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Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

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Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#41

Post by yoz-y »

flyinglizard wrote: post #31

AI has allowed me to keep shipping features and system even when holding a normally managerial position, so if anything it preserved some of my coding skills. I'd not have seen any code otherwise (writing code is a huge time sink compared to managing things around an org). I pity those who need to contend with that as ICs, though.

Hopefully this is not your case but as an IC the “manager, who didn’t write code for a couple of years” that decides to come back and “help” is one of the worst experiences. Code is usually subpar, uses old idioms, and comes with added pressure. With AI this can become much worse, because of the sheer volume of code that can be thrown at the IC.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#42

Post by pydry »

largbae wrote: post #14

My compiler writing skills atrophied with the advent of high-level languages, but in exchange I got more done. There is still a very well paid market for compiler writers, but the fact that not everyone needs to be one has made the world richer overall.

I like it when AI metaphors presume determinism.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#43

Post by mekoka »

Fergusonb wrote: post #11
iLoveOncall wrote: post #4

The two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Their code has become terrible and their judgment even worse. A very similar topic was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392004 and I make the exact same conclusion: All of this makes me selfishly excited for my own future. It's glaringly obvious that anyone who's a heavy user of LLMs i…

My friends can't ride horses as well as they used to, they've been using cars to get around too much. Sure horses are more efficient, but cars are faster and more convenient, and allow you to get a lot more done. Also cars will get better in our lifetime, horses are horses.

Just try to take those same friends who drive everywhere on a (walking) trail hike inside the city, then come back to report.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#44

Post by bigfudge »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #4

The two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Their code has become terrible and their judgment even worse. A very similar topic was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392004 and I make the exact same conclusion: All of this makes me selfishly excited for my own future. It's glaringly obvious that anyone who's a heavy user of LLMs i…

As someone who was self taught as a programmer and has a reasonable high level understanding of some CS concepts but not lots of experience applying them, and no good mentor, I’ve found working with an LLM really englightening. Asking Claude to think about “good ways to structure this” or asking how similar problems get solved in industry or high profile projects has really helped me design better solutions and avoid painfully reinventing wheels (recent eg was for a plugin type architecture).

I think a lot of academics and researchers who code but aren’t software engineers or CS majors are going to benefit, provided they take the time to prove what the model does and are curious about whether it’s doing something sensible!

Relative to a 1% coder hand rolling something then yes it’s AI slop etc. but it’s prob still raising the bar generally.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#45

Post by witx »

largbae wrote: post #14

My compiler writing skills atrophied with the advent of high-level languages, but in exchange I got more done. There is still a very well paid market for compiler writers, but the fact that not everyone needs to be one has made the world richer overall.

You clearly don't know what you're talking about if you think compilers are a good analogy.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#46

Post by tripleee »

ianbutler wrote: post #5

Tool use typically follows this curve. If you want to preserve a skill you have to actually preserve it. This isn't inherently bad by itself, tools enable us to do much more than we can without them and its a point of contention whether or not any skill is inherently important when a tool comes along that does it for us.

The huge problem in this specific case is that to use this tool well you also need the underlying skill to be developed and preserved. It's very different from a power drill.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#47

Post by pixel_popping »

beebmam wrote: post #22

A skill which is now done better by a machine is no longer a skill, it is technology. It is just a matter of time before most of our logical and language reasoning skills are replaced by frontier model-agents, which will at some point be far superior (if not already) to human capability. So I totally disagree with this premise that human skills are being ruined by the use of AI technology. No, many human skills are b…

You miss the point, the point is that by using AI, our skills (let say "coding in Rust") are diminishing and even without reading this article, we can feel it to some extent already if we aren't lying to ourselves, especially very heavy AI users.

We do however create new skills, skills that might be more relevant for the future, but still, it is controversial.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#48

Post by georgemcbay »

bwhiting2356 wrote: post #34
georgemcbay wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the real threat is at the individual level, but at the societal level. Building skills over time leads to insights that lead to innovation. AI does many interesting things, but it doesn't innovate (yet). The real threat isn't that we'll all lose our skills (possibly) and then lose access to AI (unlikely), it is that AI will remain at roughly currently levels and we'll dull our skills due to reliance on…

The number of people now involved in software development has now increased because of a lower barrier to entry. I know many people who would previously use a no-code tool or hire offshore devs, or simply not have their problem solved, who are now vibe coding. Many of these people couldn't write very much code manually if they had to, but they're closer to understanding software than they were previously.

> The number of people now involved in software development has now increased because of a lower barrier to entry.

I don't see what this has to do with what I posted.

Yes, AI lowers the floor on software development, and there are positive aspects of that, but that doesn't change the possibility of an innovation stall.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#49

Post by Capricorn2481 »

nostrademons wrote: post #35
aix1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to make sure I understand your argument. Are you saying that today's open source models are on par with frontier closed models of two weeks ago? By what criteria?

HN thread from 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48567759 Commenters there were saying GLM 5.2 was roughly equivalent to Opus 4.8 in coding prowess, based on personal experience of the people commenting. Opus 4.8 came out on May 28 this year (so more like 3 weeks ago), GLM 5.2 came out 2 days ago.

I haven't tried this specific model, but you can understand that a lot of HN testimonials are bound to swing extremely pro open source. I certainly hope they are as good. But I have personally tried a lot of models that are supposedly as good as the frontier ones and have found them lacking.

After a while, you do start to start to skip a couple rounds of open source models until there's a notable release. That, and the resources needed to run them are increasingly bought up by the owners of frontier models

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#50

Post by jcgrillo »

ianbutler wrote: post #10
iLoveOncall wrote: post #4

The two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Their code has become terrible and their judgment even worse. A very similar topic was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392004 and I make the exact same conclusion: All of this makes me selfishly excited for my own future. It's glaringly obvious that anyone who's a heavy user of LLMs i…

Idk man my system design game is better than its ever been because I put in the effort to use these tools and recognize they can't do software design better than I can and because I've increased the scope of what I'm building I often have to think more deeply about the problem up front. A typical speccing sessions lasts a few hours for me on big work before I have AI start writing that work where I'm just going back…

> Every time I see an anecdote like this, A it reaffirms my belief that FAANG devs are fairly mediocre on the whole

I think another (partially causal?) problem is how they're managed. The whole perf circus is just ridiculous, especially the stuff recently reported about facebook. But they're all more or less like that. Steeped in that cocktail of incentives, who even knows what might happen to an otherwise excellent engineer.

But also just numerically, they can't be much above average, on average, because there are so many.

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