Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will not use Jr developers for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of a Jr..... You don't have to outsource your thinking to find value in AI tools you just have to find the right tasks for them. The same as you would with any developer jr to you. I'm not going to use AI to engineer some new complex feature of my system but you can bet I'm going to use it to help with refactoring or test writing…
Not at all true, though. You see, I expect the Jr will grow and learn from those off-loaded tasks in such a way that they will eventually become another Sr in the atelier. That development of the society of engineers is precisely what I do not wish to ever outsource to some oligarch's rental fleet of bullshit machines.
"ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy
111–120 of 161 posts
Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy
#112I’ve noticed this trend in comments across the internet. Someone will ask or say something, the someone else will reply with “I asked ChatGPT and it says…” or “According to AI…” ChatGPT is free and available to everyone, and so are a dozen other LLMs. If the person making the comment wanted to know what ChatGPT had to say, they could just ask it themselves. I guess people feel like they’re being helpful, but I just d…
Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take this one for example https://codeberg.org/stagex/stagex/src/branch/main/src/compa... It took some iteration and hands on testing to get that right across multiple operating systems. Also to pass shellcheck, etc. Even if an LLM -could- do that sort of thing as well as my team and I can, we would lose a lot of the arcane knowledge required to debug things, and spot sneaky bugs, and do code review, if we did not al…
That x86 machine code link reminded me of an LLM project I did just last week - https://tools.simonwillison.net/sloccount I decided to see if I could get an old Perl and C codebase running via WebAasembly in the browser having Claude brute-force figuring out how to compile the various components to WASM. Details here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/22/sloccount-in-webassemb... Here are notes it wrote for me on th…
Even then, I would never use it, because it would be some proprietary model I have to pay some corpo for either with my privacy, my money, or both... and they could take it away at any time. I do not believe in or use centralized corpotech. Centralized power is always abused eventually. Also is that regurgitated code under an incompatible license? Who knows.
Also, again, I would rob myself of the experience and neural pathway growth and rote memory that come from doing things myself. I need to lift my own weights to build physical strength just as I need to solve my own puzzles to build patience and memory for obscure details that make me better at auditing the code of others and spotting security bugs other humans and machines miss.
I know when I can get away with LTO, and when I cannot, without causing issues with determinism, and how to track down over linking and under linking. Experience like that you only get by experimenting and compiling shit hundreds of times, and that is why stagex is the first Linux distro to ever hit 100% determinism.
Circling back, no, I am not worried about being unemployable because I do not use LLMs.
And hey, if I am totally wrong and LLMs can create perfectly secure projects better than I can in the future, and spot security bugs better than I can, and I am unemployable, then I will go be an artist or something, because there are always people out there that appreciate hard work done by humans by hand, because that is how I am wired.
Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy
#114I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…
Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy
#115I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…
Would you mind sharing what career stage you are in? I don't feel empowered to take such a stance, though I'd like to.
Maybe someone vibe codes their way through some webapp stuff and they review and clean it up, I will not stop them, but if someone turns in obvious AI slop they clearly do not understand they are dead to me.
I do security auditing and engineering though, which is in very high demand and something LLMs are incredibly bad at right now.
Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all true, though. You see, I expect the Jr will grow and learn from those off-loaded tasks in such a way that they will eventually become another Sr in the atelier. That development of the society of engineers is precisely what I do not wish to ever outsource to some oligarch's rental fleet of bullshit machines.
But happily serve other the collective oligarchs by training their next generation of knights...
Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Isn't it the modern equivalent of "let me Google that for you"? Which was just as irritating.
It was meant to be - the whole point of that meme was to shame/annoy lazy people into looking things up themselves, instead of asking random strangers on the internet.
Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
To modifying a hitchism. > What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. Becomes > That which can be asserted without thought can be dismissed without thought. Since no current AI thinks but humans do I’m just going to dismiss anything an AI says out of hand because you are pushing the cost of parsing what it said onto me and off you and nah, ain’t accepting that.
Elegant and correct. It seems so obvious to me that if someone wanted a ChatGPT answer they would have sought it out for themselves and yet... it's happened to me more than a few times. I think some people think they are being clever and resourceful (or 'efficient') but it just dilutes their own authority on that which they were asked to opine.
Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy
#119I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…
Soc. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
Phaedr. Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country.Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
That x86 machine code link reminded me of an LLM project I did just last week - https://tools.simonwillison.net/sloccount I decided to see if I could get an old Perl and C codebase running via WebAasembly in the browser having Claude brute-force figuring out how to compile the various components to WASM. Details here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/22/sloccount-in-webassemb... Here are notes it wrote for me on th…
I do not doubt that LLMs might some day be able to generate something like my work in stagex, but it would only be because someone trained one on my work and that of other people that insist on solving new problems by hand. Even then, I would never use it, because it would be some proprietary model I have to pay some corpo for either with my privacy, my money, or both... and they could take it away at any time. I do…
Have you been following the developments in open source / open weight models you can run on your own hardware?
They're getting pretty good now, especially the ones coming out of China. The GLM, Qwen and DeepSeek models out of China are all excellent. Mistral's open weight models (from France) are good too, as are the OpenAI gpt-oss models.
No privacy or money cost involved in running those.
I get your concern about learning more if you do everything yourself. All I can say there is that the rate and depth of technical topics I'm learning has been expanded by my LLM usage because I'm able to take on a much wider range of technical projects, all of which teach me new things.
You're not alone in this - there are many experienced developers who are choosing not to engage with this new family of technology. I've been thinking of it similar to veganism - there are plenty of rational reasons to embrace a vegan lifestyle and I respect people who do it but I've made different choices myself.