4 ms·

Hours of time saved, and you learned nothing in the process. You are slowly becoming a cog in the LLM process instead of an autonomous programmer. You are losin

Hours of time saved, and you learned nothing in the process. You are slowly becoming a cog in the LLM process instead of an autonomous programmer. You are losing autonomy and depending more and more on external companies. And one day will come that, with all that power, they'll set whatever price or conditions they want. And you will accept. That's the future. And it's not inevitable.

77pt77 1y ago
> Hours of time saved, and you learned nothing in the process Point and click "engineer" 2.0 We all know this. Eventually someone has to fix the mess and it won't be him. He will be management by then.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > We all know this Unfortunately, reading this thread and many other comments on similar articles, it seems like many of us have no clue about this We are in for a rough ride until we figure this out
chii 1y ago
> and you learned nothing in the process. why do you presume the person wanted to learn something, rather than to get the work done asap? May be they're not interested in learning, or may be they have something more important to do, and saving this time is a life saver? > You are losing autonomy and depending more and more on external companies do you also autonomously produce your own clean water, electricity, gas and food? Or do you rely on external companies to provision all of those things?
- shaky-carrousel 1y ago
  The pretty big difference is that I'm not easily able to produce my electricity or food. But I'm easily able to produce my code. We are losing autonomy we already have, just for pure laziness, and it will bite us.
  - hackinthebochs 1y ago
    Reducing friction, increasing the scope of what is possible given a unit of effort, that is just increasing autonomy.
    - shaky-carrousel 1y ago
      I'm afraid that "friction" is your brain learning. Depending on a few AI companies to save you the effort of learning is not increasing autonomy.
      - hackinthebochs 1y ago
        Learning != autonomy. Increasing one's action-space increases autonomy. Learning is only indirectly related. Depending on private companies is limiting, but using LLMs isn't inherently tied to private companies.
        shaky-carrousel 1y ago
        Ah, learning == autonomy, and using competitive LLMs is very much tied to private companies.
    - jplusequalt 1y ago
      >Reducing friction, increasing the scope of what is possible given a unit of effort, that is just increasing autonomy I, with a car, can drive to other side of the US and back. I am able to travel to and from to places in a way my ancestors never could. However, the price our society had to pay for this newfound autonomy was that we needed to sacrifice land for highways, move further away from our workplaces, deal with traffic, poison our breathing air with smog, decrease investments into public transportation, etc. I think people are too gung-ho on new technologies in the tech space without considering the negatives--in part because software developers are egotistical and like to think they know what's best for society. But I wish for once they'd consider the sacrifices we'll have to make as a society by adopting the shiny new toy.
bt1a 1y ago
these 3090s are mine. hands off!
baxtr 1y ago
Did you build the house you live in? Did you weave your own clothes or grow your own food? We all depend on systems others built. Determining when that trade-off is worthwhile and recognizing when convenience turns into dependence are crucial.
- shaky-carrousel 1y ago
  Did you write your own letters? Did you write your own arguments? Did you write your own code? I do, and don't depend on systems other built to do so. And losing the ability of keep doing so is a pretty big trade-off, in my opinion.
  - djray 1y ago
    There seems to be a mistaken thought that having an AI (or indeed someone else) help you achieve a task means you aren't learning anything. This is reductionist. I suggest instead that it's about degrees of autonomy. The person you're responding to made a choice to get the AI to help integrate a library. They chose NOT to have the AI edit the files itself; they rather spent time reading through the changes and understanding the integration points, and tweaking the code to make it their own. This is much different to vibe coding. I do a similar loop with my use of AI - I will upload code to Gemini 2.5 Pro, talk through options and assumptions, and maybe get it to write some or all of the next step, or to try out different approaches to a refactor. Integrating any code back into the original source is never copy-and-paste, and that's where the learning is. For example, I added Dexie (a library/wrapper for accessing IndexedDB) to a browser extension project the other day, and the AI helped me get started with a minimal amount of initial knowledge, yet I learned a lot about Dexie and have been able to expand upon the code myself since. If I were on my own, I would probably have barrelled ahead and just used IndexedDB directly, resulting in a lot more boilerplate code and time spent doing busywork. It's this sort of friction reduction that I find most liberating about AI. Trying out a new library isn't a multi-hour slog; instead, you can sample it and possibly reject it as unsuitable almost immediately without having to waste a lot of time on R&D. In my case, I didn't learn 'raw' IndexedDB, but instead I got the job done with a library offering a more suitable level of abstraction, and saved hours in the process. This isn't lazy or giving up the opportunity to learn, it's simply optimising your time. The "not invented here" syndrome is something I kindly suggest you examine, as you may find you are actually limiting your own innovation by rejecting everything that you can't do yourself.

