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The first 40 months of the AI era

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Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#111

Post by brabel »

SloppyDrive wrote: post #60

The biggest positive I have seen is not so much in the new tools, but in new ways to convince the higher ups to do sensible things. We always find that small teams of locals can do much much more than a team with an unlimited number of low cost "developers". Not just because the competence of low cost devs is poor, but also the structure of how you work changes for the worse with a bigger team, for the worse with a d…

You are confusing low cost with low competence. Some developers in India and Brazil cost a fourth of an American one but may be just as competent. Yes, the average is lower because of the lower barrier to entry and differences in cultural practices, but you really should separate cost and competency. You can hire some grifter who is quite expensive compared to a super developer from India just because they live in California.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#112

Post by mettamage »

theteapot wrote: post #35

> While I’m certain that this technology is producing some productivity improvements, I’m still genuinely (and frustratingly) unsure just how much of an improvement it is actually creating. I often wonder how much more productive I'd be if just a fraction the effort and money poured into LLMs was spent on better API documentation and conventional coding tools. A lot of the time, I'm resorting to using an AI because I…

Can’t you make the LLM write API documentation?

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#113

Post by brabel »

heavyset_go wrote: post #33
tkgally wrote: post #18

Nice observation about AI-generated content: > I’ve had the idea that from a social perspective it’d be regarded like plastic surgery, in that it only looks weird when its over-done, or done badly.

An important aspect of comparison is that nobody is going to tell you that your surgery is noticeable or looks bad. Your friends, family, partners, coworkers, aren't going to say anything, neither are people you meet casually, certainly not service workers, strangers aren't going to pull you aside to tell you the truth about your nose job, etc. I hope the same social taboo doesn't transfer over to AI content. We shou…

> An important aspect of comparison is that nobody is going to tell you that your surgery is noticeable or looks bad.

Just post a picture on the internet and let strangers comment. You will absolutely get honest feedback, but you probably don’t really want that. TBH same with code and ideas, given the reception my articles have had over the years on HN and Reddit. Can be brutal.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#114

Post by SloppyDrive »

dyauspitr wrote: post #108
SloppyDrive wrote: post #60

The biggest positive I have seen is not so much in the new tools, but in new ways to convince the higher ups to do sensible things. We always find that small teams of locals can do much much more than a team with an unlimited number of low cost "developers". Not just because the competence of low cost devs is poor, but also the structure of how you work changes for the worse with a bigger team, for the worse with a d…

But 3 Indians + AI means they don’t need any of you at all. This won’t go well in the long run.

Perhaps in the long run there will be very few developers globally; but in the short term, I see less and less use for the whole idea of low-cost outsourcing.

The historical value of a low cost region is get crap work for few dollars. "Just barely good enough". AI can do this by itself.

If you add AI to poor work, you get more extremely shit work for less dollars. If you add AI to a skilled worker you get a large volume of OK to poor work.

Basically my suspicion is as the tools improve they make low skill regions obsolete first.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#115

Post by Amekedl »

I worry about just becoming a product user.

Some people push Claude and Claude Code at work, weights are closed, even Claude Code is completely closed and proprietary.

If terms, which Anthropic controls, ever change, all work and time spent on these products will be for naught.

No, I don’t think any skills or knowledge is acquired by the use of these tools can be reliably translated to another tool / model.

Hence I firmly think it’s utter nonsense rubbish to engage with that, and even Qwen3.5-Coder-Next plus OpenCode spits out working apps.

Really, do better product users.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#116

Post by SloppyDrive »

brabel wrote: post #111
SloppyDrive wrote: post #60

The biggest positive I have seen is not so much in the new tools, but in new ways to convince the higher ups to do sensible things. We always find that small teams of locals can do much much more than a team with an unlimited number of low cost "developers". Not just because the competence of low cost devs is poor, but also the structure of how you work changes for the worse with a bigger team, for the worse with a d…

You are confusing low cost with low competence. Some developers in India and Brazil cost a fourth of an American one but may be just as competent. Yes, the average is lower because of the lower barrier to entry and differences in cultural practices, but you really should separate cost and competency. You can hire some grifter who is quite expensive compared to a super developer from India just because they live in Ca…

Ive been doing this for a while, and seen many people try; the success ratio is so low that I consider it a fools errand.

There are many reasons why; but simply there is no surplus of super developers anywhere; you might find one anywhere, but they will not stay low cost for very long... And if you try to structure your business to find any number of employees overseas you quickly become overwhelmed by the averages and cultural practices of an area.

I fully believe its possible to find a single competent Brazilian or Indian for cheaper than in the west, but I dont think its possible to structure a company in a way that you can hire 20.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#117

Post by 3abiton »

skydhash wrote: post #61
3abiton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you mention that. The only difference is sometimes you need a functionality without doing the plumbing. At the end of the day if you're getting the output you need, the process doesn't matter. It's an interesting analogy but only works if the inspector is another expert dev.

When I have such moment and I take a step back, there’s usually a strong hint that there’s a meta problem behind those instances. And while you have to chose when to take the time to solve such problem, it’s usually worth it.

I wish I could always take the time to do things right, but in reality, time is extremely scarce resource. It's when these AI agent help the most.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#118

Post by cyk21 »

gobdovan wrote: post #90
scared_together wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've turned 12 minute videos back into the 5 phrases news it was based on. Why not read the original news? Okay, there are many reasons why you might not want to do that, such as ads, tracking, having to pay for a subscription if you only want one article, and just plain boredom. I wasn't trying to call you out, it was more of a question for society at large. Why has it become more appealing to have a "content crea…

It's not that it's appealing. For example, I wanted to learn how to bend notes on harmonica, but it wasn't working. That's not something you can really understand without video, yet most tutorials are 5-15 minutes long and only show the actual technique at some random point in ~30 seconds (just search 'how to bend on harmonica' and see). So I take the transcript t check whether it's a method I've already tried or som…

Exactly. Those tutorial videos are fine if you are completely new to a topic, but if you are searching for something more advanced, then getting through all those introductory videos or those pretending to be advanced is so frustrating.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#119

Post by Bombthecat »

conception wrote: post #76
skydhash wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they shipped anything that people are using? The concerns are different and creating something usable by people is why software engineering exists.

I think that’s where software engineering is not quite getting what’s happening right now. People keep asking where are the apps?where all this great code? And the answer is becoming that people aren’t building apps to sell to other people. They’re building the apps that they themselves want to use. I’ve made dozens of apps that I have no interest in distributing or using outside of friends and family. The AI coding…

Yup, users? One, me

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#120

Post by Bombthecat »

senfiaj wrote: post #62
deadbabe wrote: post #59

The stupid thing is that instead of using AI to give ourselves 1 hour work days, we’re just cramming more work into the same amount of time we’ve always worked.

Yeah, I think this is always the case. We get more powerful tools that do the same thing in 5th amount of time, now we are asked to do 5x more. Capitlalism.

Without this, we wouldn't had bigger apartments, houses etc.
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