What currently happens looks really scary. The level of technical skills needed to make and deploy app in production dropped a lot. Everybody are trying to make something. This can be good and bad. Good because increasing the level of concurrency should lead to better end results. At the same time, a lot of people, not knowing what they are doing, they create AI slop.
Of course, they have good intentions, and do their best, just the quantity of low-quality apps becomes too big.
Open, for example, Reddit, and check the SideProject channel. I counted 1 application per 2 minutes! This is huge! And a lot of it is bad quality, because people have no technical and UI/UX skills. They don't know what architecture, MVC, code review, retrospective, technical documentation, target group, performance, hashing of password, and a lot a lot of things really EXISTS.
Even if you make something cool and stable, you just can't popup! And that's the current state. Too much noise!
I am working as contractor for the last 15-16 years. And each new project starts with interview. I have been on around 20+ . Most of the time, I just read again the most basic staff like, what is class, interface, overriding, overloading. Just to remind myself what's the proper/modern terminology that the person in front of me would like to hear. To use it, does not mean that you can explain it, and this is what they are searching for.
All else is confidence, experience, nice professional stories, curiosity, good soft skills.
People need to like you as a person, to feel unconsciously that working with you will be safe, cool, fun, productive process.
I am working on two things in parallel.
https://howareu.app/ is the first one. Of course, struggling with the making it publicly known and trusted. ;)
And the other thing I just started is a MCP server that will connect to Java remote debugging entry point. This way I will try to allow Claude to start debugging session by its own. And I hope that in pure back-end logics, it will easily trace and fix bugs. I now do it with log messages, but it is kind of annoying and dirty and error-prone to do it that way. I would like to try an approach that does not mess up the code so much. Let's see how it will go :)
howareu.app has a really interesting concept +1
Getting trust and visibility is the hardest part, but if people connect with it emotionally, it can grow fast. Keep pushing
I will :)
Sometimes, I really need someone to tell me that it makes sense. I hit so many walls trying to make this idea publicly visible, that I almost become desperate.
Most of the time, I am just treated as 'one more intruder'.
This is always the struggle. To implement it is not like promote it. Making the product publicly visible and known is actually the harder part.
Be consistent, try on multiple places, be active, make good site, good videos, good training, talk to people, listen what they say.
Post it in reddit, write articles in places like here, dev.to, medium, explain how you did it, why, what you learned...
Cases where somebody implements something and it becomes viral for a one night sleep are so rare, that I am not really sure that they actually exists ;)
Sometimes, I get bored. Writing code was so much fun. Trying to figure out, how to resolve the issue, and they feel the excitement, the joy when the task is done. This is now gone. I case of issue, ask the AI, tell the AI to write it. Where IS the JOY?! Some people find the joy in making the product that they were not being able to do, because of lack of the needed skills, and this is not bad. :) But for me, with my 20 years experience as back-end Java developer, I sometimes feel this big gap.
AI can produce garbage, it can produce excellent results. As long as you know what you are doing, and provide perfect specification, it can come with results, that you alone can't think of, or they can take a lot of time for 'manual' research and implementation.
Some people still find issues, and don't trust, but the topic is big here: what's the model, how good is the specification, what's the used process/workflow, what are the agents, what's the technical background of the person leading the agents.
Not that easy to say: AI does not work, why people want to use it after all, when it produces garbage
Life changes, customer demand it. We have no choice, and we need to adapt. Of course, there will be places that code will still be written manually. Banking, military, and other highly confidential areas have no other way to do it.
How did people feel in the beginning of the industry revolution? Have they felt the same way back then ?
At 40+ , especially if you have kids and other responsibilities, just going back t school is really, really hard. I may also say, impossible. I tried to learn German a few years ago. My brain does not work the same way, as when I was before 36.
I read it in a report, and I wrote it here in HN many times in the last few weeks:
AI amplifies... It amplifies the success of the good professionals, and it amplifies the failure of the bad ones.
Good professionals are needed so that AI is used the proper way. I think that the way we do our job will change, but there will also be place for developers, PMs, POs, Team leaders, etc.
> My brain does not work the same way, as when I was before 36.
I'm not sure it's that bad if you do it full-time like any other student. Getting a degree should be doable even at 40+. I used to be a university lecturer in CS, and occasionally I got older students who did very well.
That being said, I think the issue is employability. You may get a degree, but is anyone getting to hire an older person with not experience?
The problem is not the AI/LLMs technologies. It is the greed. Earn more money, and the money to be more important than the people. It is not a capitalism thing. It is bad culture, attitude, and egoism, IMHO.
Everything is based on the requirements and available resources. One of our clients decided that calling the AI so often takes time, and money, and this does not work for him.
AI can give suggestions, not decisions. IF you want decisions and responsibility to be taken, use real people.
Open, for example, Reddit, and check the SideProject channel. I counted 1 application per 2 minutes! This is huge! And a lot of it is bad quality, because people have no technical and UI/UX skills. They don't know what architecture, MVC, code review, retrospective, technical documentation, target group, performance, hashing of password, and a lot a lot of things really EXISTS.
Even if you make something cool and stable, you just can't popup! And that's the current state. Too much noise!
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