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I'm OK being left behind, thanks

shkspr.mobi

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Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#711

Post by whateveracct »

laserlight wrote: post #328
gradus_ad wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it not work after the first try and you gave up? Did it not produce any usable code that you could hand tweak or build off of? I want to understand your definition of "failed" here.

What's your definition of "working"? Do you consider it working, when you have to put more effort into prompting back-and-forth than writing it the old way?

I honestly think the people who love Claude were not super proficient coders. That's the only thing I can think of to explain why writing gobs of English and then code reviewing in a loop could be easier than just coding yourself.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#712

Post by komali2 »

0x3f wrote: post #562
komali2 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arguably in most cases it's more effective for you to provide the financing and direction but not be directly involved. That's why the EA guys are off beng quants. The EA guys aren't the final word on ethics or a fulfilling life. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote that one might, rather than seeking to always better one's life, instead seek to share the burden others are holding. Making a bunch of money to turn around and spe…

Nobody is asking about ethics or a fulfilling life. We are talking about maximum _impact_.

Impact only has meaning per a chosen framework to measure within. For example, if I apply my ethical system to measure the impact of an EA, they have essentially no impact, since all they do is perpetuate a system that is the root of the problems they're trying to solve.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#713

Post by whateveracct »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #404
we_have_options wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been playing with it on weekends for the last few months. 9 out of 10 projects, it's failed. Projects as simple as "set up a tmux/vim binding so I can write prompts in one pane and run claude in the other". Fails. I've been coding for over 20 years. If there is no learning curve, why doesn't it work for me? You can't say I'm not using it right, because if that was true, then all I need to do is climb the learnin…

> If there is no learning curve, why doesn't it work for me? Because LLMs are not actually good at programming, despite the hype.

I think they are better than a lot of people though, which is where their fans come from.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#714

Post by abkolan »

augusto-moura wrote: post #164
stiiv wrote: post #33

> If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours. Broadly speaking, I think this is a wise assessment. There are opportunities for productivity gains right now, but it I don't think it's a knockout for anyone using the tech, and I think that onboarding might be challenging for some people in the tech's current state. It is safe to…

What I get a bit annoyed is companies forcing AI tools, getting usage metrics and actively hunting the engineers that don't use the tool "enough", I've never seen anything like it for a technically optional tool. Even in the past, aside from technical limitaions, you were not required to use enough of a tool. It just sounds like a giant scheme to burn through tokens and give money to the AI corps, and tech directors…

A certain YC company fired a few employees for not using AI, the CEO bragged about it on X and incidentally it was a crypto company.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#715

Post by warriormonk5 »

sd9 wrote: post #112

> If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours. In contrast to the current top comment [1], I don't think this is a wise assessment. I'm already seeing companies in my network stall hiring, and in fact start firing. I think if you're not trying to take advantage of this technology today then there may not be a place for you tomor…

I agree with your take. It was obvious to my VP. It's not obvious to the rest of the enterprise (yet).

But I think it's just a matter of when not if.

My current guess at my slow fortune 500 is ~1-2 years before we see real employment impact.

Startups are happening now at least with my anecdotal conversations. Right now the discussion is more just slower growth than actually doing layoffs. That coin will flip at some point.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#717

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

ctoth wrote: post #667
kjkjadksj wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where is all the new tech years into ai? Turns out that wasn’t the limiting factor. The limiting factor is still what it was 10,000 years ago in business: accumulating capital to start and finding a fit in the market to last.

Wait. Which one is it? Is Show HN overwhelmed with too much new stuff because of AI? Or is there no new stuff? I am so confused!

As someone who does monitor /new, Show HN is overwhelmed with copycat low effort AI rubbish, not innovative AI generated tech that is interesting or useful. How many AI powered coloring book generators and AI powered anime-ification sites does the world really need?

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#718

Post by thienannguyencv »

draftsman wrote: post #133
samiv wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot but agree. It's a massive skill leveling where software development is transforming from high skilled coding to low skilled prompting. For an old dog like myself it feels an unjust rug pull.

LLMs have lowered the bar for the unskilled person to create shit software. I have used Opus 4.6 on a number of projects, and it still spits out buggy, and sometimes, flat out broken code. I was actually surprised when it completely hallucinated the names of query params for an HTTP request in my code, when in the prompt I had explicitly given it the exact names it needed to use. I thought these frontier models were…

The query parameter issue is a pattern I see a lot. The model has thousands of examples of "how HTTP requests usually look" from its training process. When your input data conflicts with the pattern, the training data takes precedence.

Interestingly, the model doesn't "know" that it's ignoring you. From its perspective, it has retrieved a "meaningful" pattern—virtual parameter names that probably fit common conventions it saw during training. Your actual request simply... wasn't documented.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#719

Post by jmalicki »

Copernicron wrote: post #679
jmalicki wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be able to just develop software on your cellphone, right? Do you have an empirical study to support that your employer should buy you a laptop and possibly a monitor or two to help your productivity? If there's no study, why should we believe it? It's like "A study found that parachutes were no more effective than empty backpacks at protecting jumpers from aircraft." https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sh…

> Oh, there's one important detail here. The drop in the study was about 2 feet total, because the biplane and helicopter were parked. I don't think that's making the argument you think it is.

That is exactly why I posted it.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#720

Post by patrick451 »

hibikir wrote: post #273
augusto-moura wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I get a bit annoyed is companies forcing AI tools, getting usage metrics and actively hunting the engineers that don't use the tool "enough", I've never seen anything like it for a technically optional tool. Even in the past, aside from technical limitaions, you were not required to use enough of a tool. It just sounds like a giant scheme to burn through tokens and give money to the AI corps, and tech directors…

It's using a bad tool to try to aim at something reasonable-ish: Developers not taking advantage of the tools in places where it's very easy to get use out of them. I have coworkers like that: One spent 3 days researching a bug that Claude found in 10 minutes by pointing it at the logs in the time window and the codebase. And he didn't even find the bug, when Claude nailed it in one. But is this something that is bes…

There are countless other stories about the AI's spouting complete bullshit. This easily wastes as much time as they save.
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