Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

koshyjohn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 656 posts

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#121

Post by guelo »

heipei wrote: post #72
torben-friis wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The huge difference is that we don't know the cost we're going to end up with. Will you have AI at the cost of a slack subscription? At the cost of a teammate? Will it not be available and you'll have to hire anthropic workers with AI access?

Local AI models are already more than capable enough writing code that surpasses the ability of any bad or even mediocre engineer. That is not something we need to worry about. In a way, this is less of a cost issue than the fact that some/many engineers do not seem to be willing or able to host things themselves anymore and will happily outsource every part of their stack to managed services, be it CDN, hosting, dat…

Thank goodness for China or Silicon Valley capitalists would be locking us down into an unimaginably awful dystopia. Though they're not done trying.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#122

Post by Pannoniae »

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.

Look at the comments about MSVC removing inline assembly as a supported feature for a counterexample. :D

(A competent assembly programmer can go miles around a competent high-level programmer, that's still true in 2026...)

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#123

Post by bla3 »

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…

> "can't make 9 babies in a month"

It's "9 women can't make a baby in one month".

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#124

Post by embedding-shape »

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…

How about "Intelligence amplification, not artificial intelligence"?

Also could be shortened to "IA, not AI", and gets even more fun when you translate it to Spanish: "AI, no IA".

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#125

Post by embedding-shape »

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.

> couldn't work

"Couldn't", or "wouldn't"? Early in my career I'd be happy doing anything basically, not much I "couldn't" do, given enough time. But nowadays, there is a long list of things I wouldn't do, even if I know I could, just because it's not fun.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#126

Post by staticshock »

bla3 wrote: post #123
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…

> "can't make 9 babies in a month" It's "9 women can't make a baby in one month".

Hah, right, I mixed it up!

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#128

Post by keeda »

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.

> ... nobody in the field of "Software Engineering" is actually an Engineer if we go by a strict definitions.

This is a pet peeve of mine, so while I understand what you mean, I will challenge you to come up with a strict definition that excludes software engineering!

And since I've had this discussion before, I'll pre-emptively hazard a guess that the argument boils down to "rigor", and point out that a) economic feasibility is a key part of engineering, b) the level of rigor applied to any project is a function of economics, and c) the economics of software projects is a very wide range.

Put another way, statistically most devs work on projects where the blast radius of failure is some minor inconvenience to like, 5 users. We really don't need rigor there, so I can see where you're coming from. But on the other extreme like aviation software, an appropriately extreme level of rigor is applied.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#129

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #92
Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i think you accidentally overlooked accredited engineers who happen to be writing software

Of course there are engineers who write software, I'm just speaking about the majority of roles where thats not the case.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#130

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN