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AI is making me dumb

jpain.io

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Re: AI is making me dumb

#231

Post by daemonk »

I am getting the exact opposite experience. But it is probably because I am in a domain where code/software is a tool, not the product.

I find myself learning exponentially faster and more. For example, I am working with spectroscopy hardware currently (raman, nmr) where I got Claude to write code that interfaces with equipment on a hardware level. Instead of me going through data sheets and writing out a bunch of wrapper code, Claude did it for me.

I am able to progress much faster by using Claude to discuss various techniques, implement them, and test it out. This loop would have probably taken me 5-10x more time previously.

And I am learning so much more about these machines/techniques/data than I would have if I had to expend the mental effort to write menial code just to see a result.

I have more than a decade of experience as a developer. I am glad that we are finally moving towards a world where we can utilize code as a tool rather than constantly trying to think how to make it into a product.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#232

Post by fragmede »

pixelready wrote: post #157
joebates wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Luckily I enjoy the process of refactoring and deleting code is nearly arousing, so I get the initial dopamine rush of wow this works, followed by the dopamine rush of "wow now this is cleaner and works so much better". Keeps me in touch with the codebase too.

Pruning code is to software engineers what cancelling plans is to introverts :) I think I need to work up a Claude skill named marie-kondo, so that when it breathlessly presents its triumphant solution, I can go “yes, but does it spark joy?” And have it go into an aggressive refactor loop with me.

Sounded like fun so had Claude do one up here: https://github.com/fragmede/marie-kondo-ai-skill

Re: AI is making me dumb

#234

Post by seanw444 »

cub-creature wrote: post #174
thisisthenewme wrote: post #126

As a developer, I kind of feel like this all smells like job security. After using LLMs for a while, I have to admit it's pretty nice, and I like using it. I've been vibecoding a few apps, and it's a good dopamine hit to immediately see your ideas come to life. However, based on my experience, it will bite you if you trust it blindly. Even in my vibecoded projects, it keeps adding "features" without me asking for the…

While I agree with the general sentiment that decentralized, bespoke solutions will explode, and require some maintenance (which may in-turn result in more hiring), I've seen plenty that still makes me hesitant to fully embrace this idea as likely. I know this is a wall of text, so forgive me while I doom-post my thoughts for a few minutes: For one thing, the efficiency gains are massive. Bigger than any other tool,…

> Bigger than any other tool, for any other price.

For as long as the investor money runway has asphalt left.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#235

Post by 2snakes »

movpasd wrote: post #105
Rooster61 wrote: post #11

I can't relate that much to this. Every time I use AI to write code, I'm constantly fighting a feeling on the back of my neck that I need to look over everything it has done and supplement/alter it with my own code. That ick feeling counteracts the dopamine hit of having a working app after a few minutes of vibe coding, and I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon. That said, I have experience. I could absolu…

I feel the same way, and yet I would still say I feel AI usage atrophying my thinking skills. I feel less tempted to use it to shortcut whole files, but even just using it to speed up looking up and carefully reading docs, tinkering with a library to understand it when docs are inadequate, working out the tradeoffs for design decisions... These sound less objectionable and more like simplr speedups, but when I _do_ n…

Maybe like a certain blurriness to the edges of those task’s schema? Like becoming a manager or reviewing an intern’s work?

Re: AI is making me dumb

#238

Post by seanw444 »

daemonk wrote: post #231

I am getting the exact opposite experience. But it is probably because I am in a domain where code/software is a tool, not the product. I find myself learning exponentially faster and more. For example, I am working with spectroscopy hardware currently (raman, nmr) where I got Claude to write code that interfaces with equipment on a hardware level. Instead of me going through data sheets and writing out a bunch of wr…

> I am glad that we are finally moving towards a world where we can utilize code as a tool rather than constantly trying to think how to make it into a product.

Maybe that's just you. Code as a tool rather than just a product has always existed.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#239

Post by seanw444 »

jkkola wrote: post #172

I'm a data analyst and a bit of a data engineer,which comes with the territory. I maintain some unholy pipelines that I wrote a few years back and they were due for refactoring for a long time. I do the AI-fueled refactoring in the most basic way - paste the code, ask for suggestions, implement the ones that are sensible, ask for clarifications whenever something's new to me. The last part is absolute gold. I've lear…

> YMMV but I think if you use the tool as a more expressive Google search it can be a great companion.

I get the most mileage out of this as well. It's the middle ground option. Everyone's either saying AI is useless, or saying how it's so good that writing code is an obsolete task already. Personally, I'm learning a ton with AI as a research tool, and implementing my code by hand with that knowledge. It also naturally solves the "you can't review 20,000 lines of code a day to even properly understand that it's correct" problem as a side effect too. But I am still building things much faster.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#240

Post by davebren »

notarobot123 wrote: post #171
ryandrake wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, Claude only knows how to spew code. Every problem you want it to solve, it translates into "more code" rather than "less code". You have to very closely code review everything it does, otherwise your codebase is going to just grow and grow, and asymptotically approach 100% debt. I code review everything that Claude produces, and I'd estimate about 90-95% of the time, my reaction is WOW it works but…

At this point, it's worth asking whether lots of relatively straightforward verbose code is actually significantly worse than the least code necessary for the problem. Obviously, architecture matters. What might matter less is verbosity. The reason we aimed for minimal "accidental complexity" up to now was directly related to the cost/pain of changing and maintaining that code. Hasn't the economics of maintenance and…

I'm been in a community that makes a lot of cognitive training software. There's some core open source projects that were created without LLMs, but new projects are now mostly created by young people vibe-coding from scratch or forking and modifying the existing projects with an LLM.

The answer to your question is really obvious. The high-effort manually coded projects stick around and the low-effort vibe-coded projects are forgotten about quickly. In the end LLM-driven programming is always going to bring you to a dead-end. There's certain things where I can predict that they're going to fail because it's going to involve certain kinds of complexity they can't and will never be able to deal with. The code gets so bad that even if an expert programmer wanted to make changes it either wouldn't be possible or worth it. A lot of the time the vibecoders are so high off the low-effort sense of empowerment that they don't even realize what they made is completely broken.

Well written software has staying power because it can be understood and built upon. Understanding a problem deeply enough to devise an elegant solution even leads to new possibilities and ideas that will never be conceived with a more superficial understanding.

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