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My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

matthewrocklin.com

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Re: My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

#111

Post by hollowturtle »

somekyle2 wrote: post #8

I suspect that lots of developers who are sour on relying on AI significantly _would_ agree with most of this, but see the result of that logic leading to (as the article notes) "the skill of writing and reading code is obsolete, and it's our job to make software engineering increasingly entirely automated" and really don't like that outcome so they try to find a way to reject it. "The skillset you've spend decades d…

> "the skill of writing and reading code is obsolete, and it's our job to make software engineering increasingly entirely automated"

This simply is a mediocre take, sometimes I feel like people never actually coded at all to have such opinions

Re: My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

#112

Post by dionian »

Yoric wrote: post #21
kleinsch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI lets you pick the parts you want to focus on and streamline the parts you don't. I get zero joy out of wrestling build tools or figuring out deploy scripts to get what I've built out onto a server. In the past side projects would stall out because the few hours per week I had would get consumed by all of the side stuff. Now I take care of that using AI and focus on the parts I want to write.

Yeah, that is one of my main uses for AI: getting the build stuff and scripts out of the way so that I can focus on the application code. That and brainstorming. In both cases, it works because I can mostly detect when the output is bullshit. I'm just a little bit scared, though, that it will stop working if I rely too much on it, because I might lose the brain muscles I need to detect said bullshit.

Im super interested to know how juniors get a long. i have dealt with build systems for decades and half the time its just use google or stackoverflow to get past something quickly, or manually troubleshoot deps. now i automate that entirely. and for code, i know what good or not, i check its output and hve it redo anything t5hat doesnt pass my known stndards. It makes using it so much easier. the article is so on point

Re: My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

#113

Post by williamcotton »

deergomoo wrote: post #2

I will never as long as I live understand the argument that AI development is more fun. If you want to argue that you’re more capable or whatever, fine. I disagree but I don’t have any data to disprove you. But saying that AI development is more fun because you don’t have to “wrestle the computer” is, to me, the same as saying you’re really into painting but you’re not really into the brush aspect so you pay someone…

Most master painters of the past had teams organized as workshops where the majority of the painting was NOT done by the master.

The “lone genius” image is largely a modern romantic invention.

Re: My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

#114

Post by rukuu001 »

deergomoo wrote: post #2

I will never as long as I live understand the argument that AI development is more fun. If you want to argue that you’re more capable or whatever, fine. I disagree but I don’t have any data to disprove you. But saying that AI development is more fun because you don’t have to “wrestle the computer” is, to me, the same as saying you’re really into painting but you’re not really into the brush aspect so you pay someone…

It shaves yaks for me. I appreciate that.

Re: My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

#115

Post by grugagag »

williamcotton wrote: post #113
deergomoo wrote: post #2

I will never as long as I live understand the argument that AI development is more fun. If you want to argue that you’re more capable or whatever, fine. I disagree but I don’t have any data to disprove you. But saying that AI development is more fun because you don’t have to “wrestle the computer” is, to me, the same as saying you’re really into painting but you’re not really into the brush aspect so you pay someone…

Most master painters of the past had teams organized as workshops where the majority of the painting was NOT done by the master. The “lone genius” image is largely a modern romantic invention.

Thats not quite true. The “lone genius” type went against the grain and created something new while still showing some skill (well, that’s debatable in modern art).

Re: My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

#117

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

deergomoo wrote: post #2

I will never as long as I live understand the argument that AI development is more fun. If you want to argue that you’re more capable or whatever, fine. I disagree but I don’t have any data to disprove you. But saying that AI development is more fun because you don’t have to “wrestle the computer” is, to me, the same as saying you’re really into painting but you’re not really into the brush aspect so you pay someone…

If you have to work in a language or framework with a lot of arbitrary-seeming features, ugly or opaque translation layers, or a lot of boiler-plate, then I absolutely understand the sentiment.

Programming a system at a low-level from scratch is fun. Getting CSS to look right under a bunch of edge cases - I won't judge that programmer too harshly for consulting the text machine.

This is especially true considering it's these shallow but trivia-dominated tasks which are the least fun and also which LLMs are the most effective at accomplishing.

Re: My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

#118

Post by saulpw »

switchbak wrote: post #19
alfalfasprout wrote: post #6

For a senior engineer, some very odd takes here: "Our ability to zoom in and implement code is now obsolete Even with SOTA LLMs like Opus 4.5 this is downright untrue. Many, many logical, strategic, architectural, and low level code mistakes are still happening. And given context window limitations of LLMs (even with hacks like subagents to work around this) big picture long-term thinking about code design, structure…

> Our ability to zoom in and implement code is now obsolete Even with SOTA LLMs like Opus 4.5 this is downright untrue. Many, many logical, strategic, architectural, and low level code mistakes are still happening. And given context window limitations of LLMs (even with hacks like subagents to work around this) big picture long-term thinking about code design, structure, extensibility, etc. is very tricky to do right…

One of the things about "math" is how theorems need to be proven to work for all numbers. I remember reading a thought experiment decades ago about an alien mathematics which didn't prove a theorem formally but would consider it proven if it worked for all numbers up to some really large number. Perhaps even just some large number of spot checks. And statistically maybe that's a functional approach?

And that's what it feels like now. We have the "old school" developers who consider CS to be equivalent to math, and we have these other people like you mention who are happy if the code seems to work 'enough'. "Hackers" have been around for decades but in order to get anything real done, they generally had to be smart enough to understand the code themselves. Now we're seeing the rise of the unskilled hacker, thanks to AI...is this creating the next generation of script kiddies?

Re: My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

#119

Post by beej71 »

>>I get it, you’re too good to vibe code. You’re a senior developer who has been doing this for 20 years and knows the system like the back of your hand.

>> [...]

>>No, you’re not too good to vibe code. In fact, you’re the only person who should be vibe coding.

All we have to do is produce more devs with 20 years of experience and we'll be set. :)

Re: My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

#120

Post by [deleted] »

emseetech wrote: post #15
CharlesW wrote: post #5

I get vibe-coders not having a good experience once the honeymoon is over. But I'm fascinated that a professional software developer could have such a different experience than I do. • LLMs generate junk • LLMs generate a lot of junk

My question is why use AI to output javascript or python? Why not output everything in C and ASM for 500x performance? Why use high level languages meant to be easier for humans? Why not go right to the metal? If anyone's ever tried this, it's clear why: AI is terrible at C and ASM. But that cuts into what AI is at its core: It's not actual programming, it's mechanical reproduction. Which means its incapabilities in…

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