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AI is making me dumb

jpain.io

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Re: AI is making me dumb

#301

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

notarobot123 wrote: post #171
ryandrake wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At this point, it's worth asking whether lots of relatively straightforward verbose code is actually significantly worse than the least code necessary for the problem. Obviously, architecture matters. What might matter less is verbosity. The reason we aimed for minimal "accidental complexity" up to now was directly related to the cost/pain of changing and maintaining that code. Hasn't the economics of maintenance and…

> Hasn't the economics of maintenance and change shifted so much that accidental complexity isn't actually all that expensive/painful?

They have, but not in the way you mean.

AI knows nothing about software engineering. AI is a technical debt generator.

You can mitigate this somewhat if you put an actual software engineer at the helm with lots of prompting, but at some point the technical debt accrues enough that neither humans nor AI can fix anything.

As an example, this is what happened to OpenClaw. (And why you suddenly stopped reading hype about it.) OpenAI paid millions for literal trash.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#302

Post by riazrizvi »

tombert wrote: post #141
riazrizvi wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced Claude Code and Codex are not the future. The cap seems to be a 3-500 line file so I just use ChatGPT and/or my own front end to APIs on OpenAI and others including local. Much beyond that it will not do what I want. Too many expert details to get right.

When it was just ChatGPT, I actually really enjoyed it. I still had to do a lot of the work, but I could use ChatGPT to explain arcane logs and help me diagnose errors. It didn't feel like babysitting interns, it felt more like "smarter google". Codex and Claude have been a bit soul sucking. I feel like I'm doing less of the planning and the like. I acknowledge that most code that makes it into production doesn't hav…

Thanks. This was useful. I've been considering the whole approach today and maybe there's a narrower way to use Codex that I haven't tried yet.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#303

Post by pona-a »

panflute wrote: post #210
Trasmatta wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hasn't the economics of maintenance and change shifted so much that accidental complexity isn't actually all that expensive/painful? I sincerely believe that extensive accidental complexity will ALSO be bad for AI agents. Their quality will diminish as their context windows get filled up with endless amounts of spaghetti and accidental complexity. I feel like we won't fully start feeling those effects for another y…

True, yet they have a Moore's Law like growth going for properties like their context windows.. I think the larger problem with letting them be verbose is Occam's razor. The more verbose they are the more variant behavior they will have where any variation that is not strictly necessary is likely to include incorrect behavior.

Attention is an O(n^2) algorithm. Combined with Moore's doubling, it will at best produce linear growth (assuming Moore's law is still remotely close to alive)

Re: AI is making me dumb

#304

Post by pona-a »

arian_ wrote: post #300

I'm 15 and learned to code with AI from the start. I genuinely don't know if I know how to program or if I just know how to talk to something that does.

It's simple to find out. Add Claude /etc/hosts and see how long you persist.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#305

Post by SpaceNoodled »

borski wrote: post #265
lmm wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you would be stupider every time you go on vacation Are you sure people aren't?

They usually come back smarter, actually.

There's a vast difference between the mental refreshment from a week or two relaxing vs. ceasing all thinking full-time.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#306

Post by panflute »

pona-a wrote: post #303
panflute wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, yet they have a Moore's Law like growth going for properties like their context windows.. I think the larger problem with letting them be verbose is Occam's razor. The more verbose they are the more variant behavior they will have where any variation that is not strictly necessary is likely to include incorrect behavior.

Attention is an O(n^2) algorithm. Combined with Moore's doubling, it will at best produce linear growth (assuming Moore's law is still remotely close to alive)

I don't think many developers like software bloat or what it has meant for our professional reputation but we would be dishonest if we predicted a future without outcomes where ugly brute force wins given all the constraints. It is not Moore's law that dictates context window that is only an analogy and so far it has been exponential growth that went from well bellow humans to more than a human can deal with in terms of short term tasks.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#307

Post by Xmd5a »

redmaple892 wrote: post #222
Xmd5a wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking of using Kiczales's Systematic Program Design [0]. Write the skeleton. Let the IA fill in the blanks. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16563160

I'm curious about how people link ideas and remember them. If you don't mind sharing, what was your process to save and remember this particular post from 2018?

I took the course more than a decade ago on Coursera, this is how I found the HN comment I linked.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#310

Post by boesboes »

denizay wrote: post #266

"With coding, I've been using AI entirely for a year or two. I've been entirely prompting and I haven't written a single line of code." I just can't understand this as a programmer. I use AI a lot as well when I program but I still write a lot of the code by myself just because it is easier to write the code I want, specially if I know what I want, than to make AI understand what kind of implementation I'm thinking o…

Same here, but i think i understand: if you can code for shit, AI makes you feel on par with people that can actually write code. Like, for some it is easier to explain what they want then writing it out as code. For me, it is not.
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