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AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

koshyjohn.com

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Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#571

Post by traderj0e »

daemin wrote: post #316
traderj0e wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same thing about compiled code, actually it's worse because anything a compiler spits out is very hard to understand even for those who understand assembly.

You don't need to look at the entire program at the assembly level to figure out parts that you want to optimise or prove for correctness. You do need to look at all the code the LLM generates in order to understand it. You can learn to understand the patterns that compilers spit out and there are many tools out there to aid in that understanding. You can't learn to understand what an LLM spits out because by design…

I dunno, I'd rather proofread (or better yet just test) LLM-generated code than have to reason about assembly. You can't just look at part of the assembly to prove that the rest is right, especially if it's hand-written, or maybe just -O3. But anyway compilers are not what come to mind when someone mentions LLM coding.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#572

Post by ekeke »

rimliu wrote: post #337
fainpul wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have people who can still do maths well after the introduction of the calculator. I assume by "do maths" you mean doing simple calculations, like adding a bunch of small numbers, in one's head. That's because in many situations it's more convenient to do so, than using a calculator. So the skill is preserved / practiced, because a calculator is too cumbersome to use. The skills of most people settle at the equil…

No. These tools are very good at creating illusion of learning, without any learning. When you watch them do stuff, you think, yeah I got this. Once they are gone, you realize all your supposed skill is gone too. Getting a skill requires deliberate practice. You can use AI for that, but just using AI is not that.

Spot on there’s an easy test.

Ask said person who learned something to describe it back to you in their own words.

Then watch them fumble :)

The second test is - explain it in such simple terms that someone who has barely any knowledge of it can understand it.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#573

Post by traderj0e »

Kiro wrote: post #374
therealdrag0 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell them no. Thats what I do. I have rejected multiple PRs that were too large and lacked proper design or alignment upfront. With code being so cheap, rejecting it should be just as cheaper. Set cultural standards that devs need to review their code before asking for reviews. Etc etc

I don't think it has the effect you think it has. No-one takes a rejection personally anymore since it's so easy to just tell an AI to fix the comments. So a rejection does not make them rethink like it would have back in the day.

Even back in the day, code review was often more of a helping exercise than gatekeeping. You can only gatekeep so much before they find someone who doesn't. Which is actually a good thing because a lot of people are pedantic about code in ways that also contradict other reviewers, but in my case I just want it to not do clearly wrong things.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#574

Post by ekeke »

palmotea wrote: post #513
zg94 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a false equivalency between software engineering and civil engineering here, in my opinion. I would argue that the craftsmanship SWEs see in their work stems from a necessity to be novel in order to truly make something worth putting out into the market. "Oh, you're making an app that tracks heartrate/makes music/provides driving directions? Why wouldn't the user just use ?" There's no real merit to making cl…

> I would argue that the craftsmanship SWEs see in their work stems from a necessity to be novel in order to truly make something worth putting out into the market. ... There's no real merit to making clones, whereas in civil engineering (I would argue) this is the bread and butter. You can't copy and paste a bridge. There's a physicality to it that says "okay, make another bridge similar to this but now for that gap…

Yep most comparisons are DOA.

If the two objects don’t possess the same fundamental characteristics they cannot be said to be comparable.. and if such fundamental differences exists you have to control for them.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#575

Post by abustamam »

pityJuke wrote: post #364
netcan wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of paraimony between your statement and Socrates' comments on the transition to writing. Interestingly, he placed a lot of importance on memory... where you emphasize manipulation of concepts.

I’ve grown to appreciate this aspect of standard examination as I’ve gotten older. Everyone wants to say “oh, you can just look it up now”, but how can you come up with higher level thinking, when you don’t have the fundamentals in your mind?

Agreed. We've been able to "look it up" for a while. To use math as an example, we've had calculators for a very long time. But when I was in school they didn't let us use calculators until precalc. Now I use calculators even for simple math because I already understand the fundamentals and just need expedience.

