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AI Stole the Joy of Programming

paulefou.com

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Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#51

Post by vundercind »

uh_uh wrote: post #32
pluc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds about right. Let's throw more money, power and natural resources at it and see if the scale tips the other way! If not well nothing of value will have been lost right? What's shortening humanity's lifetime in comparison to the potential productivity gains!

Aren't you at least a little bit excited for the potential benefits?

My spouse and I both work on different ends of AI work (spouse, content production, editing, and prompt-library building; me, feeding the things with data).

No, not really. They're useful but not revolutionary for actual productive work, and I'm being generous in dubbing some AI-based products themselves "productive" (I eagerly await the studies that I'm sure the companies building these things will not bother to do, proving that these are cost/benefit better than other approaches they're replacing—I definitely don't consider it certain that they are).

They shine when the fewest shits are given, which is mostly work that didn't need to be done in the first place, and... mass scams/astroturfing/spam. Hooray.

I don't really see this balance tipping much with the general approach the field's pursuing now.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#52

Post by dsissitka »

andix wrote: post #3

I don't agree. Copilot/etc is kind of worthless for me, it creates so many issues that I've never bothered to work with it. AI is awesome for solving issues, asking it questions about code, asking for possible solutions. But maybe I'm just fast at writing code that actually solves the problem, so I don't need an AI to code for me.

It's frustrating.

Cody's autocomplete used to work really well for me. Then they switched to DeepSeek. Now I regularly get suggestions that are irrelevant, incomplete, and contain syntax errors.

I'm not sure what it's like these days but I had a similar experience with Copilot a while back.

I wonder if good autocomplete is just too expensive.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#53

Post by squarefoot »

gosub100 wrote: post #17
Freak_NL wrote: post #2

'AI Stole the Joy of Programming' is not quite the title that blog post has.

We need an AI tool to digest the articles for us to return a signal for click bait.

Probably not even AI if there's a community helping to curate headlines. Sort of what the DeArrow browser extension does with that cesspool of sensational titles, amazed facial expressions and general bullshit that has become YouTube lately. https://dearrow.ajay.app/

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#54

Post by jdefr89 »

Damn... I wish I could say this wasn't true. Been trying to lie and say it hasn't but it absolutely has made programming less enjoyable by far... I been trying to convince myself other wise but I am just lying to myself.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#55

Post by vundercind »

gosub100 wrote: post #48
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #6

It's just the start, it's about to steal the joy of everything in life pretty soon.

Online comments are about to die. First, we won't be able to tell who is real anymore. People will profit by running huge botnets for advertising and political manipulation. (Inb4 someone says this already happens: AI will keep lowering the bar to enter and evade detection). But a knock on effect is there will be a market for farming fake accounts for later sale to said manipulators.

> But a knock on effect is there will be a market for farming fake accounts for later sale to said manipulators.

We'll lift millions in the "global south" out of poverty by providing the tools to criminals and foreign adversaries that drive demand for cheaply-staffed high-rep social media account farms.

What a time to be alive. What frontiers we are exploring.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#56

Post by mattgreenrocks »

gosub100 wrote: post #48
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #6

It's just the start, it's about to steal the joy of everything in life pretty soon.

Online comments are about to die. First, we won't be able to tell who is real anymore. People will profit by running huge botnets for advertising and political manipulation. (Inb4 someone says this already happens: AI will keep lowering the bar to enter and evade detection). But a knock on effect is there will be a market for farming fake accounts for later sale to said manipulators.

It'll be sad but the brain rot from pervasive social media is getting severe, especially in older generations. If this pushes more people to touch grass, it's a net positive.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#57

Post by [deleted] »

friggeri wrote: post #27

I've had the absolute opposite experience, AI has brought back a lot of the joy of programming and building products for me. I've been using Cursor extensively these past few months, for anything ranging from scaffolding to complex UIs. The trick, I've found, is to treat the AI like I would work with a junior engineer, giving in concrete detailed tasks to accomplish, breaking the problem down myself into manageable c…

[deleted]

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#58

Post by andix »

miningape wrote: post #23
andix wrote: post #3

I don't agree. Copilot/etc is kind of worthless for me, it creates so many issues that I've never bothered to work with it. AI is awesome for solving issues, asking it questions about code, asking for possible solutions. But maybe I'm just fast at writing code that actually solves the problem, so I don't need an AI to code for me.

Same, I spend way longer debugging and editing AI code than it would have taken me to just write it myself. I don't consider myself a fast typer, for me it's purely due to the inaccuracy of the results.

For me it's like: Oh, that solution is really smart. A few minutes later: Something doesn't work. 15 minutes of bug fixing only to find out the AI solution is nearly impossible to fix. Delete it and code it from scratch.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#59

Post by bluGill »

daemin wrote: post #30
deadbabe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just because people have been so indoctrinated by capitalism that they only find joy if they’re being worked to the bone. They have forgotten the joy of not doing anything productive.

Why learn to paint or draw if generative ML can create a picture for you? Why practice writing if generative ML can create a poem or short story for you? In that regard you're best off just sitting down in front of a screen and consuming content generated by ML. And from the example in the original blog post the author had the generative ML do the fun stuff in solving the problem and all they did was drudge work clea…

Many many people still play violin, piano, trumpet, guitar even though recordings (in various forms) have been around for more than 100 years.
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