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You are not wrong, but I pose the argument that too many people approach Gen AI as a replacement instead of a tool, and therein lies the root of the problem. W

by 0xEF 1y ago

You are not wrong, but I pose the argument that too many people approach Gen AI as a replacement instead of a tool, and therein lies the root of the problem. When I use Claude for code, for example, I am not asking it to write my code. I'm asking it to review what I have written and either suggest improvements or ways to troubleshoot a problem I am having. I also don't always follow its advice, either, but that depends on how much I understand the reply. Sometimes it outputs something that makes sense based on my current skill level, sometimes it proposes things that I know nothing about, in which case I ask it to break it down further so I can go search the Internet for more info and see if I can learn more, which pushes the limits of my skill level. It works well, since my goal is to improve what I bring to the table and I have learned a lot, both about coding and about prompt engineering. When I talk to other people, they accuse me of having the AI do all the work for me because that's how they approach their use of it. They want the AI to produce the whole project, as opposed to just using it as a second brain to offload some mental chunking. That's where Gen AI fails and the user spends all their time correcting convoluted mistakes caused by confabulation, unless they're making a simple monolithic program or script, but even then there's often hiccups. Point is, Gen AI is a great tool, if you approach it with the right mindset. The hammer does not build the whole house, but it can certainly help.

cardanome 1y ago
Generative AI is like micromanaging an talented Junior Dev that never improves. And I mean micromanaging to such a toxic degree that not human would ever put up with that. It works but it simply not what most people want. If you love to code then you just abstracted away the most fun parts and have to only do the boring parts now. If you love to manage, well managing actual humans and seeing them grow and become independent is much more fulfilling. On a side note, I feel like prompting and context management is something that is easier for me personally as a person with ADHD as I am already used to working with forms of intelligence that are different to my own. I am used to having to explicitly state my needs. My neurotypical co-workers get frustrated that the LLM can't read their minds and always tell me that it should know what they want. When it nudge them to give it more context and explain better what they need they often resist and say they shouldn't have to. Of course I am stereotyping a bit here but still an interesting observation. Prompting is indeed a skill. Though I believe the skill ceiling will lower once tools get better so I wouldn't bank too much on it. What is going to be valuable for a long time is probably general software architecture skills.
- nathan_douglas 1y ago
  I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I _do_ think I'm starting to enjoy this workflow. I don't mind the micromanagement because it's usually the ideas that appeal most to me, not the line-level details of writing code. I suppose I fit in somewhere between the "love to code" and "love to manage" dichotomy you've presented. Perhaps I love to make it look like I have coded? :) I set up SSH certificates in my homelab last night with Claude Code. It was a somewhat aggravating process - I had to remind it a couple times of some syntax issues, and I'm not sure that it actually took less time than I would've taken to do it myself. And it also locked me out of my cluster when it YOLO'ed some changes it should not have. On the whole, one of the worst AI experiences I've had recently. But I'm thrilled with it, TBH, because it got done, it works, I didn't have to beat my head against the wall for each little increment of progress, and while Claude Code was beating its own head against the wall, I was able to relax and 1) practice my French, and 2) read my book (Steven Levy's _Artificial Life_, which I recently saw excerpted on HN). The general state of things is probably still pretty terrible. I know there're no end of irritations that I have with Claude Code, and everything else I've looked at is even less pleasant. But I feel like this might be going in a good direction. *EDIT*: It should go without saying though that I'd much rather be mentoring a junior person, though, as you said.
scarecrowbob 1y ago
"Gen AI is a great tool, if you approach it with the right mindset." People keep writing this sentence as if they aren't talking to the most tool-ed up group of humans in history. I have no problems learning tools, from chorded key shortcuts to awk/sed/grep to configuring all three of my text editors (vim, sublime, and my IDE) to work for their various tasks. Hell, I have preferred ligature fonts for different languages. Sometimes tools aren't great and make your life harder, and it's not because folks aren't willing to learn the tool.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  They write that sentence because gen ai has been effective for them. We have intelligent people using ai and claiming it’s useful. And we have other intelligent people who’s saying it’s not useful. I’m inclined to believe the former. You can’t be deluded about positives usefulness. But you can be about the negative simply by using the LLM in a half assed way and picking the most convenient conclusion without nuance.
  - runiq 1y ago
    > You can’t be deluded about positives usefulness. If you honestly believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
    - ninetyninenine 1y ago
      How can you be deluded? Everyone has used it. they literally see the positive results. It’s not speculative. But you can miss the positive results if you haven’t used LLMs recently or used agentic ai like cursor. it’s easy to miss the positives
  - kentm 1y ago
    There’s actual studies that show that you can be deluded about positive usefulness. There was a study that showed people using AI thought they were being 20% more productive but actually had lowered productivity. Even productive people do not accurately estimate Joe properly track time and effort.

