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Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

antirez.com

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Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#91

Post by nebula8804 »

edg5000 wrote: post #30
systemf_omega wrote: post #8

What I don't understand about this whole "get on board the AI train or get left behind" narrative, what advantage does an early adopter have for AI tools? The way I see it, I can just start using AI once they get good enough for my type of work. Until then I'm continuing to learn instead of letting my brain atrophy.

It took me a few months of working with the agents to get really productive with it. The gains are significant. I write highly detailed specs (equiv multiple A4 pages) in markdown and dicate the agent hierarchy (which agent does what, who reports to who). I've learned a lot of new things this year thanks to AI. It's true that the low levels skills with atrophy. The high level skills will grow though; my learning rate…

The hardware needs to catch up I think. I asked ChatGPT (lol) how much it would cost to build a Deepseek server that runs at a reasonable speed and it quoted ~400k-800k(8-16 H100 + the rest of the server).

Guess we are still in the 1970s era of AI computing. We need to hope for a few more step changes or some breakthrough on model size.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#92

Post by prodigycorp »

embedding-shape wrote: post #72
antirez wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that who says that you need to be accustomed to the current "tools" related to AI agents, is suffering from a horizon effect issue: these stuff will change continuously for some time, and the more they evolve, the less you need to fiddle with the details. However, the skill you need to have, is communication skills. You need to be able to express yourself and what matters for your project fast and well. Many…

> Many programmers are not great at communication. This is true, but still shocking. Professional (working with others at least) developers basically live or die by their ability to communicate. If you're bad at communication, your entire team (and yourself) suffer, yet it seems like the "lone ranger" type of programmer is still somewhat praised and idealized. When trying to help some programmer friends with how they…

Yup. I'd take a gander than most complaints by people who have even used LLMs for long time can be resolved by "describe your thing in detail". LLM's are such a relief on my wrists that I often get tempted to write short prompts and pray that the LLM divines my thoughts. I always get much better results in a lot faster time when i just turn on the mic and have whisper transcribe a couple minutes of my speaking though.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#93

Post by gentooflux »

vanviegen wrote: post #56
gentooflux wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a zero sum game. AI cannot innovate, it can only predictively generate code based on what it's already seen. If we get to a point where new code is mostly or only written by AI, nothing new emerges. No new libraries, no new techniques, no new approaches. Fewer and fewer real developers means less and less new code.

Nonsense. LLMs can easily build novel solutions based on my descriptions. Even in languages and with (proprietary) frameworks they have not been trained on, given a tiny bit of example code and the reference docs.

That's not novel, it's still applying techniques it's already seen, just in a different platform. Moreover it has no way of knowing if it's approach is anywhere near idiomatic in that new platform.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#94

Post by falloutx »

yard2010 wrote: post #44

This is making me sad. The people that are going to lose their jobs will be literally weaponized against minorities by the crooked politicians that are doing their thing right now, it's going to be a disaster I can tell. I just wish I could go back in time. I don't want to live in this timeline anymore. I lost my passion job before anything of it even happened. On the paper.

We already may have hit the point where easier it is to make software, harder it is to sell (or make money from it).

There is no way I can convince a user that my vibe coded version of Todolist is better than 100 other made this week

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#95

Post by embedding-shape »

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building.

I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on.

I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer, and for them, I understand LLMs remove the fun part. For me, I initially got into programming because I wanted to ruin other people's websites, then I figured out I needed to know how to build websites first, then I found it more fun to create and share what I've done with others, and they tell me what they think of it. That's my "fire". But I've met so many people who doesn't care an iota about sharing what they built with others, it matters nothing to them.

I guess the conclusion is, not all programmers program for the same reason, for some of us, LLMs helps a lot, and makes things even more fun. For others, LLMs remove the core part of what makes programming fun for them. Hence we get this constant back and forth of "Can't believe others can work like this!" vs "I can't believe others aren't working like this!", but both sides seems to completely miss the other side.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#96

Post by zahlman »

dom96 wrote: post #2

> As a programmer, I want to write more open source than ever, now. I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen. Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? We've already seen some pretty strong evidence of this with Tailwind.

> But, in general, it is now clear that for most projects, writing the code yourself is no longer sensible, if not to have fun.

I want to write code to defy this logic and express my humanity. "To have fun", yes. But also to showcase what it means when a human engages in the act of programming. Writing code may increasingly not be "needed", but it increasingly is art.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#97

Post by Ekaros »

delusional wrote: post #46
RadiozRadioz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly for a different reason. I put my code out there, licensed under the GPL. It is now, through a layer of indirection, being used to construct products that are not under the GPL. That's not what I signed up for. I know the GPL didn't have a specific clause for AI, and the jury is still out on this specific case (how similar is it to a human doing the same thing?), but I like to imagine, had it been mad…

The argument of the AI megacorps is that generated work is not "derivative" and therefore doesn't fall interact with the original authors copyright. They have invented a machine that takes in copyrighted works, and from a legal standpoint produces "entirely original" code. No license, be that GPL or otherwise, can do anything about that, because they ultimately rely on the authors copyright to required the licensee t…

What makes this whole thing even weirder for me is the similar fact that any output from AI might not enjoy copyright protections. So basically if you can steal software made with AI you can freely resell it.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#98

Post by edg5000 »

> state of the art LLMs are able to complete large subtasks or medium size projects alone, almost unassisted, given a good set of hints about what the end result should be

No. I agree with the author, but it's hyperbolic of him to phrase it like this. If you have solid domain knowledge, you'll steer the model with detailed specs. It will carry those out competently and multiply your productivity. However, the quality of the output still reflects your state of knowledge. It just provides leverage. Given the best tractors, a good farmer will have much better yields than a shit one. Without good direction, even Opus 4.5 tends to create massive code repetion. Easy to avoid if you know what you are doing, albeit in a refactor pass.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#99

Post by aspaviento »

prodigycorp wrote: post #17
dom96 wrote: post #2

> As a programmer, I want to write more open source than ever, now. I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen. Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? We've already seen some pretty strong evidence of this with Tailwind.

I dont understand the invocation of tailwind here. It doesn't make sense. Tailwind's LLM struggles had nothing to do with open source, it had to do with the fact that they had the same business model as publisher, with ads pointing to their only product.

Exactly, their issue was about a drop in visits to their documentation site where they promote their paid products. If they were making money from usage, their business could really thrive with LLMs recommending Tailwind by default

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#100

Post by andrewstuart »

dom96 wrote: post #2

> As a programmer, I want to write more open source than ever, now. I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen. Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? We've already seen some pretty strong evidence of this with Tailwind.

If you give, and expect something in return, then you are not giving, that is a transaction.
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