[HN Gopher] I'm OK being left behind, thanks
___________________________________________________________________
I'm OK being left behind, thanks
Author : coinfused
Score : 773 points
Date : 2026-03-20 13:38 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shkspr.mobi)
(TXT) w3m dump (shkspr.mobi)
| marnett wrote:
| > I didn't use Git when it first came out. Once it was stable and
| jobs began demanding it, I picked it up.
|
| What jobs aren't requiring usage of these tools by now?
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| Most are, implicitly at least. But at the time, there was
| definitely a period of transition with many shops continuing to
| use subversion for a while.
| pjmlp wrote:
| And TFS, ClearCase, Mercurial, Plastic, Perforce, Fossil,
| CVS, RCS, ....
|
| Then there are those still using folders with timestamps.
| bluGill wrote:
| You should be able to pick up tools and learn on need. There
| are better version control systems than git - always have been,
| but git won despite being worse. (Git was massively better than
| what was popular before it won) if you can't learn git quick
| then you shouldn't program at all - there are much harder tools
| you will need to know and many are company or project specific
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Mercurial?
| bluGill wrote:
| That is the one I know best but there are other options
| that people I tend to trust say are good. There are more
| options than I have time to give them an honest evaluation.
| debugnik wrote:
| Just last year I migrated to Git a major code base that was
| still stuck in SVN. It's not even a legacy project, just a
| laggard. For some colleagues, this was their first time using
| Git on the job.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There are large projects still using CVS. Not to say everyone
| should, but git is only a tool. It isn't essential, and there
| are alternate ways to achive the same ends with different
| tools.
| redm wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment of this article.
|
| Sadly, I'm still disagreeing while crypto kiddies are driving
| past me in lambo's. If its the future of money, yes we'll get
| there eventually, but like every technology shift, there's a lot
| of money to be made in the transition, not after. *
|
| * I sold all crypto a few years ago and I'm a happier person :D
| codingdave wrote:
| When you see people making money from something you did not get
| involved in, just remember: Someone will always be luckier than
| you, wealthier than you, etc. It doesn't matter. Measure
| yourself by your own life satisfaction, not by how others are
| doing.
|
| That is why I agree with the sentiment as well. I use AI a
| little. Not too much. And I'm as swamped with work as ever
| because my focus is on legacy stacks, where AI is really not
| strong.
| lich_king wrote:
| Alternatively, there's money to be lost in the transition. The
| vast majority of "crypto investors" did not walk away from it
| any richer. Some folks have gotten lucky, but it's just that:
| their _thesis_ about the future of money was evidently wrong,
| they just happened to get the timing right. Getting lucky for
| the wrong reasons is not a good investment strategy.
|
| Meanwhile, the main category of people who have consistently
| gotten rich off the "crypto revolution" were various scammers
| and pump-and-dumpers who have since moved on to meme stocks, AI
| content farming, and so on.
|
| But I wouldn't use crypto as a benchmark because AI has more
| substance. We can debate if it's going to change the world, but
| you can build some new types of businesses and services if you
| have near-perfect natural language comprehension on the cheap.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Sadly, I'm still disagreeing while crypto kiddies are driving
| past me in lambo's.
|
| I know a few people who got wealthy by being early to crypto.
| None of them had the correct reasoning at the time: They
| thought BTC was going to become a common way to pay for things
| or that "the flippening" was going to see worldwide currency
| replaced with BTC. They thought they'd be kings in a new
| economy but instead they're just moderately wealthy with a
| large tax bill they're determined to dodge.
|
| I know far more people who lost money on crypto, though. Some
| were even briefly crypto-rich but failed to sell before the
| crash or did things like double down on the altcoin bubble.
|
| The second group had gone quiet about their crypto while the
| few people in the first group gloat and evangelize (because
| continued evangelization is necessary to keep their portfolios
| pumped). This creates an intense survivorship bias where it
| appears like all the crypto kiddies are wealthy, but a quiet
| mass of people who played with crypto are most definitely not.
| topaz0 wrote:
| Others are pointing out that many also lost money, but I think
| we can say something even stronger, which is that the people
| that got rich only did so by taking the money of the people who
| lost money on it. If it's the future of money, you'll be able
| to buy in at a stable valuation, neither winning nor losing in
| the transition -- that's kind of a key property of money.
