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The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

pluralistic.net

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Re: The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

#31

Post by verbify »

globular-toast wrote: post #28
fedeb95 wrote: post #23

AI is a tool. Stop treating it as something different. The value you can extract from a tool depends on your skill in using it, and knowing when not using it.

I could write more, but I think it actually is different. The addictive nature and the way it makes you more and more dependent on it is quite different from other tools. I've never met a builder who is addicted to their circular saw. These AI companies have stumbled upon the new cigarette. Did you know athletes in the 1920s would smoke cigarettes because they thought it improved performance? Cigarettes are just a to…

A certain Calvin and Hobbes strip comes to mind https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg...

Re: The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

#32

Post by KolibriFly »

wseqyrku wrote: post #10
onion2k wrote: post #7

There's a 'joke' that goes around occasionally that has some truth to it: "Excel is the world's most popular programming language." Occasionally it's 'Excel macros' or 'VBA' instead of just Excel.[1] The core truth of it is that a massive amount, possibly most , of the world's software is not a carefully hand-crafted application in that lives in Github written by expert software developers. It's a heap of Excel funct…

> AI vibe-coding is probably filling in the middle-ground [..] and it is accretive in the sense that someone can build on top of it To me 'accretive work' means something you do at a lower level than your task at hand which by itself doesn't count progress, but rather lay the groundwork for it so it's compounding from there on. AI has nothing to do with this.

I think the argument is that AI changes the cost of creating that groundwork, not the definition of it

Re: The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

#33

Post by KolibriFly »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #16

Isn’t this a question of how much the “terrorised survivors” spend on tokens to make the output “canonised”? I think the main argument that the billions spent are not going to be recouped is accurate, but I strongly suspect the cost of producing high quality code will remain the same -just being produced faster (speed, cost, quality - you still only get to pick two) If one Steve Yegge can burn tokens in “Gas Town” th…

I suspect "same price, three days instead of three months" is a very real win for plenty of businesses

Re: The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

#34

Post by KolibriFly »

fedeb95 wrote: post #23

AI is a tool. Stop treating it as something different. The value you can extract from a tool depends on your skill in using it, and knowing when not using it.

A lot of the article is about who controls the tool, who is forced to use it and who absorbs the cost when it produces bad output

Re: The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

#35

Post by wseqyrku »

KolibriFly wrote: post #32
wseqyrku wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI vibe-coding is probably filling in the middle-ground [..] and it is accretive in the sense that someone can build on top of it To me 'accretive work' means something you do at a lower level than your task at hand which by itself doesn't count progress, but rather lay the groundwork for it so it's compounding from there on. AI has nothing to do with this.

I think the argument is that AI changes the cost of creating that groundwork, not the definition of it

I mean a groundwork you can rely on for the rest of your code.

Re: The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

#36

Post by LtWorf »

cognitiveinline wrote: post #27
LtWorf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does what they present work for production or they present a demo and leave it to someone else to figure out how to make it work for real?

This is a running production service. The team was reduced to just these 2, per the lead's instuction. The closest I can explain this phenomenon to thos who are surpised was by the LLM variance section in this recent blog post: https://danluu.com/ai-coding/#llm-variance

It could be that the team was oversized and wasting time in meetings and AI has nothing to do with that.

Re: The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

#37

Post by martinclayton »

No mention of chikenized reverse-centaurs in this piece?

I find these neologisms helpful as they quite precisely capture the intended meaning and are easy to remember. Doctorow is an impressive and entertaining communicator, and being an author he needs to market himself and his work, so fair play to him for trying to score a hit follow up to "enshittification".

The earliest use of "centaur" in this sort of context I know of is Kasparov's advanced chess idea from the late 1990s: "a bad (chess) player with a good computer program will always beat a good player with a bad program". How far we travelled since then...

Re: The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

#38

Post by Schiendelman »

KolibriFly wrote: post #33
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #16

Isn’t this a question of how much the “terrorised survivors” spend on tokens to make the output “canonised”? I think the main argument that the billions spent are not going to be recouped is accurate, but I strongly suspect the cost of producing high quality code will remain the same -just being produced faster (speed, cost, quality - you still only get to pick two) If one Steve Yegge can burn tokens in “Gas Town” th…

I suspect "same price, three days instead of three months" is a very real win for plenty of businesses

Replace "plenty" with "all". At that cost, there is not a single business out there that won't benefit from a tool somewhere in their operations that they couldn't have invested in before.

And it's certainly not the same price!

Re: The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

#39

Post by gota »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #2

"There's plenty of space for "disposable and single use software." Sure, to a trained software engineer, this might be "bad code" but doing today's task has value, even if the code that performs that task isn't "accretive."" Grant me the serenity to accept the bad code i shouldn't fix, the courage to change the code I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

> Grant me the serenity to accept the bad code i shouldn't fix, the courage to change the code I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Well, It's really early in the morning and I've got the quote of the day already

Re: The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"

#40

Post by anticorporate »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #26
kazinator wrote: post #3

It could be that this person has something profound to say, but ... it's about AI. Sigh and swipe left.

> It could be that this person has something profound to say Some commentators are unknown for good reason, or otherwise not worth the effort to get to know. Cory Doctorow is not one of those.

I've had the good fortune to meet Cory many times over the past twenty years. I don't agree with everything he writes, but he's earned the right to be on of those authors I keep reading because he may end up changing my thinking.
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