Why I am not going to buy a computer • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#51

Post by munificent » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

Why bother having Copilot write documentation ahead of time? For the people who need it, they can just ask Copilot the one targeted question they have in that moment and it will serve them a textual answer to exactly that.

Having an AI write docs which are then saved and served strikes me as in the same uncanny valley as fax machines. It's a halfway step that doesn't understand the full import of a new technology. In that case, what you really want is emailing PDFs around and docusigning.

With AI documentation, let users request the docs they need on-demand.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#52

Post by yoyohello13 » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

freediddy wrote: post #22

> AI is probabilistic and any probabilistic system can inherently never be perfect as it also still makes numerous mistakes. Work still needs to be reviewed by humans. I don't know why people keep saying this. I don't believe code needs to be reviewed by humans. Are humans infallible? I think 80%+ of code is basically human slop. Do we review the assembly language that is generated by compilers? I think given where A…

> In January, someone told me that an expert told him that software engineering would be dead in 3 months, and I scoffed at the time, but now I think it's pretty accurate

I mean, maybe your 3 month prediction is correct. But by definition that expert's 3 month prediction wasn't accurate because software engineering is still around and it's after April. We are 3.5 years in '6months until programming is solved'.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#53

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

freediddy wrote: post #22

> AI is probabilistic and any probabilistic system can inherently never be perfect as it also still makes numerous mistakes. Work still needs to be reviewed by humans. I don't know why people keep saying this. I don't believe code needs to be reviewed by humans. Are humans infallible? I think 80%+ of code is basically human slop. Do we review the assembly language that is generated by compilers? I think given where A…

To me it's not a theoretical issue. I have personally caught multiple issues in code review this month that would have caused an outage had I allowed the PR to be merged. The agent that generated the PR made plausible-sounding but incorrect assertions about what the output should be. So if I don't want production outages I have to do code review.

I've seen some people suggest that I should be require agents to produce an extremely detailed PR description and review that instead, which perhaps would have worked. But I don't understand the appeal. Why would I want to review a lossy, imprecise description of what the code does instead of reviewing the actual code and what it actually does?

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#54

Post by rocmcd » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

If you didn't have the time to write something, why would you expect someone to spend the time to read it? Did _you_ read all of the documentation you generated?

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#55

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

datakan wrote: post #15

giantg2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people weren't reading documentation when it was written by humans. The low value status of documentation is well supported by the fact your workplace put it off instead of prioritizing it.

You're not wrong, but we've had a huge shake up internally and all of the people that used to complain about not having it are now in a position to create it and approve it. They just don't care anymore because now its just AI.

Those shakeups have happened many times over the decades. Nothing changed.

Once in a while someone wrote documentation - but nobody read it. Then that person was moved elsewhere in another shakeup and their documentation got obsolete. Often the documentation got obsolete even before than because the person writing it didn't maintain it (possibly because nobody was reading it?)

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#56

Post by xnx » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

AI might be exposing the valuelessness of corporate busywork.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#57

Post by fluoridation » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #26

cogman10 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before Here's the problem I have. No doubt an LLM made it faster to write those docs, but did you fully spot check it for accuracy? A lot of people aren't which I think is why the average joe hates it. These docs can still have AI generated mistakes which are easily glossed over by a regular human.

> Here's the problem I have. No doubt an LLM made it faster to write those docs, but did you fully spot check it for accuracy? Hi. I write lots of documentation already. I enjoy the taste of clean, fresh, accurate documentation. Spot-check it for accuracy? I review it. The same way I would review other documentation in the past. The difference? Fewer errors and issues, and when I do find them, it's far easier to get…

>Now it's an AI mistake, and people HATE AI mistakes. Even if the number of AI mistakes is fewer than the human mistakes.

That's because AIs make mistakes no human would. If you're documenting a function, you might misspell something (or orthographically spell something that should be misspelled), or confuse two functions with similar names; you won't reference a function or feature that doesn't and has never existed.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#58

Post by garlic_enjoyer » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

>AI is not so elegant, to make a comparison similar to Berry, as the humble, sterile Microsoft Word.

This is much like Berry drawing the line at a typewriter instead of a computer. To call a computer "sterile, untouched, factory made" and still use a typewriter is comical. Now let me tell you why etching into stone is the best medium.

People can have their preferences, but this kind of "I'm old fashioned and here's why that's better" posts are just nostalgia bait.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#59

Post by Imustaskforhelp » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

others have commented some good comments on the documentation aspect. I wish to talk more about incentives instead. I will set aside the discussion of if the AI writing docs and people caring about AI written docs.

> He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before

Pre-AI, you had some work X and you were given some salary Y and you did the work in time T, now you are expected to 10-100 times X work in time T but given the same salary Y

People are worrying about their salaries and future and some people especially within Silicon valley are worried for whats to come next with AI datacenters raising electricity prices and this fear of permanent underclass and job insecurity and a terrible job market with layoffs partially because of AI spending.

If it feels stressful, its because it probably is. I imagine that some people as such might feel that reading the very same AI documentation with the same passion/care is hard.

So yes, AI has a long uphill battle in winning over the average Joe because everything in its current implementation is actively trying to screw average Joe if we think about it

but it differs depending on your incentives on your current time. In your current job, you are the one writing these AI docs in minutes, now imagine spending hours reading those very same AI docs with all the things that I have mentioned, perhaps I hope you understand why it might be more frustrating.

(also when I mean average Joe I would consider software engineer folks like us to be the one more effected than even other professions so we are the average Joe I am talking about. Its not all gloom and doom though and the average joe is split between liking/disliking it and having a nuanced opinion in the middle)

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#60

Post by cogman10 » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

fluoridation wrote: post #57

jasonlotito wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's the problem I have. No doubt an LLM made it faster to write those docs, but did you fully spot check it for accuracy? Hi. I write lots of documentation already. I enjoy the taste of clean, fresh, accurate documentation. Spot-check it for accuracy? I review it. The same way I would review other documentation in the past. The difference? Fewer errors and issues, and when I do find them, it's far easier to get…

>Now it's an AI mistake, and people HATE AI mistakes. Even if the number of AI mistakes is fewer than the human mistakes. That's because AIs make mistakes no human would. If you're documenting a function, you might misspell something (or orthographically spell something that should be misspelled), or confuse two functions with similar names; you won't reference a function or feature that doesn't and has never existed…

> you won't reference a function or feature that doesn't and has never existed.

That does sometimes exist in human docs. I've stumbled on "aspirational" features in docs that never really existed but were more just intended to exist.

To me the mistakes are bad, but it's also that the docs tend to be pretty low quality IMO. LLMs tend to like to write novels where a sentence would have been better.