Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 425 posts

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

#111

Post by ozim »

maplethorpe wrote: post #101

> But don’t be the out of touch Kung Fu master, heir to lifetimes of tradition, that gets mauled by an amateur MMA fighter. I have an issue with this analogy, since a professional MMA fighter is a highly skilled individual who has honed their body through years of training. A more apt analogy might be "don't be the kung fu master who believes they can survive an atomic bomb, dropped from far above by a pilot who does…

I would say analogy is still apt.

When you look at King Fu master as a software dev who refuses to use AI and MMA fighter as a dev who embraces AI.

Vibe coders who know nothing about software development are untrained rubes who got mechanical arm that thinks for itself, they can maul MMA fighter, they can maul Kung Fu master but at the same time arm might just rip off their own face.

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

#112

Post by stavros »

maplethorpe wrote: post #101

> But don’t be the out of touch Kung Fu master, heir to lifetimes of tradition, that gets mauled by an amateur MMA fighter. I have an issue with this analogy, since a professional MMA fighter is a highly skilled individual who has honed their body through years of training. A more apt analogy might be "don't be the kung fu master who believes they can survive an atomic bomb, dropped from far above by a pilot who does…

But he said amateur.

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

#113

Post by stavros »

_zoltan_ wrote: post #108
omnicognate wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of people don't understand that the joy of making something is not coding but actually being able to build anything I want I expect "a lot of people" understand perfectly well that that's where the joy comes from for you. Do you not understand that other people have different motivations?

coding for the sake of coding is, well, dumb.

Is painting for the sake of painting dumb too?

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

#114

Post by Kiro »

mawadev wrote: post #94
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 honestly feel personally attacked by this and I don't consider myself to be an out of touch kung fu master or technologist at all. It is just very odd to read such an inflammatory comment on HN and then have people pretend this is correct and perfectly socially acceptable to say. Like put your shoes into the person you are arguing against, with some empathy, would you want to be treated this way?

Funny thing coming from a person with such a bio.

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

#115

Post by hypfer »

PostOnce wrote: post #88

John Carmack is a personal hero of mine, so it pains me to say this: Carmack hasn't produced anything noteworthy since AI was invented, therefore, how productive can it really be? It could be he is doing incredible work in private... but it could also be that he's lost in the weeds, because AI is so counterproductive while feeling the opposite? I remain a skeptic.

I mean his post boils down to "Get on the bandwagon because you might otherwise miss out. All the cool kids do AI now."

There are valid concerns there (and you should probably be playing around with LLMs), but he voiced none of them. He just led with a metaphor about obsolescence and then continued spreading FOMO with an authoritative voice.

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

#116

Post by oleggromov »

enraged_camel wrote: post #27
corv wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> Is anyone actually seeing a shift towards improved structure rather than more code, faster? Yes. At work we recently finished a complete rewrite of the platform. The old codebase got abandoned and two new codebases got stood up. Previous stack was Phoenix LiveView and the new one is Phoenix API + Vue /w TypeScript. Zero code shared between the two. We took the opportunity to re-architect a lot of the core function…

LLMs are a game-changer. You work more for less money.

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

#117

Post by zem »

fooker wrote: post #87
zem wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, software engineering is fundamentally changed because of AI. No amount of digging our heads in the sand is going to undo that. For example, the traditional best practice cycle of "small incremental change, code review, test, commit" is pretty much obsolete now. The way ten collaborating agents can make short work of a complex project is not something that fits in with our existing software engineering wisdom at a…

I'm not talking about the transient aspects of producing software; I'm happy to accept that AI will change that, but also I feel that it will change it in ways that really aren't very hard to learn, and truth be told the more time that passes the smaller the gap will get as the agents get more capable.

what I am talking about is principles that govern what good software looks like, what properties it has to satisfy in order to be extensible and maintainable and performant and all that other good stuff, and the AIs are not going to make that knowledge obsolete any time soon.

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

#118

Post by alexashka »

PostOnce wrote: post #88

John Carmack is a personal hero of mine, so it pains me to say this: Carmack hasn't produced anything noteworthy since AI was invented, therefore, how productive can it really be? It could be he is doing incredible work in private... but it could also be that he's lost in the weeds, because AI is so counterproductive while feeling the opposite? I remain a skeptic.

Sure, among all these other people doing 'incredible work' for 30+ years publicly, well into their 50s, John Carmack sure is a disappointment by comparison.

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

#119

Post by feffe »

socalgal2 wrote: post #33
doctorpangloss wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, there is a 100% test coverage requirement in both server and client, combined with AI-driven review rules that say all tests must be non-vacuous, look, your application works, right? so it doesn't really matter what you or i think, and this is why AI matters. but this, your "100% test coverage" - that is pure slop. just 20 years ago, all the most popular software shipped with NO tests. are you getting…

> just 20 years ago, all the most popular software shipped with NO tests not sure what you're point is here. It sounds similar to "we use to use blood letting and leeches and doctors didn't clean their hands and everything was fine so what are you getting at?" Good tests have real benefits. The fact that people shipped without them in the past in no way suggests they aren't needed or have no point.

Also, 20 years ago SW was tested by QA department and approved before shipping. Don't want to go back to that, but there were testing, just differently.

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

#120

Post by rramadass »

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".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49668392
Post reply on HN