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The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

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Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#201

Post by apsurd »

leedrake5 wrote: post #200
bwfan123 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> friction = focus, focus = product AI tools have put friction where it should be - by eliminating incidental friction. By incidental friction I mean, things that were really not ambiguous, but were made so due to lack of access to resources. As an example, if i needed to navigate, I used a paper map. There was friction in pulling out a map, planning a route etc. This took time. With digital mapping apps this sort of…

This distinction between ambiguous and incidental friction is brilliant. Was just talking about it with my wife because your specific example of a map has been a running debate between us. I just pick the least cost path via the algorithm to the point where I have poor spatial awareness. My father in law insists on using paper maps because he wants to know where everything is to be helpful. For me, the ease of the al…

I was hunting for a way in to side with your father in law. But you landed the point: friction is relative.

Digital maps clearly solve the end-goal needs for most people. But like your father in law, there’s definitely a loss in that exchange.

Bearings are incredibly useful. I remember navigating myself and my partner out of a small town on vacation by the position of the sun. It was international so we didnt have internet at the time. Im never going to live that one down!

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#202

Post by lelanthran »

hparadiz wrote: post #71
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you reach a certain skill level you really didn’t ever visit SO anymore. I basically just live in Postgres, Redis, Ruby and Rails documentation. Still do.

SO was just an example. If you try to tell me you've never copied/pasted code before I know you are lying.

> SO was just an example. If you try to tell me you've never copied/pasted code before I know you are lying.

I've never done that; many experienced devs I know have never done that. We barely used it, in fact! The few times I asked a question, the answer was not "Here's a piece of code".

Look, this comment of yours, coupled with a previous comment from you in this thread (demonstrating you don't know the difference between probabilistic and deterministic output) makes it painfully clear you don't do development; or at least you didn't until you were handed a magic "write me a program" tool...

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#203

Post by hparadiz »

gizajob wrote: post #198
hparadiz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My total usage for this month is less than one days pay.

How many days pay do you think would be your limit? It seems inevitable that prices for power users will rise dramatically in the next few years.

Don't confuse the cost of org wide LLM services with coding. Two different things. Most people at any org probably just want ChatGPT so they can write reports and do research. And now they want it to sync with Google Drive or w/e so they can pull in docs. Obviously that stuff is classic B2B Software as Service hosting. Prices will go up just because that's how B2B prices work when enterprises negotiate yearly services but overall it's not the most expensive line item by a long shot and power users are only a small sub set of the population of all the users.

But for code it's a race to the bottom because it's all text and local works quite well. You can host models on LangSmith and similar and because people use those services to create chat bots the overall use of them for coding is a very tiny fraction of their overall usage. The race to the bottom is further exacerbated by the fact that as GPUs become more powerful you can host more per unit so the cost of text inference will drop precipitately. Right now people are reporting that for some of the self hosted services they are able to do everything for under $5 / month. That price WILL drop because that's how computers work.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#204

Post by lelanthran »

michaelchisari wrote: post #76
hparadiz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to the old days when people would just blindly copy/paste random shit from Stackoverflow? Ya'll need to stop with this cope. It's not a good look.

Anyone worth their salt looked down on copy/paste from Stackoverflow, let alone blindly doing so. Where does this idea come from that good programmers were ever cool with that?

> Where does this idea come from that good programmers were ever cool with that?

Copium from folk who were never developers before, but who now want the badge anyway. Too bad the same badge can be given out to a bright 12 year old who doesn't know the difference between a variable and a type.

I suppose I'd have to admit to not being a "developer" anymore, because developers in the age of AI won't know how to write code. Perhaps I can still hold on to the label "programmer" for a little while longer.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#206

Post by bko »

cladopa wrote: post #107

I don't thing the problem is AI, but the mindset and trainning. I have probably as many or more AI projects that this man has but they are extremely useful, even if most of them I won't even sell. This is like a kid playing videogames instead of studying, you take the console away and force the kid in front of a book and the kid will spend most of his time looking at the wall and dreaming. I am engineer with very dee…

Strongly agree. I would take it one step further, consider this line:

> Slopping out a 10,000 LOC untested Python/JS mess in 5 minutes helps nobody. The thought of this happening in every commercial environment simultaneously is horrifying.

