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I don't care how well your "AI" works

fokus.cool

711–720 of 808 posts

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, no. They're people who think faster. Someone who uses vscode will never produce code faster than someone proficient in vim. Someone who clicks through GUI windows will never be able to control their computer as fast as someone with a command prompt. I'm sure that there are some examples who enjoy it for the interface. I think CRT term/emulator is peak aesthetic. And a few who aren't willing to invest the time to…

> Someone who uses vscode will never produce code faster than someone proficient in vim. Is this an actually serious/honest take of yours? I've been using vim for 20 years and, while I've spent almost no time with VS Code, I'd say that a lot of JetBrains' IDEs' built in features have definitely made me faster than I ever was with vim. Oh wait. No true vim user would come to this conclusion, right?

The take was supposed to be read as slightly hyperbolic. Because while the fastest user of an IDE, has never come close to the fastest I've seen in vim, as you pointed out, thats not really a reasonable comparison either. Here I'm intentionally only considering raw text editing speed, jumping across lines, switching files. If you're including IDE features, when you expect someone in vim to leave vim, you're comparing something that doesn't equate to my strawman.

My larger point was it's absurd to say someone who's faster using [interface] is a luddite because they don't use [other interface] with nearly identical features.

> Oh wait. No true vim user would come to this conclusion, right?

I guess that's fitting insult, given I started with a strawman example too.

edit: I can offer another equally absurd example, (and why I say it's only slightly hyperbolic because the following is true), I can write code much faster using vim, than I can with [IDE], I don't even use tab complete, or anything similar either. I, personally, am able to write better code, faster, when there's nothing but colored text to distract me. Does that make me a luddite? I've tried both, and this fits better for me. Or is it just how comfortable you are with a given interface? Because I know most people can find tab complete useful.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was very insightful. It made me think about how "hacker culture" has changed. I'm middle-aged. 30 years ago, hacker culture as I experienced it was about making cool stuff. It was also about the identity -- hackers were geeks. Intelligent, and a little (or a lot) different from the rest of society. Generally speaking, hackers could not avoid writing code. Whether it was shell scripts or HTML or Javascript or ful…

Well there are a lot of us very clear that our identities are being threatened and scared shitless we will lose the ability to pay our rent or buy food because of it.

This kind of nails it; hacker culture folks grew up and got families and mortgages, so changes comes with the territory

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#713

I get that some people want to be intellectually "pure". Artisans crafting high-quality software, made with love, and all that stuff. But one emerging reality for everyone should be that businesses are swallowing the AI-hype raw. You really need a competent and understanding boss to not be labeled a luddite, because let's be real - LLMs have made everyone more "productive" on paper. Non-coders are churning out small…

In my experience I saw the complete opposite of "juniors looking like savants", there are a few pieces of code made by some juniors and som mid engineers in my company(one also involving a senior) that were clearly made with AI, and they are such a mess that they haven't been touched ever since because it's just impossible to understand, and this wasn't caught in the PR because the size of it was so large that people didn't actually bother reading it.

I did see a few good senior engineers using AI and producing good code, but for junior and mid engineers I have witnessed the complete opposite.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they wouldn't. On Youtube, for example, videos were consistently trending longer over time, and you used to see frequent explainers ( https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-video-extra-long/ ) on why this was happening and how Youtube benefits from it. Short-form videos are harder to monetize and reduce retention, but users demand them so strongly that most platforms have built a dedicated experience for them to com…

If that was true, I would be able to turn off shorts from my recommendation feed.

You can. It’s not a hermetic seal, I assume because they live in the same database as normal videos, but if you’re thinking of the separate “shorts” section there’s a triple dot option to turn it off.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#715

I get that some people want to be intellectually "pure". Artisans crafting high-quality software, made with love, and all that stuff. But one emerging reality for everyone should be that businesses are swallowing the AI-hype raw. You really need a competent and understanding boss to not be labeled a luddite, because let's be real - LLMs have made everyone more "productive" on paper. Non-coders are churning out small…

> Non-coders are churning out small apps in record pace, juniors are looking like savants with the amount of code and tasks they finish, where probably 90% of the code is done by Claude or whatever. Honestly I think you’re swallowing some of the hype here. I think the biggest advantages of LLMs go to the experienced coders who know how to leverage them in their workflows. That may not even include having the LLM writ…

I feel sorry for juniors because they have even less incentive to troubleshoot or learn languages. At the same time, the sheer size of APIs make me relieved that I will never have to remember another command, DSL, or argument list again. Ruby has hundreds of methods, Rails hundreds more, and they constantly change. I'd rather write a prompt saying what I mean than figure out obscure incantations, especially with infrequently used tools like ffmpeg.

