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I'm OK being left behind, thanks

shkspr.mobi

81–90 of 800 posts

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#81
post #24

There are real productivity gains by using these tools right now. Instead of doing 1x your normal work, you can do 5x while still maintaining quality. This is like an accountant sticking to pen and paper because calculators are big and clunky.

In your analogy that calculator would only produce a correct answer 80% of the time, and plausible looking but incorrect ones the other 20%. If that were the case I’d hire pen guy.

What's the error rate of the pen guy?

Also, if your AI has a 20% error rate, you're not holding it right. You need to spend more time keeping it on rails - unit tests, integration tests, e2e tests, local dev + browser use, preview deployments, staging environments, phased rollouts, AI PR reviews, rolling releases. The error rate will be much closer to 0%.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#82

I actually think the opposite approach might be the most optimal one, at least from a monetary perspective. That is, be on the cutting-edge of something, but be willing to bail out at the moment its future starts seeming questionable. Or even more specifically, maximize your foothold in it while minimizing your downside. Bitcoin is a good example: if you bought it 15 years ago and held it, you're probably quite wealt…

Maybe - but that's also a style of life definition, isn't it. I did not care at all about Bitcoin, and I'm still pretty fine. I even think, sitting Bitcoin out was better for me, because who (vrosdly speaking) cares about it today (besides speculating with it)?

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#83
This is fine so long as you don't confuse stubbornness for caution. As technologies lose favor, and others suggested you expand your toolset, don't post about your frustration while you're standing in the unemployment line.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#86
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…

It also seems like skills with particular tech (prompt engineering, harnesses, mixture of experts set ups) doesn't always necessarily pay off when there's a sea change. Hard to predict what you'll want in a few years anyway, right?

Agreed! Investing lightly at this stage seems smart if your time/attention budget is tight.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#87
post #22

Crypto isn't bad because it failed to make early adopters rich — it did make them rich. It's bad because it has horrible externalities in scams, war crimes / sanctions evasion, organised crime — which most of those early adopters were well aware of.

The way early adopters got rich was by scamming others, so not sure I see your differentiation there

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#88

There's value in being early - in the right thing. - If you'd invested in Bitcoin in 2016, you'd have made a 200x return - If you'd specialized in neural networks before the transformer paper, you'd be one of the most sought-after specialists right now - If you'd started making mobile games when the iPhone was released, you could have built the first Candy Crush Of course, you could just as well have - become an Acti…

Some of those things involve a bit of money as a gamble; others require some time learning tooling that can be repurposed (mobile game developers can obviously do mobile apps), and others would be dedicating years of your life into something that may be a dead end.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#89
post #64

FOMO is making me feel like I should mess around with openclaw but I can’t see any use cases that I can’t accomplish with other tools. What should I do based on this article?

Why do you need a reason to try anything?

Just go out and prove how useless it is. If, during your testing, you find that it has no good use case, toss it.

Waiting for others to validate a tech for you is a mistake IMO.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#90

>I didn't use Git when it first came out. This really hinges on what you mean by "didn't use git". If you were using bzr or svn, that's one thing. If you were saving multiple copies of files ("foo.old.didntwork" and the like), then I'd submit that you're making the point for the AI supporters. I consulted with a couple developers at the local university as recently as a couple years ago who were still doing the copy…

Pretty sure he meant he didn't use Git.

I'm still stuck with TFS and SVN in my day jobs but use Git on and off on side projects. I really wish all my clients would just switch to Git.

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