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AI makes you boring

marginalia.nu

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Re: AI makes you boring

#271

Post by josephg »

ethmarks wrote: post #253
Uehreka wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text… Whoa whoa whoa hold your horses, code has a pretty important property that ordinary prose doesn’t have: it can make real things happen even if no one reads it (it’s executable). I don’t want to read something that someone didn’t take the time to write. But I’ll gladly use a tool someone had an AI write, as long as it works (which these th…

I guess it depends on whether you're only executing the code or if you're submitting it for humans to review. If your use case is so low-stakes that a review isn't required, then vibe coding is much more defensible. But if code quality matters even slightly, such that you need to review the code, then you run into the same problems that you do with AI-generated prose: nobody wants to read what you couldn't be bothere…

There’s lots of times where I just don’t care how it’s implemented.

I got Claude to make a test suite the other day for a couple RFCs so I could check for spec compliance. It made a test runner and about 300 tests. And an html frontend to view the test results in a big table. Claude and I wrote 8500 lines of code in a day.

I don’t care how the test runner works, so long as it works. I really just care about the test results. Is it finding real bugs? Well, we went though the 60 or so failing tests. We changed 3 tests, because Claude had misunderstood the rfc. The rest were real bugs.

I’m sure the test runner would be more beautiful if I wrote it by hand. But I don’t care. I’ve written test runners before. They’re not interesting. I’m all for beautiful, artisanal code. I love programming. But sometimes I just want to get a job done. Sometimes the code isn’t for reading. It’s for running.

Re: AI makes you boring

#272

Post by zahlman »

JohnMakin wrote: post #28

> The cool part about pre-AI show HN is you got to talk to someone who had thought about a problem for way longer than you had Honestly, I agree, but the rash of "check out my vibe coded solution for perceived $problem I have no expertise in whatever and built in an afternoon" and the flurry of domain experts responding like "wtf, no one needs this" is kind of schadenfreude, but I feel guilty a little for enjoying it…

From what I can tell, domain experts mostly don't directly respond like that. They just make separate meta-level commentaries about Show HN getting flooded. Most submissions get little or no response.

Re: AI makes you boring

#273

Post by josephg »

arscan wrote: post #147
Uehreka wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text… Whoa whoa whoa hold your horses, code has a pretty important property that ordinary prose doesn’t have: it can make real things happen even if no one reads it (it’s executable). I don’t want to read something that someone didn’t take the time to write. But I’ll gladly use a tool someone had an AI write, as long as it works (which these th…

> But I’ll gladly use a tool someone had an AI write, as long as it works (which these things increasingly do). It works, sure, but is it worth your time to use? I think a common blind spot for software engineers is understanding how hard it is to get people to use software they aren’t effectively forced to use (through work or in order to gain access to something or ‘network effects’ or whatever). Most people’s time…

> It works, sure, but is it worth your time to use?

This is something I like about the LLM future. I get to spend my time with users thinking about their needs and how the product itself could be improved. The AI can write all the CSS and sql queries or whatever to actually implement those features.

If the interesting thing about software is the code itself - like the concepts and so on, then yeah do that yourself. I like working with CRDTs because they’re a fun little puzzle. But most code isn’t like that. Most code just needs to move some text from over here to over there. For code like that, it’s the user experience that’s interesting. I’m happy to offload the grunt work to Claude.

Re: AI makes you boring

#274

Post by zahlman »

ryandrake wrote: post #98
logicprog wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is precisely it. If anything, AI gives me more freedom to think about more novel ideas, both on the implementation and the final design level, because I'm not stuck looking up APIs and dealing with already solved problems.

It's kind of freeing to put a software project together and not have to sweat the boilerplate and rote algorithm work. Boring things that used to dissuade me. Now, I no longer have that voice in my head saying things like: "Ugh, I'm going to have to write yet another ring buffer, for the 14th time in my career."

... Why aren't any of the first 13 ring buffers reusable, though?

Re: AI makes you boring

#277

Post by aeturnum »

Uehreka wrote: post #89
aeturnum wrote: post #21

I've seen people say something along the lines of "I am not interested in reading something that you could not be bothered to actually write" and I think that pretty much sums it up. Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text and when it goes well other practitioners of the form can appreciate its shape and direction. With AI you can get a lot of 'function' on the page (so to speak)…

> Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text… Whoa whoa whoa hold your horses, code has a pretty important property that ordinary prose doesn’t have: it can make real things happen even if no one reads it (it’s executable). I don’t want to read something that someone didn’t take the time to write. But I’ll gladly use a tool someone had an AI write, as long as it works (which these th…

> even if no one reads it

I gotta disagree with you there! Code that isn't read doesn't do anything. Code must be read to be compiled, it must be read to be interpreted, etc.

I think this points to a difference in our understanding of "read" means, perhaps? To expand my pithy "not gonna read if you didn't write" bit: The idea that code stands on its own is a lie. The world changes around code and code must be changed to keep up with the world. Every "program" (is the git I run the same as the git you run?) is a living document that people maintain as need be. So when we extend the "not read / didn't write" it's not using the program (which I guess is like taking the lessons from a book) it's maintaining the program.

So I think it's possible that I could derive benefit from someone else reading an llm's text output (they get an idea) - but what we are trying to talk about is the work of maintaining a text.

Re: AI makes you boring

#278

Post by cal_dent »

Writing is thinking. If you outsource your writing then you're no longer really thinking. Some people keep trying to overcomplicate this but that is it in a nutshell.

Re: AI makes you boring

#279

Post by williamcotton »

aeturnum wrote: post #277
Uehreka wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text… Whoa whoa whoa hold your horses, code has a pretty important property that ordinary prose doesn’t have: it can make real things happen even if no one reads it (it’s executable). I don’t want to read something that someone didn’t take the time to write. But I’ll gladly use a tool someone had an AI write, as long as it works (which these th…

> even if no one reads it I gotta disagree with you there! Code that isn't read doesn't do anything. Code must be read to be compiled, it must be read to be interpreted, etc. I think this points to a difference in our understanding of "read" means, perhaps? To expand my pithy "not gonna read if you didn't write" bit: The idea that code stands on its own is a lie. The world changes around code and code must be changed…

Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you wrote a dependency-free recursive descent parser in C89 thirty years ago it should still compile and return the same AST.

Re: AI makes you boring

#280

Post by jgon »

tptacek wrote: post #194
discreteevent wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about status. It's about interest. A joiner is not going to have an interesting conversation about joinery with someone who has put some flatpak furniture together.

Oh, is that what Show HN is? A community of craftspeople discussing their craft? I hadn't realized.

Based on your replies here, one thing it really doesn't seem like is a community of people trying to earnestly exchange ideas or points of view. It really seems like you're viewing this whole thing as some sort of debate contest or point sparring, and its both aggravating and disappointing to read.

What is your hoped for outcome here man? To come off like enough of a jerk or obtuse enough that people just abandon the thread and you can declare victory?

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