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AI is stifling new tech adoption?

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Re: AI is stifling new tech adoption?

#391

Post by kannanvijayan »

GrinningFool wrote: post #79
kannanvijayan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can chime in with a similar anecdote. I use co-pilot extensively in "fancy tab completion" mode. I don't use the conversational features - just the auto-complete to help my coding along. I specifically found it very useful when dealing with a bunch of boilerplate C++ shim code that used some advanced template magic to declare families of signatures for typed thunks that wrapped and augmented some underlying functio…

> It was really great. Took what would have been about day's worth of work carefully figuring out from first principles how the template system was structured.. and made it into about half an hour of "get it to generate the next shim, verify that the shim does the right thing". That also seems to highlight the disadvantage too - if you'd taken a day, you would have come away with a deeper understanding of the templat…

Fair point. In that particular circumstance I had no desire to learn the details of the system - the need of the day was to get in there, get the shims in, and get out to the other code that mattered.

If I hadn't worked for more than a decade with C++ and already been reasonably fluent in template semantics, there's a good chance I might have introduced bugs as well.

I think the issue is that these feel like incredibly safe tools because all they do is generate text, but at the same time it can lead to bad hygiene.

I personally never use AI to write prose (I'll keep my voice and my quirks thanks). And for code, I utilize the system specifically as a fancy pattern extension system. Even in well-abstracted code, about 90% of the structure of it can be inferred from the other parts. I let the AI complete that for me with tab-completions and verify that each line is what I would have otherwise typed before moving on.

I'm not comfortable engaging at a deeper level with these tools yet.

Re: AI is stifling new tech adoption?

#392

Post by sroussey »

milesvp wrote: post #300
crazygringo wrote: post #252

No, AI isn't. Any new tech, or version upgrade, or whatever, takes time for people to become familiar with it. You might as well say "Stack Overflow is stifling new tech adoption" because brand-new stuff doesn't have many Q's and A's yet. But that would be a silly thing to say. I'm not going to adopt a brand-new database regardless of LLM training data cutoff, just because enough people haven't had enough experience…

Strong disagree here. I've been trying to learn Zig, and I'm thwarted enough by chatgpt giving me outdated information on Zig's unstable API that if I didn't have a strong incentive to learn it for it's cross compiler, I'd likely turn my efforts towards another language. This effect can greatly alter the adoption curve of a new tech, which can leave it dying on the vine. You're not wrong though, in that Stack Overflo…

Have ChatGPT always use search when you ask questions. I find referencing a version number and requiring search improves things dramatically. Improves does not fix.

v0 for vercel/nextjs

Try phind or other things more into looking stuff up.

Re: AI is stifling new tech adoption?

#393

Post by williamcotton »

swatcoder wrote: post #367
williamcotton wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a library that doesn’t have any documentation or tutorials, like the Soundfont lib for JUCE where the LLM was essentially I had to get a working product?

Let's dig into this for a second. Which "Soundfont lib for JUCE" are you talking about? How did you find it in the first place? Why did you decide to use it if there was no documentation? How did you know it was appropriate or capable for your use case? How did you know it was mature, stable, or safe? Did you read the headers for the library? Did they have comments? Did you read the technical specification for the So…

I Googled and got:

https://www.mucoder.net/blog/2016/03/24/sfzero.html

There was boilerplate that wasn’t explained and only existed in a demo for an audio plugin.

I prompted the LLM with the header files and sections of the demo app and after a few back and forth learning sessions I was getting piano samples playing back:

https://github.com/williamcotton/midiplayer

It works, it doesn’t have any memory issues (after I fixed an issue in the module), and is performant.

This is also my first C++ project!

Re: AI is stifling new tech adoption?

