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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"

#51

Post by douglee650 »

gota wrote: post #39
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

live, laugh, cruft

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

#52

Post by psd1 »

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…

You haven't met a builder with a really top-notch tracksaw.

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

#53

Post by LtWorf »

cognitiveinline wrote: post #41
LtWorf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Welcome to majority of the teams in our industry.

In my previous job I was working much and doing few meetings. Then USA management decided we should have 10x more meetings, because they need to know the progress hour by hour and see that green bar progress, but also somehow expected the same pace.

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

#54

Post by cgriswald »

douglee650 wrote: post #51
gota wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

live, laugh, cruft

Though I walk through the valley of technical debt I shall fear no eval

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

#55

Post by dghlsakjg »

kbos87 wrote: post #46

Corey laid out this line of thinking on a July 1 episode of the Galaxy Brain podcast. It was a good listen and I generally think he has some interesting points, but I also can't help but think that he does himself a disservice by having such a consistently negative bias toward AI and tech in general. Most of the time he comes off as an objective thinker, but those are really discounted by moments where his own dogma…

He doesn't have a negative bias towards tech if you pay attention. He often talks about how he personally uses AI.

He has a negative take on a lot of the business practices around AI and tech. While he is consistently harsh on that front, I don't find it to be weakly supported at all, especially when you realize his criticism is focused on business and implementation, not the tech.

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

#56

Post by dhruvmittal »

KolibriFly wrote: post #30
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.

The real trick is recognizing when "disposable" code has quietly become infrastructure

Law of disposable infrastructure: The more temporary a fix is intended to be, the more likely it is to become load-bearing permanent infrastructure

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

#57

Post by stuaxo »

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.

We used to keep it in it's own separate thing: Microsoft Excel.

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

#58

Post by fedeb95 »

KolibriFly wrote: post #34
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

Yes, I was mostly agreeing with the article ;)

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

#59

Post by fedeb95 »

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…

I use AI a lot but am not addicted to it. I know it seems something every addict would say, but simply it makes things faster. You can't really take responsibility for something it makes that you don't already know how it operates, or how should operate. That's the line between what you can sell to your client, or your boss, without it blowing up in your face when things go wrong. In theory everything I build with AI I can build by hand, but in many more days.

A builder is not addicted to their tools, but he won't certainly start a project without them, if they are available. Yet, he could work without some of them. Give a circular saw to someone that can't use it, and nothing good comes out of it. Give AI to a non coder, and nothing good (that lasts) will come out of it.

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

#60

Post by pavel_lishin »

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…

I cannot overstate just how much I love working on stuff in Excel and Google Sheets. It's the most popular programming language because it's incredibly intuitive to people at all levels of programming experience (especially the "none" level), it offers instant feedback, and in many cases, the results are trivially verifiable.

It does have its flaws, that you've pointed out - there's no good way to write tests, I'm not aware of any good way to have any sort of source control, and modularity is basically non-existent.

But, damn - if I have a bunch of data I need to go through and/or present, Sheets is usually my go-to. I genuinely love it when my spouse asks me to troubleshoot some Sheets stuff for her.

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