3 ms·

I find when I do a lot of AI coding, or any "blocking" task with AI, I inevitably end up scrolling social media. And I feel dumber. I'm left wondering whether

I find when I do a lot of AI coding, or any "blocking" task with AI, I inevitably end up scrolling social media. And I feel dumber. I'm left wondering whether I should have just hand-coded what I was doing a bit slower, but kept my attention focused on the task

loloquwowndueo 1y ago
You could do other work while the AI does one task :) That’ll likely degenerate into “I want my AI to do dishes and laundry so I can code, not code so I can do my dishes and laundry”
- softwaredoug 1y ago
  That's even worse, because I'm task switching between two intensive tasks
  - loloquwowndueo 1y ago
    Sorry no, nothing is worse than doomscrolling social media.
    - squigz 1y ago
      Checking Facebook while you have a few minutes available isn't the worst thing in the world. Calm down.
      - loloquwowndueo 1y ago
        Wait, people still use Facebook? :)
        brazukadev 1y ago
        no, but zuckerberg has a fake HN profiles.
everdrive 1y ago
I'm having the same problem. LLMs really take me out of the task mentally. It feels like studying as a kid. I need to really make a concerted effort; the task is no longer engaging on its own.
- bamboozled 1y ago
  yet you kind of feel "too slow" if you don't use one?
  - everdrive 1y ago
    It depends. For a task I know well the LLM is often much worse. If I'm being asked to do something brand new, the LLM does speed me up quite a bit and let me build something I might have gotten stuck on otherwise. The problem is that although I did "build the thing," it's not clear I really gained any meaningful skills. It feels analogous to watching a documentary vs. reading a book. You learned _something_, but it's honestly pretty superficial.
    - balder1991 1y ago
      Because when you simply “read” you’re not necessarily learning. The illusion of knowledge is real, where you nod in agreement that you understood something but when it’s your turn to do it, you have no idea how to. You need to do something yourself to actually learn it, and it involves struggling, frustration, eventually insights etc.
- softwaredoug 1y ago
  As someone with focus problems, I find it more productive to have a conversation with ChatGPT (or Claude) about code. And avoid letting it make major changes. And hand code a lot with Copilot.
bamboozled 1y ago
The worst part is when you find out your vibe coded stuff didn't actually work properly in production and you introduced a bug while being lazy. It's really easy to do.
Scene_Cast2 1y ago
If you need an attention sink, try chess! Pick a time control if it's over 2 minutes of waiting, and do puzzles if it's under. I find that there's not much of a context switch when I get back to work.
Larrikin 1y ago
How slow the AIs respond provides some opportunity to work on two task at once. Things like investigate a bug, think about the implementation for something larger, edit code that experience has told you it will take just as much or more typing to have the LLM do it. It's less cool than having a future robot do it for you while you relax, but if you enjoy programming it brings some of the joy back.
- softwaredoug 1y ago
  Human attention doesn't work this way. This type of task switching makes both tasks fairly inefficient. "What was I doing again!?" is a big problem
- basisword 1y ago
  They're not that slow! You want me to believe we've gone from programmers being so fragile that disturbing their 'flow state' will lose them hours of productivity, to programmers being the ultimate multitaskers who can think and code while their LLM takes 10 seconds to respond? /s
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
raincole 1y ago
Do (did) you feel the same when you wait for code to compile? Or wait for CI/CD? The earlier days of programming had more "blocking" since compilation was quite slow. So the issue is obviously that "blocking", but social media.
- vdupras 1y ago
  That is both a sweeping generalization and plainly wrong. The "much earlier" days of programming had blazing fast compilers, like Turbo Pascal. The "earlier" days had C compiler that were plenty fast. Only languages like C++ had this kind of problem. Worst offenders like Rust are "today", not "earlier".
  - JPLeRouzic 1y ago
    I am old enough to remember a time when compilation could last minutes or even one hour, depending on what you compiled, and it was in the late 1980s.
    - vdupras 1y ago
      Certainly, but that depended on your own choices in technologies. This condition is not time-dependent. You can inflict yourself the exact same condition by choosing Rust.
      - prerok 1y ago
        Compile times are faster now for C and C++ right? Some of it due to further compiler optimizations but mostly due to higher CPU power. Still, you seem to be arguing that the choice should be Pascal instead of Rust. There is a reason why we choose these new languages: language features. Compile time is a lesser consideration.
        vdupras 1y ago
        No, I'm arguing that having more "blocking" time is not a function of time (early days of programming), but a self-inflicted choice. Yes, choosing C in the 80s meant self-inflicting yourself with "blocking" time, but there was the choice of Turbo Pascal, or Forth or whatever. Plenty of great choices that ran really fast on those old machines. Do I mean that one should choose Pascal today? No, compiling C code today is really fast and has practically no "blocking" time. But you can still inflict yourself "blocking" time if you want, with languages like Rust. Are things clearer now?
skylurk 1y ago
Waiting for the LLM is the best time to do the deeper review of the last output. I like to fire the model off to do exploratory implementations as I refine the existing work.
- alright2565 1y ago
  This sounds nice, but what I've run into is that the model fails to write changes if the code has changed under it. A better tool, where it takes a snapshot at the start of each non-interactive segment, and then resolves merge conflicts with my manual changes automatically, would make this much easier.
  - skylurk 1y ago
    I run the model against its own dev branch and either cherry-pick commits or do merges the old-fashioned way. I'm using Aider though, which makes this easy: it's just another tab in the terminal.