#394

Post by swatcoder »

williamcotton wrote: post #393
swatcoder wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's dig into this for a second. Which "Soundfont lib for JUCE" are you talking about? How did you find it in the first place? Why did you decide to use it if there was no documentation? How did you know it was appropriate or capable for your use case? How did you know it was mature, stable, or safe? Did you read the headers for the library? Did they have comments? Did you read the technical specification for the So…

I Googled and got: https://www.mucoder.net/blog/2016/03/24/sfzero.html There was boilerplate that wasn’t explained and only existed in a demo for an audio plugin. I prompted the LLM with the header files and sections of the demo app and after a few back and forth learning sessions I was getting piano samples playing back: https://github.com/williamcotton/midiplayer It works, it doesn’t have any memory issues (after I…

Thanks for answering!

Assuming your original question was not rhetorical and was asked in good faith, other people who've used SFZero before the advent of LLM's made sure they understood juce::Synthesizer (despite its many warts, juce's public interfaces are well documented and represent a strong point) as this just defines a specific implementation, and either referenced the provided example or read the headers, which are pretty straightforward.

It's great that the LLM was able to get you to where you wanted to be, and congratulations on getting your project to that milestone. Especially for not having worked in C++ before! But to the point of the person you were responding to, the LLM was not fulfilling a generally unmet need. Everything a professional or practiced amateur needs was there already.

Re: AI is stifling new tech adoption?

#395

Post by psytrancefan »

physicsguy wrote: post #7

If AI stifles the relentless churn in frontend frameworks then perhaps it's a good thing.

EXACTLY.

I suspect there has been a decade long Three-card monte on the front end in that change is good because change keeps front end salary up.

Personally, the sooner LLMs make all front end developers unemployed the better.

Re: AI is stifling new tech adoption?

#396

Post by alphan0n »

ra0x3 wrote: post #379
matsemann wrote: post #86

I actually asked this a while back, but got little response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40263033 > Ask HN: Will LLMs hurt adoption of new frameworks and technology? > If I ask some LLM/GPT a react question I get good responses. If I ask it about a framework released after the training data was obtained, it will either not know or hallucinate. Or if it's a lesser known framework the quality will be worse tha…

+1 ChatGPT 4o still does not understand that React's ChakraUI is now on version 3 - which is incompatible with it's ChakraUI version 2 training data :')

That hasn’t been my experience at all. Could you share some examples?

> As of February 14, 2025, the latest version of Chakra UI for React is 3.8.0, released on February 9, 2025. This release introduced new hooks such as useElementRect, useForceUpdate, useLiveRef, usePrevious, and useSafeLayoutEffect, as well as a new FocusTrap component. Additionally, the Breadcrumb component received fixes for RTL support, and the Group component was updated to handle invalid children appropriately.

https://chatgpt.com/share/67aff366-db20-8011-8549-861b1fc31c...

Re: AI is stifling new tech adoption?

#397

Post by WhyOhWhyQ »

crazygringo wrote: post #252

No, AI isn't. Any new tech, or version upgrade, or whatever, takes time for people to become familiar with it. You might as well say "Stack Overflow is stifling new tech adoption" because brand-new stuff doesn't have many Q's and A's yet. But that would be a silly thing to say. I'm not going to adopt a brand-new database regardless of LLM training data cutoff, just because enough people haven't had enough experience…

"Early adopters will be early adopters. And early adopters aren't the kind of people relying on an LLM to tell them what to try out."

Why is this? 'Early adopter' is a pretty arbitrary category of people.

Re: AI is stifling new tech adoption?

#398

Post by tiew9Vii »

mattmanser wrote: post #365
_puk wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having spent the past week deep in cursor, it's amazing for building out a basic web app.. but getting it to a point of productivity takes a while.. Command line install for latest svelte.. nope npx install is now deprecated, have to do it another way.. ok, let's go old school and read the docs. Great, it's up and running, but nope, Svelte has just hit V5 and the LLM isn't aware of the changes.. ok, do I drop back to…

The unfortunate truth is that the one true way these days is React, and if you're doing anything else you're in for a world of pain.

No such thing as one true way with React and the pain is just as bad if not sometimes worse.

