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I stopped using any sort of AI once I started feeling my overall problem solving ability disappear (as in, from memory, intuitively, the one thing that makes me

I stopped using any sort of AI once I started feeling my overall problem solving ability disappear (as in, from memory, intuitively, the one thing that makes me valuable in the job market), and I don't want to end up as some glorified copy-paste vessel. Not to mention, being a copy-paste vessel is only fun for manager-type people I figure. Reviewing code is the least fun part of my job, using AI to write code is essentially just spending all your days reviewing code. No thanks. I like to hammer my own nails, not watch some idiot who can't learn and has to be babysit at every turn try to hammer the nails.

croes 2y ago
For me it robs me of the feeling if achievement of I finish a complex task with AI. It’s not me who figured it out so it’s not my achievement
fire_lake 2y ago
Are you less productive though? Businesses ultimately only care about what gets shipped.
- zwnow 2y ago
  People working for these kinda businesses should get their bums to a different business asap. Would u trust a bridge that was built in a rush?
- askonomm 2y ago
  I have found that unless your job is making simple CRUD apps and you really don't care about quality at all, yes, you will be less productive. The amount of tiny problems slipping through is immense, and it is known that code reviews are ineffective at noticing all the bugs, as well as it not having any idea of the general code style or conventions, inability to learn if I tell it, and so forth. In the end I spend at least as much time as I would spend coding the thing myself just massaging the AI to make a somewhat working thing, and that at the expense of much, much worse quality. And, I myself am also miserable, since I'm basically spending my entire day communicating to a kindergarten child and teaching it, over and over again, except that a child eventually learns, AI doesn't. That's horrible. I don't want to spend my days doing that. Companies I work at tend to value quality and correctness over productivity, as ultimately low quality and incorrect software makes for unhappy clients who we have to service out of our own pockets later on anyway as part of the warranty we provide for our software, ending up costing us a lot more in money and reputation. But, like I said, I'm also not seeing any productivity gain, not unless you throw every good practice out of the window and pretend to be the only dev in the team as the AI will willfully rewrite large chunks of the app and destroy your colleagues work in the process. And for what? So that you can be a manager? What is your moat in the end of this? Will you advertise on your resume the ability to manipulate AI via text prompts as your skill? I suppose if you want to be a manager, maybe that's appealing. I don't. I want to actually make things, and be an active and intellectual part at making those things, not just a manager monitoring butts in (virtual) seats.
dotancohen 2y ago
I completely agree with you. However, when I'm working on my own time, fixing those poorly-hammered nails can take 1/4 the time _most of the time_. If I see that the AI (artificial intelligence) is unable to handle the task, then I redelegate it to my own NS (natural stupidity) and bang it out slowly but properly. AI makes coding boring and tedious. But it happens faster so I can take on more projects, or have more time for other fun things that I enjoy more than actually coding.
- askonomm 2y ago
  The interesting part here is how it differs for you and me. I work on quite complex systems most of the time, and I write things much faster myself. AI needs so much hand holding that it's equivalent to trying to sprint while carrying a backpack filled with bricks. And also, it changes the way I think, which is really scary to me. I very quickly stop thinking about what a good solution to a problem is, and instead start thinking about how to convince AI to come up with a good solution to a problem. I basically become a manipulator, not a creator. A Steve to a Wozniak. If I wanted that I'd have gone into sales or management instead. I also wonder what is the end of this relying-on-AI cycle? You need good problem solving skills to be able to use AI to make somewhat working solutions. The more you depend on AI, the worse become your problem solving skills. And then what. Since you're no longer capturing knowledge into your own brain, your moat as a problem solver is also slowly disappearing, no? And once the job market figures out you actually can't do anything outside of an AI, or the tech has moved on, and what you knew before you started using AI has become irrelevant, who will even hire you anymore? I see this a lot with juniors entering the job market nowadays, unable to problem solve (many don't even know how to copy and paste text), and sure enough, they get fired a lot.
imhoguy 2y ago
Actually LLMs help me to start coding at all, where without it I would procrastinate to not even start. I don't enjoy project bootstraping, and they help greatly with setup. Once a project gets a nice and quick development feedback loop I can drop LLMs and as they slow me down really, esp with deeper or newer abstractions. I may have undiagnosed ADHD.
- askonomm 2y ago
  How often do you start a new project? In most companies you work on the same project for years, and even in consultancies it is multiple months at least, so it's not like in a professional setting this issue would come up a lot. I also find LLM bootstrapped projects tend to use massively out of date dependencies and practices for things, riddled with linter errors, which often results in me having to still fix everything, and in the end would've been faster if I just did all myself anyway. On a side note, get diagnosed for ADHD. I did, and ever since I got on meds my life has drastically improved. Though I never had a big issue with motivation, it has greatly helped with memory and mood stability.

