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Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
401–410 of 1001 posts
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Strongly disagree. Claude Code is the most intuitive technology I've ever used-- way easier than learning to use even VS Code for example. It doesn't even take weeks. Maybe a day or two to get the hang of it and you're off to the races.
The difference is AI tooling lies to you. Day 0 you think it's perfect but the more you use ai tools you realize using them wrong can give you gnarly bugs.
It's intuitive to use but hard to master
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#403> 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…
The split I'm seeing with those around me is:
1. Those who see their codebase as a sculpture, a work of art, a source of pride 2. Those who focus on outcomes.
They are not contradictory goals, but I'm finding that if your emphasis is 1, you general dislike LLMs, and if your emphasis is 2, you love them, or at least tolerate them.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem I see is not so much in how you generate the code. It is about how to maintain the code. If you check in the AI generated code unchanged then do you start changing that code by hand later? Do you trust that in the future AI can fix bugs in your code. Or do you clean up the AI generated code first?
Are you just generating code with the LLM? Ya, you are screwed. Are you generating documentation and tests and everything else to help to code live? Your options for maintenance go up. Now just replace “generate” with “maintain” and you are basically asking AI to make changes to a description at the top that then percolate to multiple artifacts being updated, only one happening to be the code itself, and the code upd…
I wish there were good guides on how to get the best out of LLMs. All of these tips about adding documentation etc seem very useful but I’ve never seen good guides on how to do this effectively or sustainably.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#405> Hours instead of weeks.
And then goes on describing two things for which I bet almost anyone with enough knowledge of C and Redis could implement a POC in... Guess what? Hours.
At this point I am literally speechless, if even Antirez falls for this "you get so quick!!!" hype.
You get _some_ speed up _for things you could anyway implement_. You get past the "blank screen block" which prevents you from starting some project.
These are great useful things that AI does for you!
Shaving off _weeks_ of work? Let's come back in a couple of month when he'll have to rewrite everything that AI has written so well. Or, that code would just die away (which is another great use case for AI: throw away code).
People still don't understand that writing code is a way to understand something? Clearly you don't need to write code for a domain you already understand, or that you literally created.
What leaves me sad is that this time it is _Antirez_ that writes such things.
I have to be honest: it makes me doubt of my position, and I'll constantly reevaluate it. But man. I hope it's just a hype post for an AI product he'll release tomorrow.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#406"Nah uh I'm not falling for hype _you're_ falling for hype."
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#407What 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…
It needs to be said that your opinion on this is well understood by the community, respected, but also far from impartial. You have a clear vested interest in the success of _these_ tools.
There's a learning curve to any toolset, and it may be that using coding agents effectively is more than a few weeks of upskilling. It may be, and likely will be, that people make their whole careers about being experts on this topic.
But it's still a statistical text prediction model, wrapped in fancy gimmicks, sold at a loss by mostly bad faith actors, and very far from its final form. People waiting to get on the bandwagon could well be waiting to pick up the pieces once it collapses.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#408Universal Basic Income is not the panacea it's claimed to be.
UBI gives government more control over individuals' finances, especially those without independent means. Poverty is also the result of unfair taxation, where poor people face onerous taxes while receiving less and less in return, and the wealthy avoid tax at every turn. Or that it is difficult for people to be self-employed due to red tape favouring big business. UBI does not address those issues.
UBI also centralises control at the expense of local self-determination and community engagement.
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#409In my current work project I am consulting llm frequently as a type of coding search engine. I also use it to rubber duck my designs. Most of the coding was done myself though. But even that feels perhaps quaint and I feel like it may be wasting time
Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
#410> 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…
You’re right of course. For me there’s no flow state possible with LLM “coding”. That makes it feel miserable instead of joyous. Sitting around waiting while it spits out tokens that I then have to carefully look over and tweak feels like very hard work. Compared to entering flow and churning out those tokens myself, which feels effortless once I get going. Probably other people feel differently.
I like writing. I hate editing.
Coding with an LLM seems like it’s often more editing in service of less writing.
I get this is a very simplistic way of looking at it and when done right it can produce solutions, even novel solutions, that maybe you wouldn’t have on your own. Or maybe it speeds up a part of the writing that is otherwise slow and painful. But I don’t know, as somebody who doesn’t really code every time I hear people talk about it that’s what it sounds like to me.