Sysadmin

I picked up building plastic models a couple years ago since my tech hobbies don't really interest me anymore. I like working with my hands on my own terms and it's super satisfying to look at my completed projects.

I relate hard to this. Same general trend as you but I'm in web dev.

When I started, we built sites in tables before Ajax was a thing. Then there was the golden age of standards and jQuery before the JavaScript framework wars. Recently it's just been absolute new tech overload turning keeping up with latest developments into its own full time job.

Then came along ai, being the new IoT and getting shoved into things it has no right being in. Combine that with pressure on using it to ship faster and 'reduce costs' has soured me a fair bit.

It does produce more code but I've no real confidence in its output and quickly lose track of the codebase because I'm not making the granular detailed decisions that build up a project. Combine that with it hallucinating functions that don't exist, making up requirements and generally just being fairly mediocre at best is making the job not what I signed up to do. But, the powers that be have bought into the hype and usage must continue until morale (and profits) improves.

Like you, I've no real alternatives so have to stick with it for the time being.

I was finding that at nights I would make dinner and park myself on the couch watching YouTube for 3-4 hours. Nothing specific, just whatever the algorithm was feeding me. It was not a good time and I think it added to the general sense of being burned out. Combine that with general world events over the last few years and it's just a mental shit show waiting to happen.

Like you, I decided to try something physical and I took up watercolour painting recently just to have some sort of non screen related hobby I could do at nights. I was never good at art in school so figured the abstract nature of it might be a good fit and I've been really enjoying it. Yes, I'm still watching bits of YouTube but in a more targeted way.

I would highly recommend something creative and analogue to anyone reading and relating to your post or mine.

There's a nice feeling of seeing your skills improve and having something tangible to show for the time spent rather than the distant memory of consuming some random digital media you weren't actively seeking out.

Good luck with the railway!

Microslop continues to be a pox on IT. I believe they are mostly at fault for the current state of things.

Your feelings are valid. The "rise" of "AI" has been a net negative for my subjective experience, too.

On my good days, I still enjoy programming, but I just ignore AI, and if it is too forcefully suggested, I just blacklist the purveyor.

On my bad days, I don't have enthusiasm for anything, but I still program because this project isn't going to get done any other way. I've tried throwing AI at other things, and it screws things up so badly it takes me more time to fix it. And, sometimes it "lies" and I don't catch it immediately.

I have a good selection of subscriptions on YT (and Nebula), communities on Lemmy, and Follows on Mastodon, and I start there when I just want to enjoy the web. I intentionally avoid following algorithmic suggestions of unknown quality (and defintiely turn off any sort of auto-play); I find I will spend time on that stuff nearly without bound, but it's less enjoyable than what I (or other humans) have curated.

I started programming in '85 as a child. I used to be a professional Haskell programmer. I'm open for work. (All I need is vim and some API docs and I can write anything from C to JavaScript to Lean.)

That sucks, that your passion for your job got eroded to this point. The z scale train in a suitcase sounds like a really cool project. Share some updates along the way.

I hope I never have to buy a car with one of those damn screens controlling everything.

I'm personally focusing on the parts of tech I still find enjoyable. Chip / circuit design, OS and low level programming, and Formal Verification.

All of the patient detailed work that AI is never going to be able to do, because it has to be perfect to work. I feel lucky that I enjoy this type of work, it seems to be very much against the Zeitgeist.

I picked up archery and woodwork this year as a way to get away from my computer. Highly recommend finding a couple of hobies that you can switch between when that urge to get back to the screen kicks in.

Where once was a vast and lush landscape of innovation and ingenuity, now is only a desert of grift and profiteering. The optimistic nature of our youthful tech enthusiasm has transformed into a cynical and substanceless husk, aged too fast by the years of consistent disappointments.

But if anyone at work asks, then yeah, sure, I'm really excited about the next iPhone or AI generated email signatures or whatever.

Machining always needs more bodies. Take that programming experience, translate it to g code and whatever software the shop is running for parts, and make that bank.

Honestly I doubt you'll hit a salary anything like IT but its rewarding work. I LOVE manual machining. Problem solving and working out complicated parts and features is a fun challenge from day to day.

Hey me too!

I'm having way more fun buying up all the tech of the 2000s and relearning it all. Its just more interesting to me

For stuff not techy, climbing is very fun and affordable and a good way to meet people.

Same. :/

I try to be as low tech as possible now. Most tech these days feels like it's trying to exploit me in every way it can.

I started a tiny bit before you, but close enough that we'd probably be considered the same cohort so to speak. My enthusiasm has largely waned, for sure.

For me AI and general fads don't play a big part in how I feel.

