3 ms·

It's a tool. You get used to new tools. These days I can easily process "did something interesting appear" in the peripheral vision at the same time as continui

It's a tool. You get used to new tools. These days I can easily process "did something interesting appear" in the peripheral vision at the same time as continuing to type. But the most useful things don't happen while I write. Instead it's the small edits that immediately come up with "would you also like to change these other 3 things to make your change work?" Those happen in the natural breaks anyway, as I start scanning for those related changes myself.

exe34 2y ago
> in the peripheral vision this seems physiologically unlikely.
- viraptor 2y ago
  We do it all the time. I can type while talking to people. I can also read/process the text ahead while saying out loud what I read a few words back. We do a lot of things concurrently when dealing with text - I'm not staring at the cursor when writing code either. (Unless you meant it literally. No, I didn't mean actual peripheral vision. Just noticing things beyond what I type.)
  - exe34 2y ago
    I did mean it literally. the solid angle covered by the fovea is tiny.
    - theshrike79 2y ago
      The eye also doesn't literally stay 100% static when you look at something.
namaria 2y ago
A tool that forces me to shift from creating solutions to trying to figure out what might be wrong with some code is entirely detrimental to my workflow.
- viraptor 2y ago
  Is that your actual experience or expectation? If you're just making assumptions, I'd encourage you to give it an actual try. Talking about using Cursor is a bit like talking about riding a bike with someone who never did it. (But yeah, it's totally not for everyone, and that's fine)
  - namaria 2y ago
    Very early on I took pains to figure out what toolchains gave me traction and which tools produced waste complexity. I think a lot of the excitement about using LLMs to code is because a lot of teams are stuck in local optima where they need to use noisy tools, and there's a lot of de-noised output available to train LLMs. This is progress in searching and mitigating bad trade-offs, not in advancing the state of the art.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  The latter is usually much easier than the former on a small scale, so your statement is very surprising.
  - namaria 2y ago
    You find revising correctly looking but potentially wrong code easier than just writing correct code?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Obviously, yes. For the exact same reason it's true for math homework, too! Most code most people write is trivial in terms of semantics/algorithms. The hard bit is navigating the space of possible solutions: remembering all the APIs you need at the moment - right bits of the standard library, right bits of your codebase, right bits of third-party dependencies - and holding pieces you need in your head while you assemble some flow of data, transforming it between API boundaries as needed. I'm totally fine letting the AI do that - this kind of work is a waste of brain cycles, and it's much easier to follow and verify than to write from scratch.

exe34 2y ago

> in the peripheral vision this seems physiologically unlikely.

viraptor 2y ago
We do it all the time. I can type while talking to people. I can also read/process the text ahead while saying out loud what I read a few words back. We do a lot of things concurrently when dealing with text - I'm not staring at the cursor when writing code either. (Unless you meant it literally. No, I didn't mean actual peripheral vision. Just noticing things beyond what I type.)
- exe34 2y ago
  I did mean it literally. the solid angle covered by the fovea is tiny.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    The eye also doesn't literally stay 100% static when you look at something.

namaria 2y ago

A tool that forces me to shift from creating solutions to trying to figure out what might be wrong with some code is entirely detrimental to my workflow.

viraptor 2y ago
Is that your actual experience or expectation? If you're just making assumptions, I'd encourage you to give it an actual try. Talking about using Cursor is a bit like talking about riding a bike with someone who never did it. (But yeah, it's totally not for everyone, and that's fine)
- namaria 2y ago
  Very early on I took pains to figure out what toolchains gave me traction and which tools produced waste complexity. I think a lot of the excitement about using LLMs to code is because a lot of teams are stuck in local optima where they need to use noisy tools, and there's a lot of de-noised output available to train LLMs. This is progress in searching and mitigating bad trade-offs, not in advancing the state of the art.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
The latter is usually much easier than the former on a small scale, so your statement is very surprising.
- namaria 2y ago
  You find revising correctly looking but potentially wrong code easier than just writing correct code?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Obviously, yes. For the exact same reason it's true for math homework, too! Most code most people write is trivial in terms of semantics/algorithms. The hard bit is navigating the space of possible solutions: remembering all the APIs you need at the moment - right bits of the standard library, right bits of your codebase, right bits of third-party dependencies - and holding pieces you need in your head while you assemble some flow of data, transforming it between API boundaries as needed. I'm totally fine letting the AI do that - this kind of work is a waste of brain cycles, and it's much easier to follow and verify than to write from scratch.