why people value the code John Carmack has released but I do not understand why people value his public statements.

"eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id"[0]

"Great! I think Microsoft has been a good parent company for gaming IPs"[1]

By sheer coincidence, John Carmack is peddling machine generated code.[2]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxg...

[1] https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1308069857913720832

[2] https://80.lv/articles/john-carmack-s-agi-startup-keen-techn...

cadamsdotcom 3 minutes ago | parent

Yep. Having to type the code is a form of accidental complexity, and with it gone, you can focus more on the problem to solve, getting it down faster.

Of course it's possible for it to go off the rails. Consider that a wildly swung sword can do damage you can't do with your bare hands. To prevent this, constrain your model to the solution shape you want by grounding it; give it contact with reality; ways to run the code it's generating and refine it to meet your goals; granular tests; etc.

The new job is in how you wield the tools and it is at least as complex as the old.