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Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

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Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#81

Post by hombre_fatal »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #67
hombre_fatal wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a U-shaped utility curve where abstract planning is on one side (your comment) and the chore implementation is on the other. Your role is between the two: deciding on the architecture, writing the top-level types, deciding on the concrete system design. And then AI tools help you zoom in and glue things together in an easily verifiable way. I suspect that people who still haven't figured out how to make…

You don’t empathize with the humane opinion “why bother?” I like to program so it resonates. I’m fortunate to enjoy my work so why would I want to stop doing what I enjoy?

Sure, don't use if you don't want to. I'm referring to versions of the claim I see around here like LLMs are useless. Being so uncurious as to refuse to figure out what a tool might be useful for is an anti-engineering mindset.

Just like you should be able to say something positive about Javascript (async-everything instead of a bolted-on async subecosystem, event loop has its upsides, single-threaded has its upsides, has a first class promise, etc) even if you don't like using it.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#82

Post by jacobolus »

orochimaaru wrote: post #74

My thesis is actually simpler. For the longest time until the Industrial Revolution humans have done uninteresting work for the large part. There was a routine and little else. Intellectuals worked through a very terse knowledge base and it was handed down master to apprentice. Post renaissance and industrial age the amount of known knowledge has exploded, the specializations have exploded. Most of what white collar…

Hunter–gatherers have incredible knowledge and awareness about their local environment – local flora and fauna, survival skills, making and fixing shelters by hand, carpentry, pottery, hunting, cooking, childcare, traditional medicine, stories transmitted orally, singing or music played on relatively simple instruments, hand-to-hand combat, and so on – but live in relatively small groups and are necessarily generalists. The rise of agriculture and later writing made most people into peasant farmers, typically disempowered if not enslaved (still with a wide range of skills and deep knowledge), and led to increasing specialization (scribes, artisans, merchants, professional soldiers, etc.).

Calling this various work "uninteresting" mostly reflects on your preferences rather than the folks who were doing the work. A lot of the work was repetitive, but the same is true of most jobs today. That didn't stop many people from thinking about something else while they worked.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#83

Post by ofjcihen »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #81
Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t empathize with the humane opinion “why bother?” I like to program so it resonates. I’m fortunate to enjoy my work so why would I want to stop doing what I enjoy?

Sure, don't use if you don't want to. I'm referring to versions of the claim I see around here like LLMs are useless. Being so uncurious as to refuse to figure out what a tool might be useful for is an anti-engineering mindset. Just like you should be able to say something positive about Javascript (async-everything instead of a bolted-on async subecosystem, event loop has its upsides, single-threaded has its upsides…

As a counter argument, the replies I see that say LLMs are “useless” are saying they’re useless to the person attempting to use them.

This can be a perfectly valid argument for many reasons. Their use case isn’t well documented, can’t be publicly disclosed, involves APIs that aren’t public, or are actual research and not summarizing printed research to name a few I’ve run into myself.

This argument that “engineers are boring and afraid for their jobs” is ignoring the fact that these are usually professionals with years of experience in their fields and probably perfectly able to assess the usefulness of a tool for their purposes.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#84

Post by ofjcihen »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #41
rijoja wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the exact opposite*, the author said that if you're doing boilerplate _code_ it's probably fine. The thing is that since it can't think, it's absolutely useless when it comes to things that hasn't been done before, because if you are creating something new, the software won't have had any chance to train on what you are doing. So if you are in a situation in which it is a good idea to create a new DSL for yo…

In a world where the AI can understand your function library near flawlessly and compose it in to all sorts of things, why would you put the effort into a DSL that humans will have to learn and the AI will trip over? This is a dead pattern.

This is completely ignoring the purpose of a DSL.

Dead pattern? Really?