Just because one can "look it up" doesn't mean it's necessarily the best thing to do at the moment. But it also doesn't mean that folks who look it up are necessarily losing any higher level thinking, though I concede that many people certainly delude themselves into thinking they understand the fundamentals and thus can use AI as a tool for expedience when they're really using it as a tool for thought.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#576

Post by regular_trash »

gombosg wrote: post #420
gjuggler wrote: post #406

I was surprised not to see any discussion on whether the author used AI to help write this post. As many people say, writing is thinking. I started getting that "I'm reading another AI-written blog post" feeling around 1/3 of the way through, but I don't consider myself super calibrated on this. Pangram seems pretty confident it's AI ( https://www.pangram.com/history/e9f6eb77-86f9-46d0-a6c1-e57c... ). But I know thes…

Right at the top: "That distinction matters more than people think." That's basically telltale AI :) Also the entire framing around "judgment" and "taste" is what LLMs love to parrot about the topic. There are fair arguments in the post but I totally agree that "writing is thinking" and also holding myself to "if you didn't bother to write it, why would I bother to read it"?

One of the many things that has been strange to me is how often people will label written thoughts as AI slop when the "signs" are just normal phrases. Sure, that's a tired expression, and I 100% agree we should be critical of writing that seems to embolden pointless trite expressions. But people have written in that way for years before LLMs.

I find it very interesting that we only now have more widespread discourse around the quality of prose and rhetoric now that LLMs have become ubiquitous.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#577

Post by pydry »

deadbabe wrote: post #483
iewj wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this stuff is proving to me one thing: we don’t need to get better at producing stuff faster. We need to get better at producing the right stuff. Right stuff meaning getting better at project selection. I guarantee a firm that is really good at project selection with hand written code will annihilate a firm that is full of agentic engineers. And frankly I hope the outcome is that all those who went all in on agen…

Faster faster faster, everything faster except for fixing the climate, sheltering the poor, healing the sick, reducing inequality. Until we are planning to do these things with the same speed and enthusiasm as pushing out more crap for people to buy, the only thing we are moving faster toward is our own doom.

It's not the "faster" which makes investors and PMCs wet their pants with anticipation...it's the ability to swap reliance upon labor which requires a level of labor cooperation (which can be withdrawn) with reliance on raw materials.

For raw materials all you need is a bigger gun, missile and/or aircraft carrier. Labor can go straight to hell and the economy wont freeze up.

It's the same calculus which precipitated a shift from coal (labor reliant, locally sourced) to oil (bigger guns... but much less labor required) in the early 20th century.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#578

Post by ekeke »

Ronsenshi wrote: post #267
skybrian wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems overly pessimistic about education. Book learning isn't everything, but a physics textbook could be seen as the compression of centuries of experience.

Book learning to me seems like a compression of knowledge that had to be acquired through many years of experimentation and observation. But knowledge is not an experience itself. Take juggling for example - something that was on HN homepage last week. You can learn everything you need to know about juggling though a post or a book or an educational video. But can you juggle after all that book learning? Not at all -…

Nice analogy.

In many ways producing output of the brain is akin to juggling thoughts, ideas and concepts.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#579

Post by isakmarr »

mleo wrote: post #359
Rebuff5007 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the engineers of 20 years ago were better than the engineers of today because they were significantly more resource constrained and for example, would never use a 300mb javascript library for a profile page.

As a percentage of good to mediocre, maybe. Engineers of 40 years ago were probably better than engineers 20 years ago. Less of them and more constraints they had to deal with. Democratization of technology makes it easier for more people to use. It applies to programming as much as just using a computer.

Depends how you define "better". I'd argue that modern engineers are better generalists, and engineers 20-40 years ago were better specialists.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#580

Post by jmalicki »

nunez wrote: post #544
jmalicki wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you think engineers in the second half got there? By writing tons and tons of code to "build those reps" and gain that experience. It's not by writing syntax that you get there. It's by creating software and gaining the experience of seeing it go wrong. "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." AI just shortens the cycle without needing to type out syntax, so you get even m…

Why are you focusing on syntax so much? There's more to that when writing code. That's why students learn how to write pseudo-code before picking up a programming language. Learning how to think through implementing a solution to a problem is extremely important. It's exactly this experience that helps engineers grow their scope and understand bigger, more complex system. There's also the tactical components of using…

Data structures are not tactical components of programming languages.

E.g. when I am writing SQL, I need to be thinking about the underlying data structures too - even though I am not specifying the execution path.

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