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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

#501

Post by xorcist »

chii wrote: post #305
nunez wrote: post #303

> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…

> I don't see how that's possible, but maybe I'm thinking too myopically. you are thinking too myopically. We have people who can still do maths well after the introduction of the calculator. We have people who can still spell after the introduction of spell check. The junior only need to train without using AI to gain the skills needed - that's called education. If they choose to rely on AI solely, and gimp their ow…

Those are inappropriate examples because they are all deterministic. The whole reason behind the AI movement is the move from deterministic processes, and exact descriptions, to handwavy descriptions and stochastic processes.

Of course there are people who do maths after the introduction of the calculator Just like there are more people who program after the introduction of the electronic computer.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#502

Post by falcor84 »

erfgh wrote: post #487
falcor84 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Augmentation always leads to atrophy. That's a very bold claim. As a small example let's look at calculators - I remember a lot of claims that having access to calculators would make people's brains atrophy and they'll never be able to do actual math, but what I'm seeing in myself and most people around me is that we're using calculators (and more mathematical software) to tackle significantly more complex problems…

If the complexity of your mathematical problems was down to arithmetic then your problems were not at all complex.

A small example is doing NPV (Net Present Value) calculations to compare the benefits from alternative projects/investments. It's just basic arithmetic, but is annoying to do by hand. I'm sure that if we had to do them with just pen and paper, we would do significantly fewer of them, and with a lot less detailed scenarios than we can with tools.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#503

Post by dragochat »

tarsinge wrote: post #486
nunez wrote: post #303

> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…

I dont understand why software engineers insist on keeping the craftsmanship aspect of writing code. Compare to other engineering disciplines, like civil engineering. Engineering was never about going in the field yourself to build things with your own hands. You can become a great civil engineer without building bridges that fail yourself. To me it doesn’t matter that the thing I design is built with a crane or AI.…

bc software engineering learning is 99% BOTTOM-UP...

and that's bc SE education FAILED BADLY... almost nothing of what's useful is thought in schools and nothing of what's thought is useful

instead of FIXING education and theory, software engineering marched on forcefully without it

now we need to go back and properly fix education, because an intern should absolutely be required to have the "advanced" skills that we imagine in our deluded minds that only "10+ ys of industry experience" should confer, and that are absolutely required to be even a junior AI-augmented SE

SE/CS education should be rethought from scratch to distill, purify, and teach in 3ys max the concepts that used to be acquired through 10-30ys of experience - it 100% CAN be done, and we should wake tf up and DO IT instead of complaining about it - "advanced enterprise systems" architecture require nothing more than mid-highschool math and can be thought on symulated systems in sem 1 of year 1, it's just some of the "teachers" would have to actually put in the 80hrs-weeks of work to do it in due time

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#504

Post by zg94 »

tarsinge wrote: post #486
nunez wrote: post #303

> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…

I dont understand why software engineers insist on keeping the craftsmanship aspect of writing code. Compare to other engineering disciplines, like civil engineering. Engineering was never about going in the field yourself to build things with your own hands. You can become a great civil engineer without building bridges that fail yourself. To me it doesn’t matter that the thing I design is built with a crane or AI.…

There's a false equivalency between software engineering and civil engineering here, in my opinion. I would argue that the craftsmanship SWEs see in their work stems from a necessity to be novel in order to truly make something worth putting out into the market. "Oh, you're making an app that tracks heartrate/makes music/provides driving directions? Why wouldn't the user just use ?" There's no real merit to making clones, whereas in civil engineering (I would argue) this is the bread and butter. You can't copy and paste a bridge. There's a physicality to it that says "okay, make another bridge similar to this but now for that gap", so the challenge becomes making the necessary repetition more efficient, and it's "fine" if no one is going out of their way to be an "artisanal civil engineer".

Combine this argument with the fact that LLMs are reliant on what information they've ingested; they'll only give you responses based on what already exists. The creativity needed to make something (worth making) is missing there. You'd hope that the humans using the AI fill that role, but comments like this one and others lauding praises on AI and vibe-coding give me serious doubt. We could argue instead that SWE is a misnomer for this field, but that's a separate conversation.

