6 ms·

All the projects I've been able to start and make progress in in the past year vs the ten years before that are substantive enough proof for me that you're wron

by Sakos 2y ago

All the projects I've been able to start and make progress in in the past year vs the ten years before that are substantive enough proof for me that you're wrong in pretty much all of your arguments. My direct experience proves statements like "the lower knowledge requirement is an illusion" and "it takes much more effort to review code than to write it" wrong. I do code reviews all the time. I write code all the time. I've had AI help me with my projects and I've reviewed and refactored that code. You're quite simply wrong. And I don't understand why you're so eager to argue that my direct experience is wrong, as if you're trying to gaslight me. It's quite honestly mystifying to me. It's simply not the case that we need to be experts in every single part of a software project. Not for personal projects and not for professional ones either. So it doesn't make any sense to me not to use AI if I've directly proven to myself that it can improve my productivity, my understanding and my knowledge. > If you ever need to troubleshoot or debug something, you'll be forced to use an AI tool for help again This is proof to me that you haven't used AI much. Because AI has helped me understand things much quicker and with much less friction than I've ever been able to before. And I have often been able to solve things AI has had issues with, even if it's a topic I have zero experience with, through the interaction with the AI. At some point, being able to make progress (and how that affects the learning process) trumps this perfect ideal of the programmer who figures out everything on their own through tedious, mind-numbing long hours solving problems that are at best tangential to the problems they were actually trying to solve hours ago. Frankly, I'm tired of not being able to do any of my personal projects because of all the issues I've mentioned before. And I'm tired of people like you saying I'm doing it wrong, DESPITE ME NOT BEING ABLE TO DO IT AT ALL BEFORE. Honestly, fuck this.

