I've tried reading fast,
I've tried reading slow,
The text escapes my mind,
As soon as I let it go.
Maybe the default settings are too high
221–230 of 332 posts
Re: Maybe the default settings are too high
#222My dad was a busy construction contractor. One summer he tore himself away from work and took the family to a week long boat camp out next to a big beautiful lake. It turned out that our campsite was actually in the lake by a few inches at high water, but dad saw a way to dam it off and keep it dry, so he grabs the shovel and starts digging trenches and building walls and ordering us around. About an hour into that,…
My spouse and I dealt with this on our honeymoon. We were both working 50-80 hour weeks for months leading up to our trip. The first day we got to this all-inclusive resort we spent the whole time trying to min/max and be as efficient and calculated as possible. It was a stressful, miserable day. Day two we looked at each other, had an adult beverage with breakfast, and relaxed for the rest of the trip.
I was like this but maybe not as stressful as you described. Still, I wanted to do stuff and see stuff during vacation.
After having kids, my habit changed. Now we enjoy going to local parks and walking around with no goals during vacation. This wonderful attraction? Nah we don't need to see it. If we can walk there, then maybe.
Re: Maybe the default settings are too high
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> typing isn't the bottleneck. Not even close. I find it absolutely is much of the time - I'll determine the architecture/overall solution, know exactly what needs to go in a multitude of files, and now actualizing all that isn't really thinking anymore, just donkey work. Getting AI to do this has been incredible now that it's finally good enough. I've had Copilot make flawless 500+LOC C++ classes in the first pass,…
I find however, that while typing it all out, my mind often continues analyzing and thinking, and that I often find a new idea, or new structure, that might be even better. Typing it out and seeing it appear in front of me. It also gives me a feeling for how tedious, brittle, or annoying the solution is. Granted, sometimes it's really not that interesting to type the stuff. It depends what one is working on.
Each time I write a routine it's different. Its better. I've learned something from last time. In fact, this is one of the things that got me hooked on computing. That there's so much complexity, often hidden, that there's always more to learn and improve upon.
And truth be told, if I'm writing the same thing many times it's time to create a library. Maybe just for myself or for the company I work for. But the same thing happens. I always learn more while doing it and it always gets better.
I fear the programmer whose bottleneck is typing. They already know the answer. But the problem is that there is none
Re: Maybe the default settings are too high
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
How often are you actually doing this though? I think I probably work in something greenfield about once a decade. The hard part is always going down a rabbit hole in established code bases. I can do the boilerplate in a few days. It saves time, but not really even one hairy issue a year.
Nowadays? 4+ times a week. I want to learn as much as I can now that I essentially have 24/7 mentors that can remember everything I've told them. Sure, I could write it all by hand; but even as a decent typer, I'll never match a tenth speed of claude code or opencode just GOING. Maybe there's a better way to learn, but whatever it is, it's not obvious to me.
How long have you been programming?
I actually felt like I learned the most when I stopped going to Google and StackOverflow for solutions and instead moved to docs. It's far less direct but the information is much more rich. All that auxiliary information compounds. I want to skip it, feeling rushed to get an answer, but I've always been the better for taking the "scenic route". I'd then play around and learn how to push functions and abuse them. Boy there's no learning like learning how to abuse code.
Fwiw, I do use LLMs, but they don't write code for me. They are fantastic rubber ducky machines. Far better than my cat, which is better than an actual rubber duck. They aid in docs too, helping fill in that space when you don't exactly understand them. But don't let them do the hard work nor the boring work. The boring work is where you usually learn the most. It's also the time you don't recognize that's happening
Re: Maybe the default settings are too high
#225I watched game of thrones at 2x speed. I feel I watched it but have no concrete memories of events outside the big hit makers.
Re: Maybe the default settings are too high
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
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What did you get out of this comment? What do you think a reader gets? Maybe follow the spirit of the article: slow down and pounder, be curious, maybe you would have gotten the right take away instead of being antagonizing towards someone's fond memory.
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Re: Maybe the default settings are too high
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
What did you get out of this comment? What do you think a reader gets? Maybe follow the spirit of the article: slow down and pounder, be curious, maybe you would have gotten the right take away instead of being antagonizing towards someone's fond memory.
[flagged]
Its not a race to express the first thing that comes to mind, its a mutual discussion themed by top level comments. If you dislike the top level comments for some reason it's better to move on instead, unless some counter points enrich the discussion we're all having.
Re: Maybe the default settings are too high
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can get stuck in our minds and lean too much on prior skills instead of fully assessing the problem at hand. More likely than not, given he was a contractor, building a trench and walls seemed like a simple solution to something he has probably dealt with many time and didn't think twice about it.
I just don't understand how it could occur to no one in a group of three or four people for a whole hour. Like, even if the barrier had been fully built and worked perfectly even after considering the tide, they would have been making camp on fully soaked ground. Just what everyone wants first thing in the morning: to trudge through mud.
I think it did occur to everyone and that's part of the conclusion of the story - instead of stubbornly battling the situation we should brace it and adapt to it.
Re: Maybe the default settings are too high
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
> he might shrug and say "I don't know" I have far more trust for people willing to say this. > I would start blurting out half-baked ideas to fill the silence I find that I'm more likely to do this but try to make an effort to stop. There's times to spitball but we should also spend time thinking. And let's be real 30-60s is not that long > This manager also typed with one or two fingers, and pretty slowly too. But…
> I'll be honest, this is the big reason I don't get all the hype around coding agents. I do find them useful but typing isn't the bottleneck. Not even close. Plus, while typing is when I'm doing my best debugging and best simplifying. As you sort of point out between the lines, it depends on what you work on. I had an AI agent rewrite some ancient (and terrible code) which had stopped working because the v1 of an ap…
> because I doubt I would have left it at "wasn't very good".
Don't get me wrong, we all write sloppy code and often not our best. It's one of the difficulties of being an engineer, deciding what exactly is good enough.
Re: Maybe the default settings are too high
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Its not a race to express the first thing that comes to mind, its a mutual discussion themed by top level comments. If you dislike the top level comments for some reason it's better to move on instead, unless some counter points enrich the discussion we're all having.
Please move on, then.