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>But I don't buy the "joy of writing code" argument. Coding is all about making a computer work for you That is an absolutely valid point of view. But it doesn

>But I don't buy the "joy of writing code" argument. Coding is all about making a computer work for you That is an absolutely valid point of view. But it doesn't apply to everyone. Programming is something that can take me into the zone like nothing else. And it has the added side effect of making me think more precisely about higher level problems as well. It's one of those excercises that help me stop fooling myself (in the Feynman sense).

popinman322 4y ago
This reminds me of a discussion I had with a friend while playing Factorio together. Traditionally you'd put a list of recipe ratios into a spreadsheet and then calculate what you need. But there's a mod called Helm that can handle all those calculations for you, so you just need to specify what logistics components you'll be using. His immediate comment was "that takes all the fun out of it", to which I responded "it just moves the fun elsewhere." In this case, the programmer still provides intent and strategy for the bot. We know roughly how efficient the final algorithm should be, and roughly what the data model might be-- being able to get 90% of the code written in 30s-1min should free up more time to think about the system as a whole, I think. (Though this point has been beaten nearly to death, now that I ruminate on it.) At least in my own experience with Copilot it's been very convenient not having to worry about the finer details. More "should I model the problem this way?" and less "and now I bring in the inner for loop, then I overwrite the first part of the buffer up to index j...".
- danielbln 4y ago
  A programmer who "gets in the zone like nothing else" wouldn't want to write Assembly and MOV, CMP AND BMI their way to the goal (=solved problem) either. As technology has advanced, most of us think at a higher abstraction level to solve the problem at hand, and I feel that the recent ML advancements have further raised that level. Instead of thinking through the minutia of steps the computer should take, I task it on a higher level. Give me this component, make it do this thing, integrate it into the stack, add some unit codes. Great, on to the next problem. There's something liberating about it, and it's only going to get better from here.
DennisP 4y ago
Same here, but what takes me out of the zone is googling for sample code and digging through documentation to find the API calls I need and how to use them together. If AI can just give me the exact samples I need so I don't have to sift through docs and a pile of google results that aren't quite what I need, then I can stay focused on the fun stuff.

popinman322 4y ago

This reminds me of a discussion I had with a friend while playing Factorio together. Traditionally you'd put a list of recipe ratios into a spreadsheet and then calculate what you need. But there's a mod called Helm that can handle all those calculations for you, so you just need to specify what logistics components you'll be using. His immediate comment was "that takes all the fun out of it", to which I responded "it just moves the fun elsewhere." In this case, the programmer still provides intent and strategy for the bot. We know roughly how efficient the final algorithm should be, and roughly what the data model might be-- being able to get 90% of the code written in 30s-1min should free up more time to think about the system as a whole, I think. (Though this point has been beaten nearly to death, now that I ruminate on it.) At least in my own experience with Copilot it's been very convenient not having to worry about the finer details. More "should I model the problem this way?" and less "and now I bring in the inner for loop, then I overwrite the first part of the buffer up to index j...".

danielbln 4y ago
A programmer who "gets in the zone like nothing else" wouldn't want to write Assembly and MOV, CMP AND BMI their way to the goal (=solved problem) either. As technology has advanced, most of us think at a higher abstraction level to solve the problem at hand, and I feel that the recent ML advancements have further raised that level. Instead of thinking through the minutia of steps the computer should take, I task it on a higher level. Give me this component, make it do this thing, integrate it into the stack, add some unit codes. Great, on to the next problem. There's something liberating about it, and it's only going to get better from here.

DennisP 4y ago

Same here, but what takes me out of the zone is googling for sample code and digging through documentation to find the API calls I need and how to use them together. If AI can just give me the exact samples I need so I don't have to sift through docs and a pile of google results that aren't quite what I need, then I can stay focused on the fun stuff.