The rise of judgement over technical skill • Hacker News Board

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#101

Post by steveBK123 » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

skydhash wrote: post #83

strgcmc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree that "unlimited interns who don't improve much" is less practically useful than it might seem at first, but OTOH "never improve much" seems unrealistic, given the insane progress of the field in the last 3ish years (or think back 5 years and tell me who was realistically predicting tools like Claude Code to even exist by 2025). Also, there's a decently large subset of small startups where there's 1 technic…

> Also, there's a decently large subset of small startups where there's 1 technical founder and a team of contract labor, trying to build that first MVP or cranking out early features in a huge rush to stay alive, where yeah, cheap unlimited interns might actually be meaningfully useful or economically more attractive than whatever they're doing now That's when experienced developers are a huge plus. They know how to…

Yeah "actually good engineers" are like a 10:1 ratio with intern/new college hire/junior consultant level.

Not to generalize too much but if you are contracting out to some agency for junior levels, you are generally paying markup on coders who couldn't find better direct hire jobs to start with. At least with mid/senior level you can get into more of a hired-gun deal for someone who is between gigs/working part time/buy a share of their time you couldn't afford full-time.

In fact most junior consultants you are basically paying for the privilege to train other peoples employees who will then be billed at a higher rate back to you when they improve.. if they don't move on otherwise.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#102

Post by bcrosby95 » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

ben30 wrote: post #6

This echoes my experience with Claude Code. The bottleneck isn't the code generation itself—it's two critical judgment tasks: 1. Problem decomposition: Taking a vague idea and breaking it down into well-defined, context-bounded issues that I can effectively communicate to the AI 2. Code review: Carefully evaluating the generated code to ensure it meets quality standards and integrates properly Both of these require d…

This would be at least the third time in history we've tried to shunt writing code to low paid labor. We'll see if it's successful this time.

The problem tends to be that small details affect large details which affect small details. If you aren't good at both you're usually shit at both.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#103

Post by smithkl42 » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC

This doesn't actually sound encouraging. Judgment is not actually independent of skill, and the sort of music that this approach produces (i.e., nearly everything you hear on the radio these days) is a pretty solid proof of that.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#104

Post by gavmor » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 2:42 PM UTC

tingle wrote: post #94

Chap. CCCLXIV. — On the Judgment of Painters. When the work is equal to the knowledge and judgment of the painter, it is a bad sign; and when it surpasses the judgment, it is still worse, as is the case with those who wonder at having succeeded so well. But when the judgment surpasses the work, it is a perfectly good sign ; and the young painter who possesses that rare disposition, will, no doubt, arrive at great per…

> Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through. (Ira Glass)

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#105

Post by bluefirebrand » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

thrwthsnw wrote: post #71

dgb23 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to add something to this which is rarely discussed. I personally value focus and flow extremely highly when I'm programming. Code assistance often breaks and prevents that in subtle ways. Which is why I've been turning it off much more frequently. In an ironic way, using assistance more regularly helped me realize little inefficiencies, distractions and bad habits and potential improvements while programming:…

Just move up an abstraction level and put that flow into planning the features and decomposing them into well defined tasks that can be assigned to agents. Could also write really polished example code to communicate the style and architectural patterns and add full test coverage for it. I do notice the same lack of flow when using an agent since you have to wait for it to finish but as others have suggested if you s…

> Just move up an abstraction level and put that flow into planning the features and decomposing them into well defined tasks that can be assigned to agents

This doesn't work because you still have to read and verify all of the stuff your agents produce

So the new workflow is: Move up an abstraction level to use an agent to produce code Then move down an abstraction level to review the code it produces

This sounds like way more cognitive overhead and way harder (and therefore probably slower) to do than just writing the code by hand in a good flow

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#106

Post by metalrain » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

I think what and how are so tightly linked, you need to know how to make a thing so you better know what thing to make.

Let's say you want to build worlds fastest car. You can order the pieces and maybe build a car from someones instructions. But to know what makes car fast and how to build it you need to know more and more intricate details. Physics, material science, 3D printing, engineering. How do you measure traction? What shapes increase downforce?

That is how I see AI tools. You can get "off the shelf" ideas on different things, even complete small things, but you really need to be or grow to match the challenge you are facing.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#107

Post by nluken » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 3:02 PM UTC

A side note to the general point of the article, but I hate how the tech industry uses the word "democratization" to mean "lowering the barrier to entry". These concepts differ from each other but many use the former term because in doing so they justify their actions as driven by some sort of moral imperative when in reality, the development of LLMs is morally neutral, not inherently bad by any stretch, but as much a wealth and power play as any other technology of the last 25 years.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#108

Post by virgilp » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 3:04 PM UTC

eweise wrote: post #99

ben30 wrote: post #6

This echoes my experience with Claude Code. The bottleneck isn't the code generation itself—it's two critical judgment tasks: 1. Problem decomposition: Taking a vague idea and breaking it down into well-defined, context-bounded issues that I can effectively communicate to the AI 2. Code review: Carefully evaluating the generated code to ensure it meets quality standards and integrates properly Both of these require d…

"these require deep understanding of the domain, the codebase, and good software engineering principles" Most of this AI can figure out eventually, except maybe the domain. But essentially software engineering will look a lot like product management in a few years.

As a (very good I would say) product manager once told me - the product vision and strategy depends very much on the ability to execute. The market doesn't stand still, and what you _can_ do defines very much what you _should_ do.

What I mean to say here is that not even product management is reduced to just "understand the domain" - so it kinda' feels that your entire prediction leans on overly-simplified assumptions.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#109

Post by scj » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 3:08 PM UTC

AI can draw blueprints of a house. The house may look aesthetically pleasing, but if it can't hold it's own weight, the design is flawed.

There's a difference between an executed image and a display-only image.

At a certain point, judgment requires technical knowledge.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#110

Post by keybored » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 3:10 PM UTC

Very thin article. The thesis might as well be that technical competence is gone and judgement is all that’s left.

I file this under the category of AI musings on the inevitable massively changed landscape that AI has wrought.[1] I get the feeling that the content itself is secondary (again: the thesis is thin) to the motivation of writing about how AI has supposedly changed everything forever. In this case: now technical competence is dead, hail the king (judgement or whatever).

[1] “I’m learning that every topic that people read should be about AI.” : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44082683