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Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

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

#491

Post by visarga »

layer8 wrote: post #273
loubbrad wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer... Reminds me of this excerpt from Richard Hamming's book: > Finally, a more complete, and more useful, Symbolic Assembly Program (SAP) was devised—after more years than you are apt to believe during which most programmers continued their heroic absolute binary programming. At t…

I think this is beside the point, because the crucial change with LLMs is that you don’t use a formal language anymore to specify what you want, and get a deterministic output from that. You can’t reason with precision anymore about how what you specify maps to the result. That is the modal shift that removes the “fun” for a substantial portion of the developer workforce.

> because the crucial change with LLMs is that you don’t use a formal language anymore to specify what you want, and get a deterministic output from that

You don't just code, you also test, and your safety is just as good as your test coverage and depth. Think hard about how to express your code to make it more testable. That is the single way we have now to get back some safety.

But I argue the manual inspection of code and thinking it through in your head is still not strict coding, it is vibe-testing as well, only code backed by tests is not vibe-based. If needed use TLA+ (generated by LLM) to test, or go as deep as necessary to test.

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

#492

Post by simonw »

noosphr wrote: post #485
simonw wrote: post #160

Earlier 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…

I've been building Ai apps since gpt 3 so 5 years now. The pro AI people don't understand what quadratic attention means and the anti-ai people don't understand how much information can be contained in a tb of weights. At the end of the day both will be hugely disappointed. >The best asset you can develop is an intuition for what works and what doesn't, and getting that intuition requires months if not years of perso…

What does quadratic attention mean?

I've so far found that intuition travels between models of a similar generation remarkably well. The conformance suite trick (find a 9,200 test existing conformance suite and tell an agent to build a fresh implementation that passes all those tests) I first found with GPT-5.2 turned out to work exactly as well against Claude Opus 4.5, for example.

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

#493

Post by epolanski »

edg5000 wrote: post #30
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.

It took me a few months of working with the agents to get really productive with it. The gains are significant. I write highly detailed specs (equiv multiple A4 pages) in markdown and dicate the agent hierarchy (which agent does what, who reports to who). I've learned a lot of new things this year thanks to AI. It's true that the low levels skills with atrophy. The high level skills will grow though; my learning rate…

I have found that using more REPLs and doing leetcodes/katas prevents the atrophy to be honest.

In fact, I'd say I code even better since I started doing one hour per day of a mixture of fun coding and algo quizzes while at work I mostly focus on writing a requirements plan and implementation plan later and then letting the AI cook while I review all the output multiple times from multiple angles.

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

#494

Post by RayVR »

sauercrowd wrote: post #417
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.

Three things I can suggest to try, having struggled with something similiar: 1. Look at it as a completely different discipline, dont consider it leverage for coding - it's it's own thing. 2. Try using it on something you just want to exist, not something you want to build or are interested in understanding. 3. Make the "jumps" smaller. Don't oneshot the project. Do the thinking yourself, and treat it as a junior pro…

I think the key thing here is in point 2.

I’ve wanted a good markdown editor with automatic synchronization. I used to used inkdrop. Which I stopped using when the developer/owner raised the price to $120/year.

In a couple hours with Claude code, I built a replacement that does everything I want, exactly the way I want. Plus, it integrates native AI chat to create/manage/refine notes and ideas, and it plugs into a knowledge RAG system that I also built using Claude code.

What more could I ask for? This is a tool I wanted for a long time but never wanted to spend the dozens of hours dealing with the various pieces of tech I simply don’t care about long-term.

This was my AI “enlightenment” moment.

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

#496

Post by epolanski »

edg5000 wrote: post #43
bsaul wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ecosystem is being built around AI : Best prompting practices, mcps, skills, IDE integration, how to build a feedback loop so that LLM can test its output alone, plug to the outside world with browser extensions, etc... For now i think people can still catch up quickly, but at the end of 2026 it's probably going to be a different story.

> probably going to be a different story Can you elaborate? Skill in AI use will be a differentiator?

Yes.

At some point you will need to combine multiple skills together:

- communication

- engineering skills (understanding requirements, finding edge cases, etc)

- architectural proficiency

- prompting

- agentic workflows and skills

- context management

- and yes, proper old fashioned coding skills to keep things tidy and consistent

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

#497

Post by threethirtytwo »

simianwords wrote: post #398
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…

I wrote something similar earlier: This is because they have entrenched themselves in a comfortable position that they don’t want to give up. Most won’t admit this to be the actual reason. Think about it: you are a normal hands on self thought software developer. You grew up tinkering with Linux and a bit of hardware. You realise there’s good money to be made in a software career. You do it for 20-30 years; mostly th…

agreed

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

#498

Post by bitwize »

simonw wrote: post #486
bitwize wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so what do I hear about LLMs? Oh, it's just like having an intern. A fresh graduate. Now you're not building the thing yourself, you're giving directives and delegating the actual building of the thing. What does this sound like? The managerial class believes that all the value in a business comes from managerial work. LLMs are being hyped by the managerial class because they are turning software development into…

The great thing about working with LLMs is that you don't need people skills, even though managing them is a loose imitation of that. You don't have to consider the feelings of your coding agent, or their specific taste, or what challenges would best help them advance in their skills or career. You tell them to do something, and if they do it wrong you tell them what to fix, and you can keep on hammering away at them…

> The great thing about working with LLMs is that you don't need people skills, even though managing them is a loose imitation of that.

The great thing about working with LLMs, from a business perspective—or at least the promise—is that you, as a programmer/software engineer, don't need to be building the software at all. A director on the business side could be telling the agents what to do just as they would tell a development division within the company, see it done with far less pushback and at far less cost, and stay focused on their business responsibilities like devising or implementing organizational strategy to align core competencies and achieve synergy. So again, programmers will need to transition to becoming businesspeople in order to keep their relevance within the company.

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

#500

Post by fao_ »

sauercrowd wrote: post #417
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.

Three things I can suggest to try, having struggled with something similiar: 1. Look at it as a completely different discipline, dont consider it leverage for coding - it's it's own thing. 2. Try using it on something you just want to exist, not something you want to build or are interested in understanding. 3. Make the "jumps" smaller. Don't oneshot the project. Do the thinking yourself, and treat it as a junior pro…

> Try using it on something you just want to exist, not something you want to build or are interested in understanding.

I don't get any enjoyment from "building something without understanding" — what would I learn from such a thing? How could I trust it to be secure or to not fall over when i enter a weird character? How can I trust something I do not understand or have not read the foundations of? Furthermore, why would I consider myself to have built it?

When I enter a building, I know that an engineer with a degree, or even a team of them, have meticulously built this building taking into account the material stresses of the ground, the fault lines, the stresses of the materials of construction, the wear amounts, etc.

When I make a program, I do the same thing. Either I make something for understanding, OR I make something robust to be used. I want to trust the software I'm using to not contain weird bugs that are difficult to find, as best as I can ensure that. I want to ensure that the code is clean, because code is communication, and communication is an art form — so my code should be clean, readable, and communicative about the concepts that I use to build the thing. LLMs do not assure me of any of this, and the actively hamstring the communication aspect.

Finally, as someone surrounded by artists, who has made art herself, the "doing of it" has been drilled into me as the "making". I don't get the enjoyment of making something, because I wouldn't have made it! You can commission a painting from an artist, but it is hubris to point at a painting you bought or commissioned and go "I made that". But somehow it is acceptable to do this for LLMs. That is a baffling mindset to me!

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