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I don't think they really are. There is, effectively, a "learning curve" required to make them useful right now, and a lot of churn on technique, because the t

I don't think they really are. There is, effectively, a "learning curve" required to make them useful right now, and a lot of churn on technique, because the tools remain profoundly immature and their results are delicate and inconsistent. To get anything out of them and trust what you get, you need to figure out how to hold them right for your task. But presuming that there's something real here, and there does seem to be something, eventually all that will smooth out and late adopters who decide want to use the tools will be able onboard themselves plenty fast. The whole vision of them is to make the work easier, more accessible, and more productive, after all. Having a big learning curve doesn't align with that vision. Unless they happen to make you more significantly productive today on the tasks you want to pursue, which only seems to be true for select people, there's no particular reason to be an early adopter.

bdangubic 10mo ago
fantastic comment! I disagree on two fronts: - we are far removed from “early adopter” stages at this point - “eventually all that will smooth out…” is assuming that this is eventually going to be some magic that just works - if this actually happens both early and late adopters will be unemployed. it is not magic, it is unlikely to ever be magic. but from my personal perspective and many others I read - if you spend time (I am now just over 1,200 hours spent, I bill it so I track it :) ) it will pay dividends (and also will feel like magic ocassionally)
- kranke155 10mo ago
  What is this fantasy about people being unemployed? The layoffs we’ve seen don’t seem to be discriminating against or in favor of AI - they appear to be moves to shift capital from human workers to capex for new datacenters. It doesn’t appear like anything of this sort is happening and the idea that good employer with a solid technical team would start firing people for not “knowing AI” instead of giving them a 2 week intro course seems unrealistic to me. The real nuts and bolts are still software engineering. Or is that going to change too?
  - bdangubic 10mo ago
    I don't think their will be massive unemployment based on actual "AI has removed the need for SWEs of this level..." kind of talk but I was specifically commenting on eventually all that will smooth out and late adopters who decide want to use the tools will be able onboard themselves plenty fast. ... If this actually did happen (it won't) then we'd all have to worry about being unemployed
- Madmallard 10mo ago
  If you spent 1200 hours not using it you would have matured in your craft 3x more and figured out far better ways of doing things.
  - bdangubic 10mo ago
    been hacking 3 decades so exponentially north of 1,200 hours ... in my career the one trait that always seems to differentiate great SWEs from decent/mediocre/awful ones is laziness. the best SWEs will automate anything they have to manually do more than once. I have seen this over and over and over again. LLMs have take automation to another level and learning everything they can be helpful with to automate as much of my work will be worth 12,000+ hours in the long run.

bdangubic 10mo ago

fantastic comment! I disagree on two fronts: - we are far removed from “early adopter” stages at this point - “eventually all that will smooth out…” is assuming that this is eventually going to be some magic that just works - if this actually happens both early and late adopters will be unemployed. it is not magic, it is unlikely to ever be magic. but from my personal perspective and many others I read - if you spend time (I am now just over 1,200 hours spent, I bill it so I track it :) ) it will pay dividends (and also will feel like magic ocassionally)

kranke155 10mo ago
What is this fantasy about people being unemployed? The layoffs we’ve seen don’t seem to be discriminating against or in favor of AI - they appear to be moves to shift capital from human workers to capex for new datacenters. It doesn’t appear like anything of this sort is happening and the idea that good employer with a solid technical team would start firing people for not “knowing AI” instead of giving them a 2 week intro course seems unrealistic to me. The real nuts and bolts are still software engineering. Or is that going to change too?
- bdangubic 10mo ago
  I don't think their will be massive unemployment based on actual "AI has removed the need for SWEs of this level..." kind of talk but I was specifically commenting on eventually all that will smooth out and late adopters who decide want to use the tools will be able onboard themselves plenty fast. ... If this actually did happen (it won't) then we'd all have to worry about being unemployed
Madmallard 10mo ago
If you spent 1200 hours not using it you would have matured in your craft 3x more and figured out far better ways of doing things.
- bdangubic 10mo ago
  been hacking 3 decades so exponentially north of 1,200 hours ... in my career the one trait that always seems to differentiate great SWEs from decent/mediocre/awful ones is laziness. the best SWEs will automate anything they have to manually do more than once. I have seen this over and over and over again. LLMs have take automation to another level and learning everything they can be helpful with to automate as much of my work will be worth 12,000+ hours in the long run.