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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

#231

Post by akvadrako »

hliyan wrote: post #161

I can provide a data point for what the article calls pseudo productivity: I extensively use LLMs as semantic search engines or expert systems (but not as agents). Recently I asked one how to consume a Google Pub/Sub topic using Python (context: I come from an C++/Java/JS background with some Python knowledge). The LLM gave me a good intro and some code. As it usually happens, I had a few follow up questions/clarific…

This is a very common effect and I don't want to be defending LLMs here. But I've seen the same study with CLIs - people using them feel more productive but take longer than using GUIs.

What I want to say is that it's very situational and it's likely good to focus on the average. Using LLMs as docs are bad when good docs exist, but if you aren't sure if they do, it's a gamble. A much better approach would be to have somebody pre-create and edit the docs with an LLM for each service with bad docs.

Only when your situation isn't covered would it make sense to create new docs.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#232

Post by slopinthebag »

Jordan-117 wrote: post #24

> In recent times, at least once per month someone sends a screenshot for an awesome tool they are working on. I'm like whoa, that's really something and the sender is obviously proud and enthusiastic. I try not to ask, but am always thinking "and where will you market it?" What a strange perspective. His dismissal of the long list of projects at the top is also odd. What's wrong with making something cool and functi…

You might as well be arguing for gambling as a form of leisure. That's okay, but don't delude yourself into thinking you're somehow being productive by pulling the vibecoding slot machine handle.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#234

Post by alexhans »

A good tip for side projects is to build stuff that is actually useful to you and to make them ZeroOps (no maintenance required). If you find yourself waiting to add a feature and it's not easy to change (ETC) [1] then it's a good moment to stop and how did you lose control of the software.

This applies to all software projects except for the "useful to you" part, which turns into valuable to "your/the business"

[1] https://youtu.be/c8AzqMr87gQ

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#235

Post by Capricorn2481 »

hparadiz wrote: post #187
Capricorn2481 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really low effort man. You can do better than "You're not paying enough to be as good as me" followed by "oh...well you haven't paid this month."

When I encounter people who don't use these tools it feels more like talking to someone without a computer who is trying to convince you that you don't need one back in the 90s. Or someone being like "the internet is useless" back in 1995. I mean early days it was kinda like that. The early internet for normies was almost entirely useless. The change has been so rapid that I think a lot of people are having a hard ti…

> When I encounter people who don't use these tools

But you didn't encounter those people. People said they've used the tools, and then you said it wasn't recent enough. Not because you know when they've used it last, but because their experience didn't match yours.

It's great that it's working for you, really. But since you have been posting on HN a lot about this, while simultaneously claiming you don't care what other people do, maybe consider a different approach than calling everyone luddites. If people call you a shill, and you exit the conversation claiming you don't care, but then you go to the next thread doing the same low effort stuff, don't be surprised when people see a pattern. There are lots of people communicating more effectively about this.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#236

Post by dgellow »

jmward01 wrote: post #25

Wow. To me the point of code has always been the crazy ideas and playing around. I love to create just for me and every once in a while for others is ok too. If you only think of code as 'a tool to build useful things' and everything else as wasted then sure, this is the philosophy for you. However, creating a bunch of random not going to follow up on it but I explored and played moments seems like a plus and not a n…

What did the author learn through their experience? They learned how to get AI to generate those projects, but that's pretty much it.

With such a list of side projects you would learn just SO MUCH by doing it yourself, which IMHO is the whole point of playing around and what makes the experience satisfying. Here they get the artifacts, but nothing else.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#237

Post by onel »

mrkeen wrote: post #46
jmward01 wrote: post #25

Wow. To me the point of code has always been the crazy ideas and playing around. I love to create just for me and every once in a while for others is ok too. If you only think of code as 'a tool to build useful things' and everything else as wasted then sure, this is the philosophy for you. However, creating a bunch of random not going to follow up on it but I explored and played moments seems like a plus and not a n…

OP paid a machine to have those moments instead of him.

Yeah that's a good point. With these side projects, the pleasure is in the tinkering, and just playing around with an idea

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#238

Post by OneAsterisk »

sudosteph wrote: post #48

Only mentioning this because the OP did - but for me (also ADHD) it's kind of the opposite. I'm finishing side projects for the first time ever because I can actually get them working before I get bored of them. My projects are more infra-leaning, and not all of them get much use, but some do. Others let me explore certain ideas and then sometimes serve as a reference point later when I run into something that remind…

Also diagnosed. It has definitely helped me work on more things. Heck even before I got remedicated, it helped me build an MCP server to help create notes easier for my classes because I struggled with that.

But sometimes, I feel it is too easy to bounce from thing to thing.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#239

Post by epihelix »

Aurornis wrote: post #115
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is the full picture. Plenty of people who like writing code are happy to delete code too.

When you write the code you learn from writing the code. When you have an LLM produce something and then delete, you didn’t learn much.

You learnt (or should have learnt) that the strategy taken by the llm was a poor one. You then explore why it didn't work, and what would have been a better approach. You think about the structure of your code base, the issues you still need to solve, and then you roll back and start again - this time prompting a different approach.

I love coding. I've always loved coding. But coding with llms has helped me step back and see the overall design of a project better. And llms know tricks I didn't, and some of these are neat, and now I know them too. So, personally, I feel like I'm still learning, a lot. It's just a different way of learning - and one that makes coding interesting all over again.

(That said, I cannot use agentic systems and embed myself fully in the loop, and still code myself. Sometimes its faster to code the next change manually, sometimes it's faster to guide an llm. But it's still interesting, and it's even more fun, at least to me.)

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#240

Post by throwatdem12311 »

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.

The amount of times that copy pasted code will work verbatim is basically 0. Better to type it out manually so you can tweak it as needed and you understand it better.
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