21–30 of 38 posts
I know that sounds like pessimism, but I'm really content right now with ai and coding.
I don't tell my friends I like using the Google photo remix because that's kind of shameful, but it's so gender affirming haha
Earlier quoted context omitted.
what does an internal process matter if the input to output transformations are acceptable. there are many many different ways of writing a software calculator, or a protocol stack, or codec modules; internally they may be wildly different, but as long their function mapping is identical, one's understanding does not play a role. as a more extreme example: do we all understand how our brains work? we use it every day…
ive noticed a real uptick in people trusting AI for stuff like medical advice because it always seems to make sense but when it comes to a specialist topic they know a lot about they can go on and on about all of the subtle and often quite dangerous mistakes it makes.
My view is that whatever tool you use, it is YOUR work. I don't wanna hear about the robot and what it did. I want you to stand by your work.
If I hire a tree trimmer and they drop a branch on my garage, it is not acceptable for them to blame the chainsaw.
A dev should be ashamed to blame the robots for their sloppiness.
All the parents in the group of people I socialise with from my children's school dabble with AI. They're not techies, but they're enjoying it. And they're curious about how I use it at work. Some of them (law) have started to use it more aggressively in their own work.
At my actual job, there is a reasonable amount of frustration at the verbosity of ai comments and people just copy pasting ai text in response to human questions. And I'm with them. But everyone, as far as I can tell, genuinely, has adapted to coding agents and use them for coding 99% now. I have been in my industry for a long time, and have a lot of connections around London (and across continents) and they report similar.
In the real world, people are just getting on with things.
The frankly surreal amount of vicious negativity about AI here is just not something I experience whatsoever in real life.
So yes, I'm very comfortable talking about it, and even the phrase "admit" is leading, implying by default I should be ashamed.
I use ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. I have used it to look up a variety of things. I don't trust it though, I check everything for accuracy. You have to check it carefully. It can make very ridiculous recommendations. You can't take it at face value. Often you have to ask more than one tool for help. The results are completely different with different AI systems. AI is not deterministic, it is based on probability so you will get completely different answers from different AI. The algorithms, training methods, and core architectures are different for the different major AI providers.
I tried vibe coding with ChatGPT and it was awful. Then I tried vibe coding with Gemini and it could not quite do what I wanted. I ended up going to Replit which is a pain, but it works a little bit better. I still don't trust it. I have tried a variety of auditiing tools to keep the code stable. Claude and Gemini both have auditing tools to check code. So does Replit. I ask Replit and Claude to audit my site. I also have tried various third party tools to do site audits. In addition, I have asked people to look at what I am working on. The impression I get is that it is stable, but only with regular checks.
I have figured that you can get your code to be good and stable if you are careful with regular audits. However, it won't be excellent, that requires both trained developers and possibly more advanced AI systems like Figma for design. It also won't be good for large projects. It seems alright for prototypes and basic designs.