4 ms·

I have a hard time trusting the judgement of someone writing this: > I no longer write code. I’ve been a swe for over a decade. AI writes all my code following

by elktown 10mo ago

I have a hard time trusting the judgement of someone writing this: > I no longer write code. I’ve been a swe for over a decade. AI writes all my code following my instructions. My code output is now expected to be 5x what it was before because we are now augmented by AI. All my coworkers use AI. We don’t use ChatGPT we use anthropic. If I didn’t use AI I would be fired for being too slow. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46175628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46175628

baq 10mo ago
You should drop the prejudice and focus to be aware of the situation. This is happening all over the world, most people who have crossed this bridge just don’t share, just like they don’t share that they’ve brushed their teeth this morning.
- elktown 10mo ago
  I think I'll keep defaulting to critical thinking rather than some kinda pseudo-religious "crossing the bridge" talk.
  - baq 10mo ago
    Just a metaphore - used to code by hand, now he doesn't, but still produces software. Keep religion out of this.
    - elktown 10mo ago
      No one shrugs off 5x like brushing one's teeth in the morning. That makes no sense.
      - threethirtytwo 10mo ago
        People are sharing it. Look at this entire thread. It’s so conflicted. We have half the thread saying it’s 5x and the other half saying they’re delusional and lack critical thinking. I think it’s obvious who lacks critical thinking. If half the thread is saying on the ground AI has changed things and the other half just labels everyone as crazy without investigation… guess which one didn’t do any critical thinking? Last week I built an app that cross compiled into Tauri and electron that’s essentially a google earth clone for farms. It uses mapbox and deckgl and you can play back gps tracks of tractor movements and the gps traces change color as the tractor moves in actual real time. There’s pausing, seeking, bookmarking, skipping. All happening in real time because it’s optimized to use shader code and uniforms to do all these updates rather than redrawing the layers. There’s also color grading for gps fix values and satellite counts which the user can switch instantaneously to with zero slow down on tracks with thousands and thousands of points. It all interfaces with an API that scans gcp storage for gps tracks and organizes it into a queryable api that interfaces with our firebase based authentication. The backend is deployed by terraform and written in strictly typed typescript and it’s automatically deployed and checked by GHA. Of course the electron and tauri app have GUI login interfaces that work fully correctly with the backend api and it all looks professionally designed like a movie player merged with Google earth for farm orchards. I have rudimentary understanding for many of the technologies involved in the above. But I was able to write that whole internal tool in less than a week thanks to AI. I couldn’t have pulled it off without rudimentary understanding of the tech so some novice swe couldn’t really do it without the optimizations I used but that’s literally all I needed. I never wrote shader code for prod in my life and left to its own devices the AI would have come up with an implementation that’s too laggy to work properly. That’s all that’s needed. Some basic high level understanding and AI did everything else and now our company has an internal tool that is polished beyond anything that would’ve been given effort to before AI. I’m willing to bet you didn’t use AI agents in a meaningful way. Maybe copying and pasting some snippets of code into a chatbot and not liking the output. And then you do it every couple of weeks to have your finger on the pulse of AI. Go deeper. Build an app with AI. Hand hold it into building something you never built before. It’s essentially a pair programming endeavor. Im willing to bet you haven’t done this. Go in with the goal of building something polished and don’t automatically dismiss it when the AI does something stupid (it inevitably will) Doing this is what actual “critical thinking” is.
        elktown 10mo ago
        > I think it’s obvious who lacks critical thinking. My critical thinking is sharp enough to recognize that you're the recently banned ninetyninenine user [0]. Just as unbalanced and quarrelsome as before I can see. It's probably better to draw some conclusion from a ban and adjust, or just leave. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45988923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45988923
        threethirtytwo 10mo ago
        I’m not that guy lol. Why don’t you respond to my points rather than attack me.
        elktown 10mo ago
        > Why don’t you respond to my points Because I believe you have a "flexible" relationship to the truth, so I'm not wasting any more time.
        threethirtytwo 10mo ago
        Like you bs accusations? Alright then. Good day to you sir.
      - baq 10mo ago
        You're confusing critical thinking with having an axe to grind it seems. Bye.
threethirtytwo 10mo ago
Explain to me why my judgement is flawed. What I’m saying is true.
- elktown 10mo ago
  Because, among other claims, "5x now or you're fired!" is completely ridiculous.
  - threethirtytwo 10mo ago
    Bro no one said 5x now or your fired that’s your own imagination adding flavor to it. It’s obvious to anyone if your output is 5x less than everyone else you will eventually be let go. There’s no paradigm shift where the boss suddenly announced that. But the underlying unsaid expectation is obvious given what everyone is doing. What happened was this, a couple new hires and some current employees started were using AI. There output was magnified and they were not only having more output but they were deploying code outside their areas of expertise doing dev ops, infra, backend and frontend. This spread and within months everyone in the company was doing it. The boss can now throw a frontend job to a backend developer and now expect completion in a day or less. This isn’t every task but such output for the majority of tasks it’s normal. If you’re not meeting that norm it’s blindingly obvious. The boss doesn’t need to announce anything when everyone is faster. There was no deliberate culture shift where the boss announced it. The closest equivalent is the boss hiring a 10x engineer to work alongside you and you have to scramble to catch up. The difference is now we know exactly what is making each engineer 10x and we can use that tool to also operate at that level. Critical thinking my ass. You’re just labeling and assuming things with your premeditated subconscious bias. If anything it’s your perspective that is religious.
    - elktown 10mo ago
      > they were deploying code outside their areas of expertise doing dev ops, infra, backend and frontend. > The boss can now throw a frontend job to a backend developer and now expect completion in a day or less. Right. So essentially vibe coding in unknown domains, sounds great. Truly professional.

