I like this idea. Like "no watering your lawn on Mondays" to conserve water.
Could be another case for four-day work weeks, especially if AI is supposedly improving productivity during those four days a week.
No AI Fridays
61–70 of 223 posts
Re: No AI Fridays
#62Earlier 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…
I really do not get all of y'all claiming this causes you to "not be able to think". I worked on six nines active active payments infra that handled billions in daily transaction volume. I've built laser projection systems to play interactive games on skyscrapers. That ability is not atrophying. I'm able to do 10-20x what I was able to do before AI, and I'm able to work at a breadth, depth, and level of polish that w…
Hear hear. I do not understand the people who bemoan the loss of slide rules and books of trig tables in the era of graphing calculators.
I’m with you — I’m producing more and better art, with a deeper understanding of the art which comes from scale. My music is more innovative, my simulations are richer and more fun, I can wake up in the morning with a new idea and have a prototype in hours. It is magical.
Re: No AI Fridays
#63>write code with your own hands
How is this supposed to work? Like emulate an agent with my brain and write down the output?
Re: No AI Fridays
#64This 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.
Objectively, it actually would be beneficial for most people to walk to work once a week…
Also, being intelligent is still important. Enabling the dumbest people in the room to dump their tidal wave of slop on others isn’t really a positive.
Re: No AI Fridays
#65I 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 re…
More like: take some time without your phone. Something I assume everybody here would agree is a sane thing to do.
Not using a calculator as a kid for math is pretty important, because the goal is to develop intuition. Same for software, playing music, learning a language. You have to keep some level of friction to develop and keep your intuition
Re: No AI Fridays
#66Earlier 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…
I really do not get all of y'all claiming this causes you to "not be able to think". I worked on six nines active active payments infra that handled billions in daily transaction volume. I've built laser projection systems to play interactive games on skyscrapers. That ability is not atrophying. I'm able to do 10-20x what I was able to do before AI, and I'm able to work at a breadth, depth, and level of polish that w…
I believe you. I'm just telling my own personal experience. What works for you doesn't seem to work for me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? But also: I'm purely doing things for my own pleasure now, so whatever I enjoy more is what I'm free to do. Again though, that's just me.
Re: No AI Fridays
#67Some people are gonna take this as a three-day weekend. Pity.
Re: No AI Fridays
#68>write code with your own hands How is this supposed to work? Like emulate an agent with my brain and write down the output?
Just look at the keyboard and sort all characters by how probable you think they are next, type one and start from the beginning.
Re: No AI Fridays
#69>write code with your own hands How is this supposed to work? Like emulate an agent with my brain and write down the output?
And what am I supposed to do when I hit a wall solving a problem? Just sleep on it?
Sarcasm aside, I think there's a real phenomenon of AI removing the experience of getting stuck on a problem (where often I'll wake up the next day with a perfect solution in my head ready to implement). The same way social media removed the experience of "being bored".
Re: No AI Fridays
#70I 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 re…
I get consistent, though tiny, value from having memorized the multiplication table up to 12.