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Comment by reasonableklout | Hacker News Reader

What's interesting to me is that some of these communities are remaining strong despite the AI tidal wave. Although it might be my bubble. For instance, there is still a thriving art scene on instagram which has successfully demarcated itself from AI art. There is also a writing community on substack. Are there hobbyist programming communities out there that can keep the practice of human coding alive?

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currently in my experience, no, there's a total collapse on the front of people making code by hand for the sake of art. In the past six months, I've begun to suspect that I might soon be the last person on the planet doing it without any AI assistance in my job. It's been a brutally fast change.

Sorry to be an ass, but is coding really art? I applaud your dedication and craft, but I sort of doubt it.

With code, there is usually a right and wrong approach to things, and though we may find great joy in the right approach, programs are not subjective the same way a painting is.

A lot of what I do is custom UI work, including casual games. So I'm creating elements and interactions that fit together in novel ways. Some of that, I'd consider to be art. There's quite a bit of subjective taste and judgment involved, much like in painting or music. I mean, you're right that there's also a lot of coding that is not art, but there's still more than one right approach to almost anything when it comes to selecting your tools, and I think there's at least artisanship in writing elegant code even if it's for something boring.

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