Advent of Code (https://adventofcode.com/2025/about) says:

> Should I use AI to solve Advent of Code puzzles? No. If you send a friend to the gym on your behalf, would you expect to get stronger? Advent of Code puzzles are designed to be interesting for humans to solve - no consideration is made for whether AI can or cannot solve a puzzle. If you want practice prompting an AI, there are almost certainly better exercises elsewhere designed with that in mind.

I would advocate for Advent of Code in every workplace, but finding interest is rare. No matter how much craft is emphasized, ultimately businesses are concerned with solving problems. Even personally, sometimes I want to solve a problem so I can move on to something more interesting.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have this position, but the reality is that the industry is accepting it and moving forward. Whether you’ll embrace some of it and utilize it to improve your workflow, is up to you. But over-exaggerating the problem to this point is kinda funny.

"You exaggerate, and the evidence is PMs are pushing it. PMs can't be wrong, can they?" Somebody really has to know what makes developers tick to write ragebait this good. I can't even get the most expensive model on Claude to use "ls" correctly, with a fresh context window. That is a command that has been unchanged in linux for decades. You exaggerate how reliable these tools are. They are getting more useless as mo…

I’m not sure what you’re talking about, because I have a completely different experience.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was true, I would be able to turn off shorts from my recommendation feed.

You can. It’s not a hermetic seal, I assume because they live in the same database as normal videos, but if you’re thinking of the separate “shorts” section there’s a triple dot option to turn it off.

I've clicked this triple dots many times. I never saw such an option. I saw "show fewer shorts", and even that seems to be temporary.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#718
post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself progressive and my main issue with the technology is that it was created by stealing from people who have not been compensated in any way. I wouldn’t blame any artist that is fundamentally against this tech in every way. Good for them.

Every artist and creator of anything learned by engaging with other people's work. I see training AI as basically the same thing. Instead of training an organic mind, it's just training a neural network. If it reproduces works that are too similar to the original, that's obviously an issue, but that's the same as human artists.

Human beings are human beings.

For profit products are for profit products, that are required to compensate if they are derivative of other works (in this case, there would be no AI product without the upstream training data, which checks the flag that it's derivative).

If you would like to change the laws, ok. But simply breaking them and saying 'but the machine is like a person' is still... just breaking the laws and stealing.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are unions any better than mega corps? My brother is part of a union and the leaders make millions. He's pigenholed at the same low pay rate and can't ever get a raise, until everyone in the same role also gets a raise (which will never happen). It traps people, because many union jobs can't or won't innovate, and when they look elsewhere, are underskilled (and stuck). You mention 'deepseek'. Are you joking? It's…

Just because your brother's union sucks, doesn't mean they all do.

I've been on both sides of it (in a union and working with union members when there was no other choice).

They all work the same way. I'm fundamentally against the idea of unions after seeing how they stifle innovation in nearly all industries they control.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think this is what happens when a persons transitions from a progressive mindset to a conservative one, but has made being "progressive" a central tenant of their identity. Progressiveness is forward looking and a proponent of rapid change. So it is natural that LLM's are popular amongst that crowd. Also, progressivism should be accepting of and encouraging the evolution of concepts and social constructs.…

Just seeing that sentence fragment about "structures of power and violence" told me so much about the author. Its the sort of language that brings with it a whole host of stereotypes, some of which were immediately confirmed with a little more digging (and others would require way too much effort to confirm, but likely could be). And yes, this whole "capitalism bad" mentality I see in tech does kinda irk me. Why? Bec…

The government and military spending gave us the tools we have today.
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