loloquwowndueo 1y ago

You could do other work while the AI does one task :) That’ll likely degenerate into “I want my AI to do dishes and laundry so I can code, not code so I can do my dishes and laundry”

softwaredoug 1y ago
That's even worse, because I'm task switching between two intensive tasks
- loloquwowndueo 1y ago
  Sorry no, nothing is worse than doomscrolling social media.
  - squigz 1y ago
    Checking Facebook while you have a few minutes available isn't the worst thing in the world. Calm down.
    - loloquwowndueo 1y ago
      Wait, people still use Facebook? :)
      - brazukadev 1y ago
        no, but zuckerberg has a fake HN profiles.

everdrive 1y ago

I'm having the same problem. LLMs really take me out of the task mentally. It feels like studying as a kid. I need to really make a concerted effort; the task is no longer engaging on its own.

bamboozled 1y ago
yet you kind of feel "too slow" if you don't use one?
- everdrive 1y ago
  It depends. For a task I know well the LLM is often much worse. If I'm being asked to do something brand new, the LLM does speed me up quite a bit and let me build something I might have gotten stuck on otherwise. The problem is that although I did "build the thing," it's not clear I really gained any meaningful skills. It feels analogous to watching a documentary vs. reading a book. You learned _something_, but it's honestly pretty superficial.
  - balder1991 1y ago
    Because when you simply “read” you’re not necessarily learning. The illusion of knowledge is real, where you nod in agreement that you understood something but when it’s your turn to do it, you have no idea how to. You need to do something yourself to actually learn it, and it involves struggling, frustration, eventually insights etc.
softwaredoug 1y ago
As someone with focus problems, I find it more productive to have a conversation with ChatGPT (or Claude) about code. And avoid letting it make major changes. And hand code a lot with Copilot.

bamboozled 1y ago

The worst part is when you find out your vibe coded stuff didn't actually work properly in production and you introduced a bug while being lazy. It's really easy to do.

Scene_Cast2 1y ago

If you need an attention sink, try chess! Pick a time control if it's over 2 minutes of waiting, and do puzzles if it's under. I find that there's not much of a context switch when I get back to work.

Larrikin 1y ago

How slow the AIs respond provides some opportunity to work on two task at once. Things like investigate a bug, think about the implementation for something larger, edit code that experience has told you it will take just as much or more typing to have the LLM do it. It's less cool than having a future robot do it for you while you relax, but if you enjoy programming it brings some of the joy back.

softwaredoug 1y ago
Human attention doesn't work this way. This type of task switching makes both tasks fairly inefficient. "What was I doing again!?" is a big problem
basisword 1y ago
They're not that slow! You want me to believe we've gone from programmers being so fragile that disturbing their 'flow state' will lose them hours of productivity, to programmers being the ultimate multitaskers who can think and code while their LLM takes 10 seconds to respond? /s
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

raincole 1y ago

Do (did) you feel the same when you wait for code to compile? Or wait for CI/CD? The earlier days of programming had more "blocking" since compilation was quite slow. So the issue is obviously that "blocking", but social media.

vdupras 1y ago
That is both a sweeping generalization and plainly wrong. The "much earlier" days of programming had blazing fast compilers, like Turbo Pascal. The "earlier" days had C compiler that were plenty fast. Only languages like C++ had this kind of problem. Worst offenders like Rust are "today", not "earlier".
- JPLeRouzic 1y ago
  I am old enough to remember a time when compilation could last minutes or even one hour, depending on what you compiled, and it was in the late 1980s.
  - vdupras 1y ago
    Certainly, but that depended on your own choices in technologies. This condition is not time-dependent. You can inflict yourself the exact same condition by choosing Rust.
    - prerok 1y ago
      Compile times are faster now for C and C++ right? Some of it due to further compiler optimizations but mostly due to higher CPU power. Still, you seem to be arguing that the choice should be Pascal instead of Rust. There is a reason why we choose these new languages: language features. Compile time is a lesser consideration.
      - vdupras 1y ago
        No, I'm arguing that having more "blocking" time is not a function of time (early days of programming), but a self-inflicted choice. Yes, choosing C in the 80s meant self-inflicting yourself with "blocking" time, but there was the choice of Turbo Pascal, or Forth or whatever. Plenty of great choices that ran really fast on those old machines. Do I mean that one should choose Pascal today? No, compiling C code today is really fast and has practically no "blocking" time. But you can still inflict yourself "blocking" time if you want, with languages like Rust. Are things clearer now?

skylurk 1y ago

Waiting for the LLM is the best time to do the deeper review of the last output. I like to fire the model off to do exploratory implementations as I refine the existing work.

alright2565 1y ago
This sounds nice, but what I've run into is that the model fails to write changes if the code has changed under it. A better tool, where it takes a snapshot at the start of each non-interactive segment, and then resolves merge conflicts with my manual changes automatically, would make this much easier.
- skylurk 1y ago
  I run the model against its own dev branch and either cherry-pick commits or do merges the old-fashioned way. I'm using Aider though, which makes this easy: it's just another tab in the terminal.