Don't crucify me, but for me it's a vocal (and seemingly large) part of the tech community itself that I'm burned out on. As a professional in tech, it's literally soul crushing to sit in front of a computer screen all day long. Yes, that's oversimplification, but being stuck indoors, mostly sitting in front of monitors or sitting in meetings, just has destroyed my mental health. But, it's the sterile corporate mind games and managers and project managers and crabs in a bucket mentality amongst developers that really act like a wooden stake to the heart.

Even after all that, I still had/have some tech related hobbies, and those same personalities are so off putting that I had to set them aside. Granted, the whole sitting in front of a screen in my "off hours" when I could be up, out and about, doing things is also a huge factor.

Won't get into the job aspect of things too much, but as an example from my hobbies: I'm so tired of people who feel compelled to yuck others' yum. I'm using the wrong version of Linux. Why would anybody ever choose X library when Y exists? Oh, you did something with AI, why do you hate humanity?

So, basically I'm tired of "you people" (not all of you, some of you, maybe even most of you are a blessing) in addition to the soul crushing aspect of being in front of a screen all day is what's killed my enthusiasm.

Tech certainly is in a wierd spot. It certainly had lost its sheen much before that but luckily I actually like solving problems and helping people. What was frustrating when I was still working was it kinda felt like any time you were good at something you were pulled out. I literally had to refer people to my boss if they pinged me for them to authorize time with me or someone else from the team. When we had something working they often wanted us working on something else and leave the first thing to other folks. Thing is that means it lacks a lot of polish. Its like a really good poc. And again don't get me wrong I love doing poc's and quickly getting things going and would love to push off and go on to another thing before it gets tedius but usually its not being pushed to a team to finish it off instead its just. well. good enough and we don't want to spend more on this solution. anyway I have been unemployed for over a year so I would appreciated just being able to sink my teeth into something complex.

Trains are cool. I started woodworking because of the same thing happening to me.

Please share pics of trains

From Radio Shack pre-digital open build kits to this snugly bound control system with enemy spies built inside. SMH!

We are not at the end of the road. We are not at the beginning of the end of the road. We are not at the end of the beginning.

I definitely get the impulse to doom. And I'm as prone to it as anyone. But when I look at crypto and AI, all I can see is the same analog fuck-ups made in prior generations. Beanie Babies and Labubus didn't ruin the stuffed animal industry. The Delorean and the Hummer didn't ruin the automotive industry. The Great Depression of 1932 didn't ruin the financial sector.

Plenty of things to be excited about in software and tech that lives entirely outside the cloistered hype-beast market. Raspberry Pis, 3D printers, 3nm chipsets built with ultraviolet lithography, solid state drives, lithium and sodium ion batteries with incredibly recharge rates, gorilla glass and carbon fiber, 5G+ radios, full voice recognition, self-piloting vehicles.

How is none of this thrilling? Hell, even just the advent of coding pipelines that can take a project from a funky coding idea to a deliverable feature in a few keystrokes is such a huge step forward in development. I can't hate the sales goons pushing junk when I'm so immersed in all the novel innovative applications of technology I've been watching bud itself up from the ground for the last 40 years.

Even LLMs on their face are such a novel application of graph theory. You can do so much cool stuff off a second hand laptop today. It's an exciting new frontier.

Time to buy a 3D printer and escape out of the computer out in the real world

Let me help you:

AI does create a lot of slop - but at the same time, a lot of people don’t know what capabilities exist and what’s just marketing/hyperbole.

They read “AI will replace software engineers” and think that they can just talk to an AI and spit out working production level code.

Not saying that’s you. I don’t know your work.

1. It doesn’t know your machine unless it has local access. How will it know where you’re installing if it doesn’t know your directory tree?
2. it doesn’t know that it needs to import other modules or how separate functions need to interact. Not until you build it out and track what you’re doing and how the functions interact. It’s just documenting the work you do.
3. It defaults to basic framework from which to build - just like we would.

You don’t sit down and write 8,000 lines of code just one line after another. Shit - it could take me 3 days to figure WHERE to put 2 lines of code.

4. Claude web and Claude code can be split into dedicated projects or containers.

This allows specific contextual awareness. The more work you do in a project the more you can build off of it.

Organizing into context aware containers allows you to massively improve your code base because it actually accesses the code itself. Less guess - less slop. Not “no slop” just less.

It doesn’t replace everything, but recently I had Claude code evaluate ~43,000 lines of code. I verified its audits manually, and let it do its thing. I still had to make corrections on some assumptions it made but I fixed 110 critical bugs in an afternoon because of this system I’ve described.

If you’re expecting to say “build me x” it isn’t going to be successful.

Treat it like it’s a tool in the toolbox, not a replacement for good practices.

To your other note - the first time I tested Claude code I was blown away. Then the 2nd or 3rd time it took over… I felt like I lost my purpose. I need to be involved, not replaced.

One plus point for recent tech trends, my Commodore 64 is seeing a lot more use!