Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has ignited a passion again
I’m ready to retire. In my younger days, I remember a few pivotal moments for me as a young nerd. Active Server Pages. COM components. VB6. I know these are laughable today but back then it was the greatest thing in the world to be able to call server-side commands. It kept me up nights trying to absorb it all. Fast forward decades and Claude Code is giving me that same energy and drive. I love it. It feels like it did back then. I’m chasing the midnight hour and not getting any sleep.
Discussion Highlights (20 comments)
TutleCpt
I remember before style sheets existed. Webites were all nested tables and font tags. I built a video website before YouTube be even existed. Claude code and AI is definitely an exciting time.
dnw
Curious, what are you building?
ynac
Same here - it's like programming with a couple of buddies. Occasionally they goof off and wreck everything, but we put it back together and end up with a finished project. I'm literally going through my backlog of projects from the early 80s! There are parts of each of these projects that were black holes for me - just didn't know enough to get a toe hold. With Karl (that's my agent) he explains everything I don't understand, does stuff, breaks stuff, and so on. It's really a blast.
cmos
51 year old electrical engineer here, same thing! (minus the retiring part cause finances) It's given me the guts to be a solo-founder (for now). I
wepple
As a parent to two young kids and in more of a leadership position at work, Claude allows me to grind through my backlog of ideas in minutes between other tasks, and see which ones take flight.
al_borland
I spent the last 2 days primarily using Claude instead of coding things myself at work. I felt the exact opposite way. It was so unfulfilling. I’d equate it to the feeling of getting an A on a test, knowing I cheated. I didn’t accomplish anything. I didn’t learn anything. I got the end result with none of the satisfaction and learned nothing in the process. I’m probably going to go back and redo everything with my own code.
throwaway314155
I have bipolar disorder. The more frustrating aspects of coding have historically affected me tenfold (sometimes to the point of severe mania). Using Claude Code has been more like an accessibility tool in that regard. I no longer have to do the frustrating bits. Or at the very least, that aspect of the job is thoroughly diminished. And yes - coding is "fun again".
adampunk
This is the way. It's the most fun computers have been in decades.
TimFogarty
Same! After years in engineering management I'm building so many small side projects thanks to Claude Code. I'm creating at a breakneck pace. Claude Code has mostly raised the level of abstraction so I can focus much more on the creative aspect of building which has been so much fun. There are definitely a lot of limitations with Claude Code, but it's fun to work through the issues, figure out Claude's behavior, and create guardrails and workarounds. I do think that a lot of the poor behavior that agents exhibit can be fixed with more guardrails and scaffolding... so I'm looking forward to the future.
pclowes
“Hell-ya brother” 100% agree even with half your experience.
pstuart
Older here, equally excited. It's like programming with a team of your best buddies who are smarter than you but humble and eager to collaborate.
juleiie
I have this idea that probably violates some law of computing but I am really stubborn to make it happen somehow. I want a game that generates its own mechanics on the fly using AI. Generates itself live. Infinite game with infinite content. Not like no mans sky where everything is painfully predictable and schematic to a fault. No. Something that generates a whole method of generating. Some kind of ultra flexible communication protocol between engine and AI generator that is trained to program that protocol. Develop it into a framework. Use that framework to create one game. A dwarf fortress adventure mode 2.0 I have no other desires, I have no other goals, I don’t care. I or better yet - someone else, must do it.
bGl2YW5j
I've also been loving the speed Claude has enabled me to move at, and now agree that the coding part of SWE has become LLM-wrangling instead. I now see interacting with an LLM, to build all parts of software, as the new "frontend". Following this idea, what do people think "backend" work will involve? Building and tweaking models, and the infra around them? Obviously everyone will shift more into architecture and strategy, but in terms of hands-on technical work I'm interested in where people see this going.
par
It's taken over my life, I am in a leadership position at faang but i'm daydreaming about getting back to my claude sessions at work.
hparadiz
Building things as I read this.
dboreham
Perhaps I shouldn't say this but I feel that with the current LLMs I've found "my people" :)
Kim_Bruning
Getting claude to build mathematical models for me and running simulations really got me back into doing sciency things too. It's the model that's important, not the boilerplate each time!
mfalcon
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in"
penneyd
Same, early 50s and this is like the heyday of coding where you could rapidly iterate on things and actively make leaps and bounds of progress. Super fun.
ares623
I'm so excited to be able to continue build things when I'm living on the streets. I'm glad to know that drive to create will always be with me and keep me warm during winters.