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No AI Fridays

noaifridays.com

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Re: No AI Fridays

#201

Post by mapontosevenths »

lstodd wrote: post #106
mapontosevenths wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

hah. try go hiking for couple days in mountains. no cellular, no charging, flaky gps, vhf/uhf radio don't work and your only hope is that you are prepared enough to survive getting out of there . I don't even about sailing 100+nm off shore. people assume every point of earth is somewhy equivalent to their porch.

How many hours of very intentional travel did it take you to find someplace on earth where you could find yourself in that situation?

I have no intention of doing that. I'm not an explorer. I don't own a boat that is both big enough to travel that far, but small enough not to have satellite internet. I own approximately zero pith helmets and know zero sherpas.

Re: No AI Fridays

#202

Post by elliotbnvl »

xendo wrote: post #14
elliotbnvl wrote: post #12

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.

Have you read the page? I'm the COE of HTMX. I'm the boss.

Oops. I took your comment at face value. Sorry!

Re: No AI Fridays

#203

Post by CodeMage »

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…

Others have already talked to you about the significance of your anecdata and your faintly dismissive tone, but there's something else in your comment that tickled me and that no one's addressed yet:

> 2010-2020 felt like tech dystopia to me. Cellphone incrementalism, walled gardens, adtech, crypto, locked down devices. It was a pale shadow of the excitement of the early web. Personal websites, kids making Flash games, the indie web, p2p, people building stuff being 70% of the internet. For the first time in a long time, I feel extremely hopeful about the future and excited to work with tech again.

Who do you think was responsible for that dystopia? It wasn't those people you mentioned, who built the 70% of the old internet. The enshittification started when the people whose passion in life is to make money caught the scent of money-making potential the internet had.

But then, how did those people actually accomplish the enshittification we're dealing with now? The answer is: with the enthusiastic help of the True Believers. Crypto is the best example. Just recall how many devs were convinced that the blockchain was going to revolutionize everything. And I mean devs. Not snake-oil peddlers in suits, not LinkedIn influencers, none of the usual posse of posers, but people who actually wrote code and were reasonably good at that.

And that's not the only example, just the best one. I've been there myself. Back when OOP, UML, capital-A Agile, CMMi, and MDA (Model Driven Architecture) were the Hot New Thing, I was one of the True Believers, following the trends and proselytizing my colleagues.

Every bit of the dystopia you lament was pushed by the combination of ambitious MBAs and True Believer devs.

And the reason I bring this up is because you're one of those True Believers now. It's easy to fall into that trap. All you need is to have enough good experiences with the Hot New Thing to suppress your critical thinking and believe that this will Make Everything Great Again.

The same kind of people who profited off the tech dystopia you saw are now ushering a new, worse tech dystopia that you're turning a blind eye to. Your belief that this new tech will somehow balance and even counteract what those people did to the internet you loved is not based in facts. It's faith.

Re: No AI Fridays

#204

Post by kstenerud »

sublinear wrote: post #192
kstenerud wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The "best engineers" we have right now started their careers when the startup era was hot and they now have 15-20+ years of experience. They wore all the hats while everyone else stunted themselves straight out of school by going to a big corporate office. In that era, the devs at a startup were the "everything people". I've met plenty of web app devs of that vintage who are just as comfortable compiling a linux kern…

> The "best engineers" we have right now started their careers when the startup era was hot and they now have 15-20+ years of experience.

They also started before that era, and after. I've met plenty of them throughout my career, and still do every so often. They were never very common.

> They wore all the hats

This isn't unique to that era.

> In that era, the devs at a startup were the "everything people".

They still are. You do everything because you don't have the resources to hire for any positions.

> Anyone who chose to specialize went the vocational route of getting certifications and playing the contractor game.

That depends on your definition of "specialize". I'm using it in the sense of learning one particular aspect well (in addition to anything else you learn). Certifications and contracting have nothing to do with it.

> This pattern already happened in the (blue collar) "trades". It started in the late 20th century. Now we have some of the worst built homes, buildings, roads, etc.

This is certainly true in the USA, although I'd argue that it's the companies cutting costs (and corners) rather than the tradespeople becoming unskilled. In most first world countries there are standards and audits that keep companies (mostly) in line so that you don't get disasters-in-waiting like the new Bay Bridge.

> Do we really want to make this even worse with automated AI copypasta pretending to be "engineering"? Nobody is fooled.

Like with any force multiplier tool, you get the early days where every Joe is pumping out crap (same kind of thing happened with COBOL), and then the shake-out happens where companies realize that it's not a free lunch, and you need skilled people after all.

Re: No AI Fridays

#209

Post by fatata123 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #93
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.…

Eh, experiences will vary. For me, my zone is conducting things, not typing. Firing something off in twelve tabs and coming back later is precisely how my brain works.

[dead]

Re: No AI Fridays

#210

Post by brookst »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #90
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.

Big difference is when you use a calculator or other tools, you still have to interpret and know what to enter. With modern AI, you basically just ask for something and what used to be days worth of work magically appears, you didn't really think through a single thing when it comes to implementation, architecture etc unless you made a conscious effort to audit that. We also generally still encourage students to lear…

I appreciate your reply and framing, but it strikes me as a spirited opposition to delegation. Or at least a strong assertion that AI use is similar to managing an organization.

The reins metaphor is also interesting and cuts both ways: riders don’t expect to do the walking themselves, and setting direction is not the same as doing (even understanding, or being able to do) the work.

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