Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Two kinds of AI users are emerging

martinalderson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 358 posts

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#341

Post by tom_m »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #142

I'd argue 2 types of users are * People using it as a tool, aware of its limitations and treating it basically as intern/boring task executor (whether its some code boilerplate, or pooping out/shortening some corporate email), or as tool to give themselves summary of topic they can then bite into deeper. * People outsourcing thinking and entire skillset to it - they usually have very little clue in the topic, are int…

You can get it to type for you. I don't really type the code myself anymore. I review it and then have it make corrections. Very rarely I will jump in and type and probably should more because the token cost, but it's novel that I can make it change the code exactly how I want, so I do that instead.

It's nice to brainstorm with too, but you have to know what you're doing.

It gets stuck on certain things for sure. But all in all it's a great productivity tool. I treat it like an advanced auto complete. That's basically how people need to treat it. You have to spend a lot of time setting up context and detailing what you want.

So does it save time? Yea, it can. It may not in every task, but it can. It's simply another way of coding. It's a great assistant, but it's not replacing a person.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#342

Post by pizzafeelsright »

simmerup wrote: post #303
pizzafeelsright wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone recently had AI create a trading bot and it returns 131% on every transaction over a 30 day period - do you really think they care about code quality or ability to verify the math?

ANd I have a bridge to sell you in London

Someone bought that bridge and it stands in Arizona.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#343

Post by calebkaiser »

sevenzero wrote: post #165
gloomyday wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fatalistic attitude, but I can totally get behind. It has become harder to associate my job with contributing with society.

I agree and I am far from being a senior engineer. I'm only in the market since a few years and started out just before the whole LLM stuff started to pick up. So I have been grinding a lot (2nd job I've learned, am in tech since ~2020) only to be confronted with permanent existential fear of having to possibly learn a 3rd job (which takes 3 years of full time work for neglectable pay in my country). I dont want to s…

I work with/am friends with many junior-ish developers who are in the same place as you (got into programming in their late 20s around the 2020 hiring cycle). I'm very sorry for the stress you're dealing with.

I don't know if this describes your situation, but I know many people who are dealing with positions where they have no technical mentorship, no real engineering culture to grow in, and a lot of deadlines and work pressure. Coupled with this, they often don't have a large social group within programming/tech, because they've only been in it for a few years and have been heads down grinding to get a good job the whole time. They're experiencing a weird mixture of isolation, directionless-ness, and intense pressure. The work is joyless for them, and they don't see a future.

If I can offer any advice, be selfish for a bit. Outsource as much as you want to LLMs, but use whatever time savings you get out of this to spend time on programming-related things you enjoy. Maybe work the tickets you find mildly interesting without LLMs, even if they aren't mission critical. Find something interesting to tinker with. Learn a niche language. Or slack off in a discord group/make friends in programming circles that aren't strictly about career advancement and networking.

I think it's basically impossible to get better past a certain level if you can't enjoy programming, LLM-assisted or otherwise. There's such a focus on "up-skilling" and grinding through study materials in the culture right now, and that's all well and good if you're trying to pass an interview in 6 weeks, but all of that stuff is pretty useless when you're burned out and overwhelmed.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#344

Post by leptons »

Mentlo wrote: post #339
leptons wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a quarter of the smartphone market (leader) Android is by far the leader. >half of the tablet market (leader) Half does not make someone a "leader" >a tenth of the global pc market (2nd place) 2nd place?? They're last place, by a wide margin . >6th of the usa/europe market (2nd place) Also last place. I guess the reality distortion field is still alive and well.

Os x has a 10% market share, which is 2nd after Windows, but i agree on that one i conflated terms. I couldn’t quickly find device manufacturers stats. If wiki is to be trusted - apple is 4th, with share not far behind dell [1]. If half doesn’t make you leader what does? Maybe you should elaborate your definition of leader? For me it’s “has the highest market share”. And in that definition half is necessarily true. I…

>If half doesn’t make you leader what does?

A leader would be significantly more than half, which Apple definitely is not. Co-leader? Maybe. But Apple will likely be losing market share in mobile because inflation is rampant and made worse by AI eating up all the RAM and chip suppliers, and Apple's products are already too expensive and will only get more expensive and out of reach of most consumers. Apple is a "luxury brand", and most average people can't justify luxury purchases anymore.

>On mobile devices, Apple is 1st, having double market share compared to 2nd place (samsung).

>It’s funny that for PC’s you went for manufacturers

I never mentioned specific hardware manufacturers - only you did to move the goalpost. So don't lie and suggest I did that, because I did not. Manufacturers are irrelevant, since Apple won't let anyone run their OSs on any other hardware. You're trying to move goalposts to support your fanboyism.

Android crushes iOS. Windows crushes MacOS. Those are facts.

>The need to paint Apple as purely a marketing company always fascinated me.

I also never mentioned marketing. Are you a hallucinating AI?