imiric 2y ago
Hey, I'm not trying to gaslight you into anything. I'm just arguing from my point of view, which you're free to disagree with. You're right that I've probably used these tools much less than you have. I use them ocasionally for minor things (understanding an unfamiliar API, giving me hints when web searching is unhelpful, etc.), but even in my limited experience with current state of the art services (Claude 3.5, GPT-4o) I've found them to waste my time in ways I wouldn't if I weren't using them. And at the end of the day, I'm not sure if I'm overall more productive than I would be without them. This limited usage leads me to believe that the problem would be far worse if I were to rely on them for most of my project, but the truth is I haven't actually tried that yet. So if you feel differently, more power to you. There's no point in getting frustrated because someone has a different point of view than you.
- WhatIsDukkha 2y ago
  I'm not frustrated with you but I'll explain why you might be getting get the vibes here. Its like people are learning about these new things called skis. They fall on their face a few times but then they find "wow much better than good old snowshoes!" Of course some people are falling every 2 feet while trying skis and then go to the top of the mountain and claim skis are fake and we should all go back to snowshoes because we don't know about snow or mountains. They are insulting about it because its important to the ragers that, despite failing at skiing, they are senior programmers and everyone else doesn't know how to compile, test and review code and they must be hallucinating their ski journeys! Meanwhile a bunch of us took the falls and learned to ski and are laughing at the ragers. The frustrating thing though is that for all the skiiers we can't seem to get good conversations about how to ski because there is so much raging... oh well.
  - rossvor 2y ago
    With your analogy I would be the one saying that I'm still not convinced that skis are faster than snowshoes. I still use ChatGPT/Claude/Llama daily for both code generation and other things. And while it sometimes does do exactly what I want it to, and I feel more productive, it still seems to waste my time an almost an equal amount of time, and I have to give up on it and rewrite it manually or do a google search/read the actual documentation. It's good to bounce things off, it's good as starting point to learn new stuff, gives you great direction to explore new things and test things out quickly. My guess on a "happy path" it gives me 1.3 speed up, which is great when that happens, but the caveat is that you are not on a "happy path" most the time, and if you listen to the evangelists it seems like it should be 2x-5x speed up (skis). So where's the disconnect? I'm not here to disprove your experience, but with 2 years of almost daily usage of skis, how come I feel like I'm still barely breaking even compared with snowshoes? Am I that bad with my prompting skills?
    - WhatIsDukkha 2y ago
      I use - Rust, aider.chat and I thoughtfully limit the context of what I'm coding (on 2 of 15 files). I ./ask a few times to get the context setup. I let it speculate on the path ahead but rein it in with more conservative goals. I then say "let's carefully and conservatively implement this" (this is really important with sonnet as its way too eager). I get to compile by doing ./test a few times, there is sometimes a doom loop though so - I reset the context with a better footing if things are going off track or I just think "its time". I do not commit until I have a plausible building set of functions (it can probably handle touching 2-3 functions of configs or one complete function but don't get too much more elaborate without care and experience). I either reset or use the remaining context to create some tests and validate. I think saying 1.3x more productive is fair with only this loop BUT you have to keep a few things in perspective. I wrote specs for everything I did, in other words I wrote out in english my goals and expectations of the code, that was highly valuable and something I probably wouldn't have done. Automatic literate programming! Sheep shearing is crazy fast with an LLM. Those tasks that would take you off in the weeds do feel 5x faster (with caveats). I think the 2x-5x faster is true within certain bounds - What are the things that you were psychologically avoiding /dragging or just skipping because they were too tedious to even think of? Some people don't have that problem or maybe don't notice, to me its a real crazy benefit I love! That's were the real speedups happens and its amazing.
Kiro 2y ago
I understand your frustration. It's like someone trying to convince me that a red car I'm looking at is actually blue. I know what I'm seeing and experiencing. There's nothing theoretical about it and I have the results right in front of me.
senorrib 2y ago
It’s baffling to see all the ignorant answers to this thread, OP. My experience has been similar to yours, and I’ve been pushing complex software to production for the past 20 years. Feels like a bunch o flat earth arguments; they’d rather ignore evidence (or even try out by themselves) to keep the illusion that you need to write it all yourself for it to be “high quality”.
- imiric 2y ago
  Or, hey, maybe we've just had different experiences, and are using these tools differently? I even concede that I may not be great at prompting, which could be the cause of my problems. I'm not arguing that writing everything yourself leads to higher quality. I'm arguing that _in my experience_ a) it takes more time and effort to read, troubleshoot and fix code generated by these tools than it would take me to actually write it myself, and b) that taking the time to read the documentation and understand the technologies I'm working with would actually save me time and effort in the future. You're free to disagree with all of this, but don't try to tell me my experience is somehow lesser than yours.
  - senorrib 2y ago
    I wasn’t targeting this specifically at you or your individual experience. However, I did hear the same arguments you make ad nauseam, and they usually come from people that are either just too skeptical, or don’t put the effort required to use the tool.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    So link chats where you've run into the very real limitations these things have. What language you're using, what framework you're in, what library it hallucinated. I'm not interested in either of us shouting past each other, I genuinely want to understand how your experience, which is not at all lesser than mine, is so different. Am I ignoring flaws that you otherwise can't overlook? Are you expecting too much from it with too little input? Without details, all we can do is describe feelings at each other and get frustrated when the other person's experience is different. Might as well ask your star sign while we're at it.
handzhiev 2y ago
This desire of deniers to prove to people who actually get tons of benefit of LLMs that they aren't getting it is becoming more ridiculous every time. "You can't use LLMs for this or that because of this and that!!!". But I AM using them. Every. Single. Day.
- handzhiev 2y ago
  And of course every time such comments get downvoted. Folks, you can downvote as much as you want - I don't give a fuck even if my reputation goes negative. This won't make you right.

by Sakos 2y ago

imiric 2y ago

Hey, I'm not trying to gaslight you into anything. I'm just arguing from my point of view, which you're free to disagree with. You're right that I've probably used these tools much less than you have. I use them ocasionally for minor things (understanding an unfamiliar API, giving me hints when web searching is unhelpful, etc.), but even in my limited experience with current state of the art services (Claude 3.5, GPT-4o) I've found them to waste my time in ways I wouldn't if I weren't using them. And at the end of the day, I'm not sure if I'm overall more productive than I would be without them. This limited usage leads me to believe that the problem would be far worse if I were to rely on them for most of my project, but the truth is I haven't actually tried that yet. So if you feel differently, more power to you. There's no point in getting frustrated because someone has a different point of view than you.

