5 ms·

These personal blogs are starting to feel like Linkdin Lunatic posts, kinda similar. to the optimised floor sweeping blog, “I am excited to provide shareholder

These personal blogs are starting to feel like Linkdin Lunatic posts, kinda similar. to the optimised floor sweeping blog, “I am excited to provide shareholder value, at minimum wage”

simonw 9mo ago
What does it tell you that programmers with the credibility of antirez - and who do not have an AI product to sell you - are writing things like this even when they know a lot of people aren't going to like reading them?
- falloutx 9mo ago
  People higher up the ladder aren't selling anything but they also have to not worry about losing jobs. We are worried that execs are going to see the advances and quickly clear the benches, might not be true but every programmer believing they have become a 10x programmer pushes us more into that reality.
- wasmainiac 9mo ago
  Nothing at all, it just sounds like a desperate post on LinkedIn riding the slight glimmer of hope it will help them land their next position.
- fabianholzer 9mo ago
  That is an argument to authority. There is a large enough segment of folks who like to be confirmed in either direction. Doesn't make the argument itself correct or incorrect. Time will tell though.
  - hu3 9mo ago
    No, this is an argument of credibility.
    - yeasku 9mo ago
      [dead]
    - g947o 9mo ago
      The only things that stand in an argument are facts and reasoning. Which I have seen none of in GP.
- proddev123 9mo ago
  [dead]
- atmavatar 9mo ago
  Just because he doesn't have an AI product to sell doesn't mean he doesn't have a bias. For all we know, he's heavily invested in AI companies. We have to abandon the appeal to authority and take the argument on its merits, which honestly, we should be doing regardless.
  - enraged_camel 9mo ago
    > We have to abandon the appeal to authority and take the argument on its merits, which honestly, we should be doing regardless. I don't really agree. In virtually any field, when those who have achieved mastery speak, others, even other masters, tend to listen. That does not mean blindly trust them. It means adjust your priors and reevaluate your beliefs. Software development is not special. When people like antirez (redis) and simonw (django) and DHH (rails) are speaking highly of AI, and when Linus Torvalds is saying he's using AI now, suggesting they may be on to something is not an appeal to authority. And frankly, claiming that they might be saying nice things about AI because of some financial motive is crazy.
    - munksbeer 9mo ago
      > And frankly, claiming that they might be saying nice things about AI because of some financial motive is crazy. I'm actually taken aback by the vehemence of the anti-AI brigade on HN. It seems objectively crazy to me to suggest someone like antirez, with a long visible history now has an agenda to push AI products, so he writes blog posts to do so. This is just genuinely going into the wilfully blind territory now, and your post is the one downvoted for pointing it out. I think we are properly into holy war territory and people on either side are losing their minds, and their objectivity.
- kibwen 9mo ago
  What it tells me is that humans are fallible, and that being a competent programmer has no correlation with having strong mental defenses against the brainrot that typifies the modern terminally-online internet user. I leverage LLMs where it makes sense for me to do so, but let's dispense with this FOMO silliness. People who choose not to aren't missing out on anything, any more than people who choose to use stock Vim rather than VSCode aren't missing out on anything.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 9mo ago
    It's not Vim vs VSCode though - the analogy might be writing in assembler vs writing in your high level language of choice. Using AI you're increasing the level of abstraction you can work at, and reducing the amount of detail you have to worry about. You tell the AI what you want to do, not how to do it, other than providing context that does tell it about the things that you actually care about (as much or little as you choose, but generally the more the better to achieve a specific outcome).
    - sodapopcan 9mo ago
      > the analogy might be writing in assembler vs writing in your high level language of choice. If it were deterministic, yes, but it's not. When I write in a high level language, I never have to check the compiled code, so this comparison makes no sense. If we see new kinds of languages, or compile targets, that would be different.
      - HarHarVeryFunny 9mo ago
        It's a new type of development for sure, but with an agentic system like Claude Code that is able to compile, run and test the code it is generating you can have it iterate until the code meets whatever test or other criteria you have set. No reason code reviews can't be automated too, customized to your own coding standards. Effort that might be put into feeling that you need to manually review all code generated might better be put into things like automating quality checks (e.g code review, adherence to guidelines) ensuring that testing is comprehensive, and overall management of the design and process into modular testable parts the same way as if you'd done it manually. While AI is a tool, the process of AI-centric software development is better regarded as a pair-design and pair-coding process, treating the AI more like a person than a tool. A human teammate isn't deterministic either, yet if they produce working artifacts that meet interface requirements and pass unit tests, you probably aren't going to insist on reviewing all of their code.
- ThrowawayR2 9mo ago
  Being famous doesn't mean that they're right about everything, e.g. Einstein and "God does not play dice with the universe". That LLMs advocates are resorting to the appeal to authority fallacy isn't a good look for them either.

