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Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

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Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#211

Post by Nathanba »

alonsonic wrote: post #124
TeMPOraL wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With programming, the same basic tension exists as with the more effective smarter AI-enhanced approaches to conceptual learning: effectiveness is a function of effort, and the whole reason for the "AI epidemic" is that people are avoiding effort like the plague. That's not true. Yes, you can get more effective at something with more effort, but you can get even more effective at it if you find a way to get results…

It's ironic to see people say this type of things and not think about old software engineer practices that are now obsolete because overtime we have created more and more tools to simplify the craft. This is yet another step in that evolution. We are no longer using punch cards or writing assembly code, and we might not write actual code in the future anymore and just instruct ais to achieve goals. This is progress

well the only issue I have with that is that coding is already a fairly easy way to encode logic. Sure...writing Rust or C isn't easy but writing some memory managed code is so easy that I wonder whether we are helping ourselves by removing that much thinking from our lives. It's not quite the same optimization as building a machine so that we don't have to carry heavy stones ourselves. Now we are building a machine so we don't have to do heavy thinking ourselves. This isn't even specific to coding, lawyers essentially also encode logic into text form. What if lawyers in the future increasingly just don't bother understanding laws and just let an AI form the arguments?

I think there is a difference here for the future of humanity that has never happened before in our tool making history.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#212

Post by stereolambda »

nerdponx wrote: post #64
motorest wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a source document themselves. I am from the generation whose only options on the table were RTFM and/or read the source code. Your blend of comment was also directed at the likes of Google and StackOverflow. Apparently SO is not a problem anymore, but chatbot…

> Your blend of comment was also directed at the likes of Google and StackOverflow. Apparently SO is not a problem anymore And it kind of was a problem. There was an underclass of people who simply could not get anything done if it wasn't already done for them in a Stackoverflow answer or a blog post or (more recently and bafflingly) a Youtube video. These people never learned to read a manual and spent their days fl…

I would even say there's a type of comment along the lines of "we've been adding Roentgens for decades, surely adding some more will be fine so stop complaining".

As a second-order effect, I think there's a decline in expected docs quality (of course depends on the area). Libraries and such don't expect people to read through them, so they are spotty and haphazard, with only some random things mentioned. No wider overviews and explanations, and somewhat rightly so, why try to write it if (nearly) no one will read it. So only tutorials and Q&A sites remain besides of API dumps.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#213

Post by javcasas »

motorest wrote: post #44
cm2187 wrote: post #21

It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a source document themselves. Not even just about coding, about any other knowledge.

> It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a source document themselves. I am from the generation whose only options on the table were RTFM and/or read the source code. Your blend of comment was also directed at the likes of Google and StackOverflow. Apparently SO is not a problem anymore, but chatbot…

We old timers read the source code, which is a good proxy for what runs on the computer. From that, we construct a mental model of how it works. It is not "walking uphill 10 miles both ways". It is "understanding what the code actually does vs what it is supposed to do".

So far, AI cannot do that. But it can pretend to, very convincingly.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#214

Post by eqmvii »

sycren wrote: post #204
andai wrote: post #102

This isn’t just about individual laziness—it’s a systemic arms race towards intellectual decay.[0] With programming, the same basic tension exists as with the more effective smarter AI-enhanced approaches to conceptual learning: effectiveness is a function of effort, and the whole reason for the "AI epidemic" is that people are avoiding effort like the plague. So the problem seems to boil down to, how can we convince…

I think this boils the problem down solely to the individual. What if companies realised this issue and made a period of time during the day devoted solely to learning, knowledge management and innovation. If their developers only use AI to be more productive, then the potential degradation of intellect could stifle innovation and make the company less competitive in the market. It would be interesting if we start se…

The problem is motivation. I’ve worked at companies that use policies like this, but you often only see a handful of def motivated folks really make use of it.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#215

Post by seventh12 »

jeandesuis wrote: post #164

Sheesh, I didn't expect my post to go viral. Little explanation: I downloaded and run Cursor for the first time when this "error" happened. Turned out I was supposed to use agent instead of inline Cmd+K command because inline has some limitations while agent not so much. Nevertheless, I was surprised that AI could actually say something like that so just in case I screenshotted it - some might think it's fake, but it…

what code were you writing? what is that `skidMark` lol?

