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Engineers who dismiss AI

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#61

Post by netdevphoenix »

AI Transformers

I keep seeing this over and over by so called "engineers".

You can dismiss the current crop of transformers without dismissing the wider AI category. To me this is like saying that users "dismiss Computers" because they dismiss Windows and instead prefer Linux. Rejecting modern practices for not getting on the microservice hype train or not using React.

Intellisense pre-GPT is a good example of AI that wasn't using transformers.

And of course, you can have both criticise some usages of transformers in IDEs and editors while appreciating and using others.

"My coworker uses Claude Code now. She finished a project last week that would’ve taken me a month". This is one of those generalisations. There is no nuance here. The range of usage from boilerplate to vibe code level is vast. Quickly churning out code is not a virtue. It is not impressive to ship something only to find critical bugs on the first day. Nor is it a virtue using it at the cost of losing understanding of the codebase.

This rigid thinking by devs needs to stop imo. For so called rational thinkers, the development world is rife with dogma and simplistic binary thinking.

If using transformers at any level is cost-effective for all, the data will speak for itself. Vague statements and broad generalisations are not going to sway anyone and will just make this kind of articles sound like validation seeking behaviour.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#62

Post by thisissomething »

phplovesong wrote: post #35

The fact that i hear this mantra over and over again: "She wrote a thing in a day that would have taken me a month" This scares me. A lot. I never found the coding part to be a bottle neck, but the issues arise after the damn thing is in prod. If i work on something big (that will take me a month) thats going to be anywhere from (im winging these numbers) 10K LOC to 25K LOC). If thats a bechmark for me the next guy u…

It really depends on how you use it. I really like using AI for prototyping new ideas (it can run on the background while I work on the main project) and for getting the boring grunt work (such as creating CRUD endpoints on a RESTful API) out of the way. Leaving me more time to focus on the code that really is challenging and need a deeper understanding of the business or the system as a whole.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#63

Post by cons0le »

nottorp wrote: post #27

Some engineers don't dismiss LLMs. They dismiss the religion like hype machine. You want to market to engineers, stick to provable statements. And address some of their concerns. With something other than "AI is evolving constantly, all your problems will be solved in 6 months, just keep paying us." Oh by the way, what is the OP trying to sell with these FOMO tactics? Yet another ChatGPT frontend?

I think we should label devs overreliant on AI as "Engineers who dismiss themselves"

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#64

Post by raincole »

TGower wrote: post #7

"AI coding is so much better now that any skepticism from 6 months ago is invalid" has been the refrain for the last 3 years. After the first few cycles of checking it out and realizing that it's still not meeting your quality bar, it's pretty reasonable to dismiss the AI hype crowd.

Because it has been true for the last 3 years. Just because a saying is repeated a lot doesn't mean it's wrong.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#65

Post by jennyholzer2 »

pwillia7 wrote: post #47

Just normal Luddite things, which attracts those most threatened in their personal identity by the new technology. You see it obviously with the artists and image/video generators too. We did this with Dadaism and Impressionism and photography before this too with art. Ultimately, it's just more abstraction that we have to get used to -- art is stuff people create with their human expression. It is funny to see every…

This guy's knowledge of art history is the Dada wikipedia page and the Banksy movie from 20 years ago.

Allow me to repeat myself: AI is for idiots.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#66

Post by hu3 »

plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #6

> The engineers refusing to try aren’t protecting themselves; quite the opposite, they’re falling behind. The gap is widening between engineers who’ve integrated these tools and engineers who haven’t. For me, however, there is one issue: how can I utilize AI without degenerating my own abilities? I use AI sparingly because, to be honest, every time I use AI, I feel like I'm getting a little dumber. I fear that excess…

I worry about that too.

But at this point, it's like refusing to use vehicles to travel long distances in fear of becoming physicaly unfit. We go to the gym.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#67

Post by emp17344 »

If you feel the need to hype up AI to this degree, you should provide some data proving that AI use actually increases productivity. This type of fact-free polemic isn’t interesting or useful.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#68

Post by mholm »

nottorp wrote: post #27

Some engineers don't dismiss LLMs. They dismiss the religion like hype machine. You want to market to engineers, stick to provable statements. And address some of their concerns. With something other than "AI is evolving constantly, all your problems will be solved in 6 months, just keep paying us." Oh by the way, what is the OP trying to sell with these FOMO tactics? Yet another ChatGPT frontend?

Is it possible you're not the target audience if you are aware that LLMs are impressive and useful? Regardless of the inane hype and bubble around them.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#69

Post by jennyholzer2 »

jennyholzer2 wrote: post #57
plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #6

> The engineers refusing to try aren’t protecting themselves; quite the opposite, they’re falling behind. The gap is widening between engineers who’ve integrated these tools and engineers who haven’t. For me, however, there is one issue: how can I utilize AI without degenerating my own abilities? I use AI sparingly because, to be honest, every time I use AI, I feel like I'm getting a little dumber. I fear that excess…

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Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#70

Post by cjpartridge »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #14
ryandv wrote: post #5

What I want to see is a Destroy All Software style screencast where somebody actually demonstrates their AI workflow on legacy code.

That would be fantastic. I’ve seen so many claims like the author’s > [Claude Code and Cursor] can now work across entire codebases, understand project context, refactor multiple files at once, and iterate until it’s really done. But I haven’t seen anyone doing this on e.g. YouTube? Maybe that kind of content isn’t easy to monetize, but if it’s as easy to use AI as everyone says surely someone would try.

I don't mean to sound rude, but when I read comments like this, I wonder if I'm using the same model and tools?

I've done this many times over, and it's by far one of the least impressive things I've seen CC achieve with a good agent/skills/collab setup.

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