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AI coding is gambling

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Re: AI coding is gambling

#421

Post by spacechild1 »

7777332215 wrote: post #159

The problem with AI coding is that you no longer own the foundational tools.

Actually, this is one of my biggest concerns about agentic coding because I don't really feel comfortable putting myself in the hands of a few big companies. After all, that's why I'm mostly using open source tools!

The idea that I would only be able to work with an internet connection and a subscription to a big LLM provider is not very appealing to me. And I'm not even talking about the ethical concerns...

Re: AI coding is gambling

#422

Post by em-bee »

riantogo wrote: post #372
itsgrimetime wrote: post #92

All of this new capability has made me realize that the reason i love programming _isn't_ the same as the OP. I used to think (and tell others) that I loved understanding something deeply, wading through the details to figure out a tough problem. but actually, being able to will anything I can think of into existence is what I love about programming. I do feel for the people who were able to make careers out of falli…

Exactly this for me as well. When I was a SWE I thought what I loved was problem solving. So after many years of doing that I decided to move upsteam and took Product roles so that I can identify and address big business problems. It was only after I switched that I realized that I was not in love with problem solving. I was in love with art. Programming was art of me. I kept at it on the side as a hobby. But stacks…

do i read that right, you didn't enjoy addressing big business problems?

i learned programming in high school and i enjoyed it, then while starting computer science i did and internship at a software company, and i hated it, and i thought i hated programming and wanted to give up studying computer science, but when i discovered programming MUDs and then web development with the same language i loved it again. turns out i always loved programming, what i didn't like was the corporate work environment, 9-5, using CASE tools (remember those?) on windows, maybe the feeling of inferiority as an untrained intern among everyone else.

what i hate about LLMs is the tediousness, the unreliability, having to try over and over to get a result.

i often work with customers directly, less technical ones too. seeing their satisfaction when i solve a problem for them (no matter how) is what allowed me to keep going doing even non-programming work, though i admit that i prefer programming if that customer interaction is missing. so i too love the art, but i still love problem solving if there is someone who appreciates the solution.

so maybe it wasn't problem solving that was your problem, but the big business environment, and how it constrained your role and didn't give you the feedback you needed?

Re: AI coding is gambling

#423

Post by em-bee »

itsgrimetime wrote: post #406
bakugo wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going to McDonalds made me realize that the reason I love cooking isn't the actual cooking itself. Being able to order a food at McDonalds and getting it without doing anything myself is the best part about cooking! Now that I only eat McDonalds, I feel like I'm _good_ at cooking. You do not like and have never liked programming. You wanted to be a manager. They are completely different things.

a lot of the replies on here (not just yours, I just picked yours to respond to) make it clear I didn't articulate what I was meaning to very well - I'm still doing the "engineering". I used "programming" in a more general sense: building stuff with computers. I still go through the same motions. I try something, hit some failure mode, have to think of and (with the help of claude) execute on that, evaluate it, decid…

i love chopping onions and the whole cooking process. it is very meditative, and creative, whereas working at mcdonalds isn't.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#425

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

jarjoura wrote: post #371
itsgrimetime wrote: post #92

All of this new capability has made me realize that the reason i love programming _isn't_ the same as the OP. I used to think (and tell others) that I loved understanding something deeply, wading through the details to figure out a tough problem. but actually, being able to will anything I can think of into existence is what I love about programming. I do feel for the people who were able to make careers out of falli…

I'd say, you are at the phase of this journey where you're feeling empowered. It's just one step along the path of AI adoption to execute on an idea and see in near real-time the idea you had baked in your head come alive in front of you. Most of us get to this point and become the biggest evangelists of the tech. I see no reason you should feel guilty for the excitement you're feeling right now, and you should enjoy…

>you'll be left with a weird empty feeling you won't really have the words for

I want computers to do work for me. Any barrier between me and the result I want is an annoyance.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#426

Post by maplethorpe »

sixtyj wrote: post #396
leptons wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust me, the two are not the same, and are orders of magnitude different in terms of human satisfaction. When I walk down a street, I get 10 people stopping me to ask "Where did you get that?". When I tell them I made it, their heads explode. I know which side of that interaction is more satisfying. We also go all-out for Halloween, and at the big Halloween festival there is literally a line down the street of peopl…

In media there was a rule 1-9-90. One creates, 9 comment, 90 use or are silent/don’t care. Richard Branson realized that a company starts to behave differently when it reaches more than stuff of 135 people that coincides with average number of people you can consider as personally known to you. Context switching is a bitch. You cannot do it for a long time. Abundance brought by AI will somehow consolidate as people c…

One potential solution to this is AI summarization. Imagine coming home, and while preparing dinner your AI assistant recounts what happened in all your favourite tv shows that day. Then while you're doing the laundry, it tells you about all the new games it found and tested for you.

These are just thought starters, but something like this could significantly raise the ceiling on what one person is able to consume in a 24 hour period.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#429

Post by fuzzythinker »

watzon wrote: post #110

I think this article makes a valid point. However, if AI coding is considered gambling, then being a project manager overseeing multiple developers could also be seen as a form of gambling to a certain degree. In reality, there isn't much difference between the two. AI models are non-deterministic, and humans are also non-deterministic. You could assign the same task to two different developers and end up with entire…

No. Addiction for the mass comes from instant gratification. The outcome from developers takes too long for instant gratification to take into effect. So overseeing developers is not a form of gambling.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#430

Post by tovej »

thangalin wrote: post #347
tovej wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this greenfield?

How is it not? You can trace the back commits to the first to show that it was started from scratch: https://repo.autonoma.ca/repo/treetrek/commits/c7742cb3c580d...

It's using a mature data model from an existing framework (git), and it's essentially a simpler clone of other similar projects.

That's brownfield to me. Greenfield would develop a completely new system. This is a utility for an existing system, one whose design is clearly a copy of existing utilities. Both of those make this brownfield.

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