| butILoveLife wrote:
| This would hit harder if Bitcoin didn't win and AI coding didn't
| completely change our jobs.
|
| Why not simply evaluate things instead of ignoring them until its
| too late?
|
| Sure, we don't have infinity time, but the fact that OP mentions
| these two things, means the pattern showed up enough.
| eugenekolo wrote:
| I'm not sure Bitcoin won.. it just continues being a ponzi
| scheme that you can make money in.
|
| You can also accept that certain things and be happy in life
| either way. Don't need to chase get rich schemes. Some are more
| privileged than others in being able to do this.
| mehagar wrote:
| You make it seem like AI coding has already "totally changed"
| our jobs. This is exactly the FOMO the article talks about
| ("until its too late"). It hasn't. I'm still using the same
| workflows without AI tools, and so are most of my teammates.
| butILoveLife wrote:
| To be fair, I would have talked like you in January 2026. But
| things have changed since Feb.
| techblueberry wrote:
| What is too late? If you want to use cryptocurrency as a medium
| of exchange, go ahead, it's right there!
|
| There's this irony to the FOMO in crypto, which is people argue
| the "sensible" thing (it's the future of money) to create FOMO
| for the insensible thing (it's a lottery ticket). You're right
| it's too late to buy a lottery ticket, but the vision wasn't a
| lottery, it was a medium of exchange!
|
| AI assisted coding is the same way. I use it every day, but if
| I decided to stop and wait a year, I could still pick it up,
| probably more easily when the tools are better.
|
| In fact, people who wait might do better than me because their
| mental model won't be locked into a way of interacting that
| will be out of date in six months.
|
| Wouldn't it be ironic if all the early adopters were the losers
| because they liked the hacky nature of it? This happened to a
| lot of early computer adopters, low level programmers, etc.
| butILoveLife wrote:
| I never said Crypto. I said bitcoin.
|
| And with AI... I am genuinely afraid my job will be
| automated. I'm trying to become a manager before we are
| relegated to minimum wage workers.
| techblueberry wrote:
| It sounds like you're just trying to delay the inevitable
| then. Manager's may be automated before Software Engineers!
| Or at the very least otherwise be made redundant.
|
| https://fortune.com/2025/03/04/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-
| middle-...
| techblueberry wrote:
| But what are you too late for bitcoin for? Go buy some!
| lpcvoid wrote:
| Bitcoin won? I don't think it did. Main use is still scams,
| circumventing sanctions, and grifting. My SEPA instant money
| transfer does everything bitcoin promised without the trash,
| and bad people surrounding bitcoin.
| randomsolutions wrote:
| He is rejecting the framing of get in now before it's "too
| late". If it is so useful then we will be able to pick it up
| when it is more polished rather than learning to use some half
| polished turd that will be obsolete in 6 months.
| monegator wrote:
| daily reminder your have yet to start paying for using LLMs,
| the current paid tiers are just to lure you in.
|
| It also has changed nothing in the way i do stuff. Checked it
| out, not for me, thanks but no thanks
|
| (Sick and tired of hearing how you made an ui in a couple of
| hours by directing the code when it still takes me the same
| couple of hours of coding.)
| fdghrtbrt wrote:
| "if bitcoin didn't win?" It didn't win. It's still useless.
| hparadiz wrote:
| must be nice to always live under stable currencies.
| fdghrtbrt wrote:
| Where do you live?
| hparadiz wrote:
| At one point I lived in the Soviet Union but that's not
| really relevant to my point.
| fdghrtbrt wrote:
| I don't understand your point. You said it would be nice
| to live..... what does that have to do with bitcoin?
| What's your point? Make a point.
| hparadiz wrote:
| My point is your opinion is sheltered and lacks life
| experience.
| fdghrtbrt wrote:
| Your opinion on my opinion is not really relevant to
| bitcoin.
| Hasslequest wrote:
| You can use it at steak n shake
| master-lincoln wrote:
| What did bitcoin win? Seems to me like it's mainly used as
| speculative asset instead of using it to pay goods and
| services.
