5 ms·

> facts are facts, and AI is going to change programming forever Show me these "facts"

by vmaurin 9mo ago

antirez 9mo ago
If you can't see this by working with Claude Code for a few weeks, I don't want to go into bigger efforts than writing a blog post to convince you. It's not a mission, mine. I just want to communicate with the part of people that are open enough to challenge their ideas and are willing to touch with their hands what is happening. Also, if you tried and failed, it means that either for your domain AI is not good enough, or you are not able to extract the value. The fact is, this does not matter: a bigger percentage of programmers is using AI with success every day, and as it progresses this will happen more and in more diverse programming fields and tasks. If you disagree and are happy to avoid LLMs, well, it's ok as well.
- oulipo2 9mo ago
  okay, but again: if you say in your blog that those are "facts", then... show us the facts? You can't just hand-wavily say "a bigger percentage of programmers is using AI with success every day" and not give a link to a study that shows it's true as a matter of fact, we know that a lot of companies have fired people by pretending that they are no longer needed in the age of AI... only to re-hire offshored people for much cheaper for now, there hasn't been a documented sudden increase in velocity / robustness for code, a few anecdotical cases sure I use it myself, and I admit it saves some time to develop some basic stuff and get a few ideas, but so far nothing revolutionary. So let's take it at face value: - a tech which helps slightly with some tasks (basically "in-painting code" once you defined the "border constraints" sufficiently well) - a tech which might cause massive disruption of people's livelihoods (and safety) if used incorrectly, which might FAR OUTWEIGH the small benefits and be a good enough reason for people to fight against AI - a tech which emits CO2, increases inequalities, depends on quasi slave-work of annotators in third-world countries, etc so you can talk all day long about not dismissing AI, but you should take it also with everything that comes with it
  - antirez 9mo ago
    1. If you can't convince yourself, after downloading Claude Code or Codex and playing with them for 1 week, that programming is completely revolutionized, there is nothing I can do: you have it at your fingertips and you search for facts I should communicate for you. 2. The US alone air conditioning usage is around 4 times the energy / CO2 usage of all the world data centers (not just AI) combined together. AI is 10% of the data centers usage, so just AC is 40 times that.
    - oulipo2 9mo ago
      1. "if you can't convince yourself by playing anecdotically" is NOT "facts" 2. it's not because the US is incredibly bad at energy spending in AC that it somehow justifies the fact that we would add another, mostly unnecessary, polluting source, even if it's slightly lower. ACs have existed for decades. AI has been exploding for a few years, so we can definitely see it go way, way past the AC usage also the idea is of "accelerationnism". Why do we need all this tech? What good does it make to have 10 more silly slop AI videos and disinformation campaigns during election? Just so that antirez can be a little bit faster at doing his code... that's not what the world is about. Our world should be about humans, connecting together (more slowly, not "faster"), about having meaningful work, and caring about planetary resources The exact opposite of what capitalistic accelerationism / AI is trying to sell us
      - simonw 9mo ago
        If you can solve "measure programming productivity with data" you'll have cracked one of the hardest problems in our industry. > Why do we need all this tech? Slightly odd question to be asking here on Hacker News!
        oulipo2 9mo ago
        Sure, but I wasn't the one pretending to have "facts" on AI... > Slightly odd question to be asking here on Hacker News! It's absolutely not? The first line of question when you work in a domain SHOULD BE "why am I doing this" and "what is the impact of my work on others"
- vmaurin 9mo ago
  I am waiting people to commits their prompt/agents setup instead of the code to call this a changing paradigm. So far it is "just" machine generating code and generating code doesn't solve all the software problem (but yeah they get pretty good at generating code)
  - minimaxir 9mo ago
    If you want an example, I just open-sourced a project which includes the prompts and CLAUDE.md: https://github.com/minimaxir/miditui/tree/main/agent_notes https://github.com/minimaxir/miditui/tree/main/agent_notes
- timmytokyo 9mo ago
  Replace "Claude Code" or "AI" with "Jesus". It all sounds very familiar.
- llmslave3 9mo ago
  Why do you care so much to write a blog post? Like if it's such a big advantage, why not stay quiet and exploit it? Why not make Anti-AI blog posts to gain even more of an advantage? One of the big red flags I see around the pro-AI side is this constant desire to promote the technology. At least the anti-ai side is reactionary.
  - simonw 9mo ago
    "Like if it's such a big advantage, why not stay quiet and exploit it?" Maybe he's a generous person.
  - halfdanwhitshrt 9mo ago
    It seems quite profitable nowadays to position yourself as [insert currently overhyped technology] GURU to generate clicks/views. Just look at the amount of comments in this thread.
- fatata123 9mo ago
  [dead]

