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Comment by slopinthebag | Hacker News Reader

This is not true. First of all, not all software is written in the context of a FAANG company with “feature requests”. Secondly, writing software is similar to the process of design, this comment reads like “the vast majority of handbag design is mapping problem between features and leather”, ignoring that both the design and implementation can be rewarding to work on. Eg. I’m working on a program for myself and the overall architecture of the program as well as some parts of its implementation are clever and compose well to make the codebase a joy to work in. I am not simply “mapping features to mundane technical details”. It is as much art as the skillfully hand-crafted handbag.

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> I’m working on a program for myself and the overall architecture of the program as well as some parts of its implementation are clever and compose well to make the codebase a joy to work in. I am not simply “mapping features to mundane technical details”.

You said it: you are working on a "program for yourself". Hobbyist craft programming will always be here. The question is what kind of software engineering will be paid for, and a career can be built on.

I don't see much of a market for pure software engineers anymore. You also need to be a product manager, scientist, or have some other domain knowledge adjacent to software that relates to the real world.

I say this with empathy for those who just enjoyed the craft of designing and building software, and thought that alone would provide them a livelihood and career in perpetuity, but have found a big chunk of what they loved doing (and getting paid for) overtaken by AI coding agents.

What I said equally applies to commercial software as well. It's pretty much the only way to build software which is extensible, maintainable, mostly bug-free, and performant. That companies often churn out slop isn't proof that it's unnecessary, it's evidence that it is.

I think most of what you claim to be doing better is really just a result of you not really being confronted with any sort of "adversarial input", at least not as much as you'd have in corporate

it's hard to trust a claim about someone writing "bug-free" and "extensible/maintainable" code from the singular developer and user for that system... maintainability can't really be a thing you can judge when you're not a single step removed from the person who built it in the first place - maybe you'll feel different if you have to pick up the project again after a couple years' inactivity

Oh I didn't say I nailed the design of my current project, I hope I did, but I doubt it. It's nice to work in now but I imagine I'll screw it up at some point.

I think I've built like 3 things in my life which I consider to have good design. Sadly they are tucked away in private corporate repos. Design is hard!

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