I just retired after 40 years writing code. The last year or so wasn’t fun - battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted. For a long time, I thought I’d do a lot of hobby or open source coding when I retired. I haven’t even tried. I’m not burned out, but find I’ve lost the passion for coding I once had. Is that AI? Or is it me? Maybe as my retirement progresses, I can rekindle that passion, but as of now, I don’t miss tech. Sorry, got to go - my garden needs me :-)
CuriouslyC2026-05-30 00:04
ENGLISH (원문)
It's not AI or you, it's this late stage capitalist marketing firehose of bullshit and enforced productivity. Hype is out of control, nothing is real, it's exhausting.
narrator2026-05-30 00:04
ENGLISH (원문)
This reminds me of the movie Edge of Tomorrow where the main character decides he doesn't want to fight the aliens today and instead goes into town to get a drink at the pub. The aliens still get him. Robots and stuff are going to start appearing everywhere soon. He's not going to like that. Hoodlums are probably going to start burglarizing his house with their robot accomplices. Then he won't be able to go outside because he doesn't have a robot bodyguard. His UBI would have paid him to stay inside and stare at the wall, but he won't sign up for that cause it requires a smartphone and an identity implant. Probably wind up homeless with a handwritten sign, "Destroy All Clankers! Anything (without an embedded microchip) helps."
add-sub-mul-div2026-05-30 00:07
ENGLISH (원문)
I made it 27 before I retired. I kind of wish I was older so I could have enjoyed more years of what was a fun career before it turned into... this.
ChrisMarshallNY2026-05-30 00:07
ENGLISH (원문)
I retired, after 30-some years. Actually, I was forced to retire, by folks that don't think us greyheads should be working. Fortunately, I had the means to retire. Those means had nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly, and stayed at a job for a couple of decades. But I have been doubling down on my tech work. Once the knuckleheads were removed from the soup, the flavor improved markedly. I love this tech stuff. Oh, and I have been using AI. It just helped me to find a nasty crashing problem, and I hope that it will help me to determine the best way to fix it.
beached_whale2026-05-30 00:08
ENGLISH (원문)
More and more I have realized it was not the coding that I enjoyed, but solving problems/puzzles. This fits into the beautiful code not really mattering to more than myself but the solution for people, but that is hard to let go of.
adamddev12026-05-30 00:08
ENGLISH (원문)
Honest question: if you didn't enjoy using AI, why not just write code without using AI?
creaturemachine2026-05-30 00:10
ENGLISH (원문)
Congratulations! Tech doesn't have to be the end goal. Personally I can't wait to shake this industry and find a new path in retirement.
azangru2026-05-30 00:12
ENGLISH (원문)
> battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted What I am selfishly curious about is: is it possible to remain a software developer, and ignore AI? To write code the same way we did before 2022? I understand that there are many companies in which managers demand more of workforce — but are there still places where people are satisfied to not rush ahead and do business same way they did three or four years ago? In other words, is it possible to not battle with AI trying to get it what we want? Were you forced to do this by your employer, or was this entirely self-inflicted? Asking for a friend.
pipes2026-05-30 00:15
ENGLISH (원문)
The battling ai bit you mentioned. This is my life right. Ai is both amazing and shit. I feel like everyone else is running dark factories and producing millions of lines of code and having amazing lives. Meanwhile I am going insane with stress because I've burnt so much time trying to wrangle it on a team I've just joined. My productivity has not been good. I half feel like I am being gas lit by YouTubers and half feel "no I'm just doing it wrong"
Devasta2026-05-30 00:15
ENGLISH (원문)
I have definitely found my enjoyment of coding in my spare time is lessened now that AI is on the scene. I know very few if any were going to use the code, but it felt like working on a classic car, the act of working on it was fun even if the final results seem like they could have been used more productively. Now, I just feel like I am transcribing a phonebook.
lou13062026-05-30 00:19
ENGLISH (원문)
If things get as much as 10% as chaotic as you predict, there will be massive turmoil and the "Destroy all Clankers" party will actually be the one in charge.
retired2026-05-30 00:20
ENGLISH (원문)
Retired as well. Hated that dealing with AI was a big part of my job. Hated how half my time was spend clicking through portals, scrum boards, devops tooling. I just wanted to code. Haven't touched code since I retired unfortunately. Just don't feel like it. Don't need it either.
rancar22026-05-30 00:22
ENGLISH (원문)
Hi Fellow HN tech community, I’ve had the honor to digitally interact with Chad Whitacre, and from the first exchange to the subsequent ones over the months, he’s a good human. Chad provided a healthy, human-first approach to the most fundamental areas of free software. He possesses a deep understanding of how we all do better together. He is a person to celebrate for all the ways he was and is. Chad made our online lives richer by his ways of being. Cheers to Chad and his continued living as a good human!
jjice2026-05-30 00:23
ENGLISH (원문)
I'm not near retirement, but I have found that the side projects I work on have diminished quite a bit since AI took over coding. It used to be that writing a library for something like parsing ICal files was something I could spend time on, write, build out, and then other people could use. But now anyone can throw together a working version of it in a little bit. That's a good thing, but also it removes the fun of spending the time implementing it and creating something for others.
sph2026-05-30 00:25
ENGLISH (원문)
Funny, if all goes well today is my last day as professional software engineer, after 20 years. I have enough savings to buy a modest cottage and to last me a year or two being frugal. After that it’s anyone’s guess, but I am beyond excited not having to program for a living any more, but just on what feels good. Projects lined up: a Erlang-like microkernel/runtime I have been designing for the past 4 years, a series of small games that I have been itching to work on, then, of course, the lifelong project of living in a rural house/farm. Maybe I will be so lucky never to have had to use LLMs in my work.
baggachipz2026-05-30 00:26
ENGLISH (원문)
Man I really want to retire. I've gotten a couple stark reminders recently that life is fragile and short. I'm trapped by the golden handcuffs of the software industry, but I console myself by saying it's a means to an end (early retirement). I really hope that becomes possible in the near future, because whatever this is now is not sustainable.
Earw0rm2026-05-30 00:27
ENGLISH (원문)
What's worth stealing, to a dude with a robot? Chances are, whatever it is won't be found in a regular residential property.
drakythe2026-05-30 00:28
ENGLISH (원문)
What a wild dystopic vision of the future you have.
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