Do you choose createreact app / webpack / vite / next.js ?

Do you choose built in react state/contexts, redux, recoil, zustand, jotai state libraries?

Do you do data tables yourself or use the behemoths TanStack, react-table-libray, MUI x-data-grid

What about HTTP requests? Fetch api? axios? rtk-quey?

What about forms and validation? KISS simple, do it yourself? react-hook-form + zod, tanstack form?

Now how do you integrate them all in to your app, managing each edge case for each dependency with their own opinionated way of doing things not quite neatly working with your other dependency but can brute force it to work with some effort and hacks?

I find things like doing basic vanilla JS, or even things like of Svelte or Elm far less pain than React projects i've worked on. Svelte/Elm did require reading the docs not relying on a LLM.

Re: AI is stifling new tech adoption?

#399

Post by williamcotton »

swatcoder wrote: post #394
williamcotton wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I Googled and got: https://www.mucoder.net/blog/2016/03/24/sfzero.html There was boilerplate that wasn’t explained and only existed in a demo for an audio plugin. I prompted the LLM with the header files and sections of the demo app and after a few back and forth learning sessions I was getting piano samples playing back: https://github.com/williamcotton/midiplayer It works, it doesn’t have any memory issues (after I…

Thanks for answering! Assuming your original question was not rhetorical and was asked in good faith, other people who've used SFZero before the advent of LLM's made sure they understood juce::Synthesizer (despite its many warts, juce's public interfaces are well documented and represent a strong point) as this just defines a specific implementation, and either referenced the provided example or read the headers, whi…

> > learning by reading documentation and tutorials

> But to the point of the person you were responding to, the LLM was not fulfilling a generally unmet need. Everything a professional or practiced amateur needs was there already.

But isn't this stretching the definitions of documentation and tutorials a little bit here? A demo app and a bunch of undocumented header files became documentation and tutorials with the assistance of an LLM.

Re: AI is stifling new tech adoption?

#400

Post by swatcoder »

williamcotton wrote: post #399
swatcoder wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for answering! Assuming your original question was not rhetorical and was asked in good faith, other people who've used SFZero before the advent of LLM's made sure they understood juce::Synthesizer (despite its many warts, juce's public interfaces are well documented and represent a strong point) as this just defines a specific implementation, and either referenced the provided example or read the headers, whi…

> > learning by reading documentation and tutorials > But to the point of the person you were responding to, the LLM was not fulfilling a generally unmet need. Everything a professional or practiced amateur needs was there already. But isn't this stretching the definitions of documentation and tutorials a little bit here? A demo app and a bunch of undocumented header files became documentation and tutorials with the…

Perhaps.

As an experienced audio developer, it's a distinction without a difference. We get used to reading code and deciphering how to use or improve it (wait until you start working with other's DSP code!), and some features and conventions of C/C++, like the segregation of declarations from definitions, make it especially self-documenting for those that are fluent in it.

Having integrated SFZero myself (albeit to a deadend; it's very middling-to-poor), I was surprised to discover that there was not more explicit documentation when you announced it as the library you were referring to, specifically because I remember the work of integrating it was relatively trivial (maybe half a day or so).

For a complete outsider to audio development, JUCE, C++, of course the LLM helped you get done what you needed to get done, far faster than you could have hoped otherwise. And that's great if you're just toying around. On the other hand, you absolutely would have sharpened your skills with all three of those things more had you the luxury to muddle through and force yourself to make sense of it all yourself.

Assuming skills development is your goal (otherwise, you should be using different tools here! C++ and JUCE are not where to start if your personal goal is music making, synthesis, or MIDI), there's a balancing act between making sure you don't get discouraged and committing to the hard work of learning things in-depth. The LLM gave you a way to avoid feeling stuck and discouraged, and perhaps represents the difference between you sticking with the project or just throwing your hands up. But keep in mind the tradeoff that it implies for skill development and consider only turning to it when the frustration starts to get too high to bear.

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