These personal blogs are starting to feel like Linkdin Lunatic posts, kinda similar. to the optimised floor sweeping blog, “I am excited to provide shareholder value, at minimum wage”

simonw 9mo ago

What does it tell you that programmers with the credibility of antirez - and who do not have an AI product to sell you - are writing things like this even when they know a lot of people aren't going to like reading them?

falloutx 9mo ago
People higher up the ladder aren't selling anything but they also have to not worry about losing jobs. We are worried that execs are going to see the advances and quickly clear the benches, might not be true but every programmer believing they have become a 10x programmer pushes us more into that reality.
wasmainiac 9mo ago
Nothing at all, it just sounds like a desperate post on LinkedIn riding the slight glimmer of hope it will help them land their next position.
fabianholzer 9mo ago
That is an argument to authority. There is a large enough segment of folks who like to be confirmed in either direction. Doesn't make the argument itself correct or incorrect. Time will tell though.
- hu3 9mo ago
  No, this is an argument of credibility.
  - yeasku 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - g947o 9mo ago
    The only things that stand in an argument are facts and reasoning. Which I have seen none of in GP.
proddev123 9mo ago
[dead]
atmavatar 9mo ago
Just because he doesn't have an AI product to sell doesn't mean he doesn't have a bias. For all we know, he's heavily invested in AI companies. We have to abandon the appeal to authority and take the argument on its merits, which honestly, we should be doing regardless.
- enraged_camel 9mo ago
  > We have to abandon the appeal to authority and take the argument on its merits, which honestly, we should be doing regardless. I don't really agree. In virtually any field, when those who have achieved mastery speak, others, even other masters, tend to listen. That does not mean blindly trust them. It means adjust your priors and reevaluate your beliefs. Software development is not special. When people like antirez (redis) and simonw (django) and DHH (rails) are speaking highly of AI, and when Linus Torvalds is saying he's using AI now, suggesting they may be on to something is not an appeal to authority. And frankly, claiming that they might be saying nice things about AI because of some financial motive is crazy.
  - munksbeer 9mo ago
    > And frankly, claiming that they might be saying nice things about AI because of some financial motive is crazy. I'm actually taken aback by the vehemence of the anti-AI brigade on HN. It seems objectively crazy to me to suggest someone like antirez, with a long visible history now has an agenda to push AI products, so he writes blog posts to do so. This is just genuinely going into the wilfully blind territory now, and your post is the one downvoted for pointing it out. I think we are properly into holy war territory and people on either side are losing their minds, and their objectivity.
kibwen 9mo ago
What it tells me is that humans are fallible, and that being a competent programmer has no correlation with having strong mental defenses against the brainrot that typifies the modern terminally-online internet user. I leverage LLMs where it makes sense for me to do so, but let's dispense with this FOMO silliness. People who choose not to aren't missing out on anything, any more than people who choose to use stock Vim rather than VSCode aren't missing out on anything.
- HarHarVeryFunny 9mo ago
  It's not Vim vs VSCode though - the analogy might be writing in assembler vs writing in your high level language of choice. Using AI you're increasing the level of abstraction you can work at, and reducing the amount of detail you have to worry about. You tell the AI what you want to do, not how to do it, other than providing context that does tell it about the things that you actually care about (as much or little as you choose, but generally the more the better to achieve a specific outcome).
  - sodapopcan 9mo ago
    > the analogy might be writing in assembler vs writing in your high level language of choice. If it were deterministic, yes, but it's not. When I write in a high level language, I never have to check the compiled code, so this comparison makes no sense. If we see new kinds of languages, or compile targets, that would be different.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 9mo ago
      It's a new type of development for sure, but with an agentic system like Claude Code that is able to compile, run and test the code it is generating you can have it iterate until the code meets whatever test or other criteria you have set. No reason code reviews can't be automated too, customized to your own coding standards. Effort that might be put into feeling that you need to manually review all code generated might better be put into things like automating quality checks (e.g code review, adherence to guidelines) ensuring that testing is comprehensive, and overall management of the design and process into modular testable parts the same way as if you'd done it manually. While AI is a tool, the process of AI-centric software development is better regarded as a pair-design and pair-coding process, treating the AI more like a person than a tool. A human teammate isn't deterministic either, yet if they produce working artifacts that meet interface requirements and pass unit tests, you probably aren't going to insist on reviewing all of their code.
ThrowawayR2 9mo ago
Being famous doesn't mean that they're right about everything, e.g. Einstein and "God does not play dice with the universe". That LLMs advocates are resorting to the appeal to authority fallacy isn't a good look for them either.