The hidden cost of AI coding

> a far higher intensity

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. The code that I've gotten is riddled with mistakes and fabrications. If I were to use it directly, it would significantly slow my pace. Likewise, when I use LLMs to offer alternative methods to accomplish something, I have to take the time to sit down and understand what they're proposing, how to actually make it work, and whether that route(s) would be better than my original idea. That is a significant speed reduction.

The only way I can imagine LLMs resulting in "far higher intensity" is if I was just yolo'ing the code into my program, and then doing frantic integration, correction, and bugfix work afterwards.

Sure, that's "higher intensity", but that's just working harder and not smarter.

Other people see all that as an means to an end - and find no joy from the technical aspect of creating something. They're more interested in the end result / product, rather than the process itself.

I think that if you're in group A, it can be difficult to understand group B. In vice versa.

I'm a musician, so I love everything about creating music. From the theory, to the mastery of the instrument, the tens of thousands of hours I've poured into it...finally being able to play something I never thought I'd be able to, just by sheer willpower and practice. Coming up with melodies that feel something to me, or I can relate to something.

On the other hand, I know people that want to jump straight to the end result. They have some melody or idea in their head, and they just want to generate some song that revolves around that idea.

I don't really look down on those people, even though the snobs might argue that they're not "real musicians". I don't understand them, but that's not really something I have to understand either.

So I think there are a lot of devs these days, that have been honing their skills and love for the craft for years, that don't understand why people just want things to be generated, with no effort.

Haven't much used AI to assist. After all, hard enough finding authentic humans capable and willing to voluntarily review/critique one's code. So far AI doesn't consistently provide that kind of help. OTOH seems almost certain over time AI systems will improve in terms of specific and comprehensive "insights" into the particular types of code one is writing.

I think an issue is that human creativity is hard to measure. Likely enough AI is even tougher to assess. Probably AI will increasingly be assigned tasks like constructing project skeletons, assuring parts can be joined together without undue strain, handling "boilerplate" and other routine chores. To be sure the landscape will look different in 50 years, I'm certain we'd be amazed were we able to see what future systems will be doing.

In any case, we shouldn't hesitate to use tools that genuinely boost our creativity. One badly needed role would be enabling development of higher reliability software. Still that's a far cry from the contributions emanating from the best of human originality, talent and motivation.

(And I don't enjoy the value judgement)