| cryptonym wrote:
| Crypto didn't "win", the technology is there but people are
| mostly gambling, or doing shady stuff. Shall I mention NFTs? It
| didn't change the life of the average joe, nor business. It's a
| niche.
|
| Many people are still coding without AI and doing perfectly
| fine. When you design serious things, coding is not where most
| time is spent anyway. Maybe it'll become unavoidable at some
| point, by that time the experience will be refined and it'll be
| easier to learn.
|
| Point is, it's never too late. If you don't need to be cutting
| edge on a new tech, it may not make sense to put the extra
| effort of early birds. If you put that effort, you better not
| do it for free.
| argee wrote:
| I agree with the conclusion but not with the premise. The
| conclusion is, "I don't have to be an early adopter," but the
| premise seems to be "there is zero utility in getting in on
| anything early."
| Aldipower wrote:
| WordStar for DOS was great! A lot better then my hand-writing.
| But still, I get the point. :-)
| badc0ffee wrote:
| I was a WordPerfect guy, personally.
| A_Duck wrote:
| I'm upvoting because it's useful to see and debate this viewpoint
| -- shared by many engineers I know
|
| I do think it's a bad take though. Not all new trends are the
| same: the metaverse was an obvious flop and crypto hasn't found
| practical applications. AI isn't like those because it's already
| practically changed the way I get my job done.
|
| It takes time to learn skills, and getting started earlier will
| means more time to use them in your working life.
| mehagar wrote:
| The way I see it is - AI still makes mistakes, and I have to
| know how things work at some point anyway. So I'd rather spend
| my time actually understanding fundamentals (in my case, CSS at
| the moment), than trying to keep up with the frequently
| changing AI tools and models.
|
| Once the tools and models stabilize more (as well as the
| pricing model), there's less risk in me learning something that
| is no longer relevant.
|
| Except when I choose to wait on learning how to use AI tools
| effectively, I get told I am going to be "left behind".
| adriancooney wrote:
| There are real productivity gains by using these tools right now.
| Instead of doing 1x your normal work, you can do 5x while still
| maintaining quality. This is like an accountant sticking to pen
| and paper because calculators are big and clunky.
| nehal3m wrote:
| In your analogy that calculator would only produce a correct
| answer 80% of the time, and plausible looking but incorrect
| ones the other 20%.
|
| If that were the case I'd hire pen guy.
| braebo wrote:
| More like "Producing 80% of the correct answer" and the
| remaining 20% with some nudging and tweaking. Still extremely
| valuable.
| adriancooney wrote:
| What's the error rate of the pen guy?
|
| Also, if your AI has a 20% error rate, you're not holding it
| right. You need to spend more time keeping it on rails - unit
| tests, integration tests, e2e tests, local dev + browser use,
| preview deployments, staging environments, phased rollouts,
| AI PR reviews, rolling releases. The error rate will be much
| closer to 0%.
| davebren wrote:
| How does a phased rollout improve LLM error rates exactly?
| adriancooney wrote:
| Error rate here is the rate of shipping bugs to
| customers.
| davebren wrote:
| That wasn't what the comment you responded to was
| referring to. I guess it makes sense since you are kind
| of like an LLM with how you respond to input.
| gonzalohm wrote:
| What if the calculator had randomness built into it?
| graypegg wrote:
| > I feel the same way about the current crop of AI tools. I've
| tried a bunch of them. Some are good. Most are a bit shit. Few
| are useful to me as they are now. [...] If this tech is as
| amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become
| productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours.
|
| I think the point the author is making is not that it's all
| useless, but against the very overly simplistic idea the plot
| of Amount of AI vs Productivity in All Situations is a hockey
| stick chart.
|
| Being told to be excited about something when clearly all
| they're saying is "it works sometimes, other times not so much.
| I'll keep checking and when it's good enough for me I'll get on
| board" is aggravating.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Instead of doing 1x your normal work, you can do 5x while
| still maintaining quality.
|
| Yet my pay stays the same, all my coworkers get fired, and Sam
| Altman gets all of their paychecks. Hrm.
| RustyBucket wrote:
| To be honest, I would rather spend 5x effort while doing my
| normal work, because salary won't grow.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Instead of doing 1x your normal work, you can do 5x while
| still maintaining quality.
|
| That's a gross overestimate. 2x I would maybe believe.
