tjr

8 ms·

61.
by tjr 9mo ago
At this point, if you code without the use of LLM, you are significantly slower than your peers. Arguing that that is not the case is like arguing that you can be faster than someone using a calculator. A lot of truth there, but especiall
62.
by tjr 9mo ago
Seems to be back up now.
63.
by tjr 9mo ago
Yes! Hooray for whatever helps you learn best!
64.
by tjr 9mo ago
It has been generally agreed for years that different people learn best differently. I have found that I tend to learn very well reading books and taking notes (and, as applicable, doing projects) and not so great watching videos. I'd
65.
by tjr 9mo ago
On the other hand, if there is budget available, like on real movies and bigger television projects, real musicians are still used. And across the board, except for musical styles that explicitly call for electronic sounds, most people agre
66.
by tjr 9mo ago
It kinda sorta did. Decades ago, all music was played by live players. Today, there are lots of albums, lots of background music on television, radio, etc., that is made mostly or entirely using MIDI-controlled virtual instruments. No longe
67.
by tjr 9mo ago
It seems generally agreed that LLMs (currently) do better or worse with different programming languages at least, and maybe with other project logistical differences. The fact that an LLM works great for one user on one project does not mea
68.
by tjr 9mo ago
The article describes a bad programmer as one whose programs “die young”. I would guess that Knuth is saying is that the longest one of his programs lived (was used?) for 12 years? If that is what he meant, I presume this remark was written
69.
by tjr 9mo ago
I felt inclined to say, this is true, but has been true for years. Then I noticed the article is from 2019. But it was true for years even before 2019. And I find I still talk to people personally about such things, along with researching o
70.
by tjr 9mo ago
I thought that this article submission a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46543516 presented a reasonable approach for using AI coding tools but still staying engaged with the code. I am wary of hanging ove
71.
by tjr 9mo ago
My time spent with Javascript applications has thus far been pretty brief (working on some aircraft cabin interfaces for a while), but a lot of the time ended up being on testing on numerous different types and sizes of devices, and making
72.
by tjr 9mo ago
I think this is the most sensible way to use AI for coding. You stay mentally engaged, you maintain a grip on the codebase, and you still reap the productivity boost. I imagine some folks would still say that the code itself doesn't ma
73.
by tjr 9mo ago
Do you have a link to more details of what happened?
74.
by tjr 9mo ago
Just off the top of my head of some "consumer" areas that I personally encounter... I don't want AI involved in my laundry machines. The only possible exception I could see would be some sort of emergency-off system, but I do
75.
by tjr 9mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46424585
76.
by tjr 9mo ago
If the LLM just wrote the whole thing last week, surely it can write it again.
77.
by tjr 9mo ago
Why not have the LLM rewrite the entire codebase?
78.
by tjr 9mo ago
Agreed, most engineers never do anything truly novel. But the few who did, brought much value to everyone else. I think the new question here is, if the new status quo is to offload your creative thinking to LLMs, will now any engineers d
79.
by tjr 9mo ago
I think people who truly don't understand programming need more structure and guardrails than coding from scratch with LLMs. If you're wanting to, say, set up an online store website, and you don't know how to build a website
80.
by tjr 9mo ago
As a semi-professional musician, sounds fair to me. You wrote the lyrics. There are professional songwriters with many hit songs who only write lyrics. Some can't even play an instrument, much less compose music. So what do they do? Th
81.
by tjr 9mo ago
What I really enjoy in programming is algorithms and bit-twiddling and stuff that might be in Knuth or HAKMEM or whatever. That’s fun. I like writing Lisp especially, and doing cool, elegant functional programs. I don’t enjoy boilerplate. I
82.
by tjr 9mo ago
If you are looking to become as huge and as profitable as possible with furniture, then sure, MDF may be the one true path. But J. Random Small Furniture Builder is unlikely to become that huge regardless of how much MDF they use. Exploring
83.
by tjr 9mo ago
I just took delivery a few months ago of some handmade solid cherry bookshelves. I would like to never buy cheap MDF furniture again.
84.
by tjr 9mo ago
Some specifics are outdated, but I very much like a lot of the general theme of Greenspun’s Software Engineering for Internet Applications : https://philip.greenspun.com/seia/
85.
by tjr 9mo ago
I think that limitless programmer productivity is a questionable goal. Extrapolating these numbers, perhaps Employee B is so skillful that, if B did use $2000/month, B could get not 5 features done but 100 features. That sounds great a
86.
by tjr 9mo ago
Wow! I just used this a few days ago when I rented a U-Haul van. Such a great user interface element.
87.
by tjr 10mo ago
Why stop there? We can replace git with AI too!
88.
by tjr 10mo ago
If they think this is seriously a potential problem, why not turn it off now?
89.
by tjr 10mo ago
I’m not sure that really answers the question? Or perhaps my interpretation of the question is different. If (say) the code generation technology of Anthropic is so good, why be in the business of selling access to AI systems? Why not inste
90.
by tjr 10mo ago
Why limit this to AI? There have been lots of programming tools which have not been universally adopted, despite offering productivity gains. For example, it seems reasonably that using a good programming editor like Emacs or VI would offer

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