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

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

#311

Post by don_esteban »

rini17 wrote: post #162
pelorat wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the military I'd say the real reason is political. After the fall of the Berlin wall, Europe collectively agreed (knowingly or not) that war is now a thing of the past and the goal should be the complete dismantling of militaries worldwide, starting with Europe. Lead by example, etc.

It's subtler than that. Europe was just constantly reminded by its big brother not to duplicate NATO structures, which are dependent on the US.

This.

Plus, of course, each European country has to support their own defense industry, so each one of them needs to have their own howitzer/tank/whatever and they can't agree on common approach that would actually allow for the economy of scale.

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

#312

Post by aleph_minus_one »

jdw64 wrote: 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…

> The core problem is that decision-makers—often far removed from actual engineering work — believe that tacit knowledge can be replaced with documentation, tools, and processes. [It] cannot.

I am not so certain:

For example, I think that a lot of my knowledge about the system that I work on could be documented, and based on this documentation someone new could take over the system.

The problem rather is: the volume of documentation that I would have to write would be insane; I'd consider ten thousands of dense DIN A4 pages to be realistic - and this is a rather small system.

So, a new person who could take over this system would have to cram and understand basically all the details of this documentation insanely well.

This insane effort (write the documentation; new workers on the project then have to cram and understand every detail of this incredibly bulky documentation) is something that no employer wants to spend money on: this is in my experience the real reason why it isn't done.

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

#313

Post by whompyjaw »

cpursley wrote: post #283
liendolucas wrote: post #152

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.

Ya this has been my sentiment. If i need to one-off a quick script that does some processing on data, it’s nice to offload that so i can focus on pieces of my code that are more important and interesting to me. The context switching cost is still there tho…

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

#314

Post by don_esteban »

bluGill wrote: post #224
LtWorf wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA had no part in that push?

Perhaps but the US was pushing NATO to invest more in war for years suggesting they didn't believe war was in the past

Correction: The US was pushing NATO to invest more in US gear.

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

#315

Post by wolvesechoes »

cpursley wrote: post #283
liendolucas wrote: post #152

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.

Show us effects.

What amazing breakthroughs were achieved thanks to brain juice freed by AI usage? What great works of art were created?

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

#316

Post by avmich »

brabel wrote: post #157
pelorat wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the military I'd say the real reason is political. After the fall of the Berlin wall, Europe collectively agreed (knowingly or not) that war is now a thing of the past and the goal should be the complete dismantling of militaries worldwide, starting with Europe. Lead by example, etc.

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…

It could be matching theory for outcome though. The unpopular opinion may still be wrong too. Russia was quite different in 1999, or better in 1992, to the point of joining NATO, and China was nowhere the threat of today, and it could be different reasons- not keeping NATO - which caused today's standup. So, basically, the situation seem to be more complex.

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

#317

Post by mewpmewp2 »

esseph wrote: post #290
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would disagree. If you only do X, in fact I think you will miss a lot of things that could make you better. You can become better writer by reading other great writings, if you only write yourself, you will not have the full big picture on what is possible. Then you can become better by thinking a lot, imagining a lot, etc... Same with most fields I would argue.

Although we were discussing about the decay of skill in something. While in some things the decay is super clear (as in running - pace, not the technique), I think there's many areas where there's no clear decay and other activities will actually significantly boost it, and any decay that there is, will be removed in just few days of practice or remembering.

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

#318

Post by [deleted] »

cpursley wrote: post #283
liendolucas wrote: post #152

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.

[deleted]

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

#319

Post by aleph_minus_one »

t-3 wrote: post #305
vishnugupta wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> removing people and organizational slack You are spot on w.r.t every assertion you've made. When bean-counters took over the ecosystem they optimised immediate profitability over everything else. Which in turn means, in their mind, every part of the system needs to be firing at 100% all the time. There's no room for experimentation, repair, or anything else. I've commented about lack of slack on several times here…

I think the bean counters get a bad rap for this a bit unfairly. The past century has seen more progress in knowledge and technology than the rest of human history combined. The world and business environment are changing too rapidly to make longtermist thinking practical. Few care if you have a lifetime warranty and excellent service or replacement parts if the majority will upgrade in a few years! Mature technologi…

> R&D can be outsourced or bought and subsidized by the government in universities, so why do everything yourself?

Because some problems that many companies in very specialized industries work on are so special that outside of this industry, nearly all people won't even have heard about them.

Additionally, many problems companies have where research would make sense are not the kind of problems that are a good fit for universities.

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

#320

Post by _heimdall »

hnfong wrote: post #81
teiferer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In hindsight, it's easy to be smart. You picked two examples where somebody said "never gonna happen" and then it happened. How about the countless examples where somebody said the same and then the thing actually didn't happen? Take millions playing the lottery. To each of them, I can confidently say "you won't win, not gonna happen". For almost all of them I'll be right. There will be one who wins, were I was wrong…

GP also probably had a sampling bias. The ones who were actually concerned about the impending Russian invasion presumably fled out of the country (or at least, away from the major cities to rural areas that probably see less fighting)

I was in a neighboring country in Europe at the time, not Ukraine, but we didn't see any Ukrainians move into our area until a few weeks after the war started.

That's not to say the country wasn't prepared though. If the GP did talk to people on the ground days before it started, saying it won't happen would match the public propaganda at the time coming out of the Ukrainian government and their allies. They knew it was coming and seemed to decide they were better to faint like the weren't ready and avoid public panic before it started.

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