|
| Someone has to sign off your work and unless it's hard to write
| but easy to read, this is where the bottleneck currently lies.
| adriancooney wrote:
| Everything is relative. If your systems aren't adapted to AI
| development, it will be much lower.
| make_it_sure wrote:
| some people are not ok, some people lose their jobs and suffer
| because they are too complacent and it's too uncomfortable to
| adapt.
|
| This is the lazy guy path, is not the wise one.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| People mostly lose their jobs and suffer through no failure
| they were positioned to avoid, and often through no fault of
| their own at all. Spending your career chasing fads out of fear
| of being abandoned to penury is at least as limiting as mere
| conservatism towards new technologies. The risk is real and the
| fear is valid but that isn't the solution, no individual action
| you can take is the solution.
| heytakeiteasy wrote:
| Feels like a false equivalency. It's just my experience, but I've
| completely ignored crypto and the metaverse, and I don't get the
| sense I'm missing out on much. In contrast, LLMs in their current
| state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an
| idea and a working implementation, which has been legitimately
| transformative in my software dev life. Transformative for the
| better? Time will tell I suppose, but I'm really enjoying it so
| far.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose
|
| That's the point of the blog post. If you can't even say right
| now whether it's for the better, then there's no reason to rush
| in.
| nehal3m wrote:
| And conversely if it is, then there is no point to getting in
| early since the whole point is to externalize knowledge and
| experience
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I read OP as saying it _is_ transformative, at least for
| them. Whether it 's transformative for _society_ is left to
| be decided.
| xondono wrote:
| This depends very much on your line of work.
|
| As a freelancer I do a bit of everything, and I've seen places
| where LLM breezes through and gets me what I want quickly, and
| times where using an LLM was a complete waste of time.
| pennomi wrote:
| For sure. The more specialized or obscure of things you have
| to do, the less LLMs help you.
|
| Building a simple marketing website? Probably don't waste
| your time - an LLM will probably be faster.
|
| Designing a new SLAM algorithm? Probably LLMs will spin
| around in circles helplessly. That being said, that was my
| experience several years ago... maybe state of the art has
| changed in the computer vision space.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| Specialized is probably not the word I'd use, because llms
| are generally useful to understand more specialized /
| obscure topics. For example I've never randomly heard
| people talking about the dicom standard, llms have no
| trouble with it.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > llms are generally useful to understand more
| specialized / obscure topics
|
| A very simple kind of query that in my experiences causes
| problems to many current LLMs is:
|
| "Write {something obscure} in the Wolfram programming
| language."
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| One tendency I've noticed is that LLMs struggle with
| creativity. If you give them a language with extremely
| powerful and expressive features, they'll often fail to
| use them to simplify other problems the way a good
| programmer does. Wolfram is a language essentially
| designed around that.
|
| I wasn't able to replicate in my own testing though. Do
| you know if it also fails for "mathematica" code? There's
| much more text online about that.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Do you know if it also fails for "mathematica" code?
|
| My experience concerning using "Mathematica" instead of
| "Wolfram" in AI tasks is similar.
| phil21 wrote:
| I think there is a sweet spot for the training(?) on
| these LLMs where there is basically only "professional"
| level documentation and chatter, without the layman stuff
| being picked up from reddit and github/etc.
|
| I was looking at trying to remember/figure out some
| obscure hardware communication protocol to figure out
| enumeration of a hardware bus on some servers. Feeding
| codex a few RFC URLs and other such information, plus
| telling it to search the internet resulted in extremely
| rapid progress vs. having to wade through 500 pages of
| technical jargon and specification documents.
|
| I'm sure if I was extending the spec to a 3.0 version in
| hardware or something it would not be useful, but for
| someone who just needs to understand the basics to get
| some quick tooling stood up it was close to magic.
| i_cannot_hack wrote:
| The standard for obscurity is different for LLMs,
| something can be very widespread and public without the
| average person knowing about it. DICOM is used at
| practically every hospital in the world, there's whole
| websites dedicated to browsing the documentation,
| companies employ people solely for DICOM work, there's
| popular maintained libraries for several different
| languages, etc, so the LLM has an enormous amount of it
| in its training data.
