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Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

antirez.com

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Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#471

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #450
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> 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…

> For me, I initially got into programming because I wanted to ruin other people's websites, then I figured out I needed to know how to build websites first, then I found it more fun to create and share what I've done with others, and they tell me what they think of it. Talk about a good thing coming from bad intentions! Congratulations on shaking that demon.

[deleted]

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#472

Post by zhyder »

Sounds like antirez, simonw, et al are still advocating reviewing the code output of these agents for now. But presumably soon (within months?) the agents will be good enough such that line-by-line review will no longer be necessary, or humanly possible as we crank the agents up to 11.

But then how will we review each PR enough to have confidence in it?

How will we understand the overall codebase too after it gets much bigger?

Are there any better tools here other than just asking LLMs to summarize code, or flag risky code... any good "code reader" tools (like code editors but focused on this reading task)?

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#473

Post by halfdanwhitshrt »

llmslave3 wrote: post #448
antirez wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't see this by working with Claude Code for a few weeks, I don't want to go into bigger efforts than writing a blog post to convince you. It's not a mission, mine. I just want to communicate with the part of people that are open enough to challenge their ideas and are willing to touch with their hands what is happening. Also, if you tried and failed, it means that either for your domain AI is not good enoug…

Why do you care so much to write a blog post? Like if it's such a big advantage, why not stay quiet and exploit it? Why not make Anti-AI blog posts to gain even more of an advantage? One of the big red flags I see around the pro-AI side is this constant desire to promote the technology. At least the anti-ai side is reactionary.

It seems quite profitable nowadays to position yourself as [insert currently overhyped technology] GURU to generate clicks/views. Just look at the amount of comments in this thread.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#474

Post by rhubarbtree »

zhyder wrote: post #472

Sounds like antirez, simonw, et al are still advocating reviewing the code output of these agents for now. But presumably soon (within months?) the agents will be good enough such that line-by-line review will no longer be necessary, or humanly possible as we crank the agents up to 11. But then how will we review each PR enough to have confidence in it? How will we understand the overall codebase too after it gets mu…

We will review fully until they reach superhuman perfection.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#476

Post by [deleted] »

simonw wrote: post #160
systemf_omega wrote: post #8

What 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…

[deleted]

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#477

Post by pfannkuchen »

wpm wrote: post #331
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm the same way. LLMs are still somewhat useful as a way to start a greenfield project, or as a very hyper-custom google search to have it explain something to me exactly how I'd like it explained, or generate examples hyper-tuned for the problem at hand, but that's hardly as transformative or revolutionary as everyone is making Claude Code out to be. I loathe the tone these things take with me and hate how much ext…

> I didn't pay hundreds of dollars for a mechanical keyboard, tuned to make every keypress a joy, to push code around with a fucking mouse

Can’t you use vim controls?

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#478

Post by threethirtytwo »

yicmoggIrl wrote: post #463
threethirtytwo wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is not about whether programming is fun, elegant, creative, or personally fulfilling. It is about business value. Programming exists, at scale, because it produces economic value. That value translates into revenue, leverage, competitive advantage, and ultimately money. For decades, a large portion of that value could only be produced by human labor. Now, increasingly, it cannot be assumed that this will…

Excellent comment (even "mini essay"). I'm unsure if you've written it with AI-assistance, but even if that's the case, I'll tolerate it. I have two things to add. > This is not a moral failing. It is a psychological one. (1) I disagree: it's not a failing at all . Resisting displacement, resisting that your identity, existence, meaning found in work, be taken away from you, is not a failing . Such resistance might b…

I think where we actually converge is on the phenomenon itself rather than on any moral judgment about it.

What I was trying to point at is how strange it is to watch this happen in real time. You can see something unfolding directly in front of you. You can observe systems improving, replacing workflows, changing incentives. None of it is abstract. And yet the implications of what is happening are so negative for some people that the mind simply refuses to integrate them. It is not that the facts are unknown. It is that the outcome is psychologically intolerable.

At that point something unusual happens. People do not argue with conclusions, they argue with perception. They insist the thing they are watching is not really happening, or that it does not count, or that it will somehow stop before it matters. It is not a failure of intelligence or ethics. It is a human coping mechanism when reality threatens meaning, livelihood, or future stability.

Meaning and intrinsic motivation absolutely matter here. The tragedy is not that meaningful work suddenly becomes meaningless. It is that it can remain meaningful while becoming economically unsustainable. That combination is brutal. But denying the shift does not preserve meaning. It only delays the moment where a person has to decide how to respond.

What I find unsettling is not the fear or the resistance. It is watching people stand next to you, looking at the same evidence, and then effectively unsee it because accepting it would force a reckoning they are not ready for.

>I'm unsure if you've written it with AI-assistance, but even if that's the case, I'll tolerate it.

Even if it was, the world is changing. You already need to tolerate AI in code, it's inevitable AI will be part of writing.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#479

Post by conradfr »

crote wrote: post #182
falloutx wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are very high up the chain like Linus, i think doing vibe coding gives you more feedback than any average dev. So they are having a positive feedback loop. For most of us vibe coding gives 0 advantage. Our software will just sit there and get no views and producing it faster means nothing. In fact, it just scares us that some exec is gonna look at this and write us for low performance because they saw someone…

Except that Linus does basically zero programming these days. He's a manager, combining code from the subsystem managers below him into a final release.

That's wrong, he is coding, well, vibecoding.

https://github.com/torvalds/AudioNoise

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#480

Post by jfengel »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #311
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> 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 could imagine a world where LLM coding was fun. It would sound like "imagine a game, like Galaxians but using tractor trailers, and as a first person shooter." And it pumps out a draft and you say, "No, let's try it again with an army of bagpipers."

In other words, getting to be the "ideas guy", but without sounding like a dipstick who can't do anything.

I don't think we're anywhere near that point yet. Instead we're at the same point where we are with self-driving: not doing anything but on constant alert.

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