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I miss thinking hard

jernesto.com

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Re: I miss thinking hard

#91

Post by keyle »

tired-turtle wrote: post #86
keyle wrote: post #63

I don't get it. I think just as hard, I type less. I specify precisely and I review. If anything, all we've changed is working at a higher level. The product is the same. But these people just keep mixing things up like "wow I got a ferrari now, watch it fly off the road!" Yeah so you got a tools upgrade; it's faster, it's more powerful. Keep it on the road or give up driving! We went from auto completing keywords, t…

> We're all Linus Torvalds now. So...where's your OS and SCM? I get your point that wetware stills matter, but I think it's a bit much to contend that more than a handful of people (or everyone) is on the level of Linus Torvalds now that we have LLMs.

I should have been clearer. It was a pun, a take, a joke. I was referring to his day-to-day activity now, where he merges code, doesn't write hardly any code for the linux kernel.

I didn't imply most of use can do half the thing he's done. That's not right.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#92

Post by mw888 »

Give the AI less responsibility but more work. Immediate inference is a great example: if the AI can finish my lines, my `if` bodies, my struct instantiations, type signatures, etc., it can reduce my second-by-second work significantly while taking little of my cognitive agency.

These are also tasks the AI can succeed at rather trivially.

Better completions is not as sexy, but in pretending agents are great engineers it's an amazing feature often glossed over.

Another example is automatic test generation or early correctness warnings. If the AI can suggest a basic test and I can add it with the push of a button - great. The length (and thus complexity) of tests can be configured conservatively relative to the AI of the day. Warnings can just be flags in the editors spotting obvious mistakes. Off-by-one errors for example, which might go unnoticed for a while, would be an achievable and valuable notice.

Also, automatic debugging and feeding the raw debugger log into an AI to parse seems promising, but I've done little of it.

...And go from there - if a well-crafted codebase and an advanced model using it as context can generate short functions well, then by all means - scale that up with discretion.

These problems around the AI coding tools are not at all special - it's a classic case of taking the new tool too far too fast.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#93

Post by topspin »

holysoles wrote: post #28
topspin wrote: post #8

I'm using LLMs to code and I'm still thinking hard. I'm not doing it wrong: I think about design choices: risks, constraints, technical debt, alternatives, possibilities... I'm thinking as hard as I've ever done.

I very much think its possible to use LLMs as a tool in this way. However a lot of folks are not. I see people, both personally and professionally, give it a problem and expect it to both design and implement a solution, then hold it as a gold standard. I find the best uses, for at least my self, are smaller parts of my workflow where I'm not going to learn anything from doing it: - build one to throw away: give me a…

> then hold it as a gold standard

I just changed employers recently in part due to this: dealing with someone that appears to now spend his time coercing LLM's to give the answers he wants, and becoming deaf to any contradictions. LLMs are very effective at amplifying the Reality Distortion Field for those that live in them. LLMs are replacing blog posts for this purpose.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#94

Post by hnfong »

keyle wrote: post #63

I don't get it. I think just as hard, I type less. I specify precisely and I review. If anything, all we've changed is working at a higher level. The product is the same. But these people just keep mixing things up like "wow I got a ferrari now, watch it fly off the road!" Yeah so you got a tools upgrade; it's faster, it's more powerful. Keep it on the road or give up driving! We went from auto completing keywords, t…

I think I understand what the author is trying to say.

We miss thinking "hard" about the small details. Maybe "hard" isn't the right adjective, but we all know the process of coding isn't just typing stuff while the mind wanders. We keep thinking about the code we're typing and the interactions between the new code and the existing stuff, and keep thinking about potential bugs and issues. (This may or may not be "hard".)

And this kind of thinking is totally different from what Linus Torvalds has to think about when reviewing a huge patch from a fellow maintainer. Linus' work is probably "harder", but it's a different kind of thinking.

You're totally right it's just tools improving. When compilers improved most people were happy, but some people who loved hand crafting asm kept doing it as a hobby. But in 99+% cases hand crafting asm is a detriment to the project even if it's fun, so if you love writing asm yourself you're either out of work, or you grudgingly accept that you might have to write Java to get paid. I think there's a place for lamenting this kind of situation.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#95

Post by vermilingua »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #79
gyomu wrote: post #32

This March 2025 post from Aral Balkan stuck with me: https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/114160190826192080 "Coding is like taking a lump of clay and slowly working it into the thing you want it to become. It is this process, and your intimacy with the medium and the materials you’re shaping, that teaches you about what you’re making – its qualities, tolerances, and limits – even as you make it. You know the least about wha…

Eloquent, moving, and more-or-less exactly what people said when cameras first hit the scene.

Source?

Re: I miss thinking hard

#96

Post by tired-turtle »

keyle wrote: post #91
tired-turtle wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're all Linus Torvalds now. So...where's your OS and SCM? I get your point that wetware stills matter, but I think it's a bit much to contend that more than a handful of people (or everyone) is on the level of Linus Torvalds now that we have LLMs.

I should have been clearer. It was a pun, a take, a joke. I was referring to his day-to-day activity now, where he merges code, doesn't write hardly any code for the linux kernel. I didn't imply most of use can do half the thing he's done. That's not right.

> his day-to-day activity now, where he merges code

But even then...don't you think his insight into and ability to verify a PR far exceeds that of most devs (LLM or not)? Most of us cannot (reasonably) aspire to be like him.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#97

Post by cwnyth »

thrw045 wrote: post #31
topspin wrote: post #8

I'm using LLMs to code and I'm still thinking hard. I'm not doing it wrong: I think about design choices: risks, constraints, technical debt, alternatives, possibilities... I'm thinking as hard as I've ever done.

Reading this comment and other similar comments there's definitely a difference between people. Personally I agree and resonate a lot with the blog post, and I've always found designs of my programs to come sort of naturally. Usually the hard problems are the technical problems and then the design is figured out based on what's needed to control the program. I never had to think that hard about design.

Aptitude testing centers like Johnson O'Connor have tests for that. There are (relatively) huge differences between different people's thinking and problem solving styles. For some, creating an efficient process feels natural, while others need stability and redundancy. Programmers are by and large the latter.

[1]: https://www.jocrf.org/how-clients-use-the-analytical-reasoni...

Re: I miss thinking hard

#98

Post by danavar »

Many people here might be in a similar situation to me, but I took an online masters program that allowed for continuing education following completion of the degree. This has become one of my hobbies; I can take classes at my own expense, not worry about my grades, and just enjoy learning. I can push myself as much as I want and since the classes are hard, just completing 1 assignment is enough to force me to "think". Just sharing my experience for people who might be looking for ways to challenge themselves intellectually.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#99

Post by erelong »

You were walking to your destination which was three miles away

You now have a bicycle which gets you there in a third of the time

You need to find destinations that are 3x as far away than before

Re: I miss thinking hard

#100

Post by phromo »

I am thinking harder than ever due to vibe coding. How will markets shift? What will be in demand? How will the consumer side adapt? How do we position? Predicting the future is a hard problem... The thinker in me is working relentlessly since December. At least for me the thinker loves an existential crisis like no other.
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