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Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

worksonmymachine.substack.com

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Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#371

Post by clickety_clack »

aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #55
clickety_clack wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an efficient way to serve the results, and there’s an efficient way for a human to consume them, and I find LLMs to be much more efficient in terms of cognitive work done to explore and understand something than a google search. The next thing will have to beat that level of personal mental effort, and I can’t imagine what that next step would look like yet.

I find a well-written human article or guide to be far more efficient when it exists. But if AI rehash them... then the market for those may disappear, and in the process, the AI won't be very good either without the source to summarise.

I don’t disagree with that at all, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The market for serving information goes where the people want to consume it. The old portals of the 90s gave way to search because it was easier for people to find what they wanted. LLMs give people an even easier way to find information. The downstream effects don’t factor into most people’s decision to use an LLM over source material.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#372

Post by stephenlf »

Beautiful read. Thank you.

———

> Maybe all methodology is just mutually agreed-upon fiction that happens to produce results?

Good news! *All of computer science is this way.* There’s nothing universally fundamental about transistors, or Turing machines, or OOP, or the HTTP protocol. They’re all just abstractions that fit, because they worked.

———

When should I stop learning and start building? My coworker wrote absolutely ATROCIOUS code, alone, for the past decade. But he was BUILDING that whole time. He’s not up to date on modern web practices, but who cared? He built.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#373

Post by yoyohello13 »

gngoo wrote: post #310
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #270

Instead of walking away, I have worked on multiple projects at the same time. Prompt one project, let it run, prompt another project, let it run and go back to the first. Maybe walking away is a better choice hah.

Yep! I work on multiple client projects. And while one agent is running in one project, I’m reviewing and writing down the task for another. Generally I just do this 2-3 hours per day; trying to block this time. And then go outside and enjoy free time.

Enjoy it while it lasts. Once this becomes the norm, the free time will diminish.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#374

Post by yoyohello13 »

noodletheworld wrote: post #249

There is a fundamentally unfortunate reality here which is quite problematic. Namely, you don’t deserve to be paid for working 8 hours if you only worked for 30 minutes over an eight hour period. I don’t care if you personally agree with that or not, the reality is that businesses believe it. That means, sooner or later there will be a great rebalancing where people will be required to do significantly more work ; pr…

Man you struck a nerve with this one. All these devs want to believe they are still going to get paid $200k a year working 30mins a day. The reality is we will be spending the same 8 hours a day, be paid less, but now we need to work on 16 projects at the same time.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#375

Post by yoyohello13 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #258
noodletheworld wrote: post #249

There is a fundamentally unfortunate reality here which is quite problematic. Namely, you don’t deserve to be paid for working 8 hours if you only worked for 30 minutes over an eight hour period. I don’t care if you personally agree with that or not, the reality is that businesses believe it. That means, sooner or later there will be a great rebalancing where people will be required to do significantly more work ; pr…

I am hopeful that AI leads to a future with mandatory 10 hour work weeks.

You are living in a fantasy land if you think any technology (besides maybe a replicator) will lead to less work. If that were the case we'd all be on a 10 hour work week already.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#376

Post by baq »

wordofx wrote: post #297
Loic wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What junior devs will do, I'm not so sure. They somehow have to jump to the top of the mountain, but the stairs are gone. Exactly my thinking, nearly 50, more than 30 years of experience in early every kind of programming, like you do, I can easily architect/control/adjust the agent to help me produce great code with a very robust architecture. By I do that out of my experience, both in modelling (science) and prog…

I don’t know how seniors will cope. You seem to have a solid understanding that you can make use of AI. But most seniors on HN struggle with basic tasks using AI. Juniors are likely to out pace them quickly. But potentially without the experience or understanding.

They cope just fine. If you’re thinking about stubborn ‘AI is just a statical parrot’ folks, IME it takes just one interaction where it clicks and nothing is the same afterwards. Perhaps we need GPT-5 or Gemini 3 for some of those people, but that’s what, a year out? Or a month?

Juniors need experience to know if the machine is going in the right direction or guide it. That experience is now nigh impossible to get, nobody has the time for apprentices now. It’ll take some brave management to pave a way forward, we don’t know what it’ll be exactly yet.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#377

Post by vitaflo »

hooverd wrote: post #239
vitaflo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't want to work with somebody who works like this. You will most likely get your wish but not in the way you want. In a few years when this is fully matured there will be little reason to hire devs with their inflated salaries (especially in the US) when all you need is someone with some technical know-how and a keen eye on how to work with AI agents. There will be plenty of those people all over the globe who…

> some technical know-how how do they develop the technical know-how? how will you review the AI agents when you understand nothing?

How do you review the machine code generated by the compiler?

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#378

Post by bawana »

At what point does LLM output become more expensive than search? For example, the author made protocollie. Could the LLM gather all similar apps that are already written to solve the prompt that birthed it,, and then simply provide THOSE apps iinstead of figuring out how to code it anew? Sounds like this could be a moat that only hyperscalars could implement and woould reduce their energy requirements drastically.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#379

Post by bawana »

Terr_ wrote: post #305
lordnacho wrote: post #15

I'm loving the new programming. I don't know where it goes either, but I like it for now. I'm actually producing code right this moment, where I would normally just relax and do something else. Instead, I'm relaxing and coding. It's great for a senior guy who has been in the business for a long time. Most of my edits nowadays are tedious. If I look at the code and decide I used the wrong pattern originally, I have to…

> What junior devs will do, I'm not so sure I see it as a worrying extension of a pre-LLM problem: No employer wants to train, they just want to hire employees after someone else trains them.

so i guess that's a good argument for replacing employees with a bespoke LLM for your business-they will never leave after they're trained. and they never ask for a raise. and they dont need benefits or carry other human risks.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#380

Post by bawana »

booleandilemma wrote: post #226
ikerino wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take: Junior devs are going to be the ones who "know how to build with AI" better than current seniors. They are entering the job market with sensibilities for a higher-level of abstraction. They will be the first generation of devs that went through high-school + college building with AI.

Do you think that kids growing up now will be better artists than people who spent time learning how to paint because they can prompt an LLM to create a painting for them? Do you think humanity will be better off because we'll have humans who don't know how to do anything themselves, but they're really good at asking the magical AI to do it for them? What a sad future we're going to have.

more reasons for humans not to birth more humans
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