I thought so about strong static typing looong time ago.
My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
781–790 of 1001 posts
Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
#782I'm on the side of AI is a huge productivity booster (by my guess... 10x) But I don't want to make the claim lightly, so I did an experiment. I signed up for copilot pro, and have been using their 'edit' feature. This is more than just their auto complete. I set myself a goal to create a playable web game of classic frogger. It took 4 hours with copilot "edit" and my full attention. I didn't write a single line of co…
> a playable web game of classic frogger
You could create a Tetris in even less time. Try to create something more novel and less hot on the heatmap of paths walked in gamedev.
Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
#783One thing that really bothered me that the author glossed over (perhaps they don't care, given the tone of the article) is where they said: > Does an intern cost $20/month? Because that’s what Cursor.ai costs. > Part of being a senior developer is making less-able coders productive, be they fleshly or algebraic. But do you know what another part of being a senior developer is? Not just making them more productive, bu…
How many senior developers understand the minute, intimate details of the frameworks, libraries, languages they use? How many understand the databases they use? TFA says, many (but not all) don't have to care as long as the product ships. That's exactly how code written by LLMs is meant to be tested and evaluated. And if you set up a good enough build/test environment, TFA argues that you can automate most of the schelp away.
Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
#784Both off and on topic: I got access to Claude’s voice mode today, and for my second test I asked it for its thoughts about both the linked blog post and the HN discussion here. The full transcript is at [1]. Some parts that stood out (slightly edited): Me: So what is your assessment of the discussion at Hacker News? Claude: The Hacker News discussion strikes me as much more grounded than the blog post itself. What I…
Thank you for sharing. I'm looking forward to getting voice mode, but after doing some searching I saw that it still needed the user to hit the "send" button after they are done talking. Did I misread, or was your experience that it would reply to you after you finished talking without the need to press anything?
Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
#785I think this article is pretty spot on — it articulates something I’ve come to appreciate about LLM-assisted coding over the past few months. I started out very sceptical. When Claude Code landed, I got completely seduced — borderline addicted, slot machine-style — by what initially felt like a superpower. Then I actually read the code. It was shockingly bad. I swung back hard to my earlier scepticism, probably even…
Photoshop etc are still just tools. They can’t beat us at what has always set us apart: thinking. LLM’s are the closest, and while they’re not close they’re directionally correct. They’re general purpose, not like chess engines. And they improve. It’s hard to predict a year out, never mind ten.
Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
#786This: "Important caveat: I’m discussing only the implications of LLMs for software development. For art, music, and writing? I got nothing. I’m inclined to believe the skeptics in those fields. I just don’t believe them about mine". I want to emphasize this. AI seems like a great 'first draft', but not a 'finished product'. In the hands of a programmer, a first draft is a great start. But pushing AI to frontline workers or customer support fails, as Klarna learned, because a first draft is not good enough.
Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
#787One thing that really bothered me that the author glossed over (perhaps they don't care, given the tone of the article) is where they said: > Does an intern cost $20/month? Because that’s what Cursor.ai costs. > Part of being a senior developer is making less-able coders productive, be they fleshly or algebraic. But do you know what another part of being a senior developer is? Not just making them more productive, bu…
I think what is going to happen is that junior devs will develop a strong reliance on AI tools to be able to do anything. I cynically think this was OpenAI’s aim when they made ChatGPT free for students.
I had a rather depressing experience this semester in my office hours with two students who had painted themselves in a corner with code that was clearly generated. They came to me for help, but were incapable of explaining why they had written what was on their screens. I decided to find where they had lost the thread of the class and discovered that they were essentially unable to write a helloworld program. In other words, they lost the thread on day one. Up until this point, both students had nearly perfect homework grades while failing every in-class quiz.
From one perspective I understand the business case for pushing these technologies. But from another perspective, the long term health of the profession, it’s pretty shortsighted. Who knows, in the end maybe this will kill off the group of students who enroll in CS courses “because mom and dad think it’s a good job,” and maybe that will leave me with the group that really wants to be there. In the meantime, I will remind students that there is a difference between programming and computer science and that you really need a strong grasp of the latter to be an effective coder. Especially if you use AI tools.
Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
#788This article does not touch on the thing which worries me the most with respect to LLMs: the dependence . Unless you can run the LLM locally, on a computer you own, you are now completely dependent on a remote centralized system to do your work. Whoever controls that system can arbitrarily raise the prices, subtly manipulate the outputs, store and do anything they want with the inputs, or even suddenly cease to opera…
I can't run google on my computer on my own, but I'm totally dependent on it.
Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
#789> Does an intern cost $20/month? Because that’s what Cursor.ai costs.
And who the fuck will train those interns, now they've been replaced by machines?
Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
#790The author defends mediocore code, yet wrote this piece:
https://fly.io/blog/vscode-ssh-wtf/
Where he dunks on how SSH access works in VSCode. I don't know. The code and architecture behind this feature may well be bananas, but gets the work done. Sounds like a clear case of mediocority. I wonder how does he reconcile those two articles together.
For me this is more of a clickbait. Both of the articles. With that in mind, if I am nuts for being sceptical of LLMs, I think it is fair to call the author a clickbaiter.