Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
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Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#2For the longest time, the joy of creation in programming came from solving hard problems. The pursuit of a challenge meant something. Now, that pursuit seems to be short-circuited by an animated being racing ahead under a different set of incentives. I see a tsunami at the beach, and I’m not sure whether I can run fast enough.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#3For the longest time, the joy of creation in programming came from solving hard problems. The pursuit of a challenge meant something. Now, that pursuit seems to be short-circuited by an animated being racing ahead under a different set of incentives. I see a tsunami at the beach, and I’m not sure whether I can run fast enough.
Not to mention many companies speedrunning systems of strange and/or perverse incentives with AI adoption.
That being said, Welch’s grape juice hasn’t put Napa valley out of business. Human taste is still the subjective filter that LLMs can only imitate, not replace.
I view LLM assisted coding (on the sliding scale from vibe coding to fancy auto complete) similar to how Ableton and other DAW software have empowered good musicians that might not have made it otherwise due to lack of connections or money, but the music industry hasn’t collapsed completely.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#4Being a nondeterministic tool, the output for a given input can vary. Rather than having a solid plan of, "if I provide this input, then that will happen", it's more like, "if I do something like this, I can expect something like that, probably, and if not, then try again until it works, I suppose".
What are the productivity gains? Obviously, it must vary. The quality of the tool output varies based on numerous criteria, including what programming language is being used and what problem is trying to be solved. The fact that person A gets a 10x productivity increase on their project does not mean that person B will also get a 10x productivity increase on their project, no matter how well they use the tool.
But again, tool usage itself is variable. Person A themselves might get a 10x boost one time, and 8x another time, and 4x another time, and 2x another time.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#5For the longest time, the joy of creation in programming came from solving hard problems. The pursuit of a challenge meant something. Now, that pursuit seems to be short-circuited by an animated being racing ahead under a different set of incentives. I see a tsunami at the beach, and I’m not sure whether I can run fast enough.
Not to mention many companies speedrunning systems of strange and/or perverse incentives with AI adoption. That being said, Welch’s grape juice hasn’t put Napa valley out of business. Human taste is still the subjective filter that LLMs can only imitate, not replace. I view LLM assisted coding (on the sliding scale from vibe coding to fancy auto complete) similar to how Ableton and other DAW software have empowered g…
In the music world, I would say that, rather than DAWs, LLM-assisted coding is more like LLM-assisted music creation.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#6[flagged]
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#7[flagged]
Its clear from listening to podcasts/interviews, he does not want to say anything to get on elons bad side. Interviewers appear to also not be eager to broach the subject.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#8Being a nondeterministic tool, the output for a given input can vary. Rather than having a solid plan of, "if I provide this input, then that will happen", it's more like, "if I do something like this, I can expect something like that, probably, and if not, then try again until it works, I suppose". What are the productivity gains? Obviously, it must vary. The quality of the tool output varies based on numerous crite…
Non determinism of AI feels like a compiler which will on same input code spit out different executable on every run. Fixing bugs will become more like a ritual to satisfy whims of the machine spirit.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#9Man, this is giving me a cognitive dissonance compared to my experiences.
Actually, even the post itself reads like a cognitive dissonance with a dash of the usual "if it's not working for you then you are using it wrong" defence.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#10Man, this is giving me a cognitive dissonance compared to my experiences. Actually, even the post itself reads like a cognitive dissonance with a dash of the usual "if it's not working for you then you are using it wrong" defence.
I think of it this way. If you dropped Einstein with a time machine two thousand year ago, people would think he is some crazy guy doing scribbles in the sand.
No one would ever know how smart he is. The same is with people and advanced AGI like Gemini 3 Pro or Chatgpt 5.2 Pro.
We are just dumber than them.