Is anyone else losing their motivation to nerd out and tinker because of AI?

Posted by rizsyed1 3 hours ago

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Comment by coldtea 2 hours ago

People will go "no, I nerd out and tinker more than ever" where by "nerd out and tinker", and what they mean is "I prompt the AI, and it does the tinkering for me".

I say the question isn't if you use AI to build you something, but if you nerd out and tinker yourself.

Comment by sejje 2 minutes ago

For some tinkerers, the tinkering is writing the code. That's you.

For other tinkerers, the tinkering is accomplishing an objective or building a thing. That's maybe Matthias Wandel.

I used to be like you (when I was a pro coder), and now I'm more like Matthias (I have a homestead and a small business). You're welcome to write the code and enjoy yourself that way. I want to enjoy the thing I've built, with the help of AI. You can say I didn't build it, I don't really care--my ego isn't wrapped up in it.

Comment by gamessucknow 1 minute ago

> For other tinkerers, the tinkering is accomplishing an objective. That's maybe Matthias Wandel.

So if I outsource all the work to some guy on fiverr am I also a tinkerer?

Comment by sejje 29 seconds ago

All of the coding work? Or all of the work?

(Depends what you're building, of course)

Comment by drstewart 2 hours ago

I'd further say it's not a TRUE Scottish tinkering unless you're hand writing machine code yourself and feeding it via punch cards.

Comment by coldtea 1 hour ago

"I asked somebody else to do this hobby project for me" is not the same as "I tinkered" whether that somebody else is a person or AI.

Same how you're not a musician just because you had Suno create something.

So, no, sticking to the actual meaning of a thing is not true scotsman fallacy.

Comment by softwaredoug 2 hours ago

Absolutely not.

I have way more hard problems that engage me then ever.

I do both human and AI coding. The former more to learn and mold my mind around a problem. The latter when I feel I am ready to delegate to a junior dev.

I think of AI coding like how I’ve operated as a principal engineer at a company. It works well when you study the problem well enough to know precisely what you want. That often requires actual hands on technical work IMO. The coding isn’t for the machine, its not even to ship, it’s to help me think. Then I have a basis to really understand and care about the details. I can micromanage agents to do what’s expected at this point.

Comment by JohnFen 3 hours ago

Personally, no. The existence of genAI has zero impact on that for me. It's simple to ignore it entirely.

Comment by functionmouse 2 hours ago

this; I don't like it so I simply don't use it.

Comment by Festro 2 hours ago

Opposite, AI has let me delve into resources that were hard to find, compare and confirm approaches to problems, and make progress on dozens more projects that I'd had sitting around.

I now have Home Assistant established at home. LibreElec for a home media server. Time lapse camera for home mushroom growing. Wine steeping projects. And much more.

Comment by lucfranken 2 hours ago

Getting really deep into some technical thing becomes way less. Most of it is solved by a prompt.

On the other hand there are new techniques like keeping the agents on track and imagining about which things now became possible.

But the real tinkering: In real life with real physical work.

Comment by mikert89 38 minutes ago

its the opposite, i can build far more and get stuck much less

Comment by al_borland 27 minutes ago

There are things I’ve made that I wouldn’t have made without AI. But I don’t feel like it’s “nerding out” or “tinkering”. I get the end result, but I don’t learn anything or become more capable in the process. As a result, I get very little satisfaction from it.

Comment by mikert89 12 minutes ago

you just have to take the software to a higher level of abstraction... software that builds software. its different, but the tinkering is very much there, its just a massive paradigm shift

Comment by uberman 2 hours ago

The opposite is true for me. I have always wanted to try Godot as a platform and AI is helping me make that happen.

Comment by throwaway29303 2 hours ago

No. Quite the opposite.