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Posted by koshyjohn 22 hours ago

AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it(www.koshyjohn.com)
733 points | 517 commentspage 8
naveen99 20 hours ago|
Employees should elevate your thinking not replace it.
poszlem 7 hours ago||
"What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking-there's the real danger" - Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
zulux 22 hours ago||
Yes.... and I can't think without compiled languages. Missed out on assembler.

Becoming dependent on a technology is to be expected. I'm pretty sure 95% of us are dependent on packaged meat and don't know how to hunt.

awepofiwaop 22 hours ago|
I'm seeing plenty of internal work where I ask someone about their code, they ask Claude, and reply with "Claude says...".

That's substantively different than going from assembly to C.

ben_w 21 hours ago|||
Every time things change, the change itself is different.

I remember some of my earlier issues with various languages. `Dim A, B as Int`, in VisualBasic one of them is an Int the other is a Variant, in REALbasic (now Xojo) they're both Int. `MyClass *foo = nil; [foo bar];` isn't an error in ObjC because sending a message to nil is a no-op.

Or how, back when I was a complete beginner, if I forgot a semicolon in Metrowerks, the compiler would tell me about errors on every line after (but not including!) the one where I forgot the semicolon.

"Docs say", "Compiler says", "StackOverflow says", "Wikipedia says"; either this tool is good enough or it isn't; it not being good enough means we're still paid to do the thing it can't do, that only stops when nobody needs to because it can do the thing. The overlap, when people lean on it before the paint is dry, is just a time for quick-and-dirty. LLMs are in the wet-paint/quick-and-dirty phase. You could get suff done by copy-pasting code you didn't understand from StackOverflow, but you couldn't build a career from that alone. LLMs are better than StackOverflow, but still not a full replacement for SWeng, not yet.

puapuapuq 22 hours ago|||
I am that someone thinking why you can't ask Claude yourself.
koshyjohn 17 hours ago|||
The better question may be "What value did that person acting as a glorified front-end for Claude create?" (vs. what they were expected to).
awepofiwaop 16 hours ago|||
I wasn't really interested in asking Claude myself, because I wasn't really able to verify the claims being made so it's just noise. I'd hoped that the person who had written the code and put it up for review would be able to.
sharts 22 hours ago||
Meh, there’s plenty that rise in their careers while being mediocre.
joe_mamba 22 hours ago|
The tech industry lost the plot when SCRUM Masters and AGILE coaches were highly paid con-men to waste everyone's time and add no value while raking in the coal. AI doesn't impact something already broken.
operatingthetan 22 hours ago||
When was tech not bureaucratic and political?
joe_mamba 22 hours ago||
60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, basically before the Google and Meta found out ads and money printing run the world, and after the tech industry was run by nerds with mullets, New Balance sneakers and khaki shorts.
operatingthetan 22 hours ago||
Oracle, HP, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Apple, Xerox and countless other names were internally bureaucratic and political in the 80's and 90's. Like famously so.
joe_mamba 22 hours ago||
Every single one of those companies you mentioned was lean, agile and run by skilled motivated nerds with mullets and thick glasses in the beginning when they started in a garage.

And every single major company becomes bureaucratic and political after 30+ years in the business when the original founders are long retired, and the Wall Street friendly beancounters take over, caring only about the quarterly reports.

operatingthetan 21 hours ago||
You are changing your argument by adding this: "when they started in a garage."

'Lean agile' tech companies are by far the exception, not the rule.

Look at OpenAI and Anthropic, both fairly new companies that are excessively political already. This 'garage stage' of lacking politics is a myth, read old stories about Microsoft, when it was 15 people it was political.

joe_mamba 18 hours ago||
>You are changing your argument by adding this: "when they started in a garage."

No, you are.

You first asked: "When was tech not bureaucratic and political?"

To which I replied "in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's when they started in garages".

What did you fail to understand here?

>Look at OpenAI and Anthropic, both fairly new companies that are excessively political already.

Everything becomes political when you tell them they're worth trillions if they only play the right tune. Money brings out the worst in people. SW companies didn't make trillions decades ago.

operatingthetan 18 hours ago||
Why did you just lie about what you wrote?

What you actually wrote in the comment four hours ago:

>60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, basically before the Google and Meta found out ads and money printing run the world

Your lie just now:

>To which I replied "in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's when they started in garages".

---

>What did you fail to understand here?