WhatIsDukkha 2y ago
I'm not frustrated with you but I'll explain why you might be getting get the vibes here. Its like people are learning about these new things called skis. They fall on their face a few times but then they find "wow much better than good old snowshoes!" Of course some people are falling every 2 feet while trying skis and then go to the top of the mountain and claim skis are fake and we should all go back to snowshoes because we don't know about snow or mountains. They are insulting about it because its important to the ragers that, despite failing at skiing, they are senior programmers and everyone else doesn't know how to compile, test and review code and they must be hallucinating their ski journeys! Meanwhile a bunch of us took the falls and learned to ski and are laughing at the ragers. The frustrating thing though is that for all the skiiers we can't seem to get good conversations about how to ski because there is so much raging... oh well.
- rossvor 2y ago
  With your analogy I would be the one saying that I'm still not convinced that skis are faster than snowshoes. I still use ChatGPT/Claude/Llama daily for both code generation and other things. And while it sometimes does do exactly what I want it to, and I feel more productive, it still seems to waste my time an almost an equal amount of time, and I have to give up on it and rewrite it manually or do a google search/read the actual documentation. It's good to bounce things off, it's good as starting point to learn new stuff, gives you great direction to explore new things and test things out quickly. My guess on a "happy path" it gives me 1.3 speed up, which is great when that happens, but the caveat is that you are not on a "happy path" most the time, and if you listen to the evangelists it seems like it should be 2x-5x speed up (skis). So where's the disconnect? I'm not here to disprove your experience, but with 2 years of almost daily usage of skis, how come I feel like I'm still barely breaking even compared with snowshoes? Am I that bad with my prompting skills?
  - WhatIsDukkha 2y ago
    I use - Rust, aider.chat and I thoughtfully limit the context of what I'm coding (on 2 of 15 files). I ./ask a few times to get the context setup. I let it speculate on the path ahead but rein it in with more conservative goals. I then say "let's carefully and conservatively implement this" (this is really important with sonnet as its way too eager). I get to compile by doing ./test a few times, there is sometimes a doom loop though so - I reset the context with a better footing if things are going off track or I just think "its time". I do not commit until I have a plausible building set of functions (it can probably handle touching 2-3 functions of configs or one complete function but don't get too much more elaborate without care and experience). I either reset or use the remaining context to create some tests and validate. I think saying 1.3x more productive is fair with only this loop BUT you have to keep a few things in perspective. I wrote specs for everything I did, in other words I wrote out in english my goals and expectations of the code, that was highly valuable and something I probably wouldn't have done. Automatic literate programming! Sheep shearing is crazy fast with an LLM. Those tasks that would take you off in the weeds do feel 5x faster (with caveats). I think the 2x-5x faster is true within certain bounds - What are the things that you were psychologically avoiding /dragging or just skipping because they were too tedious to even think of? Some people don't have that problem or maybe don't notice, to me its a real crazy benefit I love! That's were the real speedups happens and its amazing.

Kiro 2y ago

I understand your frustration. It's like someone trying to convince me that a red car I'm looking at is actually blue. I know what I'm seeing and experiencing. There's nothing theoretical about it and I have the results right in front of me.

senorrib 2y ago

It’s baffling to see all the ignorant answers to this thread, OP. My experience has been similar to yours, and I’ve been pushing complex software to production for the past 20 years. Feels like a bunch o flat earth arguments; they’d rather ignore evidence (or even try out by themselves) to keep the illusion that you need to write it all yourself for it to be “high quality”.

imiric 2y ago
Or, hey, maybe we've just had different experiences, and are using these tools differently? I even concede that I may not be great at prompting, which could be the cause of my problems. I'm not arguing that writing everything yourself leads to higher quality. I'm arguing that _in my experience_ a) it takes more time and effort to read, troubleshoot and fix code generated by these tools than it would take me to actually write it myself, and b) that taking the time to read the documentation and understand the technologies I'm working with would actually save me time and effort in the future. You're free to disagree with all of this, but don't try to tell me my experience is somehow lesser than yours.
- senorrib 2y ago
  I wasn’t targeting this specifically at you or your individual experience. However, I did hear the same arguments you make ad nauseam, and they usually come from people that are either just too skeptical, or don’t put the effort required to use the tool.
- fragmede 2y ago
  So link chats where you've run into the very real limitations these things have. What language you're using, what framework you're in, what library it hallucinated. I'm not interested in either of us shouting past each other, I genuinely want to understand how your experience, which is not at all lesser than mine, is so different. Am I ignoring flaws that you otherwise can't overlook? Are you expecting too much from it with too little input? Without details, all we can do is describe feelings at each other and get frustrated when the other person's experience is different. Might as well ask your star sign while we're at it.

handzhiev 2y ago

This desire of deniers to prove to people who actually get tons of benefit of LLMs that they aren't getting it is becoming more ridiculous every time. "You can't use LLMs for this or that because of this and that!!!". But I AM using them. Every. Single. Day.

handzhiev 2y ago
And of course every time such comments get downvoted. Folks, you can downvote as much as you want - I don't give a fuck even if my reputation goes negative. This won't make you right.