|
| The question relevant for LLMs would be "how many high
| quality results would I get if I googled something
| related to this", and for DICOM the answer is "many". As
| long the that is the case LLMs will not have trouble
| answering questions about it either.
| heytakeiteasy wrote:
| > The more specialized or obscure of things you have to do,
| the less LLMs help you.
|
| I've been impressed by how this isn't quite true. A lot of
| my coding life is spent in the popular languages, which the
| LLMs obviously excel at.
|
| But a random dates-to-the-80s robotics language (Karel)? I
| unfortunately have to use it sometimes, and Claude ingested
| a 100s of pages long PDF manual for the language and now
| it's better at it than I am. It doesn't even have a
| compiler to test against, and still it rarely makes
| mistakes.
|
| I think the trick with a lot of these LLMs is just figuring
| out the best techniques for using them. Fortunately a lot
| of people are working all the time to figure this out.
| jatora wrote:
| Agreed. This sentiment you are replying to is a common
| one and is just people self-aggrandizing. No, almost
| nobody is working on code novel enough to be difficult
| for an LLM. All code projects build on things LLM's
| understand very well.
|
| Even if your architectural idea is completely unique... a
| never before seen magnum opus, the building blocks are
| still legos.
| someguynamedq wrote:
| Several years ago is ancient with the rate of advancement
| that LLMs have had recently
| archagon wrote:
| > _Building a simple marketing website? Probably don't
| waste your time - an LLM will probably be faster._
|
| This is actually where I would be most reluctant to use an
| LLM. Your website represents your product, and you probably
| don't want to give it the scent of homogenized AI slop.
| People can tell.
| peacebeard wrote:
| Honestly I think this is the primary explanation for why
| there is so much disagreement on if LLMs are useful or not.
| If you leave out the more motivated arguments in particular.
| muskstinks wrote:
| But this learning is also value.
|
| Without playing around with it, you wouldn't know when to use
| an LLM and when not.
| daveguy wrote:
| But the models change every 3-6 months. What's the use of
| learning what they can and can't do when what they can and
| can't do changes so frequently?
| joquarky wrote:
| If you had to hold on for dear life during the ~2014-2017
| JavaScript framework chaos, then 3-6 months is peanuts.
|
| This is an industry that requires continuous learning.
| christofosho wrote:
| Some subscriptions offer "unlimited tokens" for certain
| models. i.e. GitHub co-pilot can be unlimited for GPT-4o
| and GPT-4.1 (and, actually, GPT-5 mini!). So: I spent
| some time with those models to see what level of
| scaffolding and breaking things down (hand holding) was
| required to get them to complete a task.
|
| Why would I do that? Well, I wanted to understand more
| deeply how differences in my prompting might impact the
| outcomes of the model. I also wanted to get generally
| better at writing prompts. And of course, improving at
| controlling context and seeing how models can go off the
| rails. Just by being better at understanding these
| patterns, I feel more confident in general at when and
| how to use LLMs in my daily work.
|
| I think, in general, understanding not only that earlier
| models are weaker, but also _how_ they are weaker, is
| useful in its own right. It gives you an extra tool to
| use.
|
| I will say, the biggest findings for "weaknesses" I've
| found are in training data. If you're keeping your
| libraries up-to-date, and you're using newer methods or
| functionality from those libraries, AI will constantly
| fail to identify with those new things. For example, Zod
| v4 came out recently and the older models absolutely fail
| to understand that it uses some different syntax and
| methods under the hood. Jest now supports `using` syntax
| for its spyOn method, and models just can't figure it
| out. Even with system prompts and telling them directly,
| the existing training data is just too overpowering.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| > In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me)
| dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working
| implementation, which has been legitimately transformative in
| my software dev life.
|
| Feels like a false dichotomy.
|
| Have I become faster with LLMs? Yes, maybe. Is it 10x or 1000x
| or 10,000x? Definitely not. I think actually in the past I
| would have leaned more on senior developers, books, stack
| overflow etc. but now I can be much more independent and
| proactive.
