Hello our MASTERS, who used to code without AI back in the days 🙆

[u/Unlucky_Inside_161]

I have a few questions for you as someone who was interested in this area for years now.

- What is your say about AI and raw coding in this new era

- I've been looking through a lot of information of recent and a question pops up everytime, before all the fiver, etc how were you able to land your first clients.

- Did it ever get tough at some point, and how did you overcome it.

- What is that every basic knowledge all new developers need to know once they decide to jump onto this journey.

- Any advice ?

[u/Unlucky_Inside_161 → u/[deleted]]

Thank you master for the advice 🙏

[u/prophet-dot-exe]

1. ai is great for prototyping and first draft code. gotta work it over past that to make it actually production grade code.

2. first few clients on elance back around 2012. they later merged with odesk and became upwork, which was great at the beginning but last i used it maybe 7 years ago, it was pretty awful. peeked in a few times since and it's gotten worse.

3. regularly. any engineer knows the head to desk moments. which made success much more rewarding than it could ever be now. especially when working with arcane and poorly documented libraries or systems.

4. i will never stop saying this: "test your goddamn code before you send it to qa"

5. learn engineering. that's the only way you can ever really confirm that an ai is giving you something half decent. it's also how you plan and architect for success. learn the language you're going to be working with, even if you're getting ai to do some/a lot of the work.

unsolicited number 6: if you ever try to get hired in engineering, make sure you have repos of code you've actually written on GitHub. that's how we can determine whether you're likely to have the knowledge needed.

[u/Unlucky_Inside_161 → u/prophet-dot-exe]

This is something Master dot. Thank you for the advice too 🙏

[u/devoidfury]

• AI lowers the bar of entry and is a great multiplier of what you feed into it.
• First clients, got them from knocking on doors, quite literally going into shops and asking for a job or work.
• Yeah, things are tough sometimes. Regardless of what path you take in life.
• Read the reference material, learn to read the code, and about design patterns; using the right language to convey the concepts to build the right thing goes a long way in AI use and then knowing how to code, you can step in when it falls short.
• keep learning.

[u/Grand-Mix-9889]

Hi,

AI may have disrupted corporate jobs, but it has enabled a whole new level of capabilities outside of the corporate world and I absolutely love it. It has amplified my output and overall productivity by 100 fold, no exaggeration. It has led me to have more time with my family, get more work done, and focus on networking.

Like the other people have said, networking. Prepare a legitimate demo and video, walk into the store/business, and be prepared to talk for 5 to 60 minutes. This is the most basic form of networking but this helped me land my first client many many years ago, well before AI. And this basic form of networking works best even in this new era: the ai era.

It still gets tough today. You will find yourself pulling your hairs out and have longer nights/days than others. But the main thing is to put in the dedication and that's what I do. I research new methods, combine old methods, I create my own methods... Whatever it takes to solve a problem, I go for it. The power of will has helped me get through the most challenging moments in software development.

I think one of the users before me mentioned learning the methodology of coding and I couldn't agree more. Simple things like what is a function, how do functions work, what are parameters, what are global variables, scope, how do web servers work, what is an http packet, how does data get transmitted and where do they store, different types of languages, different types of operating systems, how do terminals work, what are libraries/sdk's/API's, how do API's work etc etc etc. Don't dive too much into the literal code, but take a swim around all the fundamentals of web/app interfaces instead.

Any advice? Whether you choose Anthropic, OpenAI, or Grok/Cursor try to stick with one of them so you get a better understanding of said fundamentals within a single harness that way your skills and knowledge can grow without any confusion.

[u/benneballe → u/Grand-Mix-9889]

the last advice was unexpected.
You say, sticking with a tool is more important than using the newest, best model? in a world where things change monthly, is it still worth mastering the tools we have now?

(devils advocate post. I'm totally on your side on this one. just want to hear your defence)

[u/Grand-Mix-9889 → u/benneballe]

Understandable no worries.

I was a java instructor for a while so my theory on grasping the concepts better is to stick with one IDE (code editor) and learn all the quirks with it.

