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Engineers who dismiss AI

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#221

Post by em-bee »

thisissomething wrote: post #37
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…

> how can I utilize AI without degenerating my own abilities? Couldn't the same statement, to some extent, be applied to using a sorting lib instead of writing your own sorting algorithm? Or how about using a language like python instead of manually handling memory allocation and garbage collection in C? > What I want above all is AI that helps me become better at my job and continue to build skills and knowledge So…

no, it's more like asking a junior dev to write the sorting algorithm instead of writing it yourself. using a library would be like using an already verified and proven one algorithm. that's not what AI code provides.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#222

Post by beasthacker »

>If your last serious attempt was more than six months ago, your opinion is (I’m sorry to say, but) outdated.

I use ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini daily. My opinion hasn't evolved over the last 6 months:

- Huge productivity leverage, but the risk is confident, subtle wrongness, so you need to be vigilant in reviewing LLM output when using.

- Great for learning if you’re motivated; if not, it becomes reasoning outsourcing and skill atrophy.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#223

Post by [deleted] »

squidbeak wrote: post #71
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?

Perhaps in that case the critics should bend their ire on the marketing departments, rather than trashing the tech? Really though, the potential in this tech is unknown at this point. The measures we have suggest there's no slowdown in progress, and it isn't unreasonable for any enthusiast or policy maker to speculate about where it could go, or how we might need to adjust our societies around it.

[deleted]

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#224

Post by frankc »

elfbargpt wrote: post #213

The catch-22 I run into with AI coding help is always: it helps the most with problems I know how to solve. I feel like most engineers run into problems where we can't fully articulate the problem we're having (otherwise we would be able to fix it). In which case AI can be helpful, but more in a google way.

I think that is both pretty true but massively underrated in how much faster you can solve the problems you know how to solve. I do also help it finds helps me more quickly learn how to solve new problems, but I must still must learn how to solve these new problems I have it solve those new problems or things go off the rails.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#225

Post by Tripping5292 »

rurp wrote: post #197
Tripping5292 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sheer number of projects I've completed that I truly would never have been able to even make a dent in is evidence enough for me. I don't think research will convince you. You need to either watch someone do it, or experiment with it yourself. Get your hands dirty on an audacious project with Claude code.

It sounds like you're building a lot of prototypes or small projects, which yes LLMs can be amazingly helpful at. But that is very much not what many/most professional engineers spend their time on, and generalizing from that former case often doesn't hold up in my experience.

It sounds like you're assuming I'm not a professional engineer and I only work on prototypes.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#226

Post by rssoconnor »

zephen wrote: post #217
rssoconnor wrote: post #176

Let me know when AI can create functions for the secp256k1 library that adds a point in jacobian coordinates to another point in jacobian coordinates, both in variable time and in constant time. i.e. add functions void secp256k1_gej_add_gej(secp256k1_gej *r, const secp256k1_gej *a, const secp256k1_gej *b); and void secp256k1_gej_add_gej_var(secp256k1_gej *r, const secp256k1_gej *a, const secp256k1_gej *b); As with th…

It probably can't do that. But neither can most humans. I admit to being surprised at what it actually can do, pretty much all by itself. https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/the-ars-technica-ai-codin...

Sure, I get that most humans aren't programmers, but the thrust of the article here is defending the position that "AI Can Write Your Code. [It Can’t Do Your Job.]" However, this task is literally the sort of code that I write. So if AI cannot do the above task, then AI cannot (yet) write my code.

I don't know what other programmers are doing, but a lot of my time is spent on tasks like this.

Here's another random task: Write an analytic ray - cubic Bézier patch intersection routine based on the based on the "Ray Tracing Parametric Patches", SIGGRAPH 82 paper. This is a task I did as part of my final project for my undergraduate graphics class.

These are both straightforward tasks to take well-described existing algorithms from literature and implement them concretely. Very few design choices to consider. In theory it ought to be right up the alley for what AI is supposedly good for.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#227

Post by fragmede »

tjchear wrote: post #175
stemlord wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the exact reason why modern software is so bloated?

I think this question can be answered in so many ways - first of all, piling abstraction doesn’t automatically imply bloating - with proper compile time optimizations you can achieve zero cost abstractions, e.g C++ compilers. Secondly, bloated comes in so many forms and they all have different reasons. Did you mean bloated as in huge dependency installs like those node modules? Or did you mean an electron app where a…

You'd have to define bloat first. Is internationalization bloat? How about screen reader support for the blind? I mean, okay, Excel didn't need a whole flight simulator in it, but just because you doing don't you use a particular feature doesn't mean it's necessarily bloat. So first: define bloat.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#228

Post by fragmede »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #218
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…

There is the other issue that AI generated anything has a value close to zero. So what's my cut of something basically worthless? Doesn't seem lucrative in the long run.

What is value, even? A dollar bill is worth a dollar, but even that’s made up too. A crappy crayon drawing of stick people and a house is utterly priceless if your kid made it, worthless if it's some other kid. AI is forcing us to confront how squishy valuation is in the first place.

Prices are not fundamental truths. They’re numbers that happen to work. Ideally price > cost, but that’s not even reliably true once you factor in fixed costs, subsidies, taxes, rebates, etc. Boeing famously came out and said they couldn't figure out how much it actually cost to make a 747, back when they were still flying.

Here's a concrete example: You have a factory with $50k/month in fixed costs. Running it costs $5 per widget in materials and labor. You make 5,000 widgets.

Originally you sell them for $20. Revenue $100k, costs $75k, pocket a cool $25k every month. Awesome.

Then, a competitor shows up and drives the price down to $10. Now revenue is $50k. On paper you “lose money” vs your original model.

But if you shut the factory down, you still eat the full $50k fixed cost and make $0. If you keep running, each widget covers its $5 marginal cost and contributes $5 toward fixed costs. You break even instead of losing $50k.

That’s the key mistake in "AI output is worth zero." Zero marginal value does not imply zero economic value. The question is whether it covers marginal cost and contributes to something else you care about: fixed costs, distribution, lock-in, differentiation, complements, optionality.

We've faced this many times before so AI isn't special in this regard. It just makes the gap between marginal cost and perceived value impossible to ignore.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#229

Post by fragmede »

plqbfbv wrote: post #136
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…

> how can I utilize AI without degenerating my own abilities? Personally I think my skill lies in solving the problem by designing and implementing the solution, but not how I code day-to-day. After you write the 100th getter/setter you're not really adding value, you're just performing a chore because of language/programming patterns. Using AI and being productive with it is an ability and I can use my time more eff…

Yeah, what about the degeneration of the skill of writing assembly? Or of punching cards, even? When compilers came onto the scene, there were similar objections. Instead of focusing on one skill atrophying, look at the new skills being developed. They may not be the ones you necessarily want to e good at, but it turns out developing social engineering skills to get an LLM to do something it's been prompted not to, might actually be a transferrable skill to real life.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#230

Post by edanm »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #190

That opening caricature was so off-putting and dismissive (and extremely wrong, that's not at all what the discourse is about generally speaking), I failed to conclude the reading session. One does not need to embrace a tool to recognize its horrendous effects and side-effects. I can critique assault rifles without ever having handled one. I can critique street narcotics without taking drugs, and I can critique nucle…

I didn't love the opening caricature either.

But, to be fair, that wasn't the kind of critique it was talking about. If your critique guns is moral, strategic, etc, then yes, you can do it without actually trying out guns. If your critique is that guns physically don't work, don't actually do the thing they are claimed to do, then some hands-on testing would quickly dispel that notion.

The article is talking about those kinds of critiques, ones of the "AI doesn't work" variety, not "AI is harmful".

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