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Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

antirez.com

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Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#291

Post by hxugufjfjf »

amelius wrote: post #191
frizlab wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer, and for them, I understand LLMs remove the fun part. Exactly me.

Same. However, for me the fun in programming was always a kind of trap that kept me from doing more challenging things. Now the fun is gone, maybe I can do more important work.

My problem was the exact opposite. I wanted to deliver but the dislike of the actual programming / typing code prevented me from doing so. AI has solved this for me.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#292

Post by rubslopes »

simonw wrote: post #160
systemf_omega wrote: post #8

What I don't understand about this whole "get on board the AI train or get left behind" narrative, what advantage does an early adopter have for AI tools? The way I see it, I can just start using AI once they get good enough for my type of work. Until then I'm continuing to learn instead of letting my brain atrophy.

This is a pretty common position: "I don't worry about getting left behind - it will only take a few weeks to catch up again". I don't think that's true. I'm really good at getting great results out of coding agents and LLMs. I've also been using LLMs for code on an almost daily basis since ChatGPT's release on November 30th 2022. That's more than three years ago now. Meanwhile I see a constant flow of complaints fro…

I don't disagree, knowing how to use the tools is important. But I wanted to add that great prompting skill nowadays are far far less necessary for top-tier models that it was years ago. If I'm clear about what I want and how I want it to behave, Claude Opus 4.5 almost always nails it first time. The "extra" that I do often, that maybe newcomers don't, is to setup a system where the LLM can easily check the results of its changes (verbose logs in terminal and, in web, verbose logs in console and playwright).

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#293

Post by gosub100 »

jebarker wrote: post #282
martin-t wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> programmer who actually do like the actual typing It's not about the typing, it's about the understanding. LLM coding is like reading a math textbook without trying to solve any of the problems. You get an overview, you get a sense of what it's about and most importantly you get a false sense of understanding. But if you try to actually solve the problems, you engage completely different parts of your brain. It's a…

> LLM coding is like reading a math textbook without trying to solve any of the problems. Most math textbooks provide the solutions too. So you could choose to just read those and move on and you’d have achieved much less. The same is true with coding. Just because LLMs are available doesn’t mean you have to use them for all coding, especially when the goal is to learn foundational knowledge. I still believe there’s…

I haven't used AI yet but I definitely would love a tool that could do the drudgery for me for designs that I already understand. For instance, if I want to store my own structures in an RDBMS, I want to lay the groundwork and say "Hey Jeeves, give me the C++ syntax to commit this structure to a MySQL table using commit/rollback". I believe once I know what I want, futzing over the exact syntax for how to do it is a waste of time. I heard c++ isn't well supported but eventually I'll give it a try.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#294

Post by dehsge »

jebarker wrote: post #282
martin-t wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> programmer who actually do like the actual typing It's not about the typing, it's about the understanding. LLM coding is like reading a math textbook without trying to solve any of the problems. You get an overview, you get a sense of what it's about and most importantly you get a false sense of understanding. But if you try to actually solve the problems, you engage completely different parts of your brain. It's a…

> LLM coding is like reading a math textbook without trying to solve any of the problems. Most math textbooks provide the solutions too. So you could choose to just read those and move on and you’d have achieved much less. The same is true with coding. Just because LLMs are available doesn’t mean you have to use them for all coding, especially when the goal is to learn foundational knowledge. I still believe there’s…

Most math books do not provide solutions. Outside of calculus, advanced mathematics solutions are left as an exercise for the reader.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#295

Post by anovikov »

I'm sure it will go in the worst way possible: demand for code will not expand at nearly the same rate in which coding productivity will increase, and vast majority of coders will become permanently jobless, the rest will become disposable cheap labor just due to overabundance of them.

This is already happening.

AI had an impact on simplest coding first, this is self-evident. So any impact it had, had to be on the quantity of software created, and only then on its quality and/or complexity. And mobile apps are/were a tedious job with a lot of scaffolding and a lot of "blanks to fill" to make them work and get accepted by stores. So first thing that had to skyrocket in numbers with the arrival of AI, had to be mobile apps.

