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Nothing new. Whenever a new layer of abstraction is added, people say it's worse and will never be as good as the old way. Though it's a totally biased opinion, we just have issues with giving up things we like as human being.
The difference is that LLM output is very nondeterministic.
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…
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I've literally never found flow state with programming. Is it even possible when working as a full stack web dev? I am constantly context switching between backend/frontend, reading documentation, looking at/modifying data, refreshing & interacting with the browser, checking/double checking feature requirements, asking people about things.
For me, yes. It is possible as when working full-stack if you aren't being interrupted. Not all tasks, but some tasks, where you're pretty sure of the high-level requirements, have the necessary agency to stay in a bubble for a bit, and the task is sufficiently complex but narrow enough so you don't have to context switch too much. With LLM Agents I can't seem to do it, as waiting for the agent to finish working just…
yea these kind of problems are the exact ones that claude code is very good at one shotting these days. If you can descibe in detail what needs to be done without context switching or research, then describe it to the LLM and bam
I've also mostly worked at small companies so the high level requirements are never well defined :D
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That’s not realistic with any processor that does branch prediction, cache hits vs cache misses etc
You can easily compute the worst cases. All the details are in the specs of the processor.
I haven’t counted cycles since programming assembly on a 65C02 where you cooks save a clock cycle by accessing memory in the first page of memory - two opcodes to do LDA $02 instead of LDA $0201
> If I can get a solution that is “close enough” in a fraction of the time and effort, it is irrational not to take the AI route. And that is the real problem: I cannot simply turn off my pragmatism. I've not seen this take yet, but this is exactly how I feel. I do not yet know what I want to do, and my parts of my personality are no longer satisfied by coding. I'm thinking we need some kind of community of people li…
I think this is context dependent. Over time, within a single code base or ecosystem, incompatibilities between "close enough" solutions can add up and create a lot of problems and complexity, kinda like floating point inaccuracies. Especially if you're not going back and revisiting the structure/abstractions you've already got when you're adding/changing something.
There's another angle too, which is that time taken to improve your abilities isn't necessarily irrational, especially because that improvement is usually applicable in many different ways. It can be an investment.
Sometimes I miss thinking hard, but I also don't miss thinking really hard on a problem that seems difficult only to find out it was actually trivial and I was just looking at it the wrong way or overthinking it. We've all spent hours tracking down bugs that turned out to be silly syntax errors or spelling mistakes. It seems like that might be the trade off now.
Unfortunately, predicting which situations are worth it and which aren't is as hard as predicting anything else...
"Oh no, I am using a thing that no one is forcing me to use, and now I am sad". Just don't use AI. The idea that you have ship ship ship 10X ship is an illusion and a fraud. We don't really need more software
Yeah, we need better software.
> the number of times I truly ponder a problem for more than a couple of hours has decreased tremendously Isn't that a good thing? If you're stuck on the same problem forever, then you're not going to get past it and never move on to the next thing... /shrug
"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. I felt a deep satisfaction in that process." In psychological terms, he's saying he has a need to solve hard problems in order to validate his identity and make himself feel good. At some point in his past he experienced some psychologi…
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What stole the joy you must have felt, fleetingly, as a child that beheld the world with fresh eyes, full of wonder? Did you imagine yourself then, as your are now, hunched over a glowing rectangle. Demanding imperiously that the world share your contempt for the sublime. Share your jaundiced view of those that pour the whole of themselves into the act of creation, so that everyone might once again be graced with won…
Thank you for brightening my morning with a brief moment of romantic idealism in a black ocean of cynicism