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'Make sure you don't fall behind!!!' is my least favourite type of post about ai. There's resllt nothing to learn about ai. You're just typing and telling it wh

'Make sure you don't fall behind!!!' is my least favourite type of post about ai. There's resllt nothing to learn about ai. You're just typing and telling it what to do.

acestus5 13d ago
the point of AI hype is to increase shareholder value.
fooker 13d ago
This is like saying there's nothing to learn about programming, you're just telling a computer what to do. :) It's partly true, but where this logic gets stuck is software engineering, for both the cases. Just telling the AI what to do won't get you to good software, especially when you want to use dozens of agents working in parallel, when you have something correctness sensitive, when you want the AI to try and solve a research problem you have a hunch about but not a concrete solution.
- zem 13d ago
  but the solution, ironically, is not learning more about ai, but learning more about good software engineering, so you can tell when the ai is not doing it
  - fooker 13d ago
    No, software engineering is fundamentally changed because of AI. No amount of digging our heads in the sand is going to undo that. For example, the traditional best practice cycle of "small incremental change, code review, test, commit" is pretty much obsolete now. The way ten collaborating agents can make short work of a complex project is not something that fits in with our existing software engineering wisdom at all. We are still trying to figure out the new science of software engineering. And the best way to get better now is to just figure out what works and what does not for your use case.
    - spwa4 13d ago
      Yeah I'm hoping AI can bring us back to software engineering of 20 years ago. Where studying the solution to a problem, finding clever solutions, getting everything to work without getting buried in little concerns is really important and "best practices" can just be a line in agents.md and the uninteresting part can just be handed off.
    - zem 13d ago
      I'm not talking about the transient aspects of producing software; I'm happy to accept that AI will change that, but also I feel that it will change it in ways that really aren't very hard to learn, and truth be told the more time that passes the smaller the gap will get as the agents get more capable. what I am talking about is principles that govern what good software looks like, what properties it has to satisfy in order to be extensible and maintainable and performant and all that other good stuff, and the AIs are not going to make that knowledge obsolete any time soon.
      - fooker 13d ago
        > what good software looks like I think this will change quite a bit too. Code being readable is one of our core tenets. Functions fitting within, approximately, a screen of code used to be ideal. Modern AI as already past solving that problem. You can give it a million line codebase, ask where something specific is happening, and it'll tell you in less than a minute. If we can de-emphasize readability, what do we gain? Custom hand rolled containers and data structures for your use cases are somewhat frowned upon unless really needed. Well, probably not anymore. What about a manually inlined mega-function with loops unrolled that pre-empts some of the compiler's work? No way that would fly a couple of years ago. Already seeing this in performance sensitive code.
      - Seattle3503 13d ago
        > truth be told the more time that passes the smaller the gap will get as the agents get more capable Yup. A lot of work is going in to reducing the skill required to operate AI agents.
- OrangeMusic 12d ago
  > This is like saying there's nothing to learn about programming, you're just telling a computer what to do. :) Counterpoint: a friend of mine who's not a developer has vibe coded multiple apps. They work just fine. Granted they're not particularly complex (e.g. domain specific CRUD type apps) - but clearly the skills required to do that are just "ability to talk to the AI" - in other words, everybody can do it.
  - fooker 12d ago
    You could also copy paste large blobs of code from stack overflow 'back in the day'. The baseline of what you can do without being an expert has jumped significantly. My claim is that the baseline of what you can do being an expert has also jumped significantly.
helloplanets 13d ago
The system that solved Navier-Stokes certainly was not about OpenAI engineers just typing and telling it what to do.
- fragmede 13d ago
  The recent advancement in math with the Riemann Hypothesis by Jared Sumner was basically him saying "you can do it! keep going!", however.
dwroberts 13d ago
Also the thing that is infuriating is, do people obsessed with using AI for everything not realise that, they are surplus to the entire process? They are doing 'prompting' or whatever but the end goal will eventually be that they are obsolete and will not be required. Companies will just endlessly, automatically pump out AI generated stuff without any human intervention at all. The tools they gloat about will be closed up and they will not have access to them any more. You're not really 'keeping up' with anything, you're just fooling yourself into being part of a process that wants to eradicate your presence. It's almost like embracing this stuff is giving them an illusion of control they don't have
orangecat 13d ago
There's nothing to learn about being an engineering manager. You tell your developers to write code, go on vacation, and come back to a completed product.
- Seattle3503 13d ago
  AI is built to adapt to you. ICs aren't.