|
| LLM-based tools are a wide spectrum, and to argue that the
| whole spectrum is worth exploring because one sliver of it has
| definite utility is a bit wonky. Kind of like saying $SHITCOIN
| is worth investing in because $BITCOIN mooned as a speculative
| asset: - I'm bullish on LLMs chat interfaces
| replacing StackOverflow and O'Reilly - I could not be
| more bearish on Agents automating software engineering
|
| Feel like we're back at Adobe Dreameaver release and everyone
| is claiming that web development jobs are dead.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Have I become faster with LLMs? Yes, maybe._
|
| The question isn't if you've improved. It's if the path you
| took to getting to your current improvement could have been
| shortcut with the benefit of hindsight. Given the number of
| dead ends we've traversed, the answer almost certainly is
| yes.
| hungryhobbit wrote:
| >Feel like we're back at Adobe Dreameaver release and
| everyone is claiming that web development jobs are dead
|
| I truly believe so much of the anti-AI sentiment is the same
| as the Luddites.
|
| They're often used as a meme now, but they were very real
| people, faced with a real and present risk to their
| livelihoods. They acted out of fear, but not just irrational
| fear.
|
| AI is the same: it's unquestionably (to anyone evaluating it
| fairly) a huge boost to productivity ... and also,
| unquestionably, a threat to programmer jobs.
|
| Maybe the OP is right about waiting, but to me whenever new
| tech is disrupting jobs, that seems like the best time to
| learn it. If you don't, it's not just FOMO as the author
| suggests ... it's failing to keep up on the skills that keep
| you employed.
| toraway wrote:
| AI is the same: it's unquestionably (to anyone evaluating
| it fairly) a huge boost to productivity .
|
| And yet, the only research that tries to evaluate this in a
| controlled, scientific way does not actually show this.
| Critics then say those studies aren't valid because of X, Y
| or Z but don't provide anything stronger than anecdotes in
| rebuttal.
|
| It's ridiculous double standard and poisons any reasonable
| discussion to assert something is a fact and anyone who
| disagrees is a hysterical Luddite based on no actual
| evidence.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| The burden of proof lies with he who makes grand claims. My
| counterargument in the face of your lack of evidence is:
| "Where are all the improvements to my daily life? Where are
| the disrupting geniuses who go-to market 100x faster than
| their Luddite counterparts?"
|
| To paraphrase another analogy that I enjoyed, it's a bit
| like when 3d printing became a thing and hype con artists
| claimed that no one would buy anything anymore, you could
| just 3d print it.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| You don't need 100x productivity to be disruptive. In
| business 10% gain can be quite enormous. My senior
| engineers are estimating 25-50% gains. That is a far cry
| from your 100,000% gain, but very real and meaningful.
| tastyface wrote:
| The last study that came out on this showed that
| engineers were significantly overestimating their own
| productivity gains.
|
| If a stat like that is not accurately measured, it's
| useless.
| whazor wrote:
| I have found that maximising AI coding is a skill on its
| own. There is a lot of context switching. There is making
| sure agents are running in loops. Keeping the quality high
| is also important, as they often take shortcuts. And
| finally you need an somewhat of an architectural vision to
| ensure agents don't just work in a single file.
|
| This is all very tiring and difficult. You can be
| significantly better than other people at this skill.
| mekoka wrote:
| > it's failing to keep up on the skills that keep you
| employed.
|
| I judge "failing to keep up" by my ability to "catch up".
| Right now if I search for paying courses on AI-assisted
| coding, I get a royal bunch for anything between 3$ to
| about 25$. These are distilled and converging observations
| by people who have had more time playing around with these
| toys than me. Most are less than 10 hours (usually 3 to 5).
| I also find countless free ones on YouTube popping up every
| week that can catch me up to a decent bouquet of current
| practices in an hour or two. They all also more or less
| need to be updated to relevancy after a few months (e.g.
| I've recently deleted my numerous bookmarks on MCP).
|
| Don't get me wrong, LLM-assisted coding _is_ disruptive,
| but when practice becomes obsolete after a few months it 's
| not really what's keeping you employed. If after you've
| spent much time and effort to live near that edge, the gap
| that truly separates you from me in any meaningful way can
| be covered in a few hours to catch up, you're not really
| leaving me behind.
| newsoftheday wrote:
| > In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me)
| dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working
| implementation
|
| It may have reduced the time to an implementation, based on my
| experiences I sincerely doubt the veracity of applying the
| adjective "working".
