201–210 of 341 posts
> More time is more tension; more pain is more gain.
While this meta analysis [1] found that:
> Results indicate that hypertrophic outcomes are similar when training with repetition durations ranging from 0.5 to 8s.
Maybe author should have chosen the amount of training resistance for the intro allegory (perceived effort?). This would have made their point just as well.
My current opinion is that AI is just a thing that is going to further amplify our existing tendencies (on a person-to-person basis). I've personally found it to be extremely beneficial in research, learning, and the category of "things that take time because of the stuff you have to mechanically go through and not because of the brainpower involved". I have been able to spend so much more time on things that I feel…
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I don't think that a couple papers counts for much of anything. A couple scientific articles form an opinion about a topic. The evidence shown in those papers are certainly something to think about, but there hasn't been enough time or effort put into the use of understanding how AI technologies aide technical work and the ability to solve more complex problems to make some sort of suggested claim that it is inherent…
Time goes forward, in the future when will you be in a situation you can't access a LLM? Better use LLM as much as possible to learn the skills of controlling agents, scaffolding constrains, docs, breaking problems in such a way that AI can solve them. These are the skills that matter now. We don't practice much using the assembler either, or the slide ruler. I also lost the skill to start an old Renault 12 which I o…
In an interview setting, while in a meeting, if you're idling on a problem while traveling or doing other work, while you are in an area with weak reception, if your phone is dead?
There are plenty of situations where my problem solving does not involve being directly at my work station. I figured out a solution to a recent problem while at the doctor's office and after deciding to check the API docs more closely instead of bashing my head on the compiler.
>We don't practice much using the assembler either, or the slide ruler.
Treating your ability to research and critically think as yet another tool is exactly why I'm pessimistic about the discipline of the populace using AI. These aren't skills you use 9-5 then turn off as you head back home.
The education system is already a relic of the past. All the points mentioned in the article assumes that a classroom full of students writing five-paragraph essays on The Red Badge of Courage in 12-point TNR with one-inch margins, hastily graded by an overworked, underpaid public school teacher is still the best way to teach kids in 2025 about critical thinking. I picture going forward we'll have much more personali…
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> Firstly, we’re making new technologies and APIs that LLMs really struggle LLMs absolutely excel at this task. Source: Me, been doing it since early July with Gemini Pro 2.5 and Claude Opus. So good, in fact, that I have no plans to hire software engineers in the future. (I have hired many over my 25 years developing software.)
So you’ve made a decision based on three months of use. I am legitimately interested in your experience though. What are you creating where you can see the results in that time frame to make entire business decisions like that? I would really like to see those kinds of productivity gains myself.
Separately, I wanted to make some changes to LMDB but the code is so opaque that it's hard to do anything with it (safely).
So I gave the entire codebase to Gemini Pro 2.5 and had it develop a glossary for local variable renames and for structure member renames. I then hand-renamed all of the structures (using my IDE's struct member refactoring tools). Then I gave the local variable glossary and each function to Gemini and had it rewrite the code. Finally, I had a separate Gemini Pro 2.5 context and a Claude Opus context validate that the new code was LOGICALLY IDENTICAL the previous code (i.e. that only local variables were renamed, and that the renaming was consistent).
Most of the time, GPro did the rewrite correctly the first time, but other times, it took 3-4 passes before GPro and Opus agreed. Each time, I simply pasted the feedback from one of the LLMs back into the original context and told it to fix it.
The largest function done this way was ~560 LOC.
Anyway, the entire process took around a day.
However, at one point, GPro reported: "Hey, this code is logically identical BUT THERE IS A SERIOUS BUG." Turns out, it had found the cause of the DUPSORT corruption, without any prompting—all because the code was much cleaner than it was at the start of the day.
That is wild to me! (It actually found another, less important bug too.)
Without LLMs, I would have never even attempted this kind of refactoring. And I certainly wouldn't pay a software engineer to do it.
> What are you creating where you can see the results in that time frame to make entire business decisions like that?
I've developed new libraries (using GPro) that have APIs it can reliably use. What's easy for LLMs can be hard for humans, and what's easy for humans can be hard for LLMs. If you want to use LLMs for coding, it pays to need code they are really good at writing. AI-first development is the big win here.
(This is all in Clojure BTW, which isn't really trained for by vendors. The idea that LLMs are ONLY good at, e.g. Python, is absurd.)
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> However, I think a lot of people lost their ability to think by scrolling social media and that is problematic.
Specifically, most of the billionaires. They’re all deranged lunatics now, between COVID, social media, and being told they couldn’t say the n-word with impunity for two weeks back in 2020.
My current opinion is that AI is just a thing that is going to further amplify our existing tendencies (on a person-to-person basis). I've personally found it to be extremely beneficial in research, learning, and the category of "things that take time because of the stuff you have to mechanically go through and not because of the brainpower involved". I have been able to spend so much more time on things that I feel…
It fulfills steve jobs promise that a computer is a bicycle for your mind. It is crazy to me that all these poeple think they are going to lose their ability to think. If you didn't lose your ability to think to scrolling social media then you aren't going to lose it to AI. However, I think a lot of people lost their ability to think by scrolling social media and that is problematic. What people need to realize is th…
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Now imagine how much better - the code - your improvement in knowledge would have been if you had skipped copilot and described your problem and asked for algorithmic help?
Now imagine that he's interested in finishing his game, not the intricacies of raycasting algorithms.
The value isn't objective and very much depends on end goals.People seem to trounce out the "make games, not engines" without realizing that engine programmers still do exist.
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And so what? Why not be dependent? I grew up with a glove box full of atlases in my car. On one job, I probably spent 30 minutes a day planning the ~4h of driving I'd do daily to different sites. Looking up roads in indexes, locating grid numbers, finding connecting roads spanning pages 22-23, 42-43, 62-63, and 64-65. Marking them and trying not to get confused with other markings I'd made over the past months. Getti…
> It didn't make me stronger or smarter or a better person. Yes, it did.
Planning routes isn't exactly rocket science. There's not much to learn. It just takes a lot of time. It's busywork.
Atrophy has really been an issue in my recent hiring cycles for good senior engineers. 80% of senior candidates I interview now aren’t able to do junior level tasks without GenAI helping them. We’ve had to start doing more coding tests to weed their skill set out as a result, and I try and make my coding tests as indicative of our real work as possible and the work they current do. But these people are struggling to…
Can the senior developer understand and internalize your codebase? Can they solve complex problems? If you're paying them to be a senior developer, it likely isn't worth their time to concern themselves with basic data structures when they are trying to solve more complex problems.