You should def try to commercialize your slop and get feedback. No one cares about your tech stack or whether it's maintainable. Does it add value? You'll get a strong signal as to whether it does or not. And adding value, picking the right problem in the right domain, that's the hard part. You can always re-write or clean it up. Didn't Javascript start out as a weekend project? (maybe not a great example depending on how much you like JS)

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#207

Post by chairmansteve »

CoffeeOnWrite wrote: post #47

Author sounds like they are missing meaning in what they do. If they had a life mission, AI is just an aid in accomplishing that mission, and they wouldn't get sidetracked by all the unfulfilling projects (modulus the ADHD, that has its own bearing on the experience using AI, and is the most interesting part of this post to me). Perhaps at a population scale AI inhibits people from finding fulfillment. But on an anec…

Very well said. The author was noodling around bored, generating random crap on AI. Not surprising the result is meaningless junk.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#208

Post by hparadiz »

lelanthran wrote: post #204
michaelchisari wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone worth their salt looked down on copy/paste from Stackoverflow, let alone blindly doing so. Where does this idea come from that good programmers were ever cool with that?

> Where does this idea come from that good programmers were ever cool with that? Copium from folk who were never developers before, but who now want the badge anyway. Too bad the same badge can be given out to a bright 12 year old who doesn't know the difference between a variable and a type. I suppose I'd have to admit to not being a "developer" anymore, because developers in the age of AI won't know how to write co…

With that Github and personal portfolio I wouldn't be making such sweeping statements.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#209

Post by prmph »

Aurornis wrote: post #184
cladopa wrote: post #107

I don't thing the problem is AI, but the mindset and trainning. I have probably as many or more AI projects that this man has but they are extremely useful, even if most of them I won't even sell. This is like a kid playing videogames instead of studying, you take the console away and force the kid in front of a book and the kid will spend most of his time looking at the wall and dreaming. I am engineer with very dee…

> You don't spend two years doing a Game only to realise later that is not fun, and you either spend 3 more years or abandon it at this moment. People do this all the time. It's such a common problem in startups that all of the books, courses, advisors, and everyone else with experience talks about finding product market fit early and shipping MVPs to validate the product. It's the most common startup advice and peop…

But it is also not always or often the best to flit from one idea to the other, never going deep, chasing signs of validation that may never come unless you put in enough work.

Almost any reasonable idea that is not obviously bad (as in having some clearly insurmountable technical or market hurdles, etc) can be made to work.

What makes ideas work (and this is what separates those with a true entrepreneurs mindset from those just playing the lottery of "MVP"s) is the creation of what I call a viability field around them.

When a person decides to create an app, or some other product, or a certain business, they have not exhaustively considered all the possible things they could do and decided that this is the objectively most viable thing to pursue. They commit to a space they like ot be in, that feels like a good match for their skills and temperament, etc.

Then, within the general idea, the key I think is to begin creating a product, the development and marketing of which acts as a substrate for the learnings you need to succeed in that market. AI used judiciously can help you to cover ground more quickly, or at least be a bit more fearless about attempting that.

Basically you should build something that allows you to learn, to pivot, to adapt as necessary until you find product market fit. Rarely, you'd need to throw everything out, but even then I often argue it is matter of personal decision rather than any fundamental roadblock. If you you are really committed to an idea, and have developed it enough (not just a 1 week MVP) to deeply understand its context, there is almost always a tangent you can take that brings you to success without throwing out everything.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#210

Post by demorro »

augment_me wrote: post #129
prmoustache wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your bottlenecks are meetings [...], and you make an agent take notes and summarize things for you. An agent taking notes and summarizing things is of no use. You are supposed to participate to a meeting, otherwise it is just a memo and the meeting doesn't have to take place. The correct solution is just to not attend it if you know you aren't requested to participate and are just here to grow the numbers and make…

> The correct solution is just to not attend it if you know you aren't requested to participate and are just here to grow the numbers and make your company waste money. If this argument actually worked in practice, the world would be a better place

It always has in my experience, you merely have to make it true.
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