Ask HN: Is this type of person rare?

3 points by piratesAndSons 196 days ago | 5 comments

In programming and software, as LLMs become increasingly common, I'm seeing a lot more of the "I don't care how a software product is built, just give me the result" attitude, and then there are people who say they care more about the creativity, the ingenuity, the craft of reaching a specific result. For them, the journey itself is the reward, not the destination.

So is this type of person rare in the wild? Fast food's dominance over home cooking suggests people naturally tend to outsource work and just consume the result — which would mean the type I'm describing is indeed rare. But I feel like engineering is a much more filtered space; someone who wants to be an engineer is fundamentally different from a guy who just wants a household chore fixed.

If this type is rare, what caused it?

ttd 196 days ago |

Like pretty much everything else about human beings, I expect most of us exist at a point on a spectrum rather than belonging to this type or not.

I think the engineering mindset comes from a place of curiosity. I don't agree that there is anything fundamentally different about the person who chooses to be an engineer versus not, I think everyone just has a different mix of characteristics and preferences.

For me, the act of creation is the compelling part. Sometimes that's writing code, other times it's seeing the fully-formed thing come into being. For the latter, LLMs can certainly help me do more, or at least take care of some of the menial stuff like writing test cases while I do more interesting things like think about strategy/architecture.

Just make sure you're reviewing your LLM's code as if you were a colleague's!

WCSTombs 196 days ago |

Engineers are fundamentally pragmatic people. We're problem solvers. Someone who only cares about ingenuity and craft would be a shitty engineer, because that perspective is entirely inward-facing and not directed at the problems at hand. I think this is fundamentally my problem with your question, and I think if you framed the question slightly differently with this in mind, it would make more sense.

To attempt to answer it, I think there are many engineers who care deeply about creativity, ingenuity, and craft, because those are key qualities (among others) needed to solve real-world problems. The question you hinted at is whether LLMs are compatible with that, and I think more people are asking those types of questions now.

PaulHoule 196 days ago |

As a professional developer I can say my heart is really in it sometimes and other times it isn't. And as a professional I have to get the job done regardless.

So depending on the day I can very much enjoy the craft or just be glad something is done.

JohnFen 196 days ago |

There's an unusual amount of the "ends justify the means" mindset amongst the dev set associated with Silicon Valley these days, particularly in the genAI crowd. Fortunately, it's not nearly as common overall.

FrankWilhoit 196 days ago |

"just give me the result" means "just give me A result", never mind whether it is correct. It means "my job is to read the next line of the script, not to notice what the words say".