croes 2y ago

For me it robs me of the feeling if achievement of I finish a complex task with AI. It’s not me who figured it out so it’s not my achievement

fire_lake 2y ago

Are you less productive though? Businesses ultimately only care about what gets shipped.

zwnow 2y ago
People working for these kinda businesses should get their bums to a different business asap. Would u trust a bridge that was built in a rush?
askonomm 2y ago
I have found that unless your job is making simple CRUD apps and you really don't care about quality at all, yes, you will be less productive. The amount of tiny problems slipping through is immense, and it is known that code reviews are ineffective at noticing all the bugs, as well as it not having any idea of the general code style or conventions, inability to learn if I tell it, and so forth. In the end I spend at least as much time as I would spend coding the thing myself just massaging the AI to make a somewhat working thing, and that at the expense of much, much worse quality. And, I myself am also miserable, since I'm basically spending my entire day communicating to a kindergarten child and teaching it, over and over again, except that a child eventually learns, AI doesn't. That's horrible. I don't want to spend my days doing that. Companies I work at tend to value quality and correctness over productivity, as ultimately low quality and incorrect software makes for unhappy clients who we have to service out of our own pockets later on anyway as part of the warranty we provide for our software, ending up costing us a lot more in money and reputation. But, like I said, I'm also not seeing any productivity gain, not unless you throw every good practice out of the window and pretend to be the only dev in the team as the AI will willfully rewrite large chunks of the app and destroy your colleagues work in the process. And for what? So that you can be a manager? What is your moat in the end of this? Will you advertise on your resume the ability to manipulate AI via text prompts as your skill? I suppose if you want to be a manager, maybe that's appealing. I don't. I want to actually make things, and be an active and intellectual part at making those things, not just a manager monitoring butts in (virtual) seats.

dotancohen 2y ago

I completely agree with you. However, when I'm working on my own time, fixing those poorly-hammered nails can take 1/4 the time _most of the time_. If I see that the AI (artificial intelligence) is unable to handle the task, then I redelegate it to my own NS (natural stupidity) and bang it out slowly but properly. AI makes coding boring and tedious. But it happens faster so I can take on more projects, or have more time for other fun things that I enjoy more than actually coding.

askonomm 2y ago
The interesting part here is how it differs for you and me. I work on quite complex systems most of the time, and I write things much faster myself. AI needs so much hand holding that it's equivalent to trying to sprint while carrying a backpack filled with bricks. And also, it changes the way I think, which is really scary to me. I very quickly stop thinking about what a good solution to a problem is, and instead start thinking about how to convince AI to come up with a good solution to a problem. I basically become a manipulator, not a creator. A Steve to a Wozniak. If I wanted that I'd have gone into sales or management instead. I also wonder what is the end of this relying-on-AI cycle? You need good problem solving skills to be able to use AI to make somewhat working solutions. The more you depend on AI, the worse become your problem solving skills. And then what. Since you're no longer capturing knowledge into your own brain, your moat as a problem solver is also slowly disappearing, no? And once the job market figures out you actually can't do anything outside of an AI, or the tech has moved on, and what you knew before you started using AI has become irrelevant, who will even hire you anymore? I see this a lot with juniors entering the job market nowadays, unable to problem solve (many don't even know how to copy and paste text), and sure enough, they get fired a lot.

imhoguy 2y ago

Actually LLMs help me to start coding at all, where without it I would procrastinate to not even start. I don't enjoy project bootstraping, and they help greatly with setup. Once a project gets a nice and quick development feedback loop I can drop LLMs and as they slow me down really, esp with deeper or newer abstractions. I may have undiagnosed ADHD.

askonomm 2y ago
How often do you start a new project? In most companies you work on the same project for years, and even in consultancies it is multiple months at least, so it's not like in a professional setting this issue would come up a lot. I also find LLM bootstrapped projects tend to use massively out of date dependencies and practices for things, riddled with linter errors, which often results in me having to still fix everything, and in the end would've been faster if I just did all myself anyway. On a side note, get diagnosed for ADHD. I did, and ever since I got on meds my life has drastically improved. Though I never had a big issue with motivation, it has greatly helped with memory and mood stability.