| locknitpicker wrote:
| > Feels like a false equivalency.
|
| It's clearly a textbook example of survivorship bias.
|
| In the 90s the same argument was directed at this new thing
| called the internet, and those who placed a bet on it being a
| fad ended up being forgotten by history.
|
| It's rather obvious that this AI thing is a transformative
| event in world history, perhaps more critical than the advent
| of the internet. Take a look at traffic to established sites
| such as Stack Overflow to get a glimpse of the radical impact.
| Even in social media we started to see the dead internet theory
| put to practice in real time.
|
| And coding is the lowest of low hanging fruits.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > It's rather obvious that this AI thing is a transformative
| event in world history, perhaps more critical than the advent
| of the internet. Take a look at traffic to established sites
| such as Stack Overflow to get a glimpse of the radical
| impact. Even in social media we started to see the dead
| internet theory put to practice in real time.
|
| It's worth noting that SO was declining well before ChatGPT
| launched. It seems more likely that the decline of SO was
| more driven by Google ranking changes to prioritise websites
| that served Google ads. Certainly I remember having to go
| down a few results to get SO results for a while, even when
| the top results were just copypasta from SO.
| locknitpicker wrote:
| > It's worth noting that SO was declining well before
| ChatGPT launched. It seems more likely that the decline of
| SO was more driven by Google ranking changes to prioritise
| websites that served Google ads.
|
| I don't think that's it. SO was the go-to page for
| troubleshooting, whose traffic was not exactly originating
| from web search. Also, the LLM-correlated drop in traffic
| is also reported by search engines. Stack Overflow just so
| happens to be a specialized service with a very specialized
| audience whose demand is perfectly dominated by LLM
| chatbots.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| > In the 90s the same argument was directed at this new thing
| called the internet, and those who placed a bet on it being a
| fad ended up being forgotten by history.
|
| Allow me to introduce you to the dot-com boom, where everyone
| who bet on the internet went broke.
| aworks wrote:
| The Google founders did ok.
| lapcat wrote:
| > In the 90s the same argument was directed at this new thing
| called the internet, and those who placed a bet on it being a
| fad ended up being forgotten by history.
|
| Almost all people are "forgotten" by history.
|
| In any case, people who were not even born yet in the 1990s
| are using the internet today, very successfully, so clearly
| you can wait.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Internet is something new. By definition llm coding isn't
| doing anything you couldn't have done already. Once the
| agents aren't writing a human syntax based language but are
| spitting out opaque functions in binary machine code, then
| they are doing something new and compelling imo because there
| are real performance gains with that.
| bitwize wrote:
| No, this is wrong. AI has _drastically_ shortened the time
| and effort between idea and implementation. The upshot
| being, that not only do you get things done faster, but
| things you wouldn 't otherwise countenance doing are now
| within reach.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| So where is all the new tech years into ai? Turns out
| that wasn't the limiting factor. The limiting factor is
| still what it was 10,000 years ago in business:
| accumulating capital to start and finding a fit in the
| market to last.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| In the 90s was also the dotcom boom, and the vast majority of
| those who placed an all-in bet on it being everything lost it
| all in the dotcom bust and also "ended up being forgotten by
| history". Some of those bets were prescient but too early but
| many of those bets never made any sense. The dotcom bust was
| worse than the software industry crash we're experiencing
| now.
|
| "It's rather obvious that this AI thing is a transformative
| event in world history" perhaps but it's not at all obvious
| how it's going to shake out or which bets are sensible.
| locknitpicker wrote:
| > In the 90s was also the dotcom boom, and the vast
| majority of those who placed an all-in bet on it being
| everything lost it all in the dotcom bust and also "ended
| up being forgotten by history".
|
| I think you are missing the point, and also the very site
| you're posting on.
|
| Look at the top 50 list of most valuable companies in the
| world. Over half of the total market value reported today
| is attributed to companies which were either dotcom
| startups or whose growth was driven by the dotcom growth
| period. Dismissing the advent of the internet as anything
| short of revolutionary is disingenuous, no matter how many
| zombo.com companies failed.
|
| LLMs have the exact same transformative impact on humanity.
| danaris wrote:
| > LLMs have the exact same transformative impact on
| humanity.
