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

techtrenches.dev

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

#351

Post by fsloth »

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…

"McKinsey comes to town".

Basically same shaped taylorism-derived industrial management has imposed itself as the "default dogma" in private and public administration.

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

#352

Post by mpweiher »

ReptileMan wrote: post #214
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…

>I closely see people that are 100% dependent on AI for literally everything, even the most trivial daily tasks and I find that truly scarly because it means that brain effort drops drammatically to a minimum level. To be stolen mental effort is not a minor thing. I find myself thinking more and my thinking is of higher quality. Now I have 30 years of fucked up projects experience, so I know all the rakes I could ste…

I think it's been well-documented that people feel more productive with GenAI, even when actual productivity declines.

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

#353

Post by bluGill »

don_esteban wrote: post #314
bluGill wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That was the hope but nothing stopped the EU from making their own stuff.

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

#354

Post by lpcvoid »

raincole wrote: post #77

First of all this is clearly AI-assist writing (being charitable here). And the premise makes no sense anyway. The only risk of forgetting how to make shells is when other countries are making shells more efficiently. Non-western countries are not going to reject AI-coding, nor are they going to make software more efficiently by hand.

>Non-western countries are not going to reject AI-coding

If they are smart, they will. And I think they are smart.

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

#355

Post by cucumber3732842 »

stingraycharles wrote: post #57
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…

Seems to me that - optimistically - this would shift the job of a software engineer into a more formal engineering role, and that the actual implementation is done by AI. In the same way in other areas, engineering and implementation differ and implementation can be (and is) automated. No idea how this should take form, though, and if it’s even realistic. But it seems like due to AI, formal specs and all kinds of “ol…

> this would shift the job of a software engineer into a more formal engineering role

If only you knew how the civil engineering sausage was made.

The amount of yolo'ing stuff based on vibes goes up when testing is expensive/impractical. They just paper over it all with disclaimers of the sort that would get laughed at for being non-starters in the software industry.

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

#356

Post by [deleted] »

latexr wrote: post #49
gib444 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ukraine is "receiving money from others"? Yes. https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/united-states-america...

You are completely ignoring the argument of your parent comment. They are saying that money is being spent to the benefit and best interest of the spenders, that it’s not a handout. You are, of course, free to disagree and make your point, but ignoring the argument does not advance the discussion.

[deleted]

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

#357

Post by flymasterv »

swiftcoder wrote: post #238
xienze wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't saying anything about that, I was just pointing out that yes, IBM produces a ton of patents, but they're mostly trivial junk that regular employees generate en masse in order to earn accomplishments and make up for the insultingly low bonuses.

> they're mostly trivial junk that regular employees generate en masse in order to earn accomplishments and make up for the insultingly low bonuses We did that at Meta and Amazon too (for polycarbonate puzzle pieces, with no monetary award at all!). Every now and then something meaningful came out of it

I still have my “Get fucked, employee! Love, Jeff” puzzle pieces.

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

#358

Post by flyinglizard »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #343
paganel wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s way easier (for this type of scenarios) and far more effective to learn by doing than to learn by reading (even tens of thousands of pages of) documentation, that is the crust of it.

> It’s way easier (for this type of scenarios) and far more effective to learn by doing than to learn by reading I don't think so: the problem is that there exist lots of parts in the system that are quite complicated but which one very rarely has to touch - except in the rare (but happening) case that something deep in such a part goes wrong a for requirement for this part pops up. If you "learned by doing" instead…

It's kind of a learning JIT. It's no use to go through and memorize something you don't need in the short term. It's hard to memorize well and by the time you need to draw on the knowledge it's already hazy. This is why you can think of such documentation more as a reference manual and not just plain documentation.

In any case, AI is great for traversing a codebase and producing at least a draft of such documentation.

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

#359

Post by aldanor »

TonyAlicea10 wrote: post #210

“Money was never the constraint. Knowledge was.” The irony is how difficult it is to read this obviously AI-generated article due to its unnatural prose and choppy flow full of LLM-isms. The ability to write is also a skill that atrophies. Even when AI is understandably used due to language fluency, I’d prefer to read an AI translation over a generated article. If you don’t care enough to write it, why should I care…

Not the factory floor. The receiving end.

It wasn’t one bottleneck. It was all of them.

Not the nuclear material. The pattern.

Money was never the constraint. Knowledge was.

...

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

#360

Post by dbalatero »

cpursley wrote: post #329
wolvesechoes wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So this is the classic tension between the "coding for the love of code" vs the "coding to solve problems" mindset. This cultural concept has been around since before AI was on the scene, heck well before software existed (craftsman vs builder).

I'm curious why this is a vs and you have to pick both? I've found coding for the love of code always helped me accelerate my speed and ability so that I could also deliver solidly on time and solve the problems too.
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