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#216

Post by c-linkage »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #148
DanHulton wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

_Kinda sorta?_ There's actually two things going on when I'm coding at work: 1) I'm writing the business code my company needs to enable a feature/fix a bug/etc. 2) I'm getting better as a programmer and as someone who understands our system, so that #1 happens faster and is more reliable next time. Using AI codegen can (arguably, the jury is still out on this if we include total costs, not just the costs of this one…

> In fact, the closest parallel for #2 I can think of us plagiarism in an academic setting. You didn't do the work, which means you didn't actually learn the material, which means this isn't actually progress (assuming we continue to value #2 (...) Plagiarism is a great analogy. It's great because what we call plagiarism in academic setting, in the real world work we call collaboration, cooperation, standing on the s…

The CTO asked the CEO what happens if we train these people and they decide to leave? The CEO asked in reply what happens if we don't train the people and they decide to stay?

Any reasonably smart company will invest in its employees. They should absolutely be training you to be better programmers while you are on the job. Only shit companies would refuse to do so.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#217

Post by alonsonic »

Nathanba wrote: post #211
alonsonic wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ironic to see people say this type of things and not think about old software engineer practices that are now obsolete because overtime we have created more and more tools to simplify the craft. This is yet another step in that evolution. We are no longer using punch cards or writing assembly code, and we might not write actual code in the future anymore and just instruct ais to achieve goals. This is progress

well the only issue I have with that is that coding is already a fairly easy way to encode logic. Sure...writing Rust or C isn't easy but writing some memory managed code is so easy that I wonder whether we are helping ourselves by removing that much thinking from our lives. It's not quite the same optimization as building a machine so that we don't have to carry heavy stones ourselves. Now we are building a machine…

> Now we are building a machine so we don't have to do heavy thinking ourselves.

There are a lot of innovations that helped us not do heavy thinking ourselves. Think calculators. We will just move to a higher level of magnitud problem to solve, software development is a means to an end, instead of thinking hard about coding we should be thinking hard about the problem being solved. That will be the future of the craft.

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#218

Post by hypeatei »

gazereth wrote: post #188
datadeft wrote: post #144

The biggest problem what I have with using AI for software engineering is that it is absolutely amazing for generating the skeleton of your code, boilerplate really and it sucks for anything creative. I have tried to use the reasoning models as well but all of them give you subpar solutions when it comes to handling a creative challenge. For example: what would be the best strategy to download 1000s of URLs using asy…

Personally I've found that you need to define the strategy yourself, or in a separate prompt, and then use a chain-of-thought approach to get to a good solution. Using the example you gave: Hey Chat, Write me some basic rust code to download a url. I'd like to pass the url as an string argument to the file Then test it and expand: Hey Chat, I'd like to pass a list of urls to this script and fetch them one by one. Can…

Whew, that's a lot to type out and you have to provide words of encouragement? Wouldn't it make more sense to do a simple search engine query for a HTTP library then write some code yourself and provide that for context when doing more complicated things like async?

I really fail to see the usefulness in typing out long winded prompts then waiting for information to stream in. And repeat...

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#219

Post by Tainnor »

moffkalast wrote: post #187
brulard wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they're letting AI do all the work This is an unnecessary hyperbole. It's like saying that your reportees do all the work for you. You need to put in an effort to understand the strengths and weaknesses of AI and put it to good work and make sure to double check its result. Low-skill individuals are not going to get great results for moderately complex tasks with AI. It's absurd to think it will do "all the…

Those damn kids, compilers and linters doing all the work for them. Back in my day we punched bits into a card by hand. /s It's just people ranting about another level of abstraction, like always.

Those other levels of abstraction that you mentioned are deterministic and predictable. I think that's a massive difference and it justifies why one should be more skeptical towards AI generated code (skeptical doesn't mean "outright dismissing" tbf).

Re: Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it

#220

Post by TeMPOraL »

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #160
alonsonic wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ironic to see people say this type of things and not think about old software engineer practices that are now obsolete because overtime we have created more and more tools to simplify the craft. This is yet another step in that evolution. We are no longer using punch cards or writing assembly code, and we might not write actual code in the future anymore and just instruct ais to achieve goals. This is progress

Progress is more than just simplistic effort reduction. The attitude of more efficient technology = always good is why society is quickly descending into a high-tech dystopia.

It's business, not technology, that makes us descend into a high-tech dystopia. Technology doesn't bring itself into existence or into market - at every point, there are people with malicious intent on their mind - people who decide to commit their resources to commission development of new technology, or to retask existing technology, specifically to serve their malicious goals.

Note: I'm not saying this is a conspiracy or a cabal - it's a local phenomenon happening everywhere. Lots of people with malicious intent, and even more indifferent to the fate of others, get to make decisions hurting others, and hide behind LLCs and behind tech and technologists, all of which get blamed instead.

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