> facts are facts, and AI is going to change programming forever Show me these "facts"

by vmaurin 9mo ago

> facts are facts, and AI is going to change programming forever Show me these "facts"

If you can't see this by working with Claude Code for a few weeks, I don't want to go into bigger efforts than writing a blog post to convince you. It's not a mission, mine. I just want to communicate with the part of people that are open enough to challenge their ideas and are willing to touch with their hands what is happening. Also, if you tried and failed, it means that either for your domain AI is not good enough, or you are not able to extract the value. The fact is, this does not matter: a bigger percentage of programmers is using AI with success every day, and as it progresses this will happen more and in more diverse programming fields and tasks. If you disagree and are happy to avoid LLMs, well, it's ok as well.

oulipo2 9mo ago
okay, but again: if you say in your blog that those are "facts", then... show us the facts? You can't just hand-wavily say "a bigger percentage of programmers is using AI with success every day" and not give a link to a study that shows it's true as a matter of fact, we know that a lot of companies have fired people by pretending that they are no longer needed in the age of AI... only to re-hire offshored people for much cheaper for now, there hasn't been a documented sudden increase in velocity / robustness for code, a few anecdotical cases sure I use it myself, and I admit it saves some time to develop some basic stuff and get a few ideas, but so far nothing revolutionary. So let's take it at face value: - a tech which helps slightly with some tasks (basically "in-painting code" once you defined the "border constraints" sufficiently well) - a tech which might cause massive disruption of people's livelihoods (and safety) if used incorrectly, which might FAR OUTWEIGH the small benefits and be a good enough reason for people to fight against AI - a tech which emits CO2, increases inequalities, depends on quasi slave-work of annotators in third-world countries, etc so you can talk all day long about not dismissing AI, but you should take it also with everything that comes with it
- antirez 9mo ago
  1. If you can't convince yourself, after downloading Claude Code or Codex and playing with them for 1 week, that programming is completely revolutionized, there is nothing I can do: you have it at your fingertips and you search for facts I should communicate for you. 2. The US alone air conditioning usage is around 4 times the energy / CO2 usage of all the world data centers (not just AI) combined together. AI is 10% of the data centers usage, so just AC is 40 times that.
  - oulipo2 9mo ago
    1. "if you can't convince yourself by playing anecdotically" is NOT "facts" 2. it's not because the US is incredibly bad at energy spending in AC that it somehow justifies the fact that we would add another, mostly unnecessary, polluting source, even if it's slightly lower. ACs have existed for decades. AI has been exploding for a few years, so we can definitely see it go way, way past the AC usage also the idea is of "accelerationnism". Why do we need all this tech? What good does it make to have 10 more silly slop AI videos and disinformation campaigns during election? Just so that antirez can be a little bit faster at doing his code... that's not what the world is about. Our world should be about humans, connecting together (more slowly, not "faster"), about having meaningful work, and caring about planetary resources The exact opposite of what capitalistic accelerationism / AI is trying to sell us
    - simonw 9mo ago
      If you can solve "measure programming productivity with data" you'll have cracked one of the hardest problems in our industry. > Why do we need all this tech? Slightly odd question to be asking here on Hacker News!
      - oulipo2 9mo ago
        Sure, but I wasn't the one pretending to have "facts" on AI... > Slightly odd question to be asking here on Hacker News! It's absolutely not? The first line of question when you work in a domain SHOULD BE "why am I doing this" and "what is the impact of my work on others"
vmaurin 9mo ago
I am waiting people to commits their prompt/agents setup instead of the code to call this a changing paradigm. So far it is "just" machine generating code and generating code doesn't solve all the software problem (but yeah they get pretty good at generating code)
- minimaxir 9mo ago
  If you want an example, I just open-sourced a project which includes the prompts and CLAUDE.md: https://github.com/minimaxir/miditui/tree/main/agent_notes https://github.com/minimaxir/miditui/tree/main/agent_notes
timmytokyo 9mo ago
Replace "Claude Code" or "AI" with "Jesus". It all sounds very familiar.
llmslave3 9mo ago
Why do you care so much to write a blog post? Like if it's such a big advantage, why not stay quiet and exploit it? Why not make Anti-AI blog posts to gain even more of an advantage? One of the big red flags I see around the pro-AI side is this constant desire to promote the technology. At least the anti-ai side is reactionary.
- simonw 9mo ago
  "Like if it's such a big advantage, why not stay quiet and exploit it?" Maybe he's a generous person.
- halfdanwhitshrt 9mo ago
  It seems quite profitable nowadays to position yourself as [insert currently overhyped technology] GURU to generate clicks/views. Just look at the amount of comments in this thread.
fatata123 9mo ago
[dead]