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AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

praf.me

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Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

#241

Post by cultofmetatron »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #228
ModernMech wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I burned out I experienced skill regression and short term memory loss. Like, an inability to remember specific events of the day before, inability to perform skills I had done for decades like play an instrument. Took over a year to stabilize and return to normal.

Yes, this is extremely similar to my experience I cannot remember events, conversations, or details about important things. I have partially lost my ability to code, because I get partway through implementing a feature and forget what pieces I've done and which pieces still need to be done I can still write it, but the quality of my work has plummeted, which is part of why I'm off on leave now

was going through something similar. here's my anti burnout protocol thats kept me functional all the way to my current position as founder and CTO of a profitable startup.

1. 1 tablespoon of cold extracted cod liver oil EVERY MORNING

2. 30 min of running 3-4 times a week

3. 2-3 weight lifting sessions every week

4. regular walks.

5. cross train on different intellectually stimulating subjects. doing the same cognitive tasks over and over is like repetive motion on your muscles

6. regularly scheduled "fallow mind time." I set aside an 30 min to an hour everyday to just sit in a chair and let my mind wander. its not meditation. I jsut sit and let my mind drift to whatever it wants.

7. while it should be avoided, in the event that you have to crunch, RESPECT THE COOLDOWN. take downtime after. don't let your nontechnical leads talk you out of it. thinking hard for extended periods of time requires appropriate recovery.

the human brain is a complex system and while we think of our mind as abstract and immaterial, it is in reality a whole lot of physical systems that grow, change and use resources the same way any other physical system in your body does. just like muscles need to recover after a workout to get stronger, so too does your brain after extended periods of deep thinking.

Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

#242

Post by pavel_lishin »

theshrike79 wrote: post #41
foo42 wrote: post #30

The tradeoff of higher velocity for less enjoyment may feel less welcome when it becomes the new baseline and the expectation of employers / customers. The excitement of getting a day's work done in an hour* (for example) is likely to fade once the expectation is to produce 8 of such old-days output per day. I suspect it doesn't matter how we feel about it mind you. If it's going to happen it will, whether we enjoy t…

The trick is not telling anyone you spent an hour to do 7 hours of work. That's stupid and detrimental to your mental health. You do it in an hour, spend maybe 1-2 hours to make it even better and prettier and then relax. Do all that menial shit you've got lined up anyway.

Until your coworkers who've never heard of work-life balance start bragging about it, and volunteering to spend 8 hours to do 56 hours of work, or maybe spending 11 hours to impress the boss.

Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

#243

Post by pavel_lishin »

gyosko wrote: post #165

I really don't get it. While letting the AI write some code can be cool and fascinating, I really can't undersand how: - write the prompt(and you need do be precise and think and express carefully what you have in mind) - check/try the code - repeat is better than writing the code by myself. AI coding like this feels like a nightmare to me and it's 100x more exhausting.

It definitely feels like a move towards management, which is something I've avoided for my entire career.

It's a perfectly cromulent approach and skillset - but it's a wildly different one.

Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

#244

Post by bluefirebrand »

ModernMech wrote: post #231
bluefirebrand wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is extremely similar to my experience I cannot remember events, conversations, or details about important things. I have partially lost my ability to code, because I get partway through implementing a feature and forget what pieces I've done and which pieces still need to be done I can still write it, but the quality of my work has plummeted, which is part of why I'm off on leave now

Hang in there, it gets better and the skills come back. From my github: 2,350 contributions in 2021 2,661 contributions in 2022 381 contributions in 2023 My recovery took about 18 months. It took time, and a lot of rest. I'd have to sleep like 12 hours a day sometimes.

