I actually still listen to music heavily when in the zone with AI coding. Totally agree that the focus time feels much more intense now than it did before AI.
AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
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Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
#92From the masterpiece, Tragedy of the Man, describing the future where everything is done in the name of efficiency: THE GREYBEARD You left your workroom in great disarray. MICHELANGELO Because I had to fabricate the chair-legs To the quality as poor as it can be. I appeal’d for long, let me modificate, Let me engrave some ornaments on it. They did not permit. I wanted as a chance The chair-back to change but all was…
Can you explain why it is a masterpiece? Im just curious.
Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
#93The tradeoff of higher velocity for less enjoyment may feel less welcome when it becomes the new baseline and the expectation of employers / customers. The excitement of getting a day's work done in an hour* (for example) is likely to fade once the expectation is to produce 8 of such old-days output per day. I suspect it doesn't matter how we feel about it mind you. If it's going to happen it will, whether we enjoy t…
The most challenging thing I'm finding about working with LLM-based tools is the reduction in enjoyment. I'm in this business because I love it, and I'm worried about that going forward.
Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use Zoom rather than Teams, but have no problems playing background music with Spotify. Just have to make sure that “share computer audio” is not enabled when sharing your screen. Also, when I was using the mic of my bluetooth headphones, any music played would be mono and lower quality due to bluetooth bandwidth. Since moving to using a dedicated mic on my desk, the bluetooth headphones are output only and back to…
Not too long ago, I installed a system mixer/EQ on my work computer so I could mix ambient-ish music with Zoom calls while giving space to the (meeting room's) vocals. It works great.
Sounds great…
I’m a hobbyist audio engineer so can’t resist tinkering.
My mic input goes to Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack which allows a chain of VST plugins to be used. I use a gentle noise gate, followed by Supertone Clear. This is excellent for removing any noise mixed in with my voice. It handles the dehumidifier near me with ease, and can also handle the portable aircon on heatwave days, which can be very loud. Next in the chain is some gentle and transparent compression, and then the output goes to the free Blackhole virtual audio device. Zoom then picks up that device. Tweaked Zoom settings and “original sound for musicians” button then stops it from compromising the sound as much as possible. I am tempted to have some EQ plugin tweaks too, but I love the character of the mic so I don’t mess around with it.
EQing the music played sounds interesting. I’ll look at the options. I tend to just have it at a level low enough that I can hear all speakers on the call.
Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
#95I like vibe coding, and I also enjoy listening to music.
Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Absolutely—I feel like I can ship at a crazy velocity now, like I have a team of interns at my disposal to code up my every silly demand. I also wonder what type of simple CRUD apps people build that have such a performance gain? They must be building well understood projects or be incredible slow developers for LLMs to have such an impact, as I cant relate to this at all.
There are people using Claude to make entire 3d MMO games, so ...
do you have any particular game in mind?
Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
#97In my experience, listening to music engages the creative part of your brain and severely limits what you can do, but this is not readily apparent. If I listen to music, I can spend an hour CODING YEAH! and be all smug and satisfied, until I turn the music off and discover that everything I've coded is unnecessary and there is an easier way to achieve the same goal. I just didn't see it, because the creative part of…
I just think it's distracting. I get caught up listening to the lyrics and kind of mentally singing along, stuff like that which disrupts my thought and distracts from what I actually want to be thinking about.
I think this is individual, I have the same problem in social settings - if I'm having a conversation and a song I like is playing in the background I some times stop listening to the conversation and focus on the music instead, unintentionally.
My solution is to listen to music without vocals when I need to focus. I've had phases where I listen to classical music, electronic stuff, and lately I've been using an app I found called brain.fm which I think just plays AI generated lo-fi or whatever and there's some binaural beats thing going on as well that's supposed to enhance focus, creativity etc. I like it but some times I go back to regular music just because I miss listening to something I actually like.
Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
#98The line that stood out for me was that "a 4-hour session of AI coding is more cognitively intense than a 4-hour session of non-AI coding." Many programmers are rejecting AI coding because they miss the challenge they enjoy getting from conventional programming but this author finds it even more challenging. Or perhaps challenging in a different way?
I think there are (at least) two types of programmer - I am the kind of programmer who wants everything done right. Others don't care as long as it works and the boss is happy.
I suspect that the type of programmer who enjoys vibe coding is the latter. For me it's pretty tiring to explain everything in excruciating detail, it's often easier to just write the code myself rather than explain in English how to write it.
It feels like I am just doing the hard part of programming all the time - deciding how the app should work and how the code should be structured etc, and I never get those breaks where I just implement my plan.
Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
#99I can work to music anytime as long as it has no lyrics.
Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The excitement of getting a day's work done in an hour* (for example) is likely to fade once the expectation is to produce 8 of such old-days output per day. That dumb attitude (which I understand you’re criticising) of “more more more” always reminds me of Lenny from the Simpsons moving fast through the yellow light, with nowhere to go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR10t-B9nYY > I suspect it doesn't matter how…
> That is quite the defeatist attitude. Society becoming shittier isn’t inevitable, though inaction and giving up certainly helps that along. The hypothetical that we're 8x as productive but the work isn't as fun isn't "society becoming shittier".
How is everyone working shitty jobs not "society becoming shittier"? Seems pretty awful