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I did well in school and the praise I received for excelling in my math degree did shape my life and impact my motivations. I do like praise. But outside of so

by abnry 23d ago

I did well in school and the praise I received for excelling in my math degree did shape my life and impact my motivations. I do like praise. But outside of social reasons, it's understanding I crave. Thoroughly understanding a topic is awesome. I remember the feeling of acing my qualifier exam in grad school. Those LLMs change nothing fundamentally about this motivation and need and capability. I can't type a prompt, hazily skim the wall of text, and come to comprehensive understanding. I still have to work. What I like about LLMs is that they can increase my understanding by helping me learn more efficiently. What I don't like is the temptation to turn off my brain.

forinti 23d ago
This week I helped a colleague with a bug. He used an LLM to sort it out before telling me about it. I'm old fashioned, so I looked at the code, saw that it used an old lib and then I searched online for a newer version. Lo and behold, the bug had been ironed out. AI makes it really easy to not think properly about your task.
- ohyes 23d ago
  AI providers are in fact incentivized to have you not think about the task. I’ve found that they automatically do more for you, and frankly, a lot of the time I don’t want it to do more for me. Ask me a question rather than burning a bunch of tokens to answer something I already know of the top of my head.
  - bornfreddy 23d ago
    The agents also overload you with walls of text, always including lots of less relevant information. It's like they want you to give up and let them drive.
- jeppester 23d ago
  Exactly. I feel that agentic programming is largely turning what would have in the past been actual understanding into some kind of fluffy superficial pseudo "understanding" that's only barely good enough when assisted by AI.
- chasd00 23d ago
  how did his AI solve the bug? I've had cc recognize a bug was in an outdated lib and then update it to resolve the issue. Granted it made that determination by finding the source code to the lib, identifying the bug, and then verifying it was fixed by looking at the source of the updated lib.
  - forinti 23d ago
    AI told him to use an alternative function which was similar but didn't have the same bug.
- zeven7 22d ago
  That same story happens without LLM involvement. I’ve also seen LLM suggest updating a lib. So unfortunately nothing about this story speaks to a difference between LLM and human capabilities.
ericmcer 23d ago
Well yeah it conditions you to turn towards it anytime you hit a roadblock. It is in a precarious state right now where it is too good not to leverage but will bite you if you get sloppy. I still write things by hand sometimes because it is fun, but it does make you feel stupid when you spend 2 hours fixing something a 2 min prompt could have fixed.
- chasd00 23d ago
  > feel stupid when you spend 2 hours fixing something a 2 min prompt could have fixed. or when it handles like 5 edge cases by default that I didn't even think of. That's scary because then I start thinking about all my other code.

by abnry 23d ago

forinti 23d ago

This week I helped a colleague with a bug. He used an LLM to sort it out before telling me about it. I'm old fashioned, so I looked at the code, saw that it used an old lib and then I searched online for a newer version. Lo and behold, the bug had been ironed out. AI makes it really easy to not think properly about your task.

ohyes 23d ago
AI providers are in fact incentivized to have you not think about the task. I’ve found that they automatically do more for you, and frankly, a lot of the time I don’t want it to do more for me. Ask me a question rather than burning a bunch of tokens to answer something I already know of the top of my head.
- bornfreddy 23d ago
  The agents also overload you with walls of text, always including lots of less relevant information. It's like they want you to give up and let them drive.
jeppester 23d ago
Exactly. I feel that agentic programming is largely turning what would have in the past been actual understanding into some kind of fluffy superficial pseudo "understanding" that's only barely good enough when assisted by AI.
chasd00 23d ago
how did his AI solve the bug? I've had cc recognize a bug was in an outdated lib and then update it to resolve the issue. Granted it made that determination by finding the source code to the lib, identifying the bug, and then verifying it was fixed by looking at the source of the updated lib.
- forinti 23d ago
  AI told him to use an alternative function which was similar but didn't have the same bug.
zeven7 22d ago
That same story happens without LLM involvement. I’ve also seen LLM suggest updating a lib. So unfortunately nothing about this story speaks to a difference between LLM and human capabilities.

ericmcer 23d ago

Well yeah it conditions you to turn towards it anytime you hit a roadblock. It is in a precarious state right now where it is too good not to leverage but will bite you if you get sloppy. I still write things by hand sometimes because it is fun, but it does make you feel stupid when you spend 2 hours fixing something a 2 min prompt could have fixed.

chasd00 23d ago
> feel stupid when you spend 2 hours fixing something a 2 min prompt could have fixed. or when it handles like 5 edge cases by default that I didn't even think of. That's scary because then I start thinking about all my other code.