Nothing because you never said it. Wild behavior.

joe_mamba 17 hours ago||
>Nothing because you never said it.

You literally just quoted me saying before two comments above: "You are changing your argument by adding this: "when they started in a garage." and then pretend otherwise.

Now you're pretending I never said and acting like you didn't read it.

Are you unable to understand an argument made by adding the context of two sentence from two consecutive comments following up on each other(which you yourself quoted and said it changes the argument), or are you just a troll acting in bad faith pretending you can't understand just to score a cheap gotcha?

>Wild behavior.

Yes you have, which is why I'll stop replying to you now, to protect my sanity. Jesus Christ.

operatingthetan 17 hours ago||
You made up a quote you never said and insisted that you said it, argument over, you lose. And no, you can't take little pieces of several of your comments and smash them together and pretend like that was the context all along. Bizarre behavior. Please read more about how this site works, this isn't acceptable.
nickandbro 22 hours ago||
I think there are engineers that can’t think without AI. But the best think with it. Unfortunately, we are now living in a day and age where simply ignoring AI is no longer an option.
fnordpiglet 21 hours ago|
There were always engineers who didn’t think and depended on crutches around them like senior engineers and politicizing the perf cycle. Most people got into this because their parents told them it makes a lot of money, and they never had the drive and curiosity to develop the passion required to truly think through the problems in computing and computer science. They will continue to use crutches to survive. Those that are driven by the problems for the problems will continue to think and use AI as a tool for leverage. This is no different than any other assistive technology.
lo_zamoyski 17 hours ago||
Absolutely. When used correctly, it can become a tool for pulling our minds out of the gutter of pedantic pocket lint and distracting ephemera and keep it in a space where it is intellectually rewarding and fruitful. It can help you grasp a code base more quickly. It can help you debug things more effectively. But that's up to how you use it.

If all you do is point your LLM at your Jira tickets, then you are failing to be an engineer. I mean, if that's all you are doing, then who needs you? One of the most important things to learn is what the right questions to ask are and what the right decisions to make are when guiding the LLM, as well as the ability to judge the output it produces.

samuelknight 21 hours ago||
We are in a transition phase where you need systems and coding skill but you can't be sufficiently productive without AI.
TrackerFF 21 hours ago||
For all we know, we're in the early stages of making traditional (software) engineering obsolete. As in, we don't know if the role of software engineer as we know it today will still exist in 10-15-20 years.

I mean, right now we're at the stage where any user can get AI to make you software to solve very specific things - almost no technical knowledge needed.

My prediction is that first will software engineers be rendered obsolete. After that, small businesses will disappear, as users can simply get those products/services directly via AI.

23df 18 hours ago|
Your prediction is... missing so much detail of how that prediction actually happens that it is pointless. This is my big dislike re. the discussion of LLMs and the effect of AI more broadly. Unless you bother to make an effort in going deeper why post it? Theres no value. The same stuff has been posted for months and even years at this point.
TrackerFF 10 hours ago||
When GPT 3.5 was released, it could handle maybe a 500 LOC codebase. Experienced engineers were calling it cute, but zero threat to actual programmers.

Then it became thousands.

Now models can handle and operate on code bases with hundreds of thousands LOC, even low MLOC.

So in just 3.5 years we've gone from LLMs being cute toys, to being powerful enough to actually replace junior engineers. Even if we hit a new AI winter tomorrow, the proverbial damage is already done.

ekeke 1 hour ago||
What damage lmao? Let’s see the llm producers raise the price to what is necessary to generate viable returns.

BTW they need to make enough to finance reinvestment internally… so it’s a lot more than you think. When they raise the price firms will then have to do a deep dive analysis on what to do - for they cannot see operating expenses climb incrementally without seeing revenue and costs of operations go in a favourable direction.

It’s easy when prices are lower than they should be.

Your prediction is missing all this detail. So….

cindyllm 20 minutes ago||
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joshcramer 21 hours ago||
First, it was pencil and paper. Then it was calculators. Then computers! It’s a slippery slope, this technology business.
Traubenfuchs 11 hours ago|
My director expects me to get things done at an accelerated rate. I don't have the time to read code and gain in depth understanding of issues he wants me to fix which requires me to understand multiple repos I have never touched.

I have no choice but let claude explore them for me and return me its summarized understanding. As next step, only claude can apply the required cross repo fixes, not me.

I just don't have the time. Meanwhile my skills as classical programmer atrophy, while my experience with and trust in claude go up...

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