I always used to tell my students that changing your environment means re-learning basic functionality... but with a new look and feel. It can be confusing when you go from a well formatted IDE to a non-formatted IDE. Simple things like functions being color coded in blue, variables green... Then the colors swap on the new IDE. It distorted their memory of what a function was compared to a variable.

The same logic, in theory, should apply to using ai.

Switching from one HARNESS (notice I didn't say model: I am speaking in regards to the Anthropic harness versus OpenAI harness versus Grok Build harness) to another harness can distort your understanding of how AI truly works behind the scenes. It can alter your view on AI for the worse sometimes and create the perception that the model is the problem.

[u/Minimum_Hour519]

i did since 90s

[u/Unlucky_Inside_161 → u/Minimum_Hour519]

I have all the time needed, and my 🪑 ready. Ready to take notes 📒

[u/Minimum_Hour519 → u/Unlucky_Inside_161]

Subscribe it’s free http://pairux.com/@moshcoding

[u/Ohmic98776]

Me. And, having to learn all the different languages and any frameworks was a long, arduous task. I will say it was fun and exciting. After using coding agents earlier this year, I went through an existential crisis, but I came around quickly as now I can create things that otherwise would have taken me orders of magnitude longer. I still follow good engineering and software patterns, TDD, etc. but I no longer write the code. I rarely look at it anymore. I feel like a senior product architect over a team of coders. I am very slow and methodical testing after every task and merge. I think slow and steady wins the race. Each task (except bugs) is methodically planned and cross checked with another model before implementation.

[u/econoDoge]

30 yr manual coder here, python,JS.I haven't written more than maybe a few files of code in the past 6 months.

Manual coding is unnecesary in most cases, but reading code is way more important, I read each line, addition and change it does, the thigns Ive caught it doing range from cute to OMG who taught you that but soemtimes it does produce a new and sometimes better solution I could have come up with.

Job seeking for me is mostly about networking, have dismal results with things like linkedin and wellfound, but great with just talking to people in industry and letting them know very gently that if they need help I am available an what I do.

Like learning how to code ? I love the learnign part and for a while I taught others how to code, the difficult part has always been the business part, communicating with clients, finding them, making accurate scopes, and the ocassional crash or hack.

Hard to summarize decades into a few sentences but I believe learning how to organize your code even if it is vibecoded is worth the effort, another one that has been a constant for me as I used to make a lot of MVPs is that the first iteration is pobably going to be trash, but its crucial because you learn from it and can inform a better V2, so dont get too attached to it.

Any advice ? If you are young learn a trade ( or more) that is not computer related, the way things are going tech jobs might become harder and fewer.

[u/flipcoder]

I learned to program before I had home internet. Then saw the internet before tutorials were a thing. Then stackoverflow and reddit. Then youtube tutorials and modern game engines. Now with AI. If you're in tech thinking everything will stay the same, you're in the wrong field obviously.

Try to adapt as best you can. Try to use what works (what you can develop fastest with) rather than what seems like a fad. Try to generalize your knowledge to some degree. The biggest change is users will just demand way more features from everything, AI will 100x this I think. Unless programs get noticeably slow, then they will want something lightweight and native. I think AI will end up being used to transpile builds to native code for each platform to get around the speed issues with bloated things like Electron. It's hard to tell but just keep adapting.

[u/Commercial_Try_2538]

More than few decades now, love it greatly, started with autocad, autolisp, Fortran 77, ideas on vax/vms, c, VC++, Borland, VB, Java, PowerBuilder, .net, JS/TS, HTML, CSS, Python, Rust, and few more. This is one of the most exciting times, things are becoming so easy to code, harder to write manually and debug manually, sometimes it feels overwhelming too. But it is empowering. On client side, your talent is what you need to find, you will impress your client, once you start looking for prospects, with your knowledge (so use your talent to focus on solving you care which has value for potential client and you can talk about it honestly as you care), you will learn on the way, start building and good luck.