by 0xEF 1y ago

cardanome 1y ago

Generative AI is like micromanaging an talented Junior Dev that never improves. And I mean micromanaging to such a toxic degree that not human would ever put up with that. It works but it simply not what most people want. If you love to code then you just abstracted away the most fun parts and have to only do the boring parts now. If you love to manage, well managing actual humans and seeing them grow and become independent is much more fulfilling. On a side note, I feel like prompting and context management is something that is easier for me personally as a person with ADHD as I am already used to working with forms of intelligence that are different to my own. I am used to having to explicitly state my needs. My neurotypical co-workers get frustrated that the LLM can't read their minds and always tell me that it should know what they want. When it nudge them to give it more context and explain better what they need they often resist and say they shouldn't have to. Of course I am stereotyping a bit here but still an interesting observation. Prompting is indeed a skill. Though I believe the skill ceiling will lower once tools get better so I wouldn't bank too much on it. What is going to be valuable for a long time is probably general software architecture skills.

nathan_douglas 1y ago
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I _do_ think I'm starting to enjoy this workflow. I don't mind the micromanagement because it's usually the ideas that appeal most to me, not the line-level details of writing code. I suppose I fit in somewhere between the "love to code" and "love to manage" dichotomy you've presented. Perhaps I love to make it look like I have coded? :) I set up SSH certificates in my homelab last night with Claude Code. It was a somewhat aggravating process - I had to remind it a couple times of some syntax issues, and I'm not sure that it actually took less time than I would've taken to do it myself. And it also locked me out of my cluster when it YOLO'ed some changes it should not have. On the whole, one of the worst AI experiences I've had recently. But I'm thrilled with it, TBH, because it got done, it works, I didn't have to beat my head against the wall for each little increment of progress, and while Claude Code was beating its own head against the wall, I was able to relax and 1) practice my French, and 2) read my book (Steven Levy's _Artificial Life_, which I recently saw excerpted on HN). The general state of things is probably still pretty terrible. I know there're no end of irritations that I have with Claude Code, and everything else I've looked at is even less pleasant. But I feel like this might be going in a good direction. *EDIT*: It should go without saying though that I'd much rather be mentoring a junior person, though, as you said.

scarecrowbob 1y ago

"Gen AI is a great tool, if you approach it with the right mindset." People keep writing this sentence as if they aren't talking to the most tool-ed up group of humans in history. I have no problems learning tools, from chorded key shortcuts to awk/sed/grep to configuring all three of my text editors (vim, sublime, and my IDE) to work for their various tasks. Hell, I have preferred ligature fonts for different languages. Sometimes tools aren't great and make your life harder, and it's not because folks aren't willing to learn the tool.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ninetyninenine 1y ago
They write that sentence because gen ai has been effective for them. We have intelligent people using ai and claiming it’s useful. And we have other intelligent people who’s saying it’s not useful. I’m inclined to believe the former. You can’t be deluded about positives usefulness. But you can be about the negative simply by using the LLM in a half assed way and picking the most convenient conclusion without nuance.
- runiq 1y ago
  > You can’t be deluded about positives usefulness. If you honestly believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
  - ninetyninenine 1y ago
    How can you be deluded? Everyone has used it. they literally see the positive results. It’s not speculative. But you can miss the positive results if you haven’t used LLMs recently or used agentic ai like cursor. it’s easy to miss the positives
- kentm 1y ago
  There’s actual studies that show that you can be deluded about positive usefulness. There was a study that showed people using AI thought they were being 20% more productive but actually had lowered productivity. Even productive people do not accurately estimate Joe properly track time and effort.