But the number of apps on Apple Store is essentially flat and rate of increase is barely distinguishable from the past years, +7% instead of +5%. Not even visible.

Apparently the world doesn't need/can't make monetisable use of much more software than it already does. Demand wasn't quite satisfied say 5 years ago, but the gap wasn't huge. It is now covered many times over.

Which means, most of us will probably never get another job/gig after the current one - and if it's over, it's over and not worth trying anymore - the scraps that are left of the market are not worth the effort.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#296

Post by akomtu »

bob1029 wrote: post #65

> Test these new tools, with care, with weeks of work, not in a five minutes test where you can just reinforce your own beliefs. Find a way to multiply yourself, and if it does not work for you, try again every few months. I've been taking a proper whack at the tree every 6 months or so. This time it seems like it might actually fall over. Every prior attempt I could barely justify spending $10-20 in API credits befo…

> Big picture, you could fight AI downstream by capitalizing on it near term.

Trying to beat a demon long term by making a contract with it short term?

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#298

Post by deadbabe »

roncesvalles wrote: post #116
adityaathalye wrote: post #27

Don't fall into the "Look ma, no hands" hype. Antirez + LLM + CFO = Billion Dollar Redis company, quite plausibly. /However/ ... As for the delta provided by an LLM to Antirez, outside of Redis (and outside of any problem space he is already intimately familiar with), an Apples to Apples comparison would be he trying this on an equally complex codebase he has no idea about. I'll bet... what Antirez can do with Redis…

Exactly. AI is minimally useful for coding something that you couldn't have been able to code yourself, given enough time, without explicitly investing time in generic learning not specific to that codebase or particular task. Although calling AI "just autocomplete" is almost a slur now, it really is just that in the sense that you need to A) have a decent mental picture of what you want, and, B) recognize a correct…

You could have another LLM tell you which is the correct output.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#299

Post by omnicognate »

barrkel wrote: post #284
omnicognate wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer and from the first line of the article: > I love writing software, line by line. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't write programs "line by line" and typing isn't programming. I work out code in the abstract away from the keyboard before typing it out, and it's not the typing part that is the bottleneck. Last time I…

I'm like you. I get on famously with Claude Code with Opus 4.5 2025.11 update. Give it a first pass from a spec. Since you know how it should be shaped you can give an initial steer, but focus on features first, and build with testability. Then refactor, with examples in prompts, until it lines up. You already have the tests, the AI can ensure it doesn't break anything. Beat it up more and you're done.

> focus on features first, and build with testability.

This is just telling me to do this:

> To use it the way you are using it we would instead have to allow it to replace the part that happens (or can happen) away from the keyboard: the mental processing of the code.

I don't want to do that.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#300

Post by ryandrake »

omnicognate wrote: post #238
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

> do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer and from the first line of the article: > I love writing software, line by line. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't write programs "line by line" and typing isn't programming. I work out code in the abstract away from the keyboard before typing it out, and it's not the typing part that is the bottleneck. Last time I…

> I've used it and it really is very, very good, but it isn't what I need because it can't take that fully-specified image from my head and translate it to the exact corresponding code. Instead I have to convert that image to vague natural language, have some code generated and then carefully review it to find and fix (or have the AI fix) the many ways it inevitably departs from what I wanted.

I agree with this. The hard part of software development happens when you're formulating the idea in your head, planning the data structures and algorithms, deciding what abstractions to use, deciding what interfaces look like--the actual intellectual work. Once that is done, there is the unpleasant, slow, error-prone part: translating that big bundle of ideas into code while outputting it via your fingers. While LLMs might make this part a little faster, you're still doing a slow, potentially-lossy translation into English first. And if you care about things other than "does it work," you still have a lot of work to do post-LLM to clean things up and make it beautiful.

I think it still remains to be seen whether idea -> natural language -> code is actually going to be faster or better than idea -> code. For unskilled programmers it probably already is. For experts? The jury may still be out.

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