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Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

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Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#71

Post by throwaway893257 »

glimshe wrote: post #3

We are going from the era of manual, line-by-line mental model transcription to one where software engineers can focus on data structures, software architecture and algorithms. I love being able to quickly bring out the program that is already running in my head without having to worry about the grind of typing it into a format that the compiler understands. Dealing with API names. Syntax. Language quirks. Library go…

> We are going from the era of manual, line-by-line mental model transcription to one where software engineers can focus on data structures, software architecture and algorithms.

I prefer an AI that is good at data structures, architecture and algorithms. Then, finally, no more leetcode.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#72

Post by skrtskrt »

hansvm wrote: post #66
enraged_camel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably averaging 70. 9 devs and 1 QA engineer.

Assuming the LLM never got anything wrong or otherwise had to be re-prompted, that means your devs were reviewing 130 SLOC per hour, on what was described as moderately greenfield (examining new implementations rather than comparing to old historical accidents). How? I don't want to sound flippant, but if the point is to add human thought to the mix, that's a high review rate even when examining small tweaks to an ex…

No don’t worry they said it’s not slop because there’s tests lol

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#73

Post by acyou »

zulux wrote: post #20
tclancy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a new theory as of this moment. Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Steve Yegge and now, sadly John Carmack. Your average hacker scoffs at the idea of religion or faith, but somehow is comfortable with complete unquestioning fealty to whichever person who did something interesting with technology in the past and made enough money to afford drugs you don’t get arrested for and then they started prophesying. Before you ston…

The nice thing about religious faith is that most minds can hold only one at a time. I may believe in an oddly resurrected deity who took the shape of a man , but I don't have room for anything crazier. "We are fools for Christ's sake." 1 Corinthians 4:10

Is that the nice thing about religious faith? Polytheism seems somewhat more tolerant of others. And religious pluralism takes in one step further.

I am sure about few things, but it seems to me that monotheism and religious exclusivism at some times represent the worst aspects and outcomes of religious faith.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#74

Post by helloplanets »

tkel wrote: post #29

Ironically, this post comes off as out of touch. The purpose of the various martial arts isn't just to win in a life-or-death brawl or murder people as efficiently as possible. Similarly, the point of programming isn't just to generate as much code as possible, or only to be more "productive".

The whole latter part of the post is exactly about that.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#75

Post by cindyllm »

yallpendantools wrote: post #57
threethirtytwo wrote: post #48

HN is loaded with out of touch Kung Fu masters. They were the loudest skeptics against AI. Still a lot here. It's human nature. If your identity is defined by your kung fu and a technology is about to obsolesce your kung fu, then all logic goes out the window as you go all out in protecting your identity. It's mostly for themselves. They have to lie to themselves and tell themselves that they still "matter".

I've been doing martial arts for more than 20 years, some in TMA, some in modern boxing/kickboxing. I have yet to meet an "out of touch Kung Fu master" in person. Nobody thinks they can clear the bar or win in a ruleset they haven't trained for. I mean I don't deny Frank Dux, George Dilman, and the DUST guy exist, nor do I support their claims. It's just that they are larger-than-life personalities to start with and…

[dead]

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#76

Post by zem »

fooker wrote: post #22
xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #10

'Make sure you don't fall behind!!!' is my least favourite type of post about ai. There's resllt nothing to learn about ai. You're just typing and telling it what to do.

This is like saying there's nothing to learn about programming, you're just telling a computer what to do. :) It's partly true, but where this logic gets stuck is software engineering, for both the cases. Just telling the AI what to do won't get you to good software, especially when you want to use dozens of agents working in parallel, when you have something correctness sensitive, when you want the AI to try and sol…

but the solution, ironically, is not learning more about ai, but learning more about good software engineering, so you can tell when the ai is not doing it

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#77

Post by knorker »

tkel wrote: post #29

Ironically, this post comes off as out of touch. The purpose of the various martial arts isn't just to win in a life-or-death brawl or murder people as efficiently as possible. Similarly, the point of programming isn't just to generate as much code as possible, or only to be more "productive".

As someone who did train one of the traditional martial arts for a few years, I appreciate the comparison.

I don't know how much weight your "just" is meant to carry, but I remember a culture of cope and excuses about why "my" flavor wasn't the winner of any MMA event.

But at least I got some exercise, strength, and flexibility out of it.

I think it's an interesting analogy, not to be dismissed so easily.

I don't see him saying the point is volume of code. I see AI generating code, and if I question it, it can justify design choices pretty well. I can give it bug symptoms, and it can find and fix the bug. Usually.

But yes, the analogy breaks down in the fact that I understand what it's saying and understand when it's wrong, because I learned it in the first place.

Or maybe it doesn't break down completely. If an MMA (AI) tells me to move in a way where I know I'll lose my balance, or over extend, I will say no, because of my previously acquired experience.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#78

Post by Razengan »

corv wrote: post #7
glimshe wrote: post #3

We are going from the era of manual, line-by-line mental model transcription to one where software engineers can focus on data structures, software architecture and algorithms. I love being able to quickly bring out the program that is already running in my head without having to worry about the grind of typing it into a format that the compiler understands. Dealing with API names. Syntax. Language quirks. Library go…

I like your constructive outlook and I want to believe that we can now focus on the bigger picture, but I'm not really seeing it around me. Most everyone I know that's "AI-pilled" has spent the newfound capacity on throughput instead of altitude. Is anyone actually seeing a shift towards improved structure rather than more code, faster? We seem to be living in the Gatling-gun version of the picture John Carmack drew…

The people who are using AI to improve what they were already doing anyway, aren't going around expounding "I made this with AI!"

Like one of my personal projects is a sort of "middleware" for Godot, and it needs to be lean, precise and match certain rules, because it's meant to be used by many games, so I can't blindly trust AI to generate code for it, it'd be too sloppy,

BUT Codex reviews have been a great help in finding bugs that would have taken me ages to even notice on my own. Some of those AI findings helped me overhaul entire subsystems, still manually coded.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#79

Post by helloplanets »

xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #10

'Make sure you don't fall behind!!!' is my least favourite type of post about ai. There's resllt nothing to learn about ai. You're just typing and telling it what to do.

The system that solved Navier-Stokes certainly was not about OpenAI engineers just typing and telling it what to do.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#80

Post by fragmede »

acedTrex wrote: post #37
agentultra wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m the opposite. I don’t believe there is a royal road to understanding anything. For me, the process of programming involves frustration. That is usually when I find my greatest insights. Syntax isn’t a big deal. Names either. You can look them up. Remember them. Language gotchas are annoying and sometimes problematic. To me, our job is understanding problems. And for me, understanding the problem involves wrestlin…

ya i find all LLM output to be incredibly boring and unskillful, I can ship vibe bugs fast with the best of them but it brings me no joy. I'll never let myself be left behind but the joy professionally of writing quality software is 100% gone.

The possibility to have an agent implement every little thing that comes up in your mind as you're building doesn't spark the tiniest bit of joy? Previously, "ooh it would be cool if" had to answer to "yeah but it'll take too long". Now, it's more like, "how important is that really?" to stupid ideas that never would have seen the light of day before.
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