It's worth noting that just because something takes time doesn't mean it's automatically worth doing.

Vibe slop-ing at supersonic speeds and waiting years to grow aren't the only options, there's something in between where you have enough signal to keep going and enough speed to not waste years on the wrong thing.

I feel that today's VCs have completely disregarded the middle and are focused on getting as big as possible as fast as possible without regard to the effect it's having on the ecosystem.

Can someone ELI5 what Earandil purpose is?

I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I think the signals that we use to determine whether we're doing the right things are different with the new AI enhanced toolsets.

Refactoring decent sized components are an order of magnitude easier than it was, but the more important signal is still, why are you refactoring? What changed in your world or your world-view that caused this?

Good things still take time, and you can't slop-AI code your way to a great system. You still need domain expertise (as the EXCELLENT short story from the other day explained, Warranty Void if Regenerated (https://nearzero.software/p/warranty-void-if-regenerated) ). The decrease in friction does definitely allow for more slop, but it also allows for more excellence. It just doesn't guarantee excellence.

I love this, and it applies to a lot more than software and trees :)

> I’m also increasingly skeptical of anyone who sells me something that supposedly saves my time.

Imagine a world in which the promise of AI was that workers could keep their jobs, at the same compensation as before, but work fewer hours and days per week due to increased productivity.

What could you do with those extra hours and days? Sleep better. Exercise more. Prepare healthy meals. Spend more time with family and friends. The benefits to physical and mental well-being are priceless. Even if you happened to earn extra money for the same amount of work, your time can be infinitely more valuable than money.

Unfortunately, that's not this world. Which is why the "increased productivity" promise doesn't seem to benefit workers at all.

If you look at the technological utopias that people imagined 50, 60+ years ago, they involved lives of leisure. If you would have told them that advances in technology would not reduce our working hours at all, maybe they would have started smashing the machines back then. Now we're supposed to be happy with more "stuff", even if there's no more time to enjoy stuff.

I think it's hard to argue with the idea that we should slow down and think more, and that AI is pushing us to do the opposite. But time is limited, it's very limited. And at least in a professional setting, to spend time on the correct things is key.

What AI allow us is to do those things we would not have been able to prioritize before. To "write" those extra tests, add that minor feature or to solve that decade old bug. Things that we would never been able to prioritize are we noe able to do. It's not perfect, it's sometimes sloppy, but at least its getting shit done. It does not matter if you solve 10% of your problem perfect if you never have time for the remaining 90.

I do miss the coding, _a lot_, but productivity is a drug and I will take it.

Go slow to go fast.

> Trees take quite a while to grow. If someone 50 years ago planted a row of oaks or a chestnut tree on your plot of land, you have something that no amount of money or effort can replicate. The only way is to wait. Tree-lined roads, old gardens, houses sheltered by decades of canopy: if you want to start fresh on an empty plot, you will not be able to get that.

This is a bad start. Louis XIV at Versailles and Marly famously made while forests appear or disappear overnight, to the utter dismay of Saint-Simon, the memorialist, who thought this was an unacceptable waste of money and energy.

And this was before the industrial revolution. Today I'm sure many more miracles happen every day.

lots of things take days, not hours. And idt AI changes that much. It does let you (or - let's be real - your middle management) try to make it happen with hours tho :P

Also you know, for programmers, say a 3 day work week is right there up for grabs. Even still employers would see big productivity increases.