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AI is making me dumb

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Re: AI is making me dumb

#141

Post by tombert »

riazrizvi wrote: post #124
tombert wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When it was just ChatGPT, I actually really enjoyed it. I still had to do a lot of the work, but I could use ChatGPT to explain arcane logs and help me diagnose errors. It didn't feel like babysitting interns, it felt more like "smarter google".

Codex and Claude have been a bit soul sucking. I feel like I'm doing less of the planning and the like. I acknowledge that most code that makes it into production doesn't have to be amazing, but I would still take some level of pride when I would figure out an interesting optimization, even for a simple CRUD app, and now I am somewhat deprived of that kind of stuff.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#142

Post by promptunit »

stolen_biscuit wrote: post #54
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…

Fully agree. I supplement my game development with AI. Anything novel or interesting I want to do, I need to write the code for myself, otherwise I'm in for a world of hurt. But for the drudgery work that is necessary to invest a lot of time in but boring to actually write, I design a clear architecture and ask AI to do the implementation leg-work. And still you have to go back over and make sure it didn't decide to…

[flagged]

Re: AI is making me dumb

#143

Post by svachalek »

steezeburger wrote: post #18
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…

Experience is so so valuable right now. We can guide these agents super well, but I do fear for the juniors as you said. I would like to think I'd use the agents to dive deeper and learn faster. It was pretty rough piecing together solutions from Stack Overflow, various irc channels, Reddit, etc. But also, I cheated on my homework in college and didn't really review the answers, so not sure. Though I pursued programm…

When the chainsaw fails the juniors, they're going to be adding wood chippers and stump grinders. The seniors are going to be out there chipping artisanal wood blocks with a hatchet. You don't need a lot of history to see who you really need to be worried about.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#144

Post by sarreph »

steezeburger wrote: post #18
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…

Experience is so so valuable right now. We can guide these agents super well, but I do fear for the juniors as you said. I would like to think I'd use the agents to dive deeper and learn faster. It was pretty rough piecing together solutions from Stack Overflow, various irc channels, Reddit, etc. But also, I cheated on my homework in college and didn't really review the answers, so not sure. Though I pursued programm…

I think this is one of the key takes right now. I too have similar experience.

Which way is it going to go?

i) “Seniors” also get superseded by even more capable models that can do all of the things which currently require experience.

ii) Linguistics become the new higher order abstraction (English is the new high-level programming language) _but_ there are different / orthogonal ways of approaching software development than the way we do things now — which “juniors” become more adept at more quickly.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#145

Post by nomel »

steezeburger wrote: post #18
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…

Experience is so so valuable right now. We can guide these agents super well, but I do fear for the juniors as you said. I would like to think I'd use the agents to dive deeper and learn faster. It was pretty rough piecing together solutions from Stack Overflow, various irc channels, Reddit, etc. But also, I cheated on my homework in college and didn't really review the answers, so not sure. Though I pursued programm…

> Experience is so so valuable right now.

And probably the least valued it has ever been.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#146

Post by gralab »

We need to separate our emotions from these things. I understand why people don't like AI, or are fearful of it, but we need to have good faith arguments about it. Not this. These articles are just cope.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#147

Post by projektfu »

It is making me feel less dumb when I use it to get Linux admin things done because 1) it gets it wrong and I have to help it and 2) even though I would have gotten frustrated and given up without AI it shows me that Linux has gotten way out of hand for administration. Wheels have been reinvented and conventions have been changed for no good reason, or because of https://xkcd.com/927/

Re: AI is making me dumb

#148

Post by dualvariable »

randusername wrote: post #112
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…

I really enjoy having the AI write the spec then I write the code. Reviewing code is pain, reviewing requirements and giving feedback feels more productive. I have to confront the full shape of the problem and I usually discover a few cans of worms that make me rethink my approach.

Yeah, I'll talk out design with AI in a brainstorming session.

Then I'll usually go and implement at least one piece of that. If I get stuck, I'll ask for some help. Then, once I'm happy with it, I'll ask the AI to review what I came up with. Then typically ask it to stamp the pattern around the codebase. And often to just iterate through writing out unit tests.

So I just did this for getting dense output from interpolants for an ODE integrator that I maintain. I did the work to make Tsit5 work by hand. I asked AI to stamp out the same pattern for DP5 and BS3, because it was just gene splicing those changes into a very similar RK integrator. I can review the diffs and see that it faithfully stamped out the same pattern with two prompts and a couple of minutes.

I'm still maintaining pretty strong contact with the codebase by doing a lot of my own programming, and fighting with the design while I'm writing that first piece of it, but then I use the AI to stamp out the mindlessly repetitive stuff.

That just seemed like the obvious way to me to go about programming with AI rather than pure-vibecoding and never touching anything other than prompts.

Also, you probably run out of tokens a lot faster if you're pure-vibecoding.

Plus you should spend some time debugging your own code. Even if AI could find and fix a bug in a minute or three that would take you 20 minutes, it is generally going to be better for you to burn that 20 minutes on trying to fix it before asking for help.

Of course, unlike another poster in this comment thread, I never cheated in college and spent a lot of time on "academic" side projects that weren't part of any course I was taking.

Once the vibecoders and cheats are done spamming a billion lines of AI generated code into industry, there's probably going to be positions for people who can (with AI assistance) sort out the mess and get production stable again.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#150

Post by xiaoyu2006 »

throw4847285 wrote: post #138

We talk a lot about the risks of AI in schools, but those same risks apply in any learning environment. I recently started a new job and I find that AI is making it so much harder for me to onboard. I am adjusting to my role much slower than my peers who are using AI less. I am coding in a language I am unfamiliar with, which makes the lure of vibe coding stronger. I am at least skilled enough to recognize when Claud…

It is the worst time for the apprenticeship system (internship). everyone expect you to ship fast and good with ai, but you can barely have the time to pick up any skills during the fast iteration.
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