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Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
181–190 of 1001 posts
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#182Don't fall into the "Look ma, no hands" hype. Antirez + LLM + CFO = Billion Dollar Redis company, quite plausibly. /However/ ... As for the delta provided by an LLM to Antirez, outside of Redis (and outside of any problem space he is already intimately familiar with), an Apples to Apples comparison would be he trying this on an equally complex codebase he has no idea about. I'll bet... what Antirez can do with Redis…
if you are very high up the chain like Linus, i think doing vibe coding gives you more feedback than any average dev. So they are having a positive feedback loop. For most of us vibe coding gives 0 advantage. Our software will just sit there and get no views and producing it faster means nothing. In fact, it just scares us that some exec is gonna look at this and write us for low performance because they saw someone…
Except that Linus does basically zero programming these days. He's a manager, combining code from the subsystem managers below him into a final release.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#183> As a programmer, I want to write more open source than ever, now. I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen. Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? We've already seen some pretty strong evidence of this with Tailwind.
I'm convinced that LLMs results in all software needing to be open source (or at the very least source available). In future everyone will expect to be able to customise an application, if the source is not available they will not chose your application as a base. It's that simple. The future is highly customisable software, and that is best built on open source. How this looks from a business perspective I think we…
I'm convinced of the opposite. I think a lot more software will be closed source so that an LLM cannot reproduce it from its training data for free.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#184> As a programmer, I want to write more open source than ever, now. I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen. Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? We've already seen some pretty strong evidence of this with Tailwind.
Unless I am missing something, it seems that you only need to use something like the following that was (obtained using quick search, haven't tried)
https://archclx.medium.com/enforcing-gpg-encryption-in-githu...
My opinion on the matter is that AI models stealing the open source code would be ok IF the models are also open and remain so, and the services like chatgpt will remain free of cost (at least a free tier), and remain free of ads.
But we all know how it is going to go.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#185These personal blogs are starting to feel like Linkdin Lunatic posts, kinda similar. to the optimised floor sweeping blog, “I am excited to provide shareholder value, at minimum wage”
What does it tell you that programmers with the credibility of antirez - and who do not have an AI product to sell you - are writing things like this even when they know a lot of people aren't going to like reading them?
People higher up the ladder aren't selling anything but they also have to not worry about losing jobs. We are worried that execs are going to see the advances and quickly clear the benches, might not be true but every programmer believing they have become a 10x programmer pushes us more into that reality.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#186What I don't understand about this whole "get on board the AI train or get left behind" narrative, what advantage does an early adopter have for AI tools? The way I see it, I can just start using AI once they get good enough for my type of work. Until then I'm continuing to learn instead of letting my brain atrophy.
This is a pretty common position: "I don't worry about getting left behind - it will only take a few weeks to catch up again". I don't think that's true. I'm really good at getting great results out of coding agents and LLMs. I've also been using LLMs for code on an almost daily basis since ChatGPT's release on November 30th 2022. That's more than three years ago now. Meanwhile I see a constant flow of complaints fro…
> Using this stuff well is a deep topic.
Just like the stuff LLMs are being used for today. Why wouldn't "using LLMs well" be not just one of the many things LLMs will simplify too?
Or do you believe your type of knowledge is somehow special and is resistant to being vastly simplified or even made obsolete by AI?
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#187Don't fall into the "Look ma, no hands" hype. Antirez + LLM + CFO = Billion Dollar Redis company, quite plausibly. /However/ ... As for the delta provided by an LLM to Antirez, outside of Redis (and outside of any problem space he is already intimately familiar with), an Apples to Apples comparison would be he trying this on an equally complex codebase he has no idea about. I'll bet... what Antirez can do with Redis…
Keep believing. To the bitter end. For such human slop codebases AI slop additions will do equally fine. Add good testing and the code might even improve over the garbage that came before.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#188>Yes, maybe you think that you worked so hard to learn coding, and now machines are doing it for you. But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. And now you can build more and better, if you find your way to use AI effectively. The fun is still there, untouched. I wonder if I’m the odd one out or if this is a common sentiment: I don’t give a shit about bu…
Interestingly, I read "I like programming as a puzzle and the ability to understand a complex system." and thought that you were about to argue in favor of AI-assisted programming!
I enjoy those things about programming too, which is why I'm having so much fun using LLMs. They introduce new layers of complex system understanding and problem solving (at that AI meta-layer), and let me dig into and solve harder and more time-consuming problems than I was able to without them.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#189> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…
It's just a reiteration of the age-old conflict in arts: - making art as you thing it should be, but at the risk of it being non-commercial - getting paid for doing commercial/trendy art choose one
With LLMs, if you did the first in the past, then no matter what license you chose, your work is now in the second category, except you don't get a dime.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#190> facts are facts, and AI is going to change programming forever Show me these "facts"
If you can't see this by working with Claude Code for a few weeks, I don't want to go into bigger efforts than writing a blog post to convince you. It's not a mission, mine. I just want to communicate with the part of people that are open enough to challenge their ideas and are willing to touch with their hands what is happening. Also, if you tried and failed, it means that either for your domain AI is not good enoug…
okay, but again: if you say in your blog that those are "facts", then... show us the facts?
You can't just hand-wavily say "a bigger percentage of programmers is using AI with success every day" and not give a link to a study that shows it's true
as a matter of fact, we know that a lot of companies have fired people by pretending that they are no longer needed in the age of AI... only to re-hire offshored people for much cheaper
for now, there hasn't been a documented sudden increase in velocity / robustness for code, a few anecdotical cases sure
I use it myself, and I admit it saves some time to develop some basic stuff and get a few ideas, but so far nothing revolutionary. So let's take it at face value:
- a tech which helps slightly with some tasks (basically "in-painting code" once you defined the "border constraints" sufficiently well)
- a tech which might cause massive disruption of people's livelihoods (and safety) if used incorrectly, which might FAR OUTWEIGH the small benefits and be a good enough reason for people to fight against AI
- a tech which emits CO2, increases inequalities, depends on quasi slave-work of annotators in third-world countries, etc
so you can talk all day long about not dismissing AI, but you should take it also with everything that comes with it