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I am uninstalling AI coding assistants from my personal computer

sam.sutch.net

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: I am uninstalling AI coding assistants from my personal computer

#21
post #13
post #3

> Regardless, the lesson for people like myself is that, in order to feel happy with creating, we have to actually create. An artist would not call their work art if they had little to no role in creating it. Thanks. The author touched something there, close to a truth (or deep belief I got ?) about our life, something about the journey mattering more than the destination...

Good. Enjoy that journey... on your own time. You've been missing your productivity OKRs, and your Claude logs say you haven't been using the tools the company has provided. You're on a PIP: if measurable progress is not seen in 30 days, disciplinary action up to and including termination may be taken.

Claude, write me a macro that will autofelate yourself according to these metrics.

Re: I am uninstalling AI coding assistants from my personal computer

#22

I haven't had nearly the same experience of success with AI. I'm often accused of letting my skepticism hold me back from really trying it properly, and maybe that's true. I certainly could not imagine going months without writing any code, letting the AI just generate it while I prompt My work is pushing these tools hard and it is taking a huge toll on me. I'm constantly hearing how life changing this is, but I cann…

I have a working theory that it's mostly bad programmers who are achieving massive productivity gains. Really good programmers will probably have trouble getting the LLM tools to perform as well as their normal level of output. This could be cope but I don't think it is.

I have seen good programmers, ones I respect a lot, get good results with AI.

I don't think this is it, personally.

Re: I am uninstalling AI coding assistants from my personal computer

#23
post #3

> Regardless, the lesson for people like myself is that, in order to feel happy with creating, we have to actually create. An artist would not call their work art if they had little to no role in creating it. Thanks. The author touched something there, close to a truth (or deep belief I got ?) about our life, something about the journey mattering more than the destination...

I think the author's definition of "creating" is just too narrow. A gardener can get tremendous satisfaction from watching their plants grow from the bed of soil that they prepared, even if there is not as much weeding or watering to do later on in the growth cycle. A parent can get tremendous satisfaction from watching their child continue to grow and develop, even after the child is no longer an infant who requires…

Cue me, cursing the AI with a choice selection of names, when my AI code writer of choice decides to change core files that I had explicitly told it not to touch earlier in the chat.

Guess I will not be a good parent lol.

Re: I am uninstalling AI coding assistants from my personal computer

#24
post #7

I haven't had nearly the same experience of success with AI. I'm often accused of letting my skepticism hold me back from really trying it properly, and maybe that's true. I certainly could not imagine going months without writing any code, letting the AI just generate it while I prompt My work is pushing these tools hard and it is taking a huge toll on me. I'm constantly hearing how life changing this is, but I cann…

And the irony is that those of us using AI to amplify our output to produce at exponential speeds feel like your comments are gaslighting us instead! Ive never seen such an outright divide in practitioners of a technology in terms of perception and outcomes. I got into LLMs super early, using them daily since 2022; so that may have bolstered the way I’ve augmented my approaches and tooling. Now almost everything I bu…

> And the irony is that those of us using AI to amplify our output

I'm guessing you don't care about quality very much, since you are focusing on your output volume

Re: I am uninstalling AI coding assistants from my personal computer

#25

I haven't had nearly the same experience of success with AI. I'm often accused of letting my skepticism hold me back from really trying it properly, and maybe that's true. I certainly could not imagine going months without writing any code, letting the AI just generate it while I prompt My work is pushing these tools hard and it is taking a huge toll on me. I'm constantly hearing how life changing this is, but I cann…

I have a working theory that it's mostly bad programmers who are achieving massive productivity gains. Really good programmers will probably have trouble getting the LLM tools to perform as well as their normal level of output. This could be cope but I don't think it is.

My approach has always been to consult 3 different models to get my understanding on the right path and then do the rest myself. Are we really just doing blind copy pastes? As an example, I recently was able to prototype several different one dimensional computational fluid dynamic GLSL shaders. Claude outputted everything with vec3s, and so the flux math matched what you’d see in the theory. It’s rapid iteration and a declutterred search engine for me with an interactive inline comment section, though I do understand some would disagree that statement, especially since it’s lacking any sort of formal verification. I counter with the old adage that anyone can be a dog on the internet

Re: I am uninstalling AI coding assistants from my personal computer

#26
> I wonder if some “actual" artists (as in, those people who create the kind of art most people would recognize) have gone through a similar arc of realizing the emptiness of creating with AI tools.

My impression is that artists are even more hostile than the most AI-skeptic of software engineers. In large part, this is likely because the economic argument doesn't hold much sway. For the large majority of artists, it's hard for them to make money with art as is, the bottleneck is not the volume of art they can produce. There's a much clearer path to turning "more code" into "more money", even if it's still not direct.

Re: I am uninstalling AI coding assistants from my personal computer

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a working theory that it's mostly bad programmers who are achieving massive productivity gains. Really good programmers will probably have trouble getting the LLM tools to perform as well as their normal level of output. This could be cope but I don't think it is.

My approach has always been to consult 3 different models to get my understanding on the right path and then do the rest myself. Are we really just doing blind copy pastes? As an example, I recently was able to prototype several different one dimensional computational fluid dynamic GLSL shaders. Claude outputted everything with vec3s, and so the flux math matched what you’d see in the theory. It’s rapid iteration and…

> My approach has always been to consult 3 different models to get my understanding on the right path and then do the rest myself. Are we really just doing blind copy pastes

For me, if I spent the time testing 3 different models I would definitely be slower than writing the code myself

Re: I am uninstalling AI coding assistants from my personal computer

#28
post #7

I haven't had nearly the same experience of success with AI. I'm often accused of letting my skepticism hold me back from really trying it properly, and maybe that's true. I certainly could not imagine going months without writing any code, letting the AI just generate it while I prompt My work is pushing these tools hard and it is taking a huge toll on me. I'm constantly hearing how life changing this is, but I cann…

And the irony is that those of us using AI to amplify our output to produce at exponential speeds feel like your comments are gaslighting us instead! Ive never seen such an outright divide in practitioners of a technology in terms of perception and outcomes. I got into LLMs super early, using them daily since 2022; so that may have bolstered the way I’ve augmented my approaches and tooling. Now almost everything I bu…

Maybe I need to watch some videos on YouTube to understand what other people are seeing.

I couldn't even get Zed hooked up to GitHub Copilot. I use ChatGPT for snippets and search and it's okay but I don't want to bother checking its work on a large scale

Re: I am uninstalling AI coding assistants from my personal computer

#30
post #26

> I wonder if some “actual" artists (as in, those people who create the kind of art most people would recognize) have gone through a similar arc of realizing the emptiness of creating with AI tools. My impression is that artists are even more hostile than the most AI-skeptic of software engineers. In large part, this is likely because the economic argument doesn't hold much sway. For the large majority of artists, it…

Perhaps that's why I as a software developer am fully genAI-skeptic…I've always considered myself a multidisciplinary artist and the skill I have in writing code is simply one of the many possible avenues I use to express myself. (Alas, it's the one which produces the most income by far, but that's another conversation!)
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