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AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

koshyjohn.com

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Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#111

Post by p_stuart82 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #76

I think AI can generally be utilized in two ways: 1) you use it to help write code that you still “own” and fully understand. 2) you use it as an abstraction layer to write and maintain the code for you. The code becomes a compile target in a sense. You would feel like it’s someone else’s code if you were asked to make changes without AI. I think 2) is fine for things like prototypes, examples, references. Things tha…

the thing is it doesn't even feel like mortgaging. shipping, features going out, everything looks fine. then something breaks and you realize you can't debug your own code without asking the model again.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#112

Post by ares623 »

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #24

There are plenty of engineers that couldn't work without a modern IDE or in languages without memory management. Or without the ability to use a library from GitHub / their package manager. It doesn't feel THAT much different to me. "Engineer" as a term might drift. There are "web developers" that can only use webflow / wordpress.

"What kind of engineer are you" - Jesse Plemons wearing bright-red sunglasses

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#113

Post by lkmill »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #55
jasonjmcghee wrote: post #24

There are plenty of engineers that couldn't work without a modern IDE or in languages without memory management. Or without the ability to use a library from GitHub / their package manager. It doesn't feel THAT much different to me. "Engineer" as a term might drift. There are "web developers" that can only use webflow / wordpress.

Engineer as a term has already drifted vastly since nobody in the field of "Software Engineering" is actually an Engineer if we go by a strict definitions. Engineers are accredited and in some countries even come with a title.

as an actual engineer i just feel sad. i should probably feel happy but i like solving problems. fml i have becomea luddite.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#114

Post by fermatf »

For couple of last weeks, I use AI to speedup my thinking process. Instead of think about something to come up to conclusion, I let AI brainstorm for me and then select. Not for everything, but I found it faster with AI. Having taste on select the ai output is important though.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#115

Post by ctvdev »

staticshock wrote: post #66

The eloquence with which this point gets (repeatedly) made is continuing to improve each next time I read it. However, I still feel like we haven't nailed it. That is, we are not yet at the "aphorism" stage of the discourse (e.g. "the medium is the message", "you ship your org chart", "9 mothers can't make a baby in a month"), in which the most pointed version of this critique packs a punch in just a few words that r…

> That is, we are not yet at the "aphorism" stage of the discourse

we learn by doing

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#116

Post by ares623 »

andsoitis wrote: post #21
orblivion wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compilers are a layer of abstraction that we can ask another human about. Some human is there taking care of it. Until we get to the point where we trust AI with our survival it would be good to be able to audit the entire stack.

any human can read the code an AI produces.

here's a tip, it would really help if you put yourself into a Ralph loop before posting comments.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#117

Post by lsy »

xnx wrote: post #75
staticshock wrote: post #66

The eloquence with which this point gets (repeatedly) made is continuing to improve each next time I read it. However, I still feel like we haven't nailed it. That is, we are not yet at the "aphorism" stage of the discourse (e.g. "the medium is the message", "you ship your org chart", "9 mothers can't make a baby in a month"), in which the most pointed version of this critique packs a punch in just a few words that r…

This concept won't reach that point because when you chisel too hard it crumbles. There are countless lower level tasks that typical programmers no longer learn how to do. Our capacity for knowledge is not unlimited so we offload everything we can to move to the next level of abstraction.

AI coding isn’t an abstraction, though. You can’t treat a prompt like source code because it will give you a different output every time you use it. An abstraction lets you offload cognitive capacity while retaining knowledge of “what you are doing”. With AI coding either you need to carefully review outputs and you aren’t saving any cognitive capacity, or you aren’t looking at the outputs and don’t know what you’re doing, in a very literal sense.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#118

Post by kimixa »

sheepscreek wrote: post #6

AI is creating problems. This isn’t one of them. Engineers are going to now think at a higher level of abstraction. No one misses coding in assembly.

I suspect there are at least as many programmers working as the ASM level today than there ever was - they're a lower proportion, but the total number of programmers has increased dramatically.

I wonder if this sort of trend will continue?

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#119

Post by cyberpunk »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #106
cyberpunk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of a weird place to be in as a senior engineer who has spent 2 decades perfecting his craft. So, on one hand, I'm also kinda sad and how quickly we've thrown the guardrails away, but on the other -- it's... Well. It's just work. Turns out, no one ever really cared how elegant or robust our code was and how clever we were to think up some design or other, or that we had an eye on the future; just that it wo…

Yeah, but the thing is, it's not "just work". Software now has really big impact on the world and actual lives. In a corporate world, we are typically detached from real world consequences and looking at people around me, people really don't think about such things - but I do. And I really care, because "relaxed" standards might result in errors that amount to stuff like identity thefts, or stolen money, shit like th…

Yeah that's a tough spot to be in; I think though, your responsibility really ends with you at work, unless you're very high up on the management chain.

Keep it simple right; in everything you do, make things a bit better than you found them. It's enough. You're never going to win the fight to get everyone (or maybe even ANYONE depending how messed up your org is) to care; so why lose sleep on things you can't change?

At least, that's what I started doing some years ago by now having lost lots of those fights, and I'm sleeping fine again.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#120

Post by ipython »

ctvdev wrote: post #115
staticshock wrote: post #66

The eloquence with which this point gets (repeatedly) made is continuing to improve each next time I read it. However, I still feel like we haven't nailed it. That is, we are not yet at the "aphorism" stage of the discourse (e.g. "the medium is the message", "you ship your org chart", "9 mothers can't make a baby in a month"), in which the most pointed version of this critique packs a punch in just a few words that r…

> That is, we are not yet at the "aphorism" stage of the discourse we learn by doing

I’ve also seen along those lines “there is no compression algorithm for experience” - a nice summary of the hn posts from today.
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