5 ms·

When you’re sailing, juat going as fast as possible won’t necessarily get you where you need to go. Not just won’t get you there fastest. At all.

larodi 8mo ago
it intensifies work, and shortens time to burnout, which... like nobody still talks of. ingesting these huge slops of information can be super tiring.
- baal80spam 8mo ago
  > it intensifies work, and shortens time to burnout This is most likely correct. Everyone talks how AI makes it possible to "do multiple tasks at the same time", but noone seems to care that the cognitive (over)load is very real.
  - menaerus 8mo ago
    IME you don't even have to do multiple things at the same time to reach that cognitive fatigue. The pace alone, which is now much higher, could be enough to saturate your cognitive capabilities.
    - bunderbunder 8mo ago
      For me one unexpected factor is how much it strains my executive function to try and maintain attention on the task at hand while I’m letting the agent spin away for 5-10 minutes at a stretch. It’s even worse than the bad old days of long compile times because at least then I could work on tests or something like that while I wait. But with coding agents I feel like I need to be completely hands off because they might decide to touch literally any file in the repository. It reminds me a bit of how à while back people were finding that operating a level 3 autonomous vehicle is actually more fatiguing than driving a vehicle that doesn’t even have cruise control.
      - falcor84 8mo ago
        > But with coding agents I feel like I need to be completely hands off because they might decide to touch literally any file in the repository. Why not just have another worktree?
        bunderbunder 8mo ago
        So the thing about task switching is, everyone is bad at it. And the studies indicate that people who think they’re good at it are even worse at it.
        falcor84 8mo ago
        I was responding to: > It’s even worse than the bad old days of long compile times because at least then I could work on tests or something like that while I wait. To me it seems like the exact same context switching situation that it always was.
        kaffekaka 8mo ago
        Not exactly maybe. Different worktrees can still lead to possible merge conflicts later. This may get messy. Working on tests during compilation seems like a more separate task.
        bunderbunder 8mo ago
        If I’m writing tests and implementation for the same problem, there isn’t so much context switch. Same business domain, same domain model, same API, same contract and invariants. I’m just switching between taking the measurements and making the cuts. Which is a smart thing to do anyway because you can accumulate a lot of need for rework very quickly if you make a bunch of cuts in a row without stopping to confirm you’re making them correctly.
      - menaerus 8mo ago
        For me it's the volume of things that I am now capable of doing in so much shorter amount of time - this leaves almost no space for resting but incurs much more strain on my cognitive limits.
- falcor84 8mo ago
  > it intensifies work, and shortens time to burnout On the bright side, that would address the employability crisis for new grads.
  - menaerus 8mo ago
    Would it though? If you have 10 people on the team now doing the work of 20, 30, 50, ...
    - wiseowise 8mo ago
      Once they get relocated to asylum, you need to replace them with fresh meat.
  - larodi 8mo ago
    well smart oldies have learned to discern among skills that need focusing on and retaining and those that dont. perhaps with live we learn to navigate information better, given also constraints imposed by (with time) failing organs. so i guess the whole thing about a grownup is really that they be better strategists, and executives than children. everything else pretty much overlaps unreasonably often. so newgrads burnout faster imho, is all im sayin.

larodi 8mo ago

it intensifies work, and shortens time to burnout, which... like nobody still talks of. ingesting these huge slops of information can be super tiring.

baal80spam 8mo ago
> it intensifies work, and shortens time to burnout This is most likely correct. Everyone talks how AI makes it possible to "do multiple tasks at the same time", but noone seems to care that the cognitive (over)load is very real.
- menaerus 8mo ago
  IME you don't even have to do multiple things at the same time to reach that cognitive fatigue. The pace alone, which is now much higher, could be enough to saturate your cognitive capabilities.
  - bunderbunder 8mo ago
    For me one unexpected factor is how much it strains my executive function to try and maintain attention on the task at hand while I’m letting the agent spin away for 5-10 minutes at a stretch. It’s even worse than the bad old days of long compile times because at least then I could work on tests or something like that while I wait. But with coding agents I feel like I need to be completely hands off because they might decide to touch literally any file in the repository. It reminds me a bit of how à while back people were finding that operating a level 3 autonomous vehicle is actually more fatiguing than driving a vehicle that doesn’t even have cruise control.
    - falcor84 8mo ago
      > But with coding agents I feel like I need to be completely hands off because they might decide to touch literally any file in the repository. Why not just have another worktree?
      - bunderbunder 8mo ago
        So the thing about task switching is, everyone is bad at it. And the studies indicate that people who think they’re good at it are even worse at it.
        falcor84 8mo ago
        I was responding to: > It’s even worse than the bad old days of long compile times because at least then I could work on tests or something like that while I wait. To me it seems like the exact same context switching situation that it always was.
        kaffekaka 8mo ago
        Not exactly maybe. Different worktrees can still lead to possible merge conflicts later. This may get messy. Working on tests during compilation seems like a more separate task.
        bunderbunder 8mo ago
        If I’m writing tests and implementation for the same problem, there isn’t so much context switch. Same business domain, same domain model, same API, same contract and invariants. I’m just switching between taking the measurements and making the cuts. Which is a smart thing to do anyway because you can accumulate a lot of need for rework very quickly if you make a bunch of cuts in a row without stopping to confirm you’re making them correctly.
    - menaerus 8mo ago
      For me it's the volume of things that I am now capable of doing in so much shorter amount of time - this leaves almost no space for resting but incurs much more strain on my cognitive limits.
falcor84 8mo ago
> it intensifies work, and shortens time to burnout On the bright side, that would address the employability crisis for new grads.
- menaerus 8mo ago
  Would it though? If you have 10 people on the team now doing the work of 20, 30, 50, ...
  - wiseowise 8mo ago
    Once they get relocated to asylum, you need to replace them with fresh meat.
- larodi 8mo ago
  well smart oldies have learned to discern among skills that need focusing on and retaining and those that dont. perhaps with live we learn to navigate information better, given also constraints imposed by (with time) failing organs. so i guess the whole thing about a grownup is really that they be better strategists, and executives than children. everything else pretty much overlaps unreasonably often. so newgrads burnout faster imho, is all im sayin.