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#345

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #333
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also - who understands the system now? Does anyone know Python at this shop? Is it someone’s implicit duty to now learn Python, or is the LLM now the de facto interface for modifying the system? When shit hits the fan and execs need answers yesterday , will they jump to using the LLM to probabilistically make modifications to the system, or will they admit it was a mistake and pull Excel back up to deterministica…

At least you can literally buy books that tell you how to test Python code and confirm it works as expected. When shit hits the fan, execs need answers yesterday and the 30 sheet Excel monstrosity is producing the wrong numbers - who fixes it? It was done by Sue, who left the company 4 years ago, people have been using it since and nobody really understands it.

Alright so it is implicit that it is someone’s duty to learn Python. Don’t get me wrong, Python is better than Excel in a million ways, but not many companies are competent at hiring people who are competent at Python - including software companies from my personal experience hah.

I’ve also heard plenty of horror stories of bus factor employees leaving (or threatening to leave) behind an excel monstrosity and companies losing 6 months of sales, so maybe there’s a win for AI somewhere in there.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#346

Post by Merad »

theshrike79 wrote: post #332
Merad wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Claude Code with Opus 4.5 a lot the last several months and while it's amazingly capable it has a huge tendency to give up on tests. It will just decide that it can commit a failing test because "fixing it has been deferred" or "it's a pre-existing problem." It also knows that it can use `HUSKY=0 git commit ...` to bypass tests that are run in commit hooks. This is all with CLAUDE.md being very specif…

Anecdata from the internet has a few stories of Claude Opus bypassing hooks too =) 1) it wants to run X command 2) it notices a hook preventing it from running X 3) it creates a Python application or shell script that does X and runs it instead Whoops.

I haven't seen it bypass my hook yet (knock on wood). I have my hook script [0] tell that its commits are required to pass validation, maybe that helps push it in the right direction?

0: https://github.com/mbcrawfo/vibefun/blob/main/.claude/hooks/...

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#347

Post by doginasuit »

Here's how I'd break down the two types of users: People who are using AI to teach themselves how to work in the domain they are interested in, and people who are relying on AI to do all or most of the heavy lifting.

I'd argue that the people using AI most effectively are in the mostly-chatters group that the author defines, and specifically they are using the AI to understand the domain on a deeper level. The "power users" are heading for a dead end, they will arrive as soon as AI is capable of figuring out what is actually valuable to people in the given domain, not generally a difficult problem to solve. These power users will eventually be outclassed by AIs that can self-navigate. But I would argue that a human that has a rich understanding of the domain will still beat self-navigating AI for a long time to come.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#348

Post by suprjami »

sevenzero wrote: post #151
PunchyHamster wrote: post #142

I'd argue 2 types of users are * People using it as a tool, aware of its limitations and treating it basically as intern/boring task executor (whether its some code boilerplate, or pooping out/shortening some corporate email), or as tool to give themselves summary of topic they can then bite into deeper. * People outsourcing thinking and entire skillset to it - they usually have very little clue in the topic, are int…

I started to outsource thinking at my job as my company made it very clear that they do not want/cant afford thinking engineers. Thinking requires time and they want to deliver quickly. So they cater towards the very realistic deadlines our PMs set for features (/s). Funnily enough the features have to be implemented ASAP according to the customers, but the customer feedback takes like 6 months due to them using the…

Put your LLM to use writing a resume and looking for a new job. You've already checked out of this job. There is a better and more fulfilling way to spend your waking hours. Good luck friend.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#349

Post by Schiendelman »

strange_quark wrote: post #264
Schiendelman wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 44. It's been more than five or six years. I would say 15 or 20, if not more.

It feels like covid turbocharged it though. The amount of grift outright corruption is unrecognizable compared to even 2019. Maybe it was always there but it feels like companies have gone full mask off now.

Give me a concrete example?

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#350

Post by Schiendelman »

idopmstuff wrote: post #270
Schiendelman wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a product manager, this makes me think the features you're building are not the things your customers need or want most. I'm curious if you were to ask your product manager about that six-month timeframe, and just ask the open-ended question of is there anything on the backlog that we can build that the product manager thinks users would pick up within days instead of months?

As a product manager, this feels like they're in the pretty typical B2B SaaS trap of building the stuff that the people who pay for the product insist they need but the people using the product don't necessarily want, so they've gotta invest a bunch of time and effort getting usage/feedback. Could be for good reasons (e.g. they're security features that are important to the business but add friction for the user) or…

If they were building the stuff the people paying for the product insist they need, it seems unlikely that they'd take 6 months to use it once built. Unless it's some API that takes a ton of work to build to. It didn't sound like they were getting feedback for those six months.

Security features that add friction for the user are usually forced, aren't they?

Contract requirements do make sense, but I get the idea that this user would know that.

What are you imagining that would be actual value but not used for six months?

Post reply on HN