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Engineers who dismiss AI
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Re: Engineers who dismiss AI
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah, LLMs have fixed search. For now. I use them daily for that. Fully expect them to include youtube levels of advertising in 1-2 years though. Just to compensate for the results being somewhat not spammy.
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Why? I'm happy to spend VC money while they're offering it. If and when they stop giving me an offering that I'm satisfied with, I'll stop using it.
Re: Engineers who dismiss AI
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might even be true this time, but there is no real mystery why many aren't inclined to invest more time figuring it out for themselves every few months. No need for the author of the original article to reach for "they are protecting their fragile egos" style of explanation.
The productivity improvements speak for themselves. Over time, those who can use ai well and those who cannot will be rewarded or penalized by the free market accordingly.
0.1x
Re: Engineers who dismiss AI
#114cough
The Strange Case of "Engineers" Who Use AI
I rely on AI coding tools. I don’t need to think about it to know they’re great. I have instincts which tell me convenience = dopamine = joy.
I tested ChatGPT in 2022, and asked it to write something. It (obviously) got some things wrong; I don’t remember what exactly, but it was definitely wrong. That was three years ago and I've forgotten that lesson. Why wouldn't I? I've been offloading all sorts of meaningful cognitive processes to AI tools since then.
I use Claude Code now. I finished a project last week that would’ve taken me a month. My senior coworker took one look at it and found 3 major flaws. QA gave it a try and discovered bugs, missing features, and one case of catastrophic data loss. I call that “nitpicking.” They say I don’t understand the engineering mindset or the sense of responsibility over what we build. (I told them it produces identical results and they said I'm just admitting I can't tell the difference between skill and scam).
“The code people write is always unfinished,” I always say. Unlike AI code, which is full of boilerplate, adjusted to satisfy the next whim even faster, and generated by the pound.
I never look at Stack Overflow anymore, it's dead. Instead I want the info to be remixed and scrubbed of all its salient details, and have an AI hallucinate the blanks. Thay way I can say that "I built this" without feeling like a fraud or a faker. The distinction is clear (well, at least in my head).
Will I ever be good enough to code by myself again? No. When a machine showed up that told me flattering lies while sounding like a silicon valley board room after a pile of cocaine, I jumped in without a parachute [rocket emoji].
I also personally started to look down on anyone who didn't do the same, for threatening my sense of competence.
Re: Engineers who dismiss AI
#115Many have the attitude of finding one edge case that it doesn’t work well and dismiss AI as useful tool I’m an early adopter and nowadays all I do is to co-write context documents so that my assistant can generate the code I need AI gives you an approximated answer, it depends on you how to steer it to a good enough answer and this takes time and learning curve … and evolves really fast Some people are just not good…
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Re: Engineers who dismiss AI
#116They will get on board when its good enough I can't imagine being so eager to socially virtue signal. Presumably some greybeard told him it was a waste of time and it upset him
That's just blatant ageism! I don't have a beard, but if I did I'm sure it would be white, beyond grey. It's okay. It's okay to feel annoyed, you have a tough battle ahead of you, you poor things. I may be labelled a grey beard but at least I get to program computers. By the time you have a grey beard maybe you are only allowed to talk to them. If you are lucky and the billionares that own everything let you...
Sorry :) I couldn't resist. I think I'm the oldest person in the department and I think also that I am probably one of the ones that have been using AI in software development the most.
Don't be so quick to point at old people and make assumptions. Sometimes all those years actually translate into useful experience :)
Possibly. The focus of a lot of young people should be to try and effect political change that allows billionares wealth grow unended. AI is all going to accelerate this very rapidly now. Just look at what kind of world some of those with the most wealth are wanting to impose on the others now. It's frightening.
Re: Engineers who dismiss AI
#117I dont feel my coworkers who use AI finish task faster than the ones who dont.
i feel my coworkers who use AI are slower, stupider, and less trustworthy than my coworkers who don't.
Re: Engineers who dismiss AI
#118I am neither pro- nor anti-AI. I just don't like the manipulative and blackmailish tactics its proponents use to get me to use it. I will use it whenever I find it useful, not because you tell me I'm getting "left behind" by not adopting it.
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Re: Engineers who dismiss AI
#119Many have the attitude of finding one edge case that it doesn’t work well and dismiss AI as useful tool I’m an early adopter and nowadays all I do is to co-write context documents so that my assistant can generate the code I need AI gives you an approximated answer, it depends on you how to steer it to a good enough answer and this takes time and learning curve … and evolves really fast Some people are just not good…
> Many have the attitude of finding one edge case that it doesn’t work well and dismiss AI as useful tool
Many programmers work on problems (nearly) *all day* where AI does not work well.
> AI gives you an approximated answer, it depends on you how to steer it to a good enough answer
Many programmers work on problem where correctness is of essential importance, i.e. if a code block is "semi-right" it is of no use - and even having to deal with code blocks where you cannot trust that the respective programmer did think deeply about such questions is a huge time sink.
> Some people are just not good at constantly learning things
Rather: some people are just not good at constantly looking beyond their programming bubble where AI might have some use.
Re: Engineers who dismiss AI
#120This story ends up being relevant in a metaphorical way. My aunt was born in the 1940s, and was something of an old fashioned feminist. She didn't know why wasn't allowed to wear pants, or why she had to wait for the man to make the first move, etc. She tells a story about a man who ditched her at a dance once because she didn't know the "latest dance." Apparently in the 1950s, some idiot was always inventing a new d…
As I see it, this is an inherent part of the tech industry. Unless you expressly choose to focus your career on maintaining legacy code, your value as a dev depends on your ability and willingness to continuously learn new tech.