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I miss thinking hard

jernesto.com

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661–670 of 764 posts

Re: I miss thinking hard

#661

Post by sebastianconcpt »

> I am currently writing much more, and more complicated software than ever, yet I feel I am not growing as an engineer at all.

This sounds like approving bad/poor abstractions too prematurely and keep building on top of that.

What about the satisfaction that comes not with struggling but from the calmness of an elegant functional model that dynamically covers all the flows and all the edge cases you could (deep and slowly [1]) think about?

[1] maybe refining in different days, in the shower, after recovering breath in a hard set in a workout session, after a nap...

Re: I miss thinking hard

#662

Post by seg_lol »

helloplanets wrote: post #64
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…

And when programming with agentic tools, you need to actively push for the idea to not regress to the most obvious/average version. The amount of effort you need to expend on pushing the idea that deviates from the 'norm' (because it's novel), is actually comparable to the effort it takes to type something out by hand. Just two completely different types of effort. There's an upside to this sort of effort too, though…

I think harder while using agents, just not about the same things. Just because we all got a super powers doesn't make the problems go away, they just move and we still have our full brains to solve them.

It isn't all great, skills that feel important have already started atrophying, but other skills have been strengthened. The hardest part is in being able to pace onself as well as figuring out how to start cracking certain problems.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#663

Post by bitwize »

fallous wrote: post #106
helloplanets wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when programming with agentic tools, you need to actively push for the idea to not regress to the most obvious/average version. The amount of effort you need to expend on pushing the idea that deviates from the 'norm' (because it's novel), is actually comparable to the effort it takes to type something out by hand. Just two completely different types of effort. There's an upside to this sort of effort too, though…

You just described the burden of outsourcing programming.

YES!

AI assistance in programming is a service, not a tool. You are commissioning Anthropic, OpenAI, etc. to write the program for you.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#664

Post by wtetzner »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #630
sgarland wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The higher-ups at my company are, like most places, breathlessly talking about how AI has changed the profession - how we no longer need to code, but merely describe the desired outcome. They say this as though it’s a good thing. They’re destroying the only thing I like about my job - figuring problems out. I have a fundamental impedance mismatch with my company’s desires, because if someone hands me a weird…

They’re destroying the only thing I like about my job - figuring problems out. So, tackle other problems. You can now do things you couldn't even have contemplated before. You've been handed a near-godlike power, and all you can do is complain about it?

> You can now do things you couldn't even have contemplated before. You've been handed a near-godlike power, and all you can do is complain about it?

This seems to be a common narrative, but TBH I don't really see it. Where is all the amazing output from this godlike power? It certainly doesn't seem like tech is suddenly improving at a faster pace. If anything, it seems to be regressing in a lot of cases.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#665

Post by midtake »

nunez wrote: post #162

I will never not be upset at my fellow engineers for selling out the ONE thing that made us valuable and respected in the marketplace and trying to destroy software engineering as a career because "Claude Code go brrrrrr" basically. It's like we had the means for production and more or less collectively decided "You know what? Actually, the bourgeoisie can have it, sure."

Based comment

Re: I miss thinking hard

#666

Post by wtetzner »

rixed wrote: post #440
helloplanets wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when programming with agentic tools, you need to actively push for the idea to not regress to the most obvious/average version. The amount of effort you need to expend on pushing the idea that deviates from the 'norm' (because it's novel), is actually comparable to the effort it takes to type something out by hand. Just two completely different types of effort. There's an upside to this sort of effort too, though…

To me it feels a bit like literate programming, it forces you to form a much more accurate idea of your project before your start. Not a bad thing, but can be wasteful also when eventually you realise after the fact that the idea was actually not that good :)

Yeah, it's why I don't like trying to write up a comprehensive design before coding in the first place. You don't know what you've gotten wrong until the rubber meets the road. I try to get a prototype/v1 of whatever I'm working on going as soon as possible, so I can root out those problems as early as possible. And of course, that's on top of the "you don't really know what you're building until you start building it" problem.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#667

Post by tshadley »

fl0ki wrote: post #572

It really bothers me how many comments on this topic (here and elsewhere) draw a false parallel between LLM-based coding as an abstraction and frameworks and compilers as an abstraction. They're not the same thing and it matters. Frameworks and compilers are designed to be leak-proof abstractions. Any way in which they deviate from their abstract promise is a bug that can be found, filed, and permanently fixed. You g…

> LLMs cannot offer that promise by design, so it remains your job to find and fix any deviations from the abstraction you intended.

LLMs are clumsy interns now, very leaky. But we know human experts can be leak-proof. Why can't LLMs get there, too, better at coding, understanding your intentions, reviewing automatically for deviations, etc.?

Thought experiment: could you work well with a team of human experts just below your level? Then you should be able to work well with future LLMs.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#668

Post by wtetzner »

hearsathought wrote: post #640
heliumtera wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if he did, why would I prefer using his prompt instead of mine? "Write a gangster movie that I like", instead of "...a movie this other guy likes". But because this is not the case, we appreciate Tarantino more than we appreciate gangster movies. It is about the process.

> But because this is not the case, we appreciate Tarantino more than we appreciate gangster movies. Do we? I don't think people appreciate tarantino more than gangster movies. Don't think people appreciate tarantino more than pulp fiction. Frankly, tarantino doesn't factor in at all. > It is about the process. I never considered the process when watching pulp fiction. It's the finished product, not the process, that…

> It's the finished product, not the process, that matters.

I think the point is that the finished product depends on the process.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#669

Post by croes »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #657
croes wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will make money but the others are the artists. That’s the whole point. You become a customer of an AI service, you get what you want but it wasn’t done by you. You get money but not the feeling of accomplishment from cracking a problem. Like playing a video game following a solution or solving a crossword puzzle with google.

What good is a “feeling of accomplishment” as I am on the street homeless, hungry and naked?

Pretty B/W view. The feeling of accomplishment is the part that makes a job interesting, if it’s just about money it becomes dull.

And don’t forget, it’s more likely to find someone cheaper who can write the same prompts as you than people with the same kind of experience in cracking problems.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#670

Post by softfalcon »

> My method was simply to think. To think hard and long... This method never failed me. I always felt that deep prolonged thinking was my superpower. I might not be as fast or naturally gifted as the top 1%, but given enough time, I was confident I could solve anything.

This mindset is a healthy and good one. It is built on training yourself, learning, and practicing a discipline of problem solving without giving up.

Persistence is something we build, not something we have. It must be maintained. Persistence is how most good in the world has been created.

Genius is worthless without the will to see things through.

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