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No AI Fridays

noaifridays.com

51–60 of 223 posts

Re: No AI Fridays

#51
post #43
post #39

AI 24/7 > Study after study shows that using LLMs can cause you to accumulate cognitive debt, make you less engaged with your work, negatively impact your critical thinking abilities, and hamper your skill formation. False I've learned more, I am more engaged, it has positively impacted my critical thinking abilities and has increased my skill formation For me it's AI 24/7 even on sundays

False based on your sample size of one, (which is fine to share), or you’ve also read this somewhere? If it’s just your own datapoint, is it difficult to self assess?

No, false based on subjective experience on a sample size of one.

Re: No AI Fridays

#52
post #9

Got no AI 7 days here. I sold my token budget to other staff and spent the money on beer.

I guess alcoholism is cooler than using AI to do things nowadays, is that your stance?

Literally everything and anything on the planet is cooler than AI, yes

Re: No AI Fridays

#53
post #38

At the very least, I do encourage people who are working on personal projects for explicitly learning and studying purposes to purposefully not use AI. Of course, if the purpose of the project is to learn AI, then that rule is allowed to be broken. Anecdotal example but I know plenty of students (Including my own brother) who graduated recently who did it almost entirely with AI (unfortunately at the request of their…

I got out of tech about 5 years ago, before AI really took off. I still do a lot of personal projects and now never use AI. I tried it a bit (only free plans) but noticed how much it caused me to no longer be able to think through a solution myself. I thought I was learning a lot from it but for some reason whatever I learned from it didn't stick. So now I'm no longer using it at all. I do realize that this is very s…

There was a well known phenomenon people called ‘tutorial hell’ where when learning to program you could understand all the code from tutorials, but when it came time to actually create your own solutions for stuff you got stuck. I think AI is basically enabling eternal tutorial hell, you never actually need to break out of it anymore.

Re: No AI Fridays

#54
This is as silly as saying you shouldn’t drive your car on Friday’s and walk to work instead.

Why only Friday? What does “doing things the old way” one day a week prove or benefit when you spend 90% of your time working with AI?

Tech people who have their entire identities wrapped up in being smart or the best engineer in the room have suddenly learned that intelligence is now a commodity and a cheap one at that.

Re: No AI Fridays

#55
post #11

I find it interesting when people say, “I need time away from the AI to think.” I use AI for development but I would not say I’ve offloaded my thinking to AI. AI is great for pushing text but I haven’t found its system design skills to be that good. To me the design has always felt like the thinking though.

Why wouldn't you offload your thinking to AI?! That's the entire point of having it!

Re: No AI Fridays

#56
The technique I'm following is: If it's easier to explain it to an LLM, have the LLM do it. If it's easier to do it myself, I do it.

This is useful when iterating on UI, where I need to make a few minor changes; or when I need to "explore" to understand how a query or data model needs to work.

Otherwise, I don't need to dedicate a day to doing things by hand; I just do a few things by hand every day.

Re: No AI Fridays

#57
post #10

I would actually really recommend people who are using coding agents full time to make AI brakes for your weekend projects. Think of it like a small break to take the time to reconnect to the code and keep your brain muscles intact, a bit like a professional cyclist going for a casual ride in the forest to experience what they don’t experience anymore in their professional life.

I see where you're coming from, but I can't help being reminded of my youth when teachers would admonish me "YoU wOn'T aLwaAYs haVe A CalCulator in yOuR poCKet!"

Now the entire world has a calculator in their pocket, and all that wrote memorization not only made me hate math as a child, it was a giant waste of time.

I suspect that one day we'll look back on advice like no-AI Fridays exactly as modern readers would react to "Punch-card only Tuesdays" in a modern enterprise.

Re: No AI Fridays

#58
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got out of tech about 5 years ago, before AI really took off. I still do a lot of personal projects and now never use AI. I tried it a bit (only free plans) but noticed how much it caused me to no longer be able to think through a solution myself. I thought I was learning a lot from it but for some reason whatever I learned from it didn't stick. So now I'm no longer using it at all. I do realize that this is very s…

Difference between taking your own notes and skimming someone else's. I have found in the last year I "get more done" but I learn less. Whats even worse is if I burn though my token quota I am less likely(and less able) to "switch to manual". LLMs make an ocean of decisions and assumptions very quickly and if you don't slow it down very intentionally (and lose the promise of the AI providers are pitching) you will qu…

It’s funny, I’m the exact opposite. I’ve tackled projects at scales I could never have done before, and learned more than I would have.

My actual coding ability is probably lower, but I’ve learned so much about music theory and production, CAD, and statistics. All because my hobby projects can go so much further than before.

Re: No AI Fridays

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoting for visibility, not because I agree. This is really disingenuous, and quite a bad idea overall. I’d make a joke about there not being a word for the reverse of plagiarism, except there is one: lying.

Disingenuous? Plagiarism? Care to explain? I dont even understand what you mean by these words in this context.

He was just taking the piss, being both OP and the boss of htmx.

Re: No AI Fridays

#60
post #39

AI 24/7 > Study after study shows that using LLMs can cause you to accumulate cognitive debt, make you less engaged with your work, negatively impact your critical thinking abilities, and hamper your skill formation. False I've learned more, I am more engaged, it has positively impacted my critical thinking abilities and has increased my skill formation For me it's AI 24/7 even on sundays

I guess you’re the exception. Congrats
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