'Make sure you don't fall behind!!!' is my least favourite type of post about ai. There's resllt nothing to learn about ai. You're just typing and telling it what to do.

acestus5 13d ago

the point of AI hype is to increase shareholder value.

fooker 13d ago

This is like saying there's nothing to learn about programming, you're just telling a computer what to do. :) It's partly true, but where this logic gets stuck is software engineering, for both the cases. Just telling the AI what to do won't get you to good software, especially when you want to use dozens of agents working in parallel, when you have something correctness sensitive, when you want the AI to try and solve a research problem you have a hunch about but not a concrete solution.

zem 13d ago
but the solution, ironically, is not learning more about ai, but learning more about good software engineering, so you can tell when the ai is not doing it
- fooker 13d ago
  No, software engineering is fundamentally changed because of AI. No amount of digging our heads in the sand is going to undo that. For example, the traditional best practice cycle of "small incremental change, code review, test, commit" is pretty much obsolete now. The way ten collaborating agents can make short work of a complex project is not something that fits in with our existing software engineering wisdom at all. We are still trying to figure out the new science of software engineering. And the best way to get better now is to just figure out what works and what does not for your use case.
  - spwa4 13d ago
    Yeah I'm hoping AI can bring us back to software engineering of 20 years ago. Where studying the solution to a problem, finding clever solutions, getting everything to work without getting buried in little concerns is really important and "best practices" can just be a line in agents.md and the uninteresting part can just be handed off.
  - zem 13d ago
    I'm not talking about the transient aspects of producing software; I'm happy to accept that AI will change that, but also I feel that it will change it in ways that really aren't very hard to learn, and truth be told the more time that passes the smaller the gap will get as the agents get more capable. what I am talking about is principles that govern what good software looks like, what properties it has to satisfy in order to be extensible and maintainable and performant and all that other good stuff, and the AIs are not going to make that knowledge obsolete any time soon.
    - fooker 13d ago
      > what good software looks like I think this will change quite a bit too. Code being readable is one of our core tenets. Functions fitting within, approximately, a screen of code used to be ideal. Modern AI as already past solving that problem. You can give it a million line codebase, ask where something specific is happening, and it'll tell you in less than a minute. If we can de-emphasize readability, what do we gain? Custom hand rolled containers and data structures for your use cases are somewhat frowned upon unless really needed. Well, probably not anymore. What about a manually inlined mega-function with loops unrolled that pre-empts some of the compiler's work? No way that would fly a couple of years ago. Already seeing this in performance sensitive code.
    - Seattle3503 13d ago
      > truth be told the more time that passes the smaller the gap will get as the agents get more capable Yup. A lot of work is going in to reducing the skill required to operate AI agents.
OrangeMusic 12d ago
> This is like saying there's nothing to learn about programming, you're just telling a computer what to do. :) Counterpoint: a friend of mine who's not a developer has vibe coded multiple apps. They work just fine. Granted they're not particularly complex (e.g. domain specific CRUD type apps) - but clearly the skills required to do that are just "ability to talk to the AI" - in other words, everybody can do it.
- fooker 12d ago
  You could also copy paste large blobs of code from stack overflow 'back in the day'. The baseline of what you can do without being an expert has jumped significantly. My claim is that the baseline of what you can do being an expert has also jumped significantly.

helloplanets 13d ago

The system that solved Navier-Stokes certainly was not about OpenAI engineers just typing and telling it what to do.

fragmede 13d ago
The recent advancement in math with the Riemann Hypothesis by Jared Sumner was basically him saying "you can do it! keep going!", however.

dwroberts 13d ago

Also the thing that is infuriating is, do people obsessed with using AI for everything not realise that, they are surplus to the entire process? They are doing 'prompting' or whatever but the end goal will eventually be that they are obsolete and will not be required. Companies will just endlessly, automatically pump out AI generated stuff without any human intervention at all. The tools they gloat about will be closed up and they will not have access to them any more. You're not really 'keeping up' with anything, you're just fooling yourself into being part of a process that wants to eradicate your presence. It's almost like embracing this stuff is giving them an illusion of control they don't have

orangecat 13d ago

There's nothing to learn about being an engineering manager. You tell your developers to write code, go on vacation, and come back to a completed product.

Seattle3503 13d ago
AI is built to adapt to you. ICs aren't.