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Building better AI tools

hazelweakly.me

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Re: Building better AI tools

#81

Post by Zacharias030 »

lucianbr wrote: post #60
donsupreme wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many analog to this IRL: 1) I can't remember the last time I write something meaningfully long with an actual pen/pencil. My handwriting is beyond horrible. 2) I can't no longer find my way driving without a GPS. Reading a map? lol

If you were a professional writer or driver, it might make sense to be able to do those things. You could still do without them, but they might make you better in your trade. For example, I sometimes drive with GPS on in areas I know very well, and the computer provided guidance is not the best.

I think the sweet spot is always keeping north up on the GPS. Yes it takes some getting used to, but you will learn the lay of the land.

Re: Building better AI tools

#82

Post by croes »

biophysboy wrote: post #48
taylorallred wrote: post #14

One thing that has always worried me about AI coding is the loss of practice. To me, writing the code by hand (including the boilerplate and things I've done hundreds of times) is the equivalent of Mr. Miyagi's paint-the-fence. Each iteration gets it deeper into your brain and having these patterns as a part of you makes you much more effective at making higher-level design decisions.

A retort you often hear is that prior technologies, like writing or the printing press, may have stunted our calligraphy or rhetorical skills, but they did not stunt our capacity to think. If anything, they magnified it! Basically, the whole Steve Jobs' bicycle-for-the-mind idea. My issue with applying this reasoning to AI is that prior technologies addressed bottlenecks in distribution, whereas this more directly at…

But AI also does the thinking.

So if the printing press stunted our writing what will the thinking press stunt.

https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-study-finds-relying-on-ai-kill...

Re: Building better AI tools

#83

Post by jxf »

ozten wrote: post #53
taylorallred wrote: post #14

One thing that has always worried me about AI coding is the loss of practice. To me, writing the code by hand (including the boilerplate and things I've done hundreds of times) is the equivalent of Mr. Miyagi's paint-the-fence. Each iteration gets it deeper into your brain and having these patterns as a part of you makes you much more effective at making higher-level design decisions.

"Every augmentation is an amputation" -- Marshall McLuhan

Q: Where did he say this? I think this may be apocryphal (or a paraphrasing?) as I couldn't find a direct quote.

Re: Building better AI tools

#84

Post by bluefirebrand »

arscan wrote: post #79
biophysboy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A retort you often hear is that prior technologies, like writing or the printing press, may have stunted our calligraphy or rhetorical skills, but they did not stunt our capacity to think. If anything, they magnified it! Basically, the whole Steve Jobs' bicycle-for-the-mind idea. My issue with applying this reasoning to AI is that prior technologies addressed bottlenecks in distribution, whereas this more directly at…

I’ve been thinking of LLMs a bit like a credit-card-for-the-mind, it reduces friction to accessing and enabling your own expertise. But if you don’t have that expertise already, be careful, eventually it’ll catch up to you and a big bill will be due.

Unfortunately a lot of people are basically just hoping that by the time the big bill is due, they have cashed out and left the bill on someone else

I also think that even with expertise, people relying too much on AI are going to erode their expertise

If you can lift heavy weights, but start to use machines to lift instead, your muscles will shrink and you won't be able to lift as much

The brain is a muscle it must be exercised to keep it strong too

Re: Building better AI tools

#85

Post by bluefirebrand »

Jonovono wrote: post #51
yoyohello13 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many time when I’ll mull over a problem in my head at night or in the shower. I kind of “write the code” in my head. I find it very useful sometimes. I don’t think it would be possible if I didn’t have the language constructs ingrained in my head.

I find it do this more now with AI than before.

Do you? Or do you spend more time thinking about how to write prompts?

Re: Building better AI tools

#87

Post by bluefirebrand »

cwnyth wrote: post #76
taylorallred wrote: post #14

One thing that has always worried me about AI coding is the loss of practice. To me, writing the code by hand (including the boilerplate and things I've done hundreds of times) is the equivalent of Mr. Miyagi's paint-the-fence. Each iteration gets it deeper into your brain and having these patterns as a part of you makes you much more effective at making higher-level design decisions.

My LLM-generated code has so many bugs in it, that I end up knowing it better since I have to spend more time debugging/figuring out small errors. This might even be better: you learn something more thoroughly when you not only practice the right answers, but know how to fix the wrong answers.

That is absurd

If you write it by hand you don't need to "learn it thoroughly", you wrote it

There is no way you understand code between by reading it than by creating it. Creating it is how you prove you understand it!

Re: Building better AI tools

#88

Post by Ekaros »

okr wrote: post #45
taylorallred wrote: post #14

One thing that has always worried me about AI coding is the loss of practice. To me, writing the code by hand (including the boilerplate and things I've done hundreds of times) is the equivalent of Mr. Miyagi's paint-the-fence. Each iteration gets it deeper into your brain and having these patterns as a part of you makes you much more effective at making higher-level design decisions.

Soldering transistors by hand was a thing too, once. But these days, i am not sure, if people wanna keep up anymore. Many trillions of transistors later. :) I like this zooming in and zooming out, mentally. At some point i can zoom out another level. I miss coding. While i still code a lot.

If you start designing circuits with LLM (can they even do that yet?) Will you ever learn to do it yourself or fix it when it goes wrong and magic smoke comes out after robot made it for you?

Re: Building better AI tools

#89

Post by Rumudiez »

drchiu wrote: post #40

Friends, we might very well be the last generation of developers who learned how to code.

I want to believe there will be a small contingent of old schoolers basically forver, even if it only shrinks over time. maybe newcomers or experienced devs who want to learn to more, or how to do what the machine is doing for them

I think it'll be like driving: the automatic transmission, power brakes, and other tech made it more accessible but in the process we forgot how to drive. that doesn't mean nobody owns a manual anymore, but it's not a growing % of all drivers

Re: Building better AI tools

#90

Post by JoshTriplett »

tptacek wrote: post #73
miltonlost wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a confusing piece if you don't skip/ignore the first part. You're using her one example and removing the portion about how human beings learn and how AI is actively removing that process. The incident resolution is an example of her general point.

I feel pretty comfortable with how my comment captures the context of the whole piece, which of course I did read. Again: what's weird about this is that the first part would be pretty coherent and defensible if applied to coding agents (some people will want to work the way she spells out, especially earlier in their career, some people won't), but doesn't make as much sense for the example she uses for the remainin…

It makes perfect sense for that case too. If you let AI do the whole job of incident handling (and leaving aside the problem where they'll get it horribly wrong), that also has the same problem of breaking the processes by which people learn. (You could make the classic "calculator" vs "long division" argument here, but one difference is, calculators are reliable.)

Also:

> some people will want to work the way she spells out, especially earlier in their career

If you're going to be insulting by implying that only newbies should be cautious about AI preventing them from learning, be explicit about it.

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