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The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

techtrenches.dev

281–290 of 896 posts

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ukraine is "receiving money from others"? Factually correct. > We are benefactors of the Ukrainians' bravery and sacrifices. Who's we? > How much money could we have not spent if Hitler had been stopped in Czechoslovakia? Very different situation, in all aspects.

You see zero similarities between Hitler invading Poland and Putin invading Ukraine?

As similar as any country who ever invaded any other country?!

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#282
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you see people who don't care about programming, joining and getting comfortable with vscode and claude code and devops? Because it seems to me like there's a lot of coding-adjacent things they still need to be able to do even if they never look at a line of code.

Those examples are nonsensical. None of those are necessary to get working code. The VSCode example is particularly baffling. Firstly, I’m sure you understand there are other editors people use for code; secondly, I know even people who don’t code who have picked up VSCode for text editing and are fine with it.

I think you haven't dealt with a lot of non-coders. 90% of the world will not be able to even open a .py

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#283

I still code daily without any coding assistance mostly because I believe this is the way to not forget how things are done, even trivial things. My main point against using AI is that I do not want to depend basically on anything when I'm in front of the screen (obviously not including, documentation, books, SO and alike). I closely see people that are 100% dependent on AI for literally everything, even the most tri…

Another perspective: AI reduces brain effort in some domains which actually frees up brain juice that can be applied elsewhere.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, many Americans and other Westerners believe that the so-called "socialist" economies, like those of the Soviet Union and of Eastern Europe were non-capitalist. This is only an illusion created by the fact that the communists were careful to rename all important things, to fool the weaker minds that the renamed things are something else than what they really are. In reality, the "socialist" economies were more ca…

Everyone wants to tag the evil with their opposition's name. The evil is concentration of power. But no one wants to call it that because then they can't pretend that it's something different when they're doing it themselves. Witness the people who keep proposing to solve market consolidation with higher taxes. Higher taxes go to the government, and therefore the interests that have captured the government. Are we go…

I'd argue we need both massive antitrust, and higher taxes on the wealthy to prevent them from amassing the power to prevent the antitrust.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#285
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s even a management tutorial game which demonstrates the dangers of removing too much slack from systems. It’s called The Beer Game[1]. One of the funny things about it is even people that have played and discussed it before _still_ make the same fundamental mistakes next time. Short-termism is the death of companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game

Wut? The point of the beer game is that buffering in the supply chain makes the bullwhip effect worse.

I'm not sure it's the same kind of buffering. I would assume the "winning" strategy for the case when the known final demand is fixed is to maintain fixed the upstream orders, and buffer outcome, and for non-fixed final demand is to model that demand as good as possible and keep upstream orders accordingly to maintain outcome matching the demand model. Large penalties for buffering may make this approach not working, I guess...

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#286
post #17

The real issue, in my view, is not AI itself. The problem is a management pattern: removing people and organizational slack because they don’t generate immediate profit, and then expecting the knowledge to still be there when it’s needed. Short-term cost cutting leads to less junior hiring, and removes the slack that experienced engineers need in order to teach. As a result, tacit knowledge stops being transferred. W…

> What AI is being sold as right now is not really productivity. In many domains, productivity is already sufficient. What’s being sold is workforce reduction. And workforce reduction is a nobel goal. In fact, I think it's one of the most important things humanity should focus on. We should strive for a workforce of zero. Humans currently was an enormous amount of their life working instead of more worthwhile pursuit…

Jobless people normally can't feed themselves in a modern world.

And uh, healthcare. Among other things.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#287
post #201
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They agreed that war was a thing of the past, but still continued to push for NATO to allow new members anyway, ironically causing Russia (and China and everyone who is NOT in NATO) to suspect that war was NOT a thing of the past and therefore never quite abandoning their military completely. Unpopular opinion: the West should either NEVER have abandoned its military production (so as to maintain NATO actual prepared…

USA had no part in that push?

NATO expansion was pretty controversial in the US

https://time.com/archive/6731121/how-clinton-decided-on-nato...

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#288
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those examples are nonsensical. None of those are necessary to get working code. The VSCode example is particularly baffling. Firstly, I’m sure you understand there are other editors people use for code; secondly, I know even people who don’t code who have picked up VSCode for text editing and are fine with it.

I think you haven't dealt with a lot of non-coders. 90% of the world will not be able to even open a .py

> I think you haven't dealt with a lot of non-coders.

And I think you should avoid making assumptions about people you know nothing about. That is so far from the truth it’s not even funny.

> 90% of the world will not be able to even open a .py

Which is nowhere near my argument. I’d appreciate if you engaged with what I said or not at all.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#289
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Russia, Eastern Europe - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO

So, NATO hasn't advanced into Russia then? Just Russia advancing into the Ukraine (after promising not to if the USSR nukes were given to Russia)? Gotcha.

I know it’s what about ism but I really hope you apply the same logic when Cuba once more tried to enter an alliance with Russia or China to defend itself against a larger aggressor next door. So while I agree that Russia should allow Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, I also think that’s only fair if countries like Brazil, Cuba and Venezuela are freely allowed to determine their futures by joining Russia, China and Iran military alliances. But you and I know that’s not going to happen. So please let’s stop pretending we don’t have double standards.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#290
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A writer will never forget what adjectives, verbs, and nouns are. But if they use LLMs to write for them for years they will be worse at writing on their own.

Well, what I'm trying to say here is that coding is conveying logic, the way you'd evaluate it is how fit it is for its purpose, and if it's long term code, how well it will scale into future. Now writing is something totally different. In some cases writing ability is not about writing, it's about your thoughts and understanding of life and human nature. You could simply become a better writer without not writing an…

> You could simply become a better writer without not writing anything by just observing.

To become a better X to must do more of X. There are few shortcuts worthwhile.

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