Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

> code is just a means to an end?

Exactly. Which is the reason why code that increases maintenance friction and costs, or decreases the product's operability or fitness for purpose, does not properly serve the end of advancing the business. Not in competitive industries anyway.

There's this whole manufactured narrative going on geared toward reframing the quality of code design and structure as an aesthetics problem. If you think code design and structure is an aesthetics problem, you will not understand the pushback.

A much more interesting question, I think, is why bad AI code is perceived as a worse problem than bad human code.

My observation is that bad human code ultimately slows down its own maintenance: the speed at which the human can add bad code decreases as the human adds more bad code. So it's a self-limiting problem. Whereas AI will quickly and efficiently add extra layers of bad code to work around the issues introduced by its own earlier bad code. If you let that go on, you can end up in runaway complexity scenarios where only AI can maintain the code at all, until even it can't. There have been a lot of arguments on HN that such scenarios are not a problem because AI will keep getting better, but to me this amounts to a Ponzi scheme for tech debt, which I find undesirable.

And that's not to even mention the externalities.

So, basically, depending on whether you care about all of the above, or not, the machine that supercharges your LoC-per-day metric will be seen as a good thing or a bad thing, and it's not a divide that can be reconciled because it boils down to what individuals care about. We can all agree about the end of writing code, but that doesn't mean you can't be wrong about the ways to get to that end, I guess.

Compiler optimizations are pretty unpredictable.

But you can, in principle, understand a compiler. Also they're made by the same people who use them. Did blacksmiths get mad when they invented the first anvils?

I don't spend much time on HN but from a glance it seems more middleground (reddit f.ex is extremely anti-ai). I think what you see generally just comes down to human nature. This new technology comes out which is going to change a lot and introduce much turbulence and uncertainty. Some people are happy to put in the work of learning these tools and are confident in their ability to land on their feet. If thats you this is an incredibly exciting time. Without a question a single individual has never had as much leverage as they have right now. And at least currently software engineering skills is a force multiplier in what you are able to accomplish.

But then you have a second group of people who don't have the time or inclination to learn a new way of working, or are worried they won't be able to keep up. If thats you this is a very scary time because the value of your current skills and position in life is decreasing day by day. Some peoples approach to this problem is to just stick their head in a sand with the subconcious belief that if they can convince themselves and enough people that this is not happening, it's not going to happen and their position in life will be safe.

A very common blindspot people have to rationalize this position is focusing on unskilled use of the current models (and often not even using the current best models). Then use that to make judgements about why AI won't be able to do something even in the future. The models are obviously going to keep getting better and I think even the best users are still just scratching the surface of how we can get the most out of the current models.

You can be pro- or anti- nail gun. I'd expect carpenters are pro-nail-gun when working professionally, but good ones avoid nail guns in at least some of their own projects, so they can stay in touch with the underlying physics.

> Datacenters are like a tiny blip on emissions plots

Maybe in 2023, but what about now?