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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”

#241

Post by simonw »

jayd16 wrote: post #233
simonw wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think AI-assisted programming may be having the opposite effect, at least for me. I'm now incentivized to use less abstractions. Why do we code with React? It's because synchronizing state between a UI and a data model is difficult and it's easy to make mistakes, so it's worth paying the React complexity/page-weight tax in order for a "better developer experience" that allows us to build working, reliable software…

Why would I want to maintain in perpetuity random snippets when a library exists? How is that an improvement?

It's an improvement if that library stops being actively maintained in the future.

... or decides to redesign the API you were using.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#242

Post by johnfn »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #226
johnfn wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is saying the author has “slopbrain” is “addressing the idea on its own merits”? It’s just name calling.

They aren't addressing my comment (which is obviously an overreaction to the tweet), he's asking you why we should appeal to authority rather than evaluate whether Karpathy is completely overreacting and in way too deep.

The intent of my comment was to state that you should write something more substantive than dismissing Karpathy as “slopbrain”. I wasn’t appealing to authority by saying that he was correct — just that he deserves more than name calling in a response.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#243

Post by whstl »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #63
rambojohnson wrote: post #58

What exhausts me isn’t “falling behind.” It’s watching the profession collectively decide that the solution to uncertainty is to pile abstraction on top of abstraction until no one can explain what’s actually happening anymore. This agentic arms race by C-suite know-nothings feels less like leverage and more like denial. We took a stochastic text generator, noticed it lies confidently, wipes entire databases and hard…

It’s wild that programmers are willing to accept less determinism.

Why would the average programmer have a problem with it?

The average programmer is already being pushed into doing a lot of things they're unhappy about in their day jobs.

Crappy designs, stupid products, tracking, privacy violation, security issues, slowness on customer machines, terrible tooling, crappy dependencies, horrible culture, pointless nitpicks in code reviews.

Half of HN is gonna defend one thing above or the other because $$$.

What's one more thing?

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#244

Post by simonw »

tyre wrote: post #221
simonw wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every dependency carries a cost. You are effectively outsourcing part of the future maintenance of your project to an external team. This can often be a very solid bet, but it can also occasionally backfire if the library you chose falls out of date and is no longer maintained. For this reason I lean towards fewer dependencies, and have a high bar for when a dependency is worth adding to a project. I prefer a dozen w…

For smol things like left-pad, sure but the two examples given (moment and react) solve really hard problems. If I were reviewing a PR where someone tried to re-implement time zone handling in JS, that’s not making it through review. In JS, the DOM and time zones are some of the most messed up foundations you’re building on top of ime. (The DOM is amazing for documents but not designed for web apps.) I think we reall…

Whether that's true about React and Moment varies on a case-by-case basis.

If you're building something simple like a contact form React may not be the right choice. If you're building something like Trello that calculation is different.

Likewise, I wouldn't want Moment for https://tools.simonwillison.net/california-clock-change but I might want it for something that needs its more advanced features.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#245

Post by robotresearcher »

Andrej is 39 years old, according to Wikipedia.

Douglas Adams on age and relating to technology:

"1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

From 'The Salmon of Doubt' (2002)

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#246

Post by nen-nomad »

Claude Code didn’t make me faster. It changed the calendar. What used to take me months now takes weeks. Work didn't vanished, the friction did.

Two years ago I was a human USB cable: copy, paste, pray. IDE chat window, piece by piece. Now the loop is tighter. The distance is shorter.

There’s still hand-holding. Still judgment. Still cleanup. But the shift is real.

We’ve come a long way. And we’re not done.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#247

Post by kakapo5672 »

reconnecting wrote: post #224
CamperBob2 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's wait one more year, and perhaps everyone who didn't fall victim to these "slimming pills” for developers' brains will be glad about the choice they made. In that year, AI will get better. Will you?

AI is only getting better at consuming energy and wasting people's time communicating with this T9. However, if talented engineers continue to use it, it might eventually provide more accurate replies as a result. Answering your question, no matter how much I personally degrade or improve, I will not be able to produce anything even remotely comparable in terms of negative impact that AI brings to humanity these days…

I see this logical pairing a lot.

1) AI is basically useless, a mere semi-random word generator. 2) And it is so powerful that it is going to hurt (or even destroy) humanity.

This is this is called "having your cake, and letting it eat you too".

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#248

Post by bgwalter »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #220
bgwalter wrote: post #122

This is from the man who has no finished open source projects and who recommended camera-only FSD to Tesla, which he also did not finish. The actually productive programmers, who wrote the stack that powers the economy before and after 2023 need not listen to these cheap commercials.

who recommended camera-only FSD to Tesla That's a bummer if true. Is there a reliable source that lays that decision at Karpathy's feet?

He was "AI" director at Tesla from 2017:

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-ai-director-hiring-autopilot...

He gave a glowing recommendation for camera-only FSD in 2021:

https://thenextweb.com/news/tesla-ai-chief-explains-self-dri...

Then he left Tesla in 2022. So yes, you could argue that it was all Elon's fault and he just followed for 5 years. We won't know with 100% certainty, I'd find it odd to stay 5 years if you think it doesn't work.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#249

Post by LogicFailsMe »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #203
LogicFailsMe wrote: post #155

Countdown to his youtube course explaining it all for beginners commences...

His "youtube course" already exists, and it's absolutely transformational. He's working on a more formal educational framework/service of some kind, which will presumably not be free, but what he's already posted is some of the most effective CS pedagogy I've ever encountered (and personally benefited from.)

If he publishes something in this space he can just TAKE MY MONEY!

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#250

Post by causal »

brandonmenc wrote: post #98

I admit to pangs of this, but it's really never made any sense because the implication is that the profession is now magically closed off to newcomers. Imagine someone in the 90s saying "if you don't master the web NOW you will be forever behind!" and yet 20 years later kids who weren't even born then are building web apps and frameworks. Waiting for it to all shake out and "mastering" it then is still a strategy. Th…

If anything I'd expect all these tools to be easier for new engineers to adopt, unburdened by how things were before.
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