> What really struck me was how Amazon's product decisions were driven by internal KPIs rather than user empathy.
First day on the job or what?
The Last Programmers?
11–20 of 95 posts
Re: The Last Programmers?
#12The author works for a company that builds an “AI ad maker”. And they link to it in the first paragraph.
"AI ad maker" sounds like a toilet that produces its own shit
Re: The Last Programmers?
#13We're doomed, when even supposed experts, working on these "AI" tools can't help but anthropomorphize those tools.
"when edge cases emerge that the AI didn't anticipate"
The only "anticipation" that is happening within those tools is on token level, the tools have no idea (and are fundamentally unable to even have an idea) what the code is even supposed to do in the real world.
Re: The Last Programmers?
#14We're doomed, when even supposed experts, working on these "AI" tools can't help but anthropomorphize those tools. "when edge cases emerge that the AI didn't anticipate" The only "anticipation" that is happening within those tools is on token level, the tools have no idea (and are fundamentally unable to even have an idea) what the code is even supposed to do in the real world.
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Re: The Last Programmers?
#15It’s fun to get swept away in the worldview of AI hyperenthoudiasts in the same way it’s fun to get sucked into the world of Percy Jackson when reading the books.
It is loosely based on reality and not in line with reality.
Re: The Last Programmers?
#16I liked the author's chocolate analogy although not in the way they intended. Yes it's a known reproducible tech and yes Hershey dominates there. Hershey is also the worst crap you can buy for the money.
I don’t disagree with the article, but it’s very much from the perspective of a modern “move fast and break things” PoV.
That’s how Hershey Kisses are made.
I’ve always been more of a Lindt kind of person. Not top of the heap (around here, the current kick is “Dubai Chocolate,” with $20 chocolate bars), but better than average.
I try to move quickly, and not break anything. It does work, but it’s more effort, takes longer, and is more expensive (which is mainly why “move fast and break things” is so popular).
I’m looking forward to “Artisanal” agents, that create better stuff, but won’t have a free tier, and will require experienced drivers.
Re: The Last Programmers?
#17> They'll judge us the way we judge people who manually calculated ledgers before spreadsheets existed. Impressive dedication to craft, but ultimately unnecessary effort spent on problems that got solved by better tools. One of my dad's anecdotes was of someone who was very proud of the fact that they could multiply numbers with a slide rule faster than any of the then-newfangled electronic hand calculators. A lot of…
> One of my dad's anecdotes was of someone who was very proud of the fact that they could multiply numbers with a slide rule faster than any of the then-newfangled electronic hand calculators.
I am 100% willing to admin that the guy was cool and had good reason to be proud about that.
Re: The Last Programmers?
#18I am still yet able to find an LLM which can understand it has to look for files and change config after an error, they have no understanding of when to comment things out and work. To be fair it can make websites, algorithms , copy things nicely but that's about it.
Another tool in the box. import pdb is my way still
Re: The Last Programmers?
#19The point being made that code is cheap, anything is replicable and that what actually matters is building human centered useful software is a very good point. However, It has nothing to do with today. This has always been true. It has always been the case that outside of the most complex applications you can rip off almost any piece of software in significantly less time than it took to build.
Re: The Last Programmers?
#20I tried the Claude Code thing and the generated code is utter garbage.
Also, it fails to iterate on complex features. If you are just creating CRUDs, it may work. But even on CRUD scenarios I've seen it completely lose context and use wrong values and things go broke in ways that are hard to track or update.
I'm surprised people work with it and say those things. Are they really using the same tool I use?
I'm sure the problem isn't my prompting, because I've tried watching many videos of people doing the same, and I see the same issues as I've said.