Thank you for the kind encouragement

I hope my recovery doesn't take that long, but if it does it does

I would rather give myself the space and time to really get better, rather than simply rush back to work and burn out again

Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

#245

Post by sarchertech »

throw10920 wrote: post #214
sarchertech wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If AI-coding is even marginally more economically efficient (i.e. more for less) the "old way" will be swept aside at breathtaking pace (as we're seeing). On the scale I’ve been doing this (20 years), that hasn’t been the case. Rails was massively more efficient for what 90% of companies where building. But it never had anywhere near a 90% market share. It doesn’t take 1000 engineers to build CRUD apps, but compani…

I think that you're correct in that Rails and IDEs offer significant productivity benefits but aren't/weren't widely adopted. But AI seems to be different in that it claims to replace programmers, instead of augment them. Yes, higher productivity means you don't have to hire as many people, but with AI tools there's specifically the promise that you can get rid of a bunch of your developers, and regardless of truth,…

I believe you’re 100% right about trying to replace devs. In that respect it’s like offshoring.

But no matter how hard cost cutters wanted to, they were never able to actually reduce the total number of devs outside of major economic downturns.

Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

#246

Post by david-gpu »

jplusequalt wrote: post #224
david-gpu wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet some people felt the same way when we collectively moved from assembly to compilers.

In the previous scenario, programmers were still writing the code themselves. The compilers, if they were any good, generated deterministic code. In our current scenario, programmers are merely describing what they think the code should do, and another program takes their description and then stochastically generates code based on it.

Compilers are (a) typically non-deterministic and, (b) produce different code from one version to the next, from one brand to the next, and from one set of flags to the next.

Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

#247

Post by david-gpu »

gyosko wrote: post #170
david-gpu wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet some people felt the same way when we collectively moved from assembly to compilers.

Yeah, if not only for the small fact that you are leaving a well defined set of rules for pure chaos and randomness this time around.

My career sat at the interface of hardware and software. We would often run into situations where the code produced by the compiler was not what we desired. This issue was particularly pronounced when we were transitioning some components from being written in assembly by hand vs using a compiler.

I think the parallels are clear for those of us who have been through this scenario.

Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

#248

Post by furyofantares »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #110
furyofantares wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Society" is more than just software developers. We are very well paid for very cushy work. It's not good for anyone's work to get worse, but it's not a huge hit to society if a well-paid cushy job gets less cushy. And presumably people buy our work because it's valuable to them. Multiplying that by 8 would be a pretty big benefit to society. I don't want my job to get less fun, but I would press that button without…

My cushy software job has burned me out so badly that I am on medical leave with massive memory problems and a bit of concern about my heart So I mean... Yeah Is software more comfortable generally than many other lines of work? Yes probably Is it always soft and cushy? No, not at all. It is often high pressure and high stress

I'm sorry for implying there can't be hardship (significant, even devastating) in this line of work. Thanks for posting about your experience.

Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

#249

Post by shkkmo »

loandbehold wrote: post #135
shkkmo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more economically efficient I suspect we'll find that the amount of technical debt and loss of institutional knowledge incured by misuse of these tools was initially underappreciated. I don't doubt that the industry will be transformed, but that doesn't mean that these tools are a panacea.

I read about AI assistants allegedly creating tech debt but my experience is opposite. Claude Code makes it easy to refactor helping to reduce tech debt. Tech debt usually happens because refactoring takes time but is hard to justify to upper management because upper management only sees new features but not quality of code. With Claude Code refactoring is much faster so it gets done.

I would argue that you should only allow Claude to refactor code that you understand. Once that institutional knowledge is lost you would then have to regain it before you can safely refactor it, even with Claude's help.

I also specifically used the term "misuse" to significantly weaken my claim. I mean only to say that the risks and downsides are often poorly understood, not that there are no good uses.

Re: AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore

#250

Post by jodosha »

foo42 wrote: post #30

The tradeoff of higher velocity for less enjoyment may feel less welcome when it becomes the new baseline and the expectation of employers / customers. The excitement of getting a day's work done in an hour* (for example) is likely to fade once the expectation is to produce 8 of such old-days output per day. I suspect it doesn't matter how we feel about it mind you. If it's going to happen it will, whether we enjoy t…

> The tradeoff of higher velocity for less enjoyment may feel less welcome when it becomes the new baseline and the expectation of employers / customers

This is what happens with big technological advancements. Technology that enables productivity won’t free people time, but only set higher expectations of getting more work done in a day.

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