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I miss thinking hard

jernesto.com

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Re: I miss thinking hard

#181

Post by AdieuToLogic »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #143
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Cameras have not replaced paintings, assuming this is the inference. > You wouldn't have known that, going by all the bellyaching and whining from the artists of the day. > Guess what, they got over it. You conveniently omitted my next sentence, which contradicts your position and reads thusly: Instead, they serve only to be an additional medium for the same concerns quoted ... > You will too. This statement is as…

Username checks out, at least.

> Username checks out, at least.

Thoughtful retorts such as this are deserving of the same esteem one affords the "rubber v glue"[0] idiom.

As such, I must oblige.

0 - https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/I%27m+rubber%2c+you%27r...

Re: I miss thinking hard

#182

Post by sph »

nunez wrote: post #162

I will never not be upset at my fellow engineers for selling out the ONE thing that made us valuable and respected in the marketplace and trying to destroy software engineering as a career because "Claude Code go brrrrrr" basically. It's like we had the means for production and more or less collectively decided "You know what? Actually, the bourgeoisie can have it, sure."

The personification of the quote “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should”

I feel the existential problem for a world that follows the religion of science and technology to its extreme, is that most people in STEM have no foundation in humanities, so ethical and philosophical concerns never pass through their mind.

We have signed a pact with the devil to help us through boring tasks, and no one thought to ask what we would give in exchange.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#183

Post by allovertheworld »

topspin wrote: post #8

I'm using LLMs to code and I'm still thinking hard. I'm not doing it wrong: I think about design choices: risks, constraints, technical debt, alternatives, possibilities... I'm thinking as hard as I've ever done.

Thats not thinking hard, you are making decisions

Re: I miss thinking hard

#184

Post by kuerbel »

lkey wrote: post #145
CamperBob2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cameras have not replaced paintings, assuming this is the inference. You wouldn't have known that, going by all the bellyaching and whining from the artists of the day. Guess what, they got over it. You will too.

What stole the joy you must have felt, fleetingly, as a child that beheld the world with fresh eyes, full of wonder? Did you imagine yourself then, as your are now, hunched over a glowing rectangle. Demanding imperiously that the world share your contempt for the sublime. Share your jaundiced view of those that pour the whole of themselves into the act of creation, so that everyone might once again be graced with won…

[flagged]

Re: I miss thinking hard

#185

Post by darkwater »

fallous wrote: post #106
helloplanets wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when programming with agentic tools, you need to actively push for the idea to not regress to the most obvious/average version. The amount of effort you need to expend on pushing the idea that deviates from the 'norm' (because it's novel), is actually comparable to the effort it takes to type something out by hand. Just two completely different types of effort. There's an upside to this sort of effort too, though…

You just described the burden of outsourcing programming.

With the basic and enormous difference that the feedback loop is 100 or even 1000x faster. Which changes the type of game completely, although other issues will probably arise as we try this new path.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#186

Post by oceanplexian »

gyomu wrote: post #32

This March 2025 post from Aral Balkan stuck with me: https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/114160190826192080 "Coding is like taking a lump of clay and slowly working it into the thing you want it to become. It is this process, and your intimacy with the medium and the materials you’re shaping, that teaches you about what you’re making – its qualities, tolerances, and limits – even as you make it. You know the least about wha…

Coding is not at all like working a lump of clay unless you’re still writing assembly.

You’re taking a bunch of pre-built abstractions written by other people on top of what the computer is actually doing and plugging them together like LEGOs. The artificial syntax that you use to move the bricks around is the thing you call coding.

The human element of discovery is still there if a robot stacks the bricks based on a different set of syntax (Natural Language), nothing about that precludes authenticity or the human element of creation.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#187

Post by johanvts »

I dont think LLMs really took away much thinking, for me they replaced searching stackexchange to find incantations. Now I can get them instantly and customized to my situation. I miss thinking hard too, but I dont blame that on AI, its more that as a dev you are paid to think the absolute minimal amount needed to solve an issue or implement a feature. I dont regret leaving academia, but being paid to think I will always miss.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#188

Post by satvikpendem »

oceanplexian wrote: post #186
gyomu wrote: post #32

This March 2025 post from Aral Balkan stuck with me: https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/114160190826192080 "Coding is like taking a lump of clay and slowly working it into the thing you want it to become. It is this process, and your intimacy with the medium and the materials you’re shaping, that teaches you about what you’re making – its qualities, tolerances, and limits – even as you make it. You know the least about wha…

Coding is not at all like working a lump of clay unless you’re still writing assembly. You’re taking a bunch of pre-built abstractions written by other people on top of what the computer is actually doing and plugging them together like LEGOs. The artificial syntax that you use to move the bricks around is the thing you call coding. The human element of discovery is still there if a robot stacks the bricks based on a…

Exactly, and that's why I find AI coding solving this well, because I find it tedious to put the bricks together for the umpteenth time when I can just have an AI do it (which I will of course verify the code when it's done, not advocating for vibe coding here).

This actually leaves me with a lot more time to think, about what I want the UI to look like, how I'll market my software, and so on.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#189

Post by satvikpendem »

anavat wrote: post #154
keyle wrote: post #63

I don't get it. I think just as hard, I type less. I specify precisely and I review. If anything, all we've changed is working at a higher level. The product is the same. But these people just keep mixing things up like "wow I got a ferrari now, watch it fly off the road!" Yeah so you got a tools upgrade; it's faster, it's more powerful. Keep it on the road or give up driving! We went from auto completing keywords, t…

It is simple. Continuing your metaphor, I have a choice of getting exactly where I want on a camel in 3 days, or getting to a random location somewhere on the other side of the desert on a helicopter in few hours. And being a reasonable person I, just like the author, choose the helicopter. That's it, that's the whole problem.

Why is that the reasonable choice if it doesn't get you to your destination?

I too did a lot of AI coding but when I saw the spaghetti it made, I went back to regular coding, with ask mode not agent mode as a search engine.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#190

Post by soanvig »

z3t4 wrote: post #158

I always search the web, ask others, or read books in order to find a solution. When I do not find an answer from someone else, that's where I have to think hard.

That's weird as I do the opposite: think by myself, then look for help if I don't know.
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