by elktown 10mo ago

baq 10mo ago

You should drop the prejudice and focus to be aware of the situation. This is happening all over the world, most people who have crossed this bridge just don’t share, just like they don’t share that they’ve brushed their teeth this morning.

elktown 10mo ago
I think I'll keep defaulting to critical thinking rather than some kinda pseudo-religious "crossing the bridge" talk.
- baq 10mo ago
  Just a metaphore - used to code by hand, now he doesn't, but still produces software. Keep religion out of this.
  - elktown 10mo ago
    No one shrugs off 5x like brushing one's teeth in the morning. That makes no sense.
    - threethirtytwo 10mo ago
      People are sharing it. Look at this entire thread. It’s so conflicted. We have half the thread saying it’s 5x and the other half saying they’re delusional and lack critical thinking. I think it’s obvious who lacks critical thinking. If half the thread is saying on the ground AI has changed things and the other half just labels everyone as crazy without investigation… guess which one didn’t do any critical thinking? Last week I built an app that cross compiled into Tauri and electron that’s essentially a google earth clone for farms. It uses mapbox and deckgl and you can play back gps tracks of tractor movements and the gps traces change color as the tractor moves in actual real time. There’s pausing, seeking, bookmarking, skipping. All happening in real time because it’s optimized to use shader code and uniforms to do all these updates rather than redrawing the layers. There’s also color grading for gps fix values and satellite counts which the user can switch instantaneously to with zero slow down on tracks with thousands and thousands of points. It all interfaces with an API that scans gcp storage for gps tracks and organizes it into a queryable api that interfaces with our firebase based authentication. The backend is deployed by terraform and written in strictly typed typescript and it’s automatically deployed and checked by GHA. Of course the electron and tauri app have GUI login interfaces that work fully correctly with the backend api and it all looks professionally designed like a movie player merged with Google earth for farm orchards. I have rudimentary understanding for many of the technologies involved in the above. But I was able to write that whole internal tool in less than a week thanks to AI. I couldn’t have pulled it off without rudimentary understanding of the tech so some novice swe couldn’t really do it without the optimizations I used but that’s literally all I needed. I never wrote shader code for prod in my life and left to its own devices the AI would have come up with an implementation that’s too laggy to work properly. That’s all that’s needed. Some basic high level understanding and AI did everything else and now our company has an internal tool that is polished beyond anything that would’ve been given effort to before AI. I’m willing to bet you didn’t use AI agents in a meaningful way. Maybe copying and pasting some snippets of code into a chatbot and not liking the output. And then you do it every couple of weeks to have your finger on the pulse of AI. Go deeper. Build an app with AI. Hand hold it into building something you never built before. It’s essentially a pair programming endeavor. Im willing to bet you haven’t done this. Go in with the goal of building something polished and don’t automatically dismiss it when the AI does something stupid (it inevitably will) Doing this is what actual “critical thinking” is.
      - elktown 10mo ago
        > I think it’s obvious who lacks critical thinking. My critical thinking is sharp enough to recognize that you're the recently banned ninetyninenine user [0]. Just as unbalanced and quarrelsome as before I can see. It's probably better to draw some conclusion from a ban and adjust, or just leave. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45988923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45988923
        threethirtytwo 10mo ago
        I’m not that guy lol. Why don’t you respond to my points rather than attack me.
        elktown 10mo ago
        > Why don’t you respond to my points Because I believe you have a "flexible" relationship to the truth, so I'm not wasting any more time.
        threethirtytwo 10mo ago
        Like you bs accusations? Alright then. Good day to you sir.
    - baq 10mo ago
      You're confusing critical thinking with having an axe to grind it seems. Bye.

threethirtytwo 10mo ago

Explain to me why my judgement is flawed. What I’m saying is true.

elktown 10mo ago
Because, among other claims, "5x now or you're fired!" is completely ridiculous.
- threethirtytwo 10mo ago
  Bro no one said 5x now or your fired that’s your own imagination adding flavor to it. It’s obvious to anyone if your output is 5x less than everyone else you will eventually be let go. There’s no paradigm shift where the boss suddenly announced that. But the underlying unsaid expectation is obvious given what everyone is doing. What happened was this, a couple new hires and some current employees started were using AI. There output was magnified and they were not only having more output but they were deploying code outside their areas of expertise doing dev ops, infra, backend and frontend. This spread and within months everyone in the company was doing it. The boss can now throw a frontend job to a backend developer and now expect completion in a day or less. This isn’t every task but such output for the majority of tasks it’s normal. If you’re not meeting that norm it’s blindingly obvious. The boss doesn’t need to announce anything when everyone is faster. There was no deliberate culture shift where the boss announced it. The closest equivalent is the boss hiring a 10x engineer to work alongside you and you have to scramble to catch up. The difference is now we know exactly what is making each engineer 10x and we can use that tool to also operate at that level. Critical thinking my ass. You’re just labeling and assuming things with your premeditated subconscious bias. If anything it’s your perspective that is religious.
  - elktown 10mo ago
    > they were deploying code outside their areas of expertise doing dev ops, infra, backend and frontend. > The boss can now throw a frontend job to a backend developer and now expect completion in a day or less. Right. So essentially vibe coding in unknown domains, sounds great. Truly professional.