121–130 of 145 posts
"I'm not going to use this technology that obviously enhances my productivity because ." I think a lot of people have forgotten why we actually get paid to write code. The person who wants an automated billing system doesn't care if you hand-typed it or not, or if the CSS that would have taken 2 hours to write took 8 seconds via an AI plus 60 seconds of you tweaking a border you didn't like. They just want their bill…
[flagged]
"I'm not going to use this technology that obviously enhances my productivity because ." I think a lot of people have forgotten why we actually get paid to write code. The person who wants an automated billing system doesn't care if you hand-typed it or not, or if the CSS that would have taken 2 hours to write took 8 seconds via an AI plus 60 seconds of you tweaking a border you didn't like. They just want their bill…
Customer doesn’t give a fuck how long a billing system took to make, they only care that it works correctly. A billing system only truly gets built once, then possibly maintained in perpetuity. This makes the advantage of building it 20x times faster pointless. AI builds it in a day, will it matter 5 years from now if that billing system was instead built by hand in 20 days a long time ago? No. The speed advantage of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every billing system in use is constantly maintained with new features, bug fixes ane the like. The system of 20 years ago would apply the wrong tax laws today. the people asking for the new feature today care about how easy those are to add
I think adding new features is exactly the sort of place where AI is terrible, at least after you do it for a while. I think it's going to have a tendency to regenerate the whole function(s), but it's not deterministic. Plus, as others have said, the code isn't clean. So you're going to get accretions of messy code, the actual implementation of which will change around each time it gets generated. Anything not clearl…
Skill issue. If you just one-shot everything, sure, you'll get a messy codebase. But if you just manage it like a talented junior dev, review the code, provide feedback, and iterate, you get very clean code. Minus the arguing you get from some OCD moron human who is attached to their weird line length formatting quirk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think adding new features is exactly the sort of place where AI is terrible, at least after you do it for a while. I think it's going to have a tendency to regenerate the whole function(s), but it's not deterministic. Plus, as others have said, the code isn't clean. So you're going to get accretions of messy code, the actual implementation of which will change around each time it gets generated. Anything not clearl…
That is why I understand everything before I commit. Ai can write a lot of bad code - but an expert can guide it to good code.
While I applaud her and wish her well — writing like this reminds me of a couple of things. First my aging father insisting on navigating using his unfortunately fading memory instead of Google maps. Some people just won’t pick up technology out of habit or spite, even if it hinders them. Second, a quote I read here that I’ll paraphrase “you can be the best marathon runner in the world and still lose a race to a guy…
> Know the race you’re racing This is the KEY difference between people who are willing to adopt this technology and those who aren't. If you are able to view your job as simply a pursuit of a craft, more power to you. The reality is likely that over time your employer will realize you are slower than every other engineer, and that your enjoyment of the craft is actually just you being an old slow developer. The "rac…
> I don’t want to feel this kind of “addiction.” Getting a feeling of "wanting to keep going" with something does not automatically make it an "addiction". > I don’t want to depend on something doing the work I earn money with. A tale as old as time, and a valid feeling, though not particularly helpful to dwell on since the technology will never go away and never get worse than it is right now. > I don’t want to give…
Doubt. When the money dries up, there won't be many people who will care enough to learn and discuss computer science or whatever else. The AI already knows all of it and people will absolutely be satisfied by that.
> I don’t want to feel this kind of “addiction.” > I don’t want to depend on something doing the work I earn money with. > I don’t want to give up my brain and become lazy and not think for myself anymore. There are a lot of good reasons we should be skeptical of AI and not give up on essential skills. But sometimes I want to shake these people by the shoulders. Do you drive an automatic car? Do you use a microwave?…
Douglas Adams really put it best: > “I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies,” writes Douglas Adams in The Salmon of Doubt. > 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. > 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can proba…
Reposting a comment (and one of the replies) since it's relevant: --- It occurred to me on my walk today that a program is not the only output of programming. The other, arguably far more important output, is the programmer. The mental model that you, the programmer, build by writing the program. And -- here's the million dollar question -- can we get away with removing our hands from the equation? You may know that…
Everyone fools themselves into thinking that they understand but the illusion immediately falls apart when they try to write it down. The problem with LLM is that it is actually able to produce something that "works". But more often that not, what it produces is usually beyond what the author actually understand.
Arguably, one could ask "Why does it matter?" If there are enough tests and monitoring to capture the behavior of the program, who cares how it is implemented? To me this is extremely disappointing. I have always wanted to write software that lasts for a century but if software becomes a commodity, I see software quality mattering less and less.
If something is broken, just ask the LLM to patch it. Unlike a human, there is no limit to this. The LLM will happily fix that 50 years old Fortran code that no one understand. There is a lot less pressure to rethink at the fundamental principles.
The sheer selective blindness is mind boggling. I get so sick of seeing this virtue signalling.
> I don’t want to feel this kind of “addiction.” > I don’t want to depend on something doing the work I earn money with. > I don’t want to give up my brain and become lazy and not think for myself anymore. There are a lot of good reasons we should be skeptical of AI and not give up on essential skills. But sometimes I want to shake these people by the shoulders. Do you drive an automatic car? Do you use a microwave?…
Agreed, this is the aspect of the AI criticism I find strange too. We should want to be targeted in how we use it, just as how a practical fusion reactor wouldn't replace solar in every situation. Not reject it outright. We should be using these capabilities to allow ourselves to work on harder problems. In science, there are a lot of tasks that require a low, but non-zero amount of intelligence and aren't really the…
Yes, people should do those things but we also know that's not what's going to happen to the average developer or the public in general. We are already seeing AI generated nonsense PRs, AI cheating on homework and interviews, AI generated documents and emails containing hallucinations, etc. that points toward a future where people abdicate reasoning and critical thinking instead.