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AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

joshwcomeau.com

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Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#271

Post by wavemode »

vslira wrote: post #194
adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that the fact that the thing you’re an expert at looked like garbage to you, but the things you’re not an expert at, looked just fine, is not a coincidence? You can talk to a bunch of designers who will say the opposite. Claude Design Studio generated this garbage UI, that I fixed manually, but it created great code j never could have that made it work.

Maybe specialists have a higher bar than consumers, and as a design consumer he's right about the design, and the designer is right about the code, if "being right" means "understanding what the end customer will think about this".

Well, design isn't just about looking nice, nor even just about what people think about it. Something can look nice and fail as a design.

That is to say - it's entirely possible to have a design that a layperson looks at and goes "wow that's beautiful", and then A/B test it in the real world and your revenue goes down X% because (for example) certain important sections now require more clicks to access.

Or to use a real-world example - you could redesign a train station and make it more beautiful while also increasing the amount of people who get lost because it's now more difficult for some people with poor eyesight to find the right track.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#272

Post by teaearlgraycold »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #245
adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that the fact that the thing you’re an expert at looked like garbage to you, but the things you’re not an expert at, looked just fine, is not a coincidence? You can talk to a bunch of designers who will say the opposite. Claude Design Studio generated this garbage UI, that I fixed manually, but it created great code j never could have that made it work.

Colleague (non-designer) generated UI with Claude. It was awful and broke basic design rules. So yes you may be right.

Claude Code or Claude Design? The latter seems to be a step up, but it’s more so a replacement for a repurposed paid template than a full time designer.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#273

Post by dannersy »

keeda wrote: post #266
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using AI as a tutor, or even just for help with the hard assignments, produces slightly better learning outcomes Source? The few people I’ve seen try to do this wind up with a terrible understanding of the material, with large knowledge gaps and one or two fundamental fuckups. In every case, an introductory textbook would have been better. (It would also have been harder.)

For coding specifically (there are many studies out there by now, but I know of these offhand): https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/14/10/4115 -- probably the earliest one of its kind, finds over-reliance degrades critical skills but supplementary use is mostly harmless. https://arxiv.org/html/2601.20245v2 -- Anthropic's study, same as above except supplementary use (like clarifying concepts) can actually be beneficial. h…

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.04721

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#274

Post by reactordev »

lobf wrote: post #264
reactordev wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are ahead of the curve my friend

How do you mean?

using AI to write your own personal software whose quality is only concerned by you, the user. If it works for you, it works for you. This will be the norm in the future. SaaS and platforms and the old way of writing software will die when writing software becomes something one does while asleep.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#276

Post by miyoji »

echelon wrote: post #219
miyoji wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really saddens me to see some developers talk about literally quitting their careers over AI, right when the benefits of existing deep technical experience have never been more valuable. 1. Because the experience of interacting with AI is miserable. I like writing code. I don't like finding the magic incantation that gets the machine to write the correct code. I don't like correcting the machine when it gets thi…

> Because the experience of interacting with AI is miserable. I like writing code. I'm your exact opposite. I've felt like code is 1960's punch card tech my entire career. I've always wanted to do more. So much of coding is plumbing. Or paying attention to tiny little details. Or hunting down stupid bugs. Or changing requirements and refactoring. That shit sucks. All of it. I've never had so much fun with software. I…

> So much of coding is plumbing. Or paying attention to tiny little details. Or hunting down stupid bugs. Or changing requirements and refactoring. That shit sucks. All of it.

No offense, but this sounds like you just don't like anything about writing code and you don't have any LLM superpowers, because those are the technical skills that make you good at being a software engineer regardless of whether you're using an agent.

> Code is not holy. In 100 years people will look at our ephemeral artifacts as silly little things. Treat it that way today. Means to an end.

I don't give a shit about code as an artifact. Writing code to solve problems is fun. Prompting an AI to solve problems makes me want to eat a gun. That's a real difference and it's not something I can just change about myself.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#277

Post by simulator5g »

znnajdla wrote: post #247

Bingo. AI is NOT making raw skill/talent obsolete, rather it’s actually making it more valuable. Deep technical knowledge now has even more leverage in the real world, not less, because you then have more “surfaces” to apply the use of AI. And this realization is what actually inspired me to build my own homelab datacenter to host my tech SaaS rather than use cloud services like AWS. The value of learning basic netwo…

[Child]: Moooom can we get Terry Davis?

[Mom]: We have Terry Davis at home.

[znnajdla]: In fact I am actually tempted to build my own OS — something I wouldnt have dared to think of before AI.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#278

Post by lobf »

reactordev wrote: post #274
lobf wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you mean?

using AI to write your own personal software whose quality is only concerned by you, the user. If it works for you, it works for you. This will be the norm in the future. SaaS and platforms and the old way of writing software will die when writing software becomes something one does while asleep.

Ah I see. Funny enough I consider myself more of a dinosaur or originalist- the PC was idealized as a device for individuals to write their own programs for their personal use.

The issue before is that coding is not only difficult and time-consuming to learn, but also that I think it requires a particular type of person to fully grasp this new, non-human language.

I see these SOTA LLMs as akin to the digital camera revolution. Suddenly the moat that has kept people from participating in this art form (for film it was the high cost of film stock, processing film, editing the film prior to non-linear editing programs, etc) has disappeared.

Are people producing low-quality video content now because of the cheap and ubiquitous access? Of course, but we’re also exposed to brilliant filmmakers / artists who simply never would have had the opportunity to try their hand.

By the same token, sure there’s lots of garbage code out there now. But it’s also unlocking imaginations by granting access to the mysterious inner workings of a computer to the average person, letting them use their computers more thoroughly than ever before.

I find it exciting. Bummer for the highly-paid SWEs, but such is life. You can only protect a niche to demand high wages for so long.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#279

Post by hollowturtle »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #193
hollowturtle wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is a maintenance deadend for LLMs it's notorious codebases start accumulating enormous amount of tech debt and that it gets almost impossible to unravel it even with the best agent

I've never seen it happen. You say this and it's likely one anecdotal claim. At the same time there's counter points like Bun getting rewritten in rust. This is talk and talk is cheap. Prove it, otherwise it's still a million dollar question... unanswered. HN is notoriously mentally deficient when it comes to AI. They were wrong about self driving cars (I sit in AI cars daily), they were wrong about AI getting used f…

> They were wrong about self driving cars

only in the bubble you live in

> So I have to say unless there's something evidence based or substantial here it's likely given HN track record that most people here will end up being another wrong, baseless and over confident answer.

Again only in the bubble you live in. You want evidence? There are zero killer app products out there. Not even one, the ones that seems impressive like bun zig to rust, it's just an experiment and will see how bad it will unravel.

And the existing products? They get shittier day by day at rate not seen before.

Or are u building one via codex inside the ai car while u eat a burrito?

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#280

Post by hollowturtle »

rustyminnow wrote: post #236
threethirtytwo wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen it happen. You say this and it's likely one anecdotal claim. At the same time there's counter points like Bun getting rewritten in rust. This is talk and talk is cheap. Prove it, otherwise it's still a million dollar question... unanswered. HN is notoriously mentally deficient when it comes to AI. They were wrong about self driving cars (I sit in AI cars daily), they were wrong about AI getting used f…

Bun getting rewritten in Rust is not really the counter point you think it is. The rust version hasn't shipped yet, so there hasn't even been a chance to see if the code can be maintained. It's an impressive feat no doubt, but until they've maintained it on a months to years timeline, it's also just talk with no evidence.

His comment doesnt even seem written by him, too busy doing nothing in a self driving car while codex work for him
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