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Ape Coding [fiction]

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Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#51

Post by aspenmartin »

aqua_coder wrote: post #40
justinhj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I never use a calculator. Since my school days I have the skill to do long division. Why hit the sin button when I have the skill to write out a Taylor series expansion? For many other purposes I have the skill to use Newton Raphson methods to calculate values that mostly work. Those who use a calculator simply don't have these skills.

There is a notable difference between say, calculating long division through a calculator compared to prompting an AI to calculate the derivative of a simple continuous function. one requires _understanding_ of the function, while the other just skips the understanding and returns the required derivative. One is just a means to skip labor intensive and repetitive actions, while the other is meant to skip the entire p…

I'm not quite sure I understand the logic of this and how people don't see that these claims of "well now everyone is going to be dumber because they don't learn" has been a refrain literally every time a major technological / Industrial Revolution happens. Computers? The internet? Calculators?

The skills we needed before are just no longer as relevant. It doesn't mean the world will get dumber, it will adapt to the new tooling and paradigm that we're in. There are always people who don't like the big paradigm change, who are convinced it's the end of the "right" way to do things, but they always age terribly.

I find I learn an incredible amount from using AI + coding agents. It's a _different_ experience, and I would argue a much more efficient one to understand your craft.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#52

Post by rnimmer »

djha-skin wrote: post #36

I would probably just call it hand coding , as we say we use hand tools in wood working. Many do this for fun, but knowing the hand tools also makes you a better woodworker. It's an interesting question: Will coding turn out to be more like landscaping, where (referring to the practice specifically of cutting grass) no one uses hand tools (to a first approximation)? Or it will it be more like woodworking, where every…

Can't wait to sell my artisinal hand-crafted software at the farmer's market.

Humor aside, long-handed programming is losing its ability to compete in an open market. Automate or be left behind. This will become increasingly true of many fields, not just software.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#56

Post by Dansvidania »

i don't understand the stance of the post and it being the first in the blog (congrats on getting this hot on your first post) I am unable to further investigate.

Is it sci-fi like writing from the perspective of a future person?

It sounds like someone trying to make assumption sounds as fact. Not a fan.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#57

Post by RaftPeople »

justinhj wrote: post #37
pbohun wrote: post #24

It's not ape coding. It's skill coding. People who don't have the skill to do math and logic ask others to do it for them. The reason we have programming languages is the same reason we have musical notation or math notation. It is a far more concise and precise way of communicating than using natural languages. We could write music using natural language, but no one does because a single page of music would require…

This is why I never use a calculator. Since my school days I have the skill to do long division. Why hit the sin button when I have the skill to write out a Taylor series expansion? For many other purposes I have the skill to use Newton Raphson methods to calculate values that mostly work. Those who use a calculator simply don't have these skills.

> This is why I never use a calculator.

I always use the calculator.

But, because the numbers that get returned aren't always the right numbers, I try to approximate the answer in my head or with paper and pencil to kind of make sure it's in the ball park.

Also, sometimes it returns digits that don't actually exist, and it's pretty insistent that the digit is correct. If I catch it early I just re-run the equation but there is a special button where I can tell it that it used a digit that does not actually exist.

Sometimes, for complex ones, it tells me it's trying to calculate and provides some details about how it's going about it and keeps going and going and going, for those ones I just reboot the calculator.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#58

Post by Philpax »

Dansvidania wrote: post #56

i don't understand the stance of the post and it being the first in the blog (congrats on getting this hot on your first post) I am unable to further investigate. Is it sci-fi like writing from the perspective of a future person? It sounds like someone trying to make assumption sounds as fact. Not a fan.

It is presented as a Wikipedia article from the future describing a subculture of tomorrow. See also https://qntm.org/mmacevedo for another example of this genre.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#59

Post by thorum »

Ape thinking is a cognitive practice where a human deliberately solves problems with their own mind. Practitioners of ape thinking will typically author thoughts by thinking them with their own brain, using neurons and synapses.

The term was popularized when asking a computer to do it for you became the dominant form of cognition. "Ape thinking" first appeared in online communities as derogatory slang, referring to humans who were unable to outsource all their thinking to a computer. Despite the quick spread of asking a computer to do it for you, institutional inertia, affordability, and limitations in human complacency were barriers to universal adoption of the new technology.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#60

Post by masswerk »

thorum wrote: post #59

Ape thinking is a cognitive practice where a human deliberately solves problems with their own mind. Practitioners of ape thinking will typically author thoughts by thinking them with their own brain, using neurons and synapses. The term was popularized when asking a computer to do it for you became the dominant form of cognition. "Ape thinking" first appeared in online communities as derogatory slang, referring to h…

The slogan of ape thinking (deliberately adjusted for machine readability): "Not AI, not machine generated slop genuine human intelligence."
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