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Correct… reading code is a much more difficult and ultimately, productive, task. I suspect those using the tools in the best way are thinking harder than ever

• dns_snek 8mo ago
  > reading code is a much more difficult Not inherently, no. Reading it and getting a cursory understanding is easy, truly understanding what it does well, what it does poorly, what the unintended side effects might be, that's the difficult part. In real life I've witnessed quite a few intelligent and experienced people who truly believe that they're thinking "really hard" and putting out work that's just as good as their previous, pre-AI work, and they're just not. In my experience it roughly correlates to how much time they think they're saving, those who think they're saving the most time are in fact cutting corners and putting out the sloppiest quality work.
  • d-us-vb 8mo ago
    It depends on the language, paradigm (or lack thereof), quality/accuracy of the names. My work’s codebase is 30 years of never-refactored C++. It takes an exceptional amount of focus and thinking to get even a cursory understanding of anything a particular method or class does or why it’s there. But for languages like C, I agree with you (as long as function pointers aren’t used abused).
  • godelski 8mo ago
    The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. - Feynman
• William_BB 8mo ago
  Sure. Reading a book is a much more difficult and ultimately, productive, task than writing a book.