In my opinion, SWE should prioritize true innovation, which AI isn't designed for. (IMO, AI is better suited for fast info lookup rather than key production tasks) Without creativity in SWE, the industry bloats to a unsustainable mass of cloned/useless apps and startups just hoping to be eaten (bought) by a bigger fish, with investors/customers repeatedly being promised "something better is right around the corner!" ...and it just never comes, and the whole thing just collapses on itself.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#505

Post by pjmlp »

tarsinge wrote: post #486
nunez wrote: post #303

> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…

I dont understand why software engineers insist on keeping the craftsmanship aspect of writing code. Compare to other engineering disciplines, like civil engineering. Engineering was never about going in the field yourself to build things with your own hands. You can become a great civil engineer without building bridges that fail yourself. To me it doesn’t matter that the thing I design is built with a crane or AI.…

Because many aren't software engineers, they are brick layers.

To be comparable, they would have to go through the same university degree and professional certification, instead of doing a JavaScript training and call themselves software engineers instead of coders.

They are getting the blueprints from architects and senior devs, and putting those bricks into place, and carrying buckets.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#506

Post by falcor84 »

rimliu wrote: post #436
falcor84 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Augmentation always leads to atrophy. That's a very bold claim. As a small example let's look at calculators - I remember a lot of claims that having access to calculators would make people's brains atrophy and they'll never be able to do actual math, but what I'm seeing in myself and most people around me is that we're using calculators (and more mathematical software) to tackle significantly more complex problems…

a lot of people indeed cannot do even simple calculations by themselves. Your example just adds to the point.

"A lot of people" never could do simple calculations, regardless of calculators. But if you're interested in actual figures over time, this data from nationsreportcard.gov would probably be the best longitudinal data source we have about the US, showing a strong general increase in mathematical scores, both for 9 and 13 year-olds, from when calculators started being introduced in the 70s and until the 2010s. Note that there's a recent decline over the last decade, partially explained by the pandemic, but even with it, current scores are higher than what they were in the 70s.

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/mathematics/scores-per...

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/mathematics/scores-per...

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#507

Post by throw4847285 »

This is what happens when the people building your society's advanced technology have no theory of mind. Too much science fiction, not enough human interaction.

The Social Network is looking more and more prophetic. When your only ambition is success for its own sake, driven by insecurities you can never name, you're going to make things that don't actually serve other people, or only do as an unfortunate side effect of you making money and gaining power.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#508

Post by palmotea »

nunez wrote: post #303

> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…

> but in a world wherein writing code by hand (the "struggle") is "artisinal" and "outdated", this process being non-optional (which I agree with) is contradictory.

> How juniors and fresh grads do that with AI that is designed to give you whatever answer you need in a given moment is unclear to me. I don't see how that's possible, but maybe I'm thinking too myopically.

The contradiction is resolved by your employer pushing professional development into "your own time."

And they'll do that by being totally stupid and unaware: they'll push you to maximally use AI tools, but judge you for the skill deficits those tools create.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#509

Post by abustamam »

thrownthatway wrote: post #498
chrisweekly wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"struggle is the only reason for existence" That is a bold and frankly unsupportable claim.

Humans don’t tend towards idle quiescence. We seem to be insatiable inquisitive. Curiosity doth struggle many cats.

Being inquisitive doesn't equate to loving, or needing, struggle in my brain. Also, struggle differs for many people. Running a half marathon was a struggle for me, but I can't compare it to a family who is struggling to pay bills.

If we take Maslows hierarchy of needs, me running a half marathon is self actualization. Something I'm privileged to be able to do. A family struggling to put food on the table is still on the Lower tier of the pyramid.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#510

Post by abustamam »

hectdev wrote: post #410
rimliu wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that by purging stuff from the brain we are losing thinking itself. Thinking is manipulating ideas and concepts in your head, assembling and linking. The fewer things there is, the more primitive the result. You cannot juggle without object to juggle, connecting the dots result in trivial patterns when you have just a couple of dots.

It just becomes more abstracted but the thinking is still there. And who is to say we aren’t going to keep reading books, delving into hobbies, or watching movies. All those concepts will then be mixed into the our brains and who knows what new things we will think of to extract out and desire to build with AI.

I think we'll continue to read books and stuff. But many books/movies will probably have devolved into AI slop (not that this hasn't been a trend for the last few decades to a lot of film buffs).

But hobbies like woodworking or instrument seem immune to slop... But people can be creative with what they can sloppify

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