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AI is making me dumb

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241–250 of 328 posts

Re: AI is making me dumb

#241

Post by barrkel »

> before computer science was a profession, it was physicists and mathematicians and academics who programmed. Professionals. The professionalism has faded away as demand for software developers skyrocketed.

This is revisionist nonsense.

Programmers used to be cowboys, by and large, outside a handful of critical domains. Systematic use of code review, automated tests, source control and so on are relatively new.

What was different is an entire program could fit in one person's head. The stack of abstractions wasn't nearly as deep, necessarily, since you couldn't afford the cost in memory and CPU.

That delivered a different kind of intellectual control, a kind that is exceedingly rare nowadays outside hobby projects.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#242

Post by ok_dad »

ryandrake wrote: post #72
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…

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…

Hey that’s my exact experience. I started coding the interfaces by hand which helps with the architecture but you still have to say, “don’t add a bunch of helpers and stuff, stick to filling in the stubs.”

Then I only have to spend one hour handholding the clanker to get it perfect. I usually do a lot of manual refactoring as well during that time.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#243

Post by usefulcat »

steezeburger wrote: post #18
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…

Experience is so so valuable right now. We can guide these agents super well, but I do fear for the juniors as you said. I would like to think I'd use the agents to dive deeper and learn faster. It was pretty rough piecing together solutions from Stack Overflow, various irc channels, Reddit, etc. But also, I cheated on my homework in college and didn't really review the answers, so not sure. Though I pursued programm…

> Experience is so so valuable right now.

I think traditional coding experience will be a lot more valuable in 5-10 years, given the apparent inverse relationship between that and LLM usage, and the number of people who seem to already be heavily reliant on LLMs today.

The next killer app on the scale of today's LLMs could be an LLM (or call it whatever) that can un-spaghettify the reams of code that are currently being generated by LLMs.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#244

Post by luxuryballs »

When it comes to writing I only use AI for writing technical documentation or basic page copy, never for anything that is purely writing or for communication like a blog post, or a paper, or an email, or a letter, or a book, or even marketing copy.

Basically only use it for anything I wouldn’t otherwise have the time to write but isn’t important to be written by me.

I actually can’t fathom using it for writing as a principle, to me it’s just a keyboard extension for code generation, never a replacement for the written word that should be in my voice and fully a stream coming from my mind that I should have full editorial awareness and memory of.

Now that I think about it I’m a snob in this regard, I turn my nose up at people that use AI to write things that are purely written, in my mind using it for writing is defeating the purpose of writing!

Re: AI is making me dumb

#245

Post by godshatter »

throw4847285 wrote: post #138

We talk a lot about the risks of AI in schools, but those same risks apply in any learning environment. I recently started a new job and I find that AI is making it so much harder for me to onboard. I am adjusting to my role much slower than my peers who are using AI less. I am coding in a language I am unfamiliar with, which makes the lure of vibe coding stronger. I am at least skilled enough to recognize when Claud…

I'd suggest going the route of having Claude teach you what you need to know. How do I uppercase this string? What's the best way to tackle this problem? Is there a standard way to do this thing? Then you learn along the way. You don't have to use it as a search engine, just ask it what you need to know in the moment. It will shake it's token chains and give you something that's useful, especially for a beginner in the language. This way you can implement your plan of growing your skills and then starting to delegate to it later.

I've been doing this, and it's a nice balance for me. Having Claude code things when you don't know how to evaluate it's code seems like madness to me, but I guess I'm in the minority on this.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#246

Post by davebren »

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,…

> was able to vibe-code an MVP of our product that we've been working on in a matter of hours. > Given a little more time, I could solo ship and maintain what has taken us a few years to build as a small dev team.

Sorry but this just sounds fake. Team spending a "few years" rewriting a web app, Claude doing it in a matter of hours. What the hell were you guys doing the last three years.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#247

Post by lofaszvanitt »

jasonjei wrote: post #74

I’m not using AI to eliminate thinking but to free me from the rote mundane code writing. AI is perfectly competent at writing code once a prototype is implemented. I do write initial proof of concept crude prototypes (not commented, hardcoded variables, etc), and AI does the productionizing of them. It has really allowed me to command a team of agents instead of keeping track of a bunch of humans of varying work eth…

Most of the time is spent making plans and prototype outlines for the llm to work with. Otherwise the whole thing will be a horrible mess. You need elaborately crafted prompts, so you have to have proper understanding of the underlying framework and language otherwise the whole thing will be a horrible mess. I don't even know how could people handle multiple agents, when it usually finishes quite fast. And you can't even do anything between runs, because you are in a constant oh one more minute and it finishes state. And when it finishes you have to evaluate the output. So can't even do deep thinking during "work", because the pattern is similar to social media. Constant attention, almost instant gratification. So your attention span is again and again fucked, properly fucked.

And the problem is, that these plans are obliterated in a few hours and then you have to analyze and iterate on the output to weed out the idiocies.

And handling multiple agent outputs... so continous context switches. Well, good luck with that in the long term.

If you let agents run wild and build whatever, the output is almost surely will be a horrible mess. End of story.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#248

Post by raincole »

dwaltrip wrote: post #200
raincole wrote: post #64

> I just caught myself about to copy and paste it into Claude to see what it thinks because I'm worried that it doesn't make sense or it reads funny or there's something missing I unironically believe this is a very good habit. When it comes to writing, instead of starting with AI, finish a chapter by hand first then ask AI to review it strikes the best balance.

You may be right in many cases. But I think the author was commenting on how it felt like a compulsive urge stemming from fear and self-doubt. It’s a good insight about their frame of mind, and I applaud them for resisting the urge. You need to do things the hard way by yourself in order to learn. Reflexively copy + pasting into chatgpt is a good way to become completely dependent on the tool and have your skills atr…

Yeah, but in a professional setting, one's work is for someone else to review. We programmers have code review. Even very established authors have editors. I think it's wisdom instead of a weakness to admit your work needs reviews. Of course AI review is the cheaper and sloppier alternative to reviews from human experts, but for a blog post I think AI is the sweetspot.

"My works deserve to be reviewed before being posted to the public" is not a bad mentality. It's not imposter syndrome either. It's just consciousness.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#249

Post by scubbo »

suzzer99 wrote: post #159
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.

I question any dev who doesn't get aroused by deleting code. I just removed an entire graphql endpoint - 500 lines of front and back-end code. I may need to be hosed down.

`$JOB` recently introduced the `#red-diffs` Slack channel. I just submitted ` +4 / -28,742`. Pretty proud.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#250

Post by davebren »

DParida08 wrote: post #208

The day AI platforms suffer a massive and prolonged outage, it’ll trigger absolute panic and chaos. In many ways we are sacrificing a part of our creativity and independent thinking, but the reality is there’s hardly any alternative now. In a world moving this fast, choosing not to adapt often means getting left behind.

Please stop pushing the "getting left behind" fear. Prompting is not a skill, there is nowhere it's going that it can leave anyone behind. The "skill" of prompting is 100% dependent on one's skill programming, and in a day the skilled programmer will be able to surpass the guy that's been vibecoding for a decade.
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