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AI is making me dumb

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Re: AI is making me dumb

#121

Post by wahnfrieden »

embedding-shape wrote: post #106
wahnfrieden wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tasks where it is appropriate to vibe code

Agreed, whenever you're 99% sure you'll throw away the code afterwards.

Internal/personal tooling, marketing automations, etc. tend to afford it without needing to throw it out after. These are also cases where you can simply rewrite later without having to address a mountain of debt.

If you do this work for a wage and are nearly fully alienated from the value of your labor, I understand the distaste for applying it in any circumstance. You'll care more for your personal experience of the work: how informed you appear when reporting on it to your colleagues, how your boss/colleagues will judge you when an issue arises, how much you feel you are learning from the work, how frustrating it feels to return to items at the behest of others, etc. Vibe coding in these circumstances is unpleasant.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#122

Post by Bolwin »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #58
comrade1234 wrote: post #22

For my current project I'm coding every day in Java, ruby, and JavaScript. I waste a lot of tokens doing what used to be simple google searches for language differences since I mix up things like the null-safe operator ruby vs jscript or what is the continue/break statement in ruby vs java. I think Claude is probably very disappointed in me that the most complicated thing I use it for is refactoring old Java loops to…

It doesn’t help that Google has gone to shit though, and what used to be a simple Google search is now an enshittified embedded experience with an AI anyway.

No one's forcing you to use Google. I've found Kagi to be pretty good

Re: AI is making me dumb

#123

Post by gavinh »

When I work with Claude to plan a feature and then review Claude's implementation, I don't understand the feature as well those I developed without AI assistance. I don't recall details of the feature's behavior as well, even days later. I suspect that this is not surprising to anyone who has studied pedagogy. I've been working on applying some exercises during code review (including self-review of my own AI-assisted code) to improve comprehension and recall (https://bridgekeeper.io/). If this problem resonates with you, I would like to talk.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#124

Post by riazrizvi »

tombert wrote: post #67
riazrizvi wrote: post #40

It converts ICs into project managers, by default. I've been wrestling with this issue for a year.

Yeah, I've felt like it has converted my job from "writing software" to "babysitting interns". There are things that I think are very cool; there are lots of projects that I've sort of wanted to do for the last decade that I have pushed off because they're reasonably high effort and I don't want them that much, so being able to have a pretend intern write it for me has been great. On the other hand, I do think that u…

I'm convinced Claude Code and Codex are not the future. The cap seems to be a 3-500 line file so I just use ChatGPT and/or my own front end to APIs on OpenAI and others including local. Much beyond that it will not do what I want. Too many expert details to get right.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#125

Post by pmg101 »

lacedeconstruct wrote: post #83
syl5x wrote: post #55

I feel that few will have the privilege to have the time to write code by hand. And let's actually see what we are actually writing, most of the time for me its nothing novel, nothing fancy its the same old create a backend for X, fix some simple bug and stuff that are trivial for a mid-senior programmer. The harder tasks are mostly (again for us) architectural decision over the code and I am even thinking of how we…

It was a never a velocity problem though, rapid progress comes mainly from designing better systems and building tight abstractions not by writing using the same primitives faster

That certainly used to be the case.

Do you think that in 2026 maybe rapid progress can also come from using the same primitives faster?

I'm still figuring this out but I'm certainly open to the possibility.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#126

Post by thisisthenewme »

As a developer, I kind of feel like this all smells like job security.

After using LLMs for a while, I have to admit it's pretty nice, and I like using it. I've been vibecoding a few apps, and it's a good dopamine hit to immediately see your ideas come to life. However, based on my experience, it will bite you if you trust it blindly. Even in my vibecoded projects, it keeps adding "features" without me asking for them. Since they're just pet projects, I don’t really care as long as the end result is what I'm expecting, but I don’t think companies will be as flexible. I also don't think customers would like it if features changed or got added with every new fix or update.

So this could go in a bunch of different directions from here, but to summarize the current situation:

    A lot of companies are heading in this direction.
    Without proper engineering, AI will easily write more code and potentially change the application unintentionally.
    We will have fewer junior engineers entering the market because of fear around AI and reduced hiring.
    AI usage will hit a critical point where it is making massive amounts of changes, and the people "prompting" it might start getting overwhelmed.
    We will end up with more features that people have to keep in their heads. I don’t think we can trust LLMs 100%, and because of that, developers will still need to know exactly what the application does.
    Eventually, there will be a lot of bugs, and developers will complain that we need additional human resources.
    Hiring starts again.
I think, right now, the toughest position is for new developers, and the best position is for people already in the market.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#127

Post by photochemsyn »

Aggressively red-teaming your own work with LLMs is a good habit to get into. Prompts like “I’ve been told me to find the flaws in this argument/presentation/code file/etc.”. Doesn’t save any time, but is pretty educational, as long as you go back and forth a lot. It can fall into a style disagreement loop between two equivalent code blocks as it will try to find something wrong if instructed to do so, which is interesting.

If you don’t do this constantly, LLMS can certainly lead you right down the Dunning-Kruger path (though that’s a big oversimplification of a whole collection of psychological features from idee fixe to narcissism to fear of failure/criticism). If you really work at getting the LLM into the proper state it will happily rip your work apart in a rather cruel and indifferent manner, like an unsympathetic corporate gatekeeper who relishes exposing your flaws in a public setting. Debate club is another tactic that’s a bit less harsh, you have the LLM flip back and forth between defense and prosecution of your work.

I think this should be the default setting, but it doesn’t encourage engagement, the average customer will think the LLM is a mean jerk if it starts off like that.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#128

Post by joebates »

ryandrake wrote: post #72
Rooster61 wrote: post #11

I can't relate that much to this. Every time I use AI to write code, I'm constantly fighting a feeling on the back of my neck that I need to look over everything it has done and supplement/alter it with my own code. That ick feeling counteracts the dopamine hit of having a working app after a few minutes of vibe coding, and I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon. That said, I have experience. I could absolu…

In my experience, Claude only knows how to spew code. Every problem you want it to solve, it translates into "more code" rather than "less code". You have to very closely code review everything it does, otherwise your codebase is going to just grow and grow, and asymptotically approach 100% debt. I code review everything that Claude produces, and I'd estimate about 90-95% of the time, my reaction is WOW it works but…

Same. Luckily I enjoy the process of refactoring and deleting code is nearly arousing, so I get the initial dopamine rush of wow this works, followed by the dopamine rush of "wow now this is cleaner and works so much better". Keeps me in touch with the codebase too.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#129

Post by AlecSchueler »

dogleash wrote: post #109
AlecSchueler wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you have the kind of life where you were never really challenged to build that skillset, Do you really think phrasing a question like this will ever induce a productive response?

I guess I could have phrased it better, but at some point I'm asking about weak self control vs if the drug is that strong. The life experience thing was meant as laying down a facesaving reason that it's OK to say your willpower sucks. You just weren't forced to cultivate it. Plenty of reasons that can happen in life. I think it's pretty normal to be able to reflect on the difference in life skills between myself an…

I understand what you're asking and why, but the phrasing reads very dismissively and that's what I was asking about. Generally a friendly tone will get you a lot further.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#130

Post by ge96 »

skeptic_ai wrote: post #88
ge96 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair seems it was my vpn As far as the topic on hand, I work with someone whenever you ask them a question they say "AI says..." I'm not a big fan of that.

If you have checked your AI would have said is not the cert

Possible?

AI would have to know I have a VPN active

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