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Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

#21

Post by galaxy_gas »

softwaredoug wrote: post #11

AI ruins your flow. That's the biggest problem. I sit here and wait for Claude to do something. Then I get distracted by social media. No these things don't actually work if you study human psychology: * Switching to another work task (what for like a minute?) * Playing chess or something (sure its better than social media, but still a distraction) But I do like AI tools that don't interfere with my flow like Github…

I just ask right now Cursor-GPT about where a service was being called from, its has over 10 minutes and it hasn't come up with an answer. Just constant grepping and reading and planning next moves

So aggravating

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

#22

Post by objcts »

softwaredoug wrote: post #11

AI ruins your flow. That's the biggest problem. I sit here and wait for Claude to do something. Then I get distracted by social media. No these things don't actually work if you study human psychology: * Switching to another work task (what for like a minute?) * Playing chess or something (sure its better than social media, but still a distraction) But I do like AI tools that don't interfere with my flow like Github…

stare out the window. look at clouds. wonder how they take the shapes they do. think about water and how it moves through time and space. how those water molecules were once in a bowl of rice or loaf of bread. how many other things has this water been in? what about the water in my body, right now? holy shit, i’ve been a cloud before…

oh, claude’s done now. how does this thing work?

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

#23

Post by redhale »

Yes, you are using the tools wrong.

These tools are _hard_ to use well. Very hard. Deceptively hard. So hard that smart engineers bounce off of them believing them to be all smoke and hype. But if you study the emerging patterns, experiment, and work through the difficulty and rough edges, you will come out the other side with a new skill that will have you moving faster than you believed possible.

There are people who will think I'm either lying or delusional. It's fine. They just haven't made it through the fog yet. They'll get there eventually.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

#24

Post by dasefx »

My workflow is simple, step 1) THINK hard about the problem by yourself, 2) Define rough sketches of function names, params, flow, etc. adapt to your problem 3) Iterate with any LLM and create an action plan, this is where you correct everything, before any code is written 4) Send the plan to one the CLI LLM thingies and attack the points one by one so you don't run out of context.

So far has been working beautifully for real work stuff, sometimes the models do drift, but if you are actually paying attention to the responses, you should be able to catch it early.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

#25

Post by nicohayes »

You're definitely not alone. Social media amplifies the "AI is everywhere" narrative, but in reality? Most people are still shipping code the old-fashioned way.

I'd estimate maybe 20% of devs have actually integrated AI into their daily workflow beyond occasional ChatGPT queries. The other 80% either tried it and bounced off the friction, or are waiting to see which tools actually stick.

Not using AI doesn't mean you're falling behind - it means you're avoiding cargo-culting. The real skill is knowing when it's worth the context-switching cost and when grep + your brain is faster.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

#26

Post by overvale »

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

― Douglas Adams

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

#27

Post by propablythrown »

sph wrote: post #18
propablythrown wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use llms everyday for coding assistance the same way I used search engines in the past, and to that extent I do not see an issue. Why would you avoid that out of principle?

For the same reason Richard Stallman only uses free software. Sometimes, it's good to have a moral imperative and stick to it. This is mine. I'm far enough in my career to know that avoiding coding assistance or LLM-assisted "search" won't make my life or craft worse in any way. Quite the opposite, in fact.

You might be right, as we don't know yet if these tools actually enhance or make our craft better in the long term.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

#28

Post by digital_sawzall »

softwaredoug wrote: post #11

AI ruins your flow. That's the biggest problem. I sit here and wait for Claude to do something. Then I get distracted by social media. No these things don't actually work if you study human psychology: * Switching to another work task (what for like a minute?) * Playing chess or something (sure its better than social media, but still a distraction) But I do like AI tools that don't interfere with my flow like Github…

I started doing pushups between claude code responses. I started with 10 but now I rip ~50 like nothing. I'm getting a pull up bar and trying to do the same. Pull ups until it completes then prompt and again, squats, pushups, ect. I'm getting stronger and better at code.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

#29

Post by Jeremy1026 »

I've recently started to use it to help with writing tests. I'll write the code, then scaffold out the test scenarios that I want it to do, give it my code, my scaffolding, and say fill it in. It's done pretty well and saves me a ton of time doing the part of the job that I hate the most. I go through and tweak probably 10% of the generated code, and typically about 1 out of 30 tests will fail, badly, and I'll have to rewrite it from scratch.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one not using AI?

#30

Post by yodsanklai »

In my company (big tech), the tools are integrated in our environment, and most people use them, and actually a 20-30% of the new code in prod is generated by AI. I was skeptical, and I don't like this new world, but it's happening.

I don't know what will be the final form of this, how our jobs will be impacted, and how much more productive we really are with the tool. But it's not a hype, these tools are here to stay and have changed the way we code. I don't think they will replace coders but they will make the best programmers more efficient.

As you said, it's easy to lose time with the generated slop, but someone who use the tools wisely is more efficient.

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