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AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

koshyjohn.com

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Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#51

Post by _pdp_ »

erxam wrote: post #42

Here's the question I want to posit and nobody who's against AI has managed to answer satisfactorily: what is it in for me if I were to acquire all those skills? I don't give a shit about this career. I don't give a shit about engineering. I despise every second of it. There's nothing to aim for other than being a drone that does whatever is asked of it. If AI can reduce my mental workload, why wouldn't I want to del…

Some people enjoy working with computers. :) It is not always about the money. It is also about having fun and learning new things.

For you, it seems that you are not cut for it judging from what you say.

So yes, use LLMs.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#53

Post by srcreigh »

Is it wise to understand everything that AI does for you?

Let’s say a person has 10 units of learning per week. Is the author actually claiming that that person must not deliver any results beyond their 10 units?

It makes some sense to have say 20 units of results and prioritize which ones to fully comprehend.

I suspect APIs / libraries / languages / platforms will have more churn due to AI. New platform new system need to learn. Once every 5 years might become every year or even more frequent. That would be a sort of inflation of knowledge and skills. It would affect the decision making about how to spend one’s 10 units per week.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#54

Post by torben-friis »

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #24

There are plenty of engineers that couldn't work without a modern IDE or in languages without memory management. Or without the ability to use a library from GitHub / their package manager. It doesn't feel THAT much different to me. "Engineer" as a term might drift. There are "web developers" that can only use webflow / wordpress.

The huge difference is that we don't know the cost we're going to end up with.

Will you have AI at the cost of a slack subscription? At the cost of a teammate? Will it not be available and you'll have to hire anthropic workers with AI access?

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#55

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #24

There are plenty of engineers that couldn't work without a modern IDE or in languages without memory management. Or without the ability to use a library from GitHub / their package manager. It doesn't feel THAT much different to me. "Engineer" as a term might drift. There are "web developers" that can only use webflow / wordpress.

Engineer as a term has already drifted vastly since nobody in the field of "Software Engineering" is actually an Engineer if we go by a strict definitions.

Engineers are accredited and in some countries even come with a title.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#56

Post by ben_w »

awepofiwaop wrote: post #19
zulux wrote: post #11

Yes.... and I can't think without compiled languages. Missed out on assembler. Becoming dependent on a technology is to be expected. I'm pretty sure 95% of us are dependent on packaged meat and don't know how to hunt.

I'm seeing plenty of internal work where I ask someone about their code, they ask Claude, and reply with "Claude says...". That's substantively different than going from assembly to C.

Every time things change, the change itself is different.

I remember some of my earlier issues with various languages. `Dim A, B as Int`, in VisualBasic one of them is an Int the other is a Variant, in REALbasic (now Xojo) they're both Int. `MyClass *foo = nil; [foo bar];` isn't an error in ObjC because sending a message to nil is a no-op.

Or how, back when I was a complete beginner, if I forgot a semicolon in Metrowerks, the compiler would tell me about errors on every line after (but not including!) the one where I forgot the semicolon.

"Docs say", "Compiler says", "StackOverflow says", "Wikipedia says"; either this tool is good enough or it isn't; it not being good enough means we're still paid to do the thing it can't do, that only stops when nobody needs to because it can do the thing. The overlap, when people lean on it before the paint is dry, is just a time for quick-and-dirty. LLMs are in the wet-paint/quick-and-dirty phase. You could get suff done by copy-pasting code you didn't understand from StackOverflow, but you couldn't build a career from that alone. LLMs are better than StackOverflow, but still not a full replacement for SWeng, not yet.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#57

Post by [deleted] »

erxam wrote: post #42

Here's the question I want to posit and nobody who's against AI has managed to answer satisfactorily: what is it in for me if I were to acquire all those skills? I don't give a shit about this career. I don't give a shit about engineering. I despise every second of it. There's nothing to aim for other than being a drone that does whatever is asked of it. If AI can reduce my mental workload, why wouldn't I want to del…

[deleted]

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#58

Post by conqrr »

This is a huge concern and I fully agree with the post. Even though one might think I am not fully giving into AI, this was always the case etc. It still affects YOU and everyone else. 1. Software, often, isn't built in vacuum. Lots of companies are shoving AI down throats like it or not. Most Bigtech is heavily using metrics to get to 100% AI generated code. Reviewing is a nightmare. 2. New entrants (new grads etc) are largely AI first and are losing out on the safety and reliability aspects that are enforced automatically when you learn coding without AI.

IMO, teams need to agree on a set of principles on AI usage, concrete examples of where and how to use it. Perhaps its much more useful in parts of your system that's faster evolving and doesn't have too much core logic like testing frameworks etc

Simply discarding it as 'yet another tool' is part of the problem.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#59

Post by spacechild1 »

joe_mamba wrote: post #5
CorbenDallas wrote: post #3

There are plenty of engineers, who simply can't think, AI will not change anything in this regard.

How do you graduate your engineering degree without being able to think? Even my colleagues who cheated their way through uni still needed critical thinking to do that and get away with cheating without being caught. People might hate this but being a good cheat requires a lot of critical thinking.

OP should have put "engineers" in double quotes. Many software developers like to describe themselves as engineers although they don't have an actual engineering degree. A lot of software development resembles plumbing more than engineering, so most devs don't really need an engineering degree anyway, but they should be more honest about what they're actually doing and not try to elevate themselves with fancy titles.

You are, of course, right that the idea that someone could finish a serious engineering degree without being able to think is ridiculous.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#60

Post by vips7L »

joe_mamba wrote: post #5
CorbenDallas wrote: post #3

There are plenty of engineers, who simply can't think, AI will not change anything in this regard.

How do you graduate your engineering degree without being able to think? Even my colleagues who cheated their way through uni still needed critical thinking to do that and get away with cheating without being caught. People might hate this but being a good cheat requires a lot of critical thinking.

Half of my graduating class could barely program.
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