77pt77 1y ago

> Hours of time saved, and you learned nothing in the process Point and click "engineer" 2.0 We all know this. Eventually someone has to fix the mess and it won't be him. He will be management by then.

bluefirebrand 1y ago
> We all know this Unfortunately, reading this thread and many other comments on similar articles, it seems like many of us have no clue about this We are in for a rough ride until we figure this out

chii 1y ago

> and you learned nothing in the process. why do you presume the person wanted to learn something, rather than to get the work done asap? May be they're not interested in learning, or may be they have something more important to do, and saving this time is a life saver? > You are losing autonomy and depending more and more on external companies do you also autonomously produce your own clean water, electricity, gas and food? Or do you rely on external companies to provision all of those things?

shaky-carrousel 1y ago
The pretty big difference is that I'm not easily able to produce my electricity or food. But I'm easily able to produce my code. We are losing autonomy we already have, just for pure laziness, and it will bite us.
- hackinthebochs 1y ago
  Reducing friction, increasing the scope of what is possible given a unit of effort, that is just increasing autonomy.
  - shaky-carrousel 1y ago
    I'm afraid that "friction" is your brain learning. Depending on a few AI companies to save you the effort of learning is not increasing autonomy.
    - hackinthebochs 1y ago
      Learning != autonomy. Increasing one's action-space increases autonomy. Learning is only indirectly related. Depending on private companies is limiting, but using LLMs isn't inherently tied to private companies.
      - shaky-carrousel 1y ago
        Ah, learning == autonomy, and using competitive LLMs is very much tied to private companies.
  - jplusequalt 1y ago
    >Reducing friction, increasing the scope of what is possible given a unit of effort, that is just increasing autonomy I, with a car, can drive to other side of the US and back. I am able to travel to and from to places in a way my ancestors never could. However, the price our society had to pay for this newfound autonomy was that we needed to sacrifice land for highways, move further away from our workplaces, deal with traffic, poison our breathing air with smog, decrease investments into public transportation, etc. I think people are too gung-ho on new technologies in the tech space without considering the negatives--in part because software developers are egotistical and like to think they know what's best for society. But I wish for once they'd consider the sacrifices we'll have to make as a society by adopting the shiny new toy.

bt1a 1y ago

these 3090s are mine. hands off!

baxtr 1y ago

Did you build the house you live in? Did you weave your own clothes or grow your own food? We all depend on systems others built. Determining when that trade-off is worthwhile and recognizing when convenience turns into dependence are crucial.

shaky-carrousel 1y ago
Did you write your own letters? Did you write your own arguments? Did you write your own code? I do, and don't depend on systems other built to do so. And losing the ability of keep doing so is a pretty big trade-off, in my opinion.
- djray 1y ago
  There seems to be a mistaken thought that having an AI (or indeed someone else) help you achieve a task means you aren't learning anything. This is reductionist. I suggest instead that it's about degrees of autonomy. The person you're responding to made a choice to get the AI to help integrate a library. They chose NOT to have the AI edit the files itself; they rather spent time reading through the changes and understanding the integration points, and tweaking the code to make it their own. This is much different to vibe coding. I do a similar loop with my use of AI - I will upload code to Gemini 2.5 Pro, talk through options and assumptions, and maybe get it to write some or all of the next step, or to try out different approaches to a refactor. Integrating any code back into the original source is never copy-and-paste, and that's where the learning is. For example, I added Dexie (a library/wrapper for accessing IndexedDB) to a browser extension project the other day, and the AI helped me get started with a minimal amount of initial knowledge, yet I learned a lot about Dexie and have been able to expand upon the code myself since. If I were on my own, I would probably have barrelled ahead and just used IndexedDB directly, resulting in a lot more boilerplate code and time spent doing busywork. It's this sort of friction reduction that I find most liberating about AI. Trying out a new library isn't a multi-hour slog; instead, you can sample it and possibly reject it as unsuitable almost immediately without having to waste a lot of time on R&D. In my case, I didn't learn 'raw' IndexedDB, but instead I got the job done with a library offering a more suitable level of abstraction, and saved hours in the process. This isn't lazy or giving up the opportunity to learn, it's simply optimising your time. The "not invented here" syndrome is something I kindly suggest you examine, as you may find you are actually limiting your own innovation by rejecting everything that you can't do yourself.