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AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

joshwcomeau.com

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Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#201

Post by bluefirebrand »

djeastm wrote: post #188
snide wrote: post #7

I mostly share Josh's opinion, but I think a lot of these posts that talk about Senior vs. Junior experience when working with AIs is kind of rubbish. Sure, you get better results as a Senior working with AI tooling and struggle more as a Junior. Nothing has changed in that equation except the amplification. What folks seem to avoid is that a Junior (in ANY subject) has the ability to LEARN so much faster with an AI…

>I think the only real case to be made is that AI's sense of immediate pleasure can neuter people away from running into friction. AI natives likely won't understand friction and question it. This is key, I think, and gets overshadowed by people being offended by seeing bad vibecode or claims of 10x speeds, etc. The most important learning that happens is not when we ask and get the answer to our question right away.…

> If the next generations skip this step, they'll always think answers are supposed to be easy to find and will find themselves more and more dependent on AI and less and less confident in their own brains

This seems like a very polite way of saying they will become less intelligent and less capable

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#202

Post by nomel »

dbingham wrote: post #183
nomel wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it was instantly a maintenance dead end. I gave up on this recently. It achieved the goal now, and in a year or two, when you actually want to add whatever feature, the SOTA AI will probably be able to clean it up as it does so . What does "maintain" even mean anymore? If you don't agree, how many years into the future do we need until you would agree?

The problem is that people keep saying this, but the code keeps being bad. Every time I commit myself to trying to build something with AI, I end up wasting a ton of time and backing it out or completely rewriting it without the AI. The code it generates just isn't where it needs to be. And people have been saying this exact thing for years now. Someone said this very thing two years ago. And we're still at the "main…

> If you don't agree, how many years into the future do we need until you would agree?

Respectfully, I asked first. ;)

> before we realize its a dead end (at best)

You've declared the future, which doesn't leave much room for a conversation. So, cheers!

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#204

Post by hoppp »

Yeah I mean I can now program in every language. Before I used to learn them and it took me a week to a month to start working with a new language (talking about similar syntax languages)

Now I can just get to it. I know what I want and can organize the codebase, whatever the code is I can generate it.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#205

Post by zephen »

techblueberry wrote: post #133

I had this observation talking to Claude one time. I forget the context exactly but I said something like: Me: Isn’t it crazy that X is better than Y. Claude: what an insightful critique, Y is better than X because of x, y, and z reasons. - And this answer from Claude was good. Thoughtful, well-reasoned. But it was opposite the point I wanted to make so I said : Me: “oh, you heard me say Y is better than X, I actuall…

It is a well-known trope that LLMs are prediction engines.

But, to get the best out of them, you really have to consider what that means in the small. They are predicting, to a first order of approximation, what you want or expect them to answer.

Its response to your first prompt is hilarious, because the LLM completely misunderstood you and based its prediction on what it thought you wrote. Its response to your second prompt further cements that its goal is to predict what you want or expect to see.

It's also well known that LLMs are prone to hallucinations. One of the biggest triggers for hallucinations is when the LLM's interpretation of your expectations doesn't match reality.

Because the LLM will try to make reality match what it perceives to be your expectations.

One of the best ways to reduce hallucinations is to work hard to remove any assertions from your prompts.

For example "Isn’t it crazy that X is better than Y." contains an explicit assertion. The LLM misunderstood the direction of the assertion, but certainly understood that an assertion was there, and so it gave you reasons why reality matched its understanding of your assertion.

When you clarified the assertion, it switched, and again gave you reasons why reality matches its understanding of your assertion.

Lawyers often get into trouble for made-up citations. "Claude, find me case law that shows X" is a recipe for disaster. Instead "Claude, what is the case law on X?" is probably a better starting point.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#206

Post by krapht »

reconnecting wrote: post #36
pelasaco wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the whole thing is creepy. The ruvnet, has multiple projects.. its just AI. A lot of AI. It floods GH infra.. Kind of easy to understand why GH struggles.

On the other hand, there are 8,400 forks, and it looks very real, so developers seem to have confidence in it.

I went and looked at the code. It's AI bots and a few confused trend followers all the way down. There's no way anything in there works.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#207

Post by qweiopqweiop »

xxs wrote: post #95
snide wrote: post #7

I mostly share Josh's opinion, but I think a lot of these posts that talk about Senior vs. Junior experience when working with AIs is kind of rubbish. Sure, you get better results as a Senior working with AI tooling and struggle more as a Junior. Nothing has changed in that equation except the amplification. What folks seem to avoid is that a Junior (in ANY subject) has the ability to LEARN so much faster with an AI…

> has the ability to LEARN so much faster with an AI research assistant, and that becoming an expert has accelerated for those with the personal stamina to dig deep (this as a requirement hasn't changed) If anything it allows to be as lazy as possible. I have not seen anyone digging deeper with the AI tools.

If you decide to dig deeper, it's an incredible tool. Getting a summary of the internals of something you only use as an API, then getting it to test you on it until you understand. It really allows you to learn a lot.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#209

Post by rglover »

travisgriggs wrote: post #118

What is unclear to me is how less skilled people gain useful experience, when using these amplifying tools. I’ve been at this for 35 years; I like to think that sometimes i get some pretty amazing results. I work with two pretty green developers. The rate that they can make a mess is now phenomenal. And the sense of confidence the tools give them with early successes, means any experience I might have to offer means…

> But I do find myself curious how “lessons are learned” that lead to greater and greater tool exploitation in this brave new world.

(I think I'm reading this the right way but if not feel free to correct).

In a word: pain.

Until there's a legitimate threat to their well-being (emotional, psychological, or financial), the lessons won't be truly "learned." Until you know the true cost of a decision, you're flying high.

Older engineers have dealt with this organically so it's kind of encoded into their DNA. The very reason certain things aren't done (or a certain way) is because that pain has already been felt/encouraged learning a better way.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#210

Post by zephen »

siliconc0w wrote: post #192

I agree that every so often you have to clean up a mess and the illusion breaks. Even with a super detailed spec, even with AGENTS and SKILLs specifying certain patterns or practices, even with 'fresh eyes' reviews from other agents, etc there are still these long tail of issues where I have to either hand hold the agent or just manually rework the code. Some examples: * it cheats at verification. Even with specific…

> it cheats at verification. Even with specific instructions how to verify, it still cheats.

As I responded to another commenter, as a prediction engine, the LLM is trying to predict what you want. It, at one level, correctly predicts that you want tests to pass.

Maybe try telling the LLM that you're a verification engineer, and you get bonuses for finding bugs?

Think about it. All those security researchers wouldn't be finding real bugs in real programs using LLMs if this were an insurmountable problem.

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