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I miss thinking hard

jernesto.com

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Re: I miss thinking hard

#451

Post by mr_freeman »

keyle wrote: post #81
joseangel_sc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except the thing does not work as expected and it just makes you worse not better

Like I said that's temporary. It's janky and wonky but it's a stepping stone. Just look at image generation. Actually factually look at it. We went from horror colours vomit with eyes all over, to 6 fingers humans, to pretty darn good now. It's only time.

> Just look at image generation. Actually factually look at it. We went from horror colours vomit with eyes all over, to 6 fingers humans, to pretty darn good now.

Yes, but you’re not taking into account what actually caused this evolution. At first glance, it looks like exponential growth, but then we see OpenAI (as one example) with trillions in obligations compared to 12–13 billion in annual revenue. Meanwhile, tool prices keep rising, hardware demand is surging (RAM shortages, GPUs), and yet new and interesting models continue to appear. I’ve been experimenting with Claude over the past few days myself. Still, at some point, something is bound to backfire.

The AI "bubble" is real, you don’t need a masters degree in economics to recognize it. But with mounting economic pressures worldwide and escalating geopolitical tension we may end up stuck with nothing more than those amusing Will Smith eating pasta videos for a while.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#452

Post by amelius »

sdoering wrote: post #417
amelius wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the point is that only if you're willing to accept crappy results then you can use AI to build bigger things.

To me that seems like a spurious (maybe even false) dichotomy. You can have crappy results without AI. And you can have great results with AI. Your contrast is an either or, that - in the real world - does not exist. Take content written by AI, prompted by a human. A lot of it is slop and crap. And there will be more slop and crap with AI than before. But that was the case, when the medium changed from hand writen to…

Lightroom killed photography.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#453

Post by mr_freeman »

nunez wrote: post #210
CrimsonRain wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's your opinion and you can not use those tools. People are paying for it because it helps them. Who are you to whine about it?

But that's the entire flippin' problem. People are being forced to use these tools professionally at a stagering rate. It's like the industry is in its "training your replacement" era.

That's Capitalism, baby

Re: I miss thinking hard

#454

Post by sebastianmestre »

juggy69 wrote: post #439
sebastianmestre wrote: post #438

I did competitive programming seriously between '17 and '24, then kept on coaching people As a beginner I often thought about a problem for days before finding a solution, but this happened less and less as I improved I got better at exploiting the things I knew, to the point where I could be pretty confident that if I couldn't solve a problem in a few hours it was because I was missing some important piece of theory…

Do you mean that sitting with the problem for days is a weakness that you should fix since you're wasting time making no progress? Or that it is a necessary practice in order to understand your weaknesses?

When you're a beginner you're a beginner, no way around it.

But understanding your weaknesses and working on them is huge, and I think most people just don't try to do it.

Being stuck for days is something to be overcome.

The next step would be being slow because you are trying out many different ideas and have no intuition for what the right one is.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#455

Post by Insanity »

Advent of Code (which given my schedule runs into January). That’s the last time thinking hard about a coding problem, I don’t remember exactly if it was day 10 or 11 that had me scratching my head for a while.

I intentionally do not use AI though.

But I sympathize with the author. I enjoy thinking deeply about problems which is why I studied compsci and later philosophy, and ended up in the engineering field. I’m an EM now so AI is less of an “immediate threat” to my thinking habits than the role change was.

That said, I did recently pick up more philosophy reading again just for the purpose of challenges my brain.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#456

Post by adriand »

Hendrikto wrote: post #375
socalgal2 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it's all abstraction. I didn't write my own OS. I didn't write my own compiler. I didn't write the standard library. I just use them. I could write them but I'm happy to work on the new thing that uses what's already there. This is no different than many things. I could grow a tree and cut it into wood but I don't. I could buy wood and nails and brackets and make furniture but I don't. I instead just fill my ho…

> No, your favorite movie is not crap because the creators didn't grind their own lens. But Pulp Fiction would not have been a masterpiece if Tarantino just typed “Write a gangster movie.” into a prompt field.

> But Pulp Fiction would not have been a masterpiece if Tarantino just typed “Write a gangster movie.” into a prompt field.

Doesn’t that prove the point? You could do that right now, and it would be absolute trash. Just like how right now we are nowhere close to being able to make great software with a single prompt.

I’ve been vibecoding a side project and it has been three months of ideating, iterating, refining and testing. It would have taken me immeasurably longer without these tools, but the end result is still 100% my vision, and it has been a tremendous amount of work.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#457

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

croes wrote: post #427
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really what it’s about. As someone that started with Machine Code, I'm grateful for compiled -even interpreted- languages. I can’t imagine doing the kind of work that I do, nowadays, in Machine Code. I’m finding it quite interesting, using LLM-assisted development. I still need to keep an eye on things (for example, the LLM tends to suggest crazy complex solutions, like writing an entire control from scratch,…

But we become watchers instead of makers. There is a difference between cooking and putting a ready meal into the microwave. Both satisfy your hunger but only one can give some kind of pride.

Eh. I've had pride in my work for over 40 years.

The tools change, but the spirit only grows.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#458

Post by ontouchstart »

After leaving my previous day job, I have some downtime to get back to thinking and realizing how much I love reading and thinking.

Contemplating the old RTFM, I started a new personal project called WTFM and spends time writing instead of coding. There is no agenda and product goals.

https://wtfm-rs.github.io/

There are so many interesting things in human generated computer code and documentation. Well crafted thoughts are precious.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#459

Post by shsksj »

Cuervo_ wrote: post #347
gyomu wrote: post #32

This March 2025 post from Aral Balkan stuck with me: https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/114160190826192080 "Coding is like taking a lump of clay and slowly working it into the thing you want it to become. It is this process, and your intimacy with the medium and the materials you’re shaping, that teaches you about what you’re making – its qualities, tolerances, and limits – even as you make it. You know the least about wha…

I personally have found success with an approach that's the inverse of how agents are being used generally. I don't allow my agent to write any code. I ask it for guidance on algorithms, and to supply the domain knowledge that I might be missing. When using it for game dev for example, I ask it to explain in general terms how to apply noise algorithms for procedural generation, how to do UV mapping etc, but the actua…

Yep, this is the sweet spot. Though I still let it type code a lot - boilerplate stuff I’d be bored out of my mind typing. And I’ve found it has an extremely high success rate typing that code on top of its very easy for me to review that code. No friction at all. Granted this is often no larger than 100 lines or so (across various files).

If it takes you more than a few seconds or so to understand code an agent generated you’re going to make mistakes. You should know exactly what it’s going to produce before it produces it.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#460

Post by davidmurdoch »

I'm wondering if everyone here saying they think harder with LLM agents have never reached "flow state" while programming. I just can't imagine using 100% of my mental focus state for hours with an agent. Sure, I think differently when my coding is primarily via agent, but I've never been totally enveloped by my thoughts while doing so.

For those who have found a "flow state" with LLM agents, what's that like?

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