> The introduction chronicled the evolution of swordsmanship and martial arts in general from pragmatic battlefield necessities to sports, historical curiosities, and hobbies. Eh? Martial arts has always been a mix of utility and cultural artifact. Greco-Roman wrestling flourished in a/alongside of military utility. Greeks and Romans had swords, shields, spears, bows and arrows. Boxing also traces its history all the…
Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master
121–130 of 427 posts
Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master
#122This post reminded me of the story about Jeet Kun Do [0] after Bruce Lee [1] died.
JKD was supposed to be a martial art that adapted the best techniques from other martial arts. e.g. "have no style" because your style is constantly adapting.
After Lee died, JKD broke into two camps:
1. "We should only teach what Lee taught us and no more. e.g. the techniques he taught us are the core techniques."
2. "Lee taught us to be constantly adapting from other martial arts so there is no list of core techniques."
I've always loved this story as it highlights how humans have essentially two reactions to change: embracing it or fearing it.
Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master
#123John 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.
Would a person who is lost in the weeds come up with such excellent though-formulations like this?
> Musashi would probably have been pretty enthusiastic about assault rifles.
Musashi famously "retired to a cave, Reigandō, living as a hermit to write The Book of Five Rings" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi), for those not in the know.
Edit: Had to re-read a bunch of stuff about Musashi, and to Carmack's credit, seems to have been a relatively pragmatic guy when it comes to the choice of weapons in a battle, talking both about the benefits and drawbacks of firearms (although they were slightly different ones than we have today)
Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master
#124Is there a name for this pervasive psychological phenomenon where someone reads an ancient text and becomes convinced of its profound relevance to their own field? Seems to be especially common amongst the influencers of the tech sphere.
Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master
#125Earlier 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…
> We could have gotten it done faster, but we were well aware of the potential for slop and thus paid an absurd amount of attention to (and tokens for) code quality. 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, plus a ton of invariants enforced via deterministic checks.
This is why my current view in terms of LLM productivity gains are:
- debugging and triaging 5x
- refactoring when you have tests in place 3x
- greenfield where you have zero tests is about 1.5x
Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master
#126I also code as a hobby. It seems like a pretty good thing to have as a hobby.
Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master
#127John 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.
I sense sarcasm. But I think you misinterpreted the parent’s point. I read it as: yes, Carmack has made huge contributions but, has not publicly released anything noteworthy since the advent of AI coding. Of course that doesn’t mean he won’t, just that so far nothing he released has backed up his statement.
Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master
#128John 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 can achieve more with AI than without.
What's the complain exactly?
That AI still hasn't made my effort and thinking and directing and checking and ideas completely redundant and thus out of job?
It's like you people see everything in black and white and miss that most of the real world is a gradient of shades of grey and quite never full black or white.
Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master
#129We 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…
You're describing software developers, even better, coders, not really engineers.
Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master
#130Everyone who writes enthusiastically about AI already has the benefit of having worked without AI. They have been schooled in the basics. Enough of us know about data structures, concurrency, networks, language design etc. from the ground up that the knowledge is passed on. I worry about the world that we will be living in when a whole generation has skipped learning the basics the hard way. Given the attendance rate…
Right, I weirdly feel like we are entering an era where industry doesn’t invest that much in training the next generation - it feels like a rich getting richer scenario in all aspects of society
I think mathematics is feeling that concern with training acutely. The average math department pays its way by teaching in all forms and all levels: they don’t bring in the magnitude of grant money that concretely impacts a university’s budget. But they are already dealing with the consequences of that - that’s why universities that are cutting due to “low student demand” are going after math programs.