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#85

Post by ofjcihen »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #54
towledev wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Instruct them in how you want them to code They don't always listen. Writing SQL, I'll give ChatGPT the schema for 5 different tables. It habitually generates solutions with columns that don't exist. So, naturally, I append, "By the way, TableA has no column FieldB." Then it just imagines a different one. Or, I'll say, "Do not generate a solution with any table-col pair not provided above." It doesn't listen to that…

I haven't had that problem with Gemini 2.5 pro or O3, are you on the free tier of ChatGPT?

You do understand that these models are not sentient and are subject to hundreds of internal prompts, weights, and a training set right?

They can’t generate knowledge that isn’t in their corpus and the act of prompting (yes, even with agents ffs) is more akin to playing pachinko than it is pool?

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#86

Post by ofjcihen »

towledev wrote: post #52
CuriouslyC wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the new world that's emerging, you are losing your edge by not learning how to master and leverage AI agents. Quality not good enough? Instruct them in how you want them to code, and make sure a sufficient quantity of the codebase is loaded into their context so they can see examples of what you consider good enough.

>Instruct them in how you want them to code They don't always listen. Writing SQL, I'll give ChatGPT the schema for 5 different tables. It habitually generates solutions with columns that don't exist. So, naturally, I append, "By the way, TableA has no column FieldB." Then it just imagines a different one. Or, I'll say, "Do not generate a solution with any table-col pair not provided above." It doesn't listen to that…

This is something that people working on extremely simple apps don’t understand because for their purposes it looks like magic.

If you know what you’re doing and you’re trying to achieve something other than the same tutorials that have been pasted all over the internet the non-deterministic pattern machine is going to generate plausible bs.

They’ll tell you any number of things that you’re supposedly doing wrong without understanding what the machine is actually doing under the hood.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#87

Post by rwyinuse »

orochimaaru wrote: post #74

My thesis is actually simpler. For the longest time until the Industrial Revolution humans have done uninteresting work for the large part. There was a routine and little else. Intellectuals worked through a very terse knowledge base and it was handed down master to apprentice. Post renaissance and industrial age the amount of known knowledge has exploded, the specializations have exploded. Most of what white collar…

I would say that mastering things like building, farming, gardening, hunting, blacksmithing and cooking does require quite a bit of learning. Before industrial revolution most people engaged in many or all of those activities, and I believe they were more intellectually stimulated than your average office worker today.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#88

Post by loloquwowndueo »

briandw wrote: post #72
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful - if you’re not familiar with the domain how are you going to spot when the LLM gives you suboptimal or even outright wrong answers?

Just like anything else, stackoverflow, advice from a coworker or expert. If it doesn’t work, it will become clear that it’s not fixing your problem.

If all you’re doing is ping-ponging back and forth between an expert and an LLM, then what’s your value ?

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#89

Post by marssaxman »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #41
rijoja wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the exact opposite*, the author said that if you're doing boilerplate _code_ it's probably fine. The thing is that since it can't think, it's absolutely useless when it comes to things that hasn't been done before, because if you are creating something new, the software won't have had any chance to train on what you are doing. So if you are in a situation in which it is a good idea to create a new DSL for yo…

In a world where the AI can understand your function library near flawlessly and compose it in to all sorts of things, why would you put the effort into a DSL that humans will have to learn and the AI will trip over? This is a dead pattern.

It's a big leap from that hypothetical world back to ours.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#90

Post by briandw »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #88
briandw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like anything else, stackoverflow, advice from a coworker or expert. If it doesn’t work, it will become clear that it’s not fixing your problem.

If all you’re doing is ping-ponging back and forth between an expert and an LLM, then what’s your value ?

Don't think what I described was ping-ponging. But if you want to see it that way, go ahead.

To clarify my process. 1) I have a problem in a new domain that I'm stuck on. 2) I work with the LLM to discuss my problem, think about solutions, get things to try. Not unlike StackOverflow or digging through documentation. However this process is much faster and I learn more without being called stupid by random people on SO (or HN). 3) The problem is fixed and I move on, or back to 1 or try something else.

The value here is that I have a problem to solve and I'm seeing it through to the end. I know what good looks like and have the agency and attention span to get there. The LLM doesn't and likely won't for quite some time.

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