|
| But this is begging the question.
|
| Yes, we can see that the internet was radically
| transformative.
|
| But you are arguing that this somehow proves that LLMs
| are too, when there's wildly insufficient evidence--
| either on where LLMs are going in themselves, or in the
| comparison--to credibly make that claim.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me)
| dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working
| implementation, which has been legitimately transformative in
| my software dev life.
|
| I can't really agree. I've never seen anything from an LLM that
| I would consider even helpful, never mind transformative.
|
| How are you supposed to use them?
| kaffekaka wrote:
| Is this seriously so? Have you never seen anything helpful
| from an LLM? That seems such a black and white statement that
| I get confused.
|
| I am conservative regarding AI driven coding but I still see
| tremendous value.
|
| It makes me want to ask you: do you ever see helpful things
| from your colleagues at all?
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > Is this seriously so? Have you never seen anything
| helpful from an LLM?
|
| No, not at all. I may be using it wrong.
|
| I put in "write me a library that decodes network packets
| in <format I'm working with>" and it had no idea where to
| start.
|
| What part of it is it supposed to do? I don't want to do
| any more typing than I have to.
| linhns wrote:
| Well, if you ask it to write a library at the start, it's
| likely it will not do that well. Start small, spoon feed
| some examples.
| xigoi wrote:
| If you have to put in this much effort, why not just
| write it yourself?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| When you write a library the first step is always
| designing it. LLMs dont get rid of that step, they get
| rid of the next step where you implement your design.
| xigoi wrote:
| They also added an additional step where you have to
| explain your design using vague natural language.
| irishcule wrote:
| Is this really "additional"? do you not do design
| docs/adrs/rfcs etc and talk about them with your team? do
| you take any notes or write out your design/plan in some
| way even for yourself?
|
| Why can't you just pass any of those to an AI?
| xigoi wrote:
| I'm not part of any team, I work on my projects alone. I
| rarely write long-form design documents; usually I either
| just start coding or write very vague notes that only
| make sense when combined with what's in my head.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| So I have to do a lot of typing? Because the typing is
| the bit I don't want to do.
|
| Actually writing code is the fun and easy bit.
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| You're right, you are using it wrong. An LLM can read
| code faster than you can, write code faster than you can,
| and knows more things than you do. By "you" I mean you,
| me, and anyone with a biological brain.
|
| Where LLMs are behind humans is depth of insight. Doing
| anything non-trivial requires insight.
|
| The key to effectively using LLMs is to provide the
| insight yourself, then let the LLM do the grunt work.
| Kind of like paint by numbers. In your case, I would
| recommend some combination of defining the API of the
| library you want yourself manually, thinking through how
| you would implement it and writing down the broad strokes
| of the process for the LLM, and collecting reference
| materials like a format spec, any docs, the code that's
| creating these packets, and so on.
| spelunker wrote:
| Crypto and the Metaverse were solutions in search of a problem.
| LLMs kind of felt like that until tooling arrived that enabled
| doing a lot more than copying + pasting chat conversations.
|
| Sure, maybe crypto changed some lives, but an entire industry?
| I think ALL of software dev is going under a transformation and
| I think we're past the point of "wait it out" IMO.
|
| Or I'm wrong, but right I'm being paid to develop a new skill
| professionally. Maybe the skill ends up not being useful - ok,
| back to writing code the old way then.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| In general, a good strategy is just staying a little bit behind.
| Let the new fads play themselves out. Some have staying power.
| Bitcoin never did turn into a usable currency, just another
| speculator's toy. Luckily I am - so far - in a position where I
| can watch the AI thing from the sidelines to see how it plays
| out.
| throwaway330935 wrote:
| >what's the point of "getting in early"?
|
| You're trying to make the point using BitCoin, but in the early
| 2000s I had just over 14,000 of them, so I can quite clearly see
| a point in getting in early.
| flatline wrote:
| The bitcoin white paper was released in 2008.
| bdcravens wrote:
| (Assuming you meant early 2010s, since Bitcoin didn't exist in
| the early 2000s)
|
| This underscores a main counter point: dipping your toes and
| casting a wide net often has a low cost, since back then you
| could mine (and even purchase) Bitcoin relatively
| inexpensively. If it hadn't worked out