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No AI Fridays

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181–190 of 226 posts

Re: No AI Fridays

#181

Post by nogbit »

KingOfMyRoom wrote: post #88
dom96 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing this on my latest personal project. What I've realised I missed the most is feeling in the zone or in a "flow" state as some call it. It really feels amazing. Coding agents take that away from you. I really think we need some coding agent implementation which takes less agency away from programmers and helps people be in the flow even more. For my project I use Gemini/Google's AI mode to great effect.…

What do you use to be in the zone? music in the background? What type? Or silence or something else?

You don’t need to use anything. You just need to enjoy what you are doing. This is often related to dopamine. Being in flow state for hours on end while programming is bliss and fun for me.

If you don’t enjoy programming keep trying, have the language or api docs open and do not use generative AI. Generative AI just gets you outcomes. An artist paints because they like painting, not because they like a pile of painted pictures.

Re: No AI Fridays

#182

Post by kstenerud »

sublinear wrote: post #177
kstenerud wrote: post #92

Reminds me of when we were admonished to use a "real" compiled language rather than an interpreted, GC'd one, lest we lose our ability to reason about the system, cache, and memory. Which reminds me of when we were admonished to continue using assembly, lest our "real" skills atrophy from too much cushy C development. Which reminds me of when we were admonished to keep our scope and probe skills sharp, and read and u…

> The best engineers know how our systems work down to more levels, but for average developers producing average software with average impact, average output is acceptable. What if I told you the "best engineers" pretty much all know the same things? The tools they use at work and the code they write to get paid doesn't reflect even half of what they know. There will always be situations where a problem goes deep eno…

> What if I told you the "best engineers" pretty much all know the same things?

I'd say that you need to provide some evidence for this extraordinary claim.

> What if I told you that your "specialists", AI or not, are going to be objectively far worse at actually getting things done because they don't have the bigger picture in mind?

I'd say that you need to provide some evidence for this extraordinary claim.

> We've seen this race to the bottom in other disciplines before.

Such as?

Re: No AI Fridays

#183

Post by LogicFailsMe »

breezybottom wrote: post #180
LogicFailsMe wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would absolutely believe people on the spectrum with hyperfocus-oriented ADHD (such as myself) might knock things out of the park with coding agents while everyone else is befuddled by their bizarre behavior. But then, I don't get the slow pace and fake drama of reality TV and professional wrestling, yet so many others do. Similarly, starting with British serial dramas like Survivors and Blake's Seven in the 80s, I…

ADHD is an inability to focus. ChatGPT diagnosed you incorrectly.

Not even wrong: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/hyperfocus-and-adhd

"When you have ADHD, the problem isn’t that you lack attention, it’s that you struggle to control your attention — to put your attention where you want it to go rather than having it go where it wants to go. Hyperfocus is a natural consequence of that lack of control."

Lived it. Made it work for me professionally in the end. Do not not need pointy hair edicts telling me how to do career development.

Re: No AI Fridays

#184

Post by KingOfMyRoom »

noduerme wrote: post #101
KingOfMyRoom wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use to be in the zone? music in the background? What type? Or silence or something else?

I don't think it has to do with sound. Some sounds can disrupt it, of course. I can work well in a noisy cafe as long as I'm not listening to any particular conversation. Although oftentimes, if I'm alone, I talk to myself out loud while I'm coding ("no, not that, it should go here... where's that header? stupid typo...") We used to call it "seeing through the code". The moment when you're no longer looking at text o…

That makes sense. I wonder how much the sound itself matters versus it simply becoming part of the ritual that tells your brain "now we’re working"

I used to listen to classical music, rap or hip hop, but lately I’ve moved toward those long focus playlists on YouTube and things like Brain.fm. They seem to help me, so I was curious whether other people deliberately use something to get into that state or whether it just happens through the work itself.

Re: No AI Fridays

#185

Post by KingOfMyRoom »

nogbit wrote: post #181
KingOfMyRoom wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use to be in the zone? music in the background? What type? Or silence or something else?

You don’t need to use anything. You just need to enjoy what you are doing. This is often related to dopamine. Being in flow state for hours on end while programming is bliss and fun for me. If you don’t enjoy programming keep trying, have the language or api docs open and do not use generative AI. Generative AI just gets you outcomes. An artist paints because they like painting, not because they like a pile of painte…

I’m not a programmer, life choices took me in another direction, but I’m starting to understand the addictive part of building things and immediately seeing them come to life.

With AI coding it suddenly feels like there are so many possibilities. My biggest problem now is almost the opposite: trying not to chase every idea and keeping myself focused on building one thing. There’s definitely a dopamine hit in seeing visible progress regularly :)

Re: No AI Fridays

#186

Post by KingOfMyRoom »

hrideshmg wrote: post #163
KingOfMyRoom wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use to be in the zone? music in the background? What type? Or silence or something else?

the flow state isn't something that is triggered by music. It can help maybe, but it's not a pre-requisite. It's something common to a lot of creative fields, that moment where u enter a sort of hyper-focused state where the line between you and the code blurs and you operate at peak efficiency. It quite literally feels like overclocking your brain. I miss it a lot.

I tend to agree. I think music can help prolong the state. It helps to keep on grinding.

You said you miss that state a lot. What changed? Is it related to using AI more when coding or something else?

Re: No AI Fridays

#187

Post by polnoner »

echelon wrote: post #45
wkjagt wrote: 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…

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…

You were probably exposed to a wide range of art, music, culture and ideas growing up.

I think there is a whole generation of people who were so culturally starved during their formative years they can only see a blank canvas as a useless white square.

"Who is going to buy a painting of a white square?"

Re: No AI Fridays

#188

Post by brookst »

claytongulick wrote: post #131
brookst wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Why do you think so many people prefer to listen to live music over an album playing on a jukebox? Live music doesn't have the polish and perfection of a studio recording, it's much less efficient to have to manually play instruments than to just hit "play" on a song. So why both…

To the extent code is artistic expression, sure, I get what you're saying.

But when you sit down at an awesome synth and start jamming, do you care whether the firmware was written by a real live human?

It's forest/trees.

Re: No AI Fridays

#189

Post by dom96 »

KingOfMyRoom wrote: post #88
dom96 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing this on my latest personal project. What I've realised I missed the most is feeling in the zone or in a "flow" state as some call it. It really feels amazing. Coding agents take that away from you. I really think we need some coding agent implementation which takes less agency away from programmers and helps people be in the flow even more. For my project I use Gemini/Google's AI mode to great effect.…

What do you use to be in the zone? music in the background? What type? Or silence or something else?

For me music is usually a must. I need to drown out any potential distracting noise.

Re: No AI Fridays

#190

Post by dom96 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #159
majormajor wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mentioned "coming back later" but being in the zone. That's the part I want to understand. So this metaphor isn't helping cause the conductor is constantly working, constantly seeing the output. Not coming back later.

My zone is the big-picture zone. What are we building, what needs to be done, how do the interrelated bits all come together? I can tell an agent "go implement X" and start planning Y that comes after it. I don't really get in the zone for raw code typing, that's always been a slog.

I cannot imagine being able to plan the next thing when I don't know what issues the coding agent might run into with the previous/current task. It feels like a waste to be planning the next thing when my previous plan may turn out to be wrong. The only thing I can really think to do is to wait for the agent to be finished, which makes getting distracted by social media and other random stuff really easy. Total opposite of being in the zone.
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