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AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com

71–80 of 288 posts

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#71
post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

In my 7th years of professionally programming node, not even once I remember the express or html boilerplate, neither is the router definition or middleware. Yet I can code normally provided there's internet accessible. It's simply not worth remembering, logic and architecture worth more IMO

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#72
post #67
post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

I guess writing code is now like creating punch-cards for old computers. Or even more recently, as writing ASM instead of using a higher level language like C. Now we simply write our "code" in a higher language, natural language, and the LLM is the compiler.

I cringe every time I read this "punch card" narrative. We are not at this stage at all. You are comparing deterministic stuff and LLMs which are not deterministic and may or may not give you what you want. In fact I personally barely use autonomous Agents in my brownfield codebase because they generate so much unmaintainable slop.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#73
Every time I see these I am thinking to myself: Is microsoft copilot a problem of implementation or the capability of the models?

I have ZERO doubt that if you put people that haven't used a computer in front of one and you had copilot everywhere and I mean not the way it is now instead you're presented with a chatbox in the middle of the screen and you just ask the computer what you want I am 99.99% sure that everyone would prefer to use that chatbox rather than trying to figure out how to use a computer which is why I am not quick to discredit "microslop", they're most likely pivoting windows to how it will look like in the future.

Obviously, the strongest argument here is that it should have been an entirely different product such as "Windows AI" where the entire system is designed around it. But if you look at their current implementation it's more of a copilot which is just there, letting you know it exists. Obviously not all of these features were thought through such as recall, that should have been dead and burried since it doesn't offer that much real value a magical box that takes in english sentences and does roughly what you want.

At the end of the day it's a question if AI will/is doing more harm than good. AI has really only existed in this form for a little more than 3 years and really started shining since the advent of Opus 4.5. We went from having models producing more security vulnerabilities than one can count to fixing obscure human made ones and the capabilities will keep increasing (if anthropic is to be believed). We will enter an era where it will have 95%+ accuracy in doing what a typical computer user would want from AI and there's really nothing anyone can do to stop it.

So my opinion is that AI will be the next big thing and it might spread way beyond what we can even imagine.

I think that we will have things similar to non technical people that just talk on the phone with an AI agent to get a website done, register a domain and have a website done within a 1 hour phone call all for pennies while the AI has access to their financials, mail and other things. All of that is relatively possible today with the simple caviat of security and I do believe we have enough smart people in the world that can figure out how to make AI better at rejecting social engineering than 99% of humans.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#74
post #67
post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

I guess writing code is now like creating punch-cards for old computers. Or even more recently, as writing ASM instead of using a higher level language like C. Now we simply write our "code" in a higher language, natural language, and the LLM is the compiler.

Except that compiler is a non-deterministic pull of a slot-machine handle. No thanks, I'll keep my programming skills; COBOL programmers command a huge salary in 2026, soon all competent programmers will.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#75
post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

Others have addressed other aspects of this, but I want to address this: > I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. I don't know exactly what you mean by boilerplate stuff, but honestly, that's stuff we should have automated away prior to AI. We should not be writing boilerplate. I'd highly encourage you to take the time to automate this stuff away. Not even with AI, but with scripts you can run to automate boilerp…

Jeez, I never remembered boilerplate stuff anyway. Losing grasp of your commonly used, slightly more involved code idioms in your key languages would probably be where I’d draw the ‘be concerned’ line. Like if I get into a car after years of only using public transit, I wouldn’t be too worried if I couldn’t immediately use a standard transmission smoothly. If I no longer could intuitively interact with urban traffic or merge onto a highway, I’d be a lot more concerned.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#76
post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

Really? How long you've been a developer? I've been almost exclusively doing "agent coding" for the last year + some months, been a professional developer for a decade or something. Tried just now to write some random JavaScript, C#, Java, Rust and Clojure "manually" and seems my muscle memory works just as well as two years ago. I'm wondering if this is something that hits new developers faster than more experienced…

Experience isn't the problem. I have 20+ years of C++ development, built commercial software in Java, Rust, Python, played with assembly, Erlang, Prolog, Basic.

Played with these coding agents for the last couple weeks and instantly noticed the brainrot when I was staring at an empty vim screen trying to type a skeleton helloworld in C.

Luckily the right idioms came back after couple of hours, but the experience gave me a big scare.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#77
post #37

The lack of robotics mention somewhat undermines this article. I don't think it's intrinsically wrong, we are in a late stage of a transformation. Software is eating the world and AI is (so far) most profitably an automation of software. There is plenty of money to be made along the way. I don't really buy the article's seeming confusion about where the money is going to come from. Anthropic is making billions and si…

As far as I know Anthropic still bleeds money, as Open AI also does.

They will keep bleeding money by the way.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others have addressed other aspects of this, but I want to address this: > I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. I don't know exactly what you mean by boilerplate stuff, but honestly, that's stuff we should have automated away prior to AI. We should not be writing boilerplate. I'd highly encourage you to take the time to automate this stuff away. Not even with AI, but with scripts you can run to automate boilerp…

I read the "boilerplate" in that comment as "basic" meaning "I don't know how to center a div" or "I do not know how to remove duplicates from a collection"

Well both of them are easily retrieved from web search, it's not a problem if you forget one or two. I'll probably need some refreshment if I want to implement bubble sort again.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#79
post #14
post #2

tangentially related, but as someone who built multiple internet businesses -- mostly unsuccessful, some mildly successful -- I barely have any new ideas to work on. I don't know if this is the effect of relying on AI too much in my day-to-day work or leading a more monotonous life as of late, but I'm sure I'm not the only one. Lots of ideas that I could have built before LLMs took over now seem trivial to build with…

I can relate to this, in the past I felt like I could write down pages of projects to try if only I had time. Now my mind immediately goes towards "do I want to manage this long term after the initial spark".

That made me wonder, honestly, if AI can build it, could AI manage it too?

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#80
post #67
post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

I guess writing code is now like creating punch-cards for old computers. Or even more recently, as writing ASM instead of using a higher level language like C. Now we simply write our "code" in a higher language, natural language, and the LLM is the compiler.

> Now we simply write our "code" in a higher language, natural language, and the LLM is the compiler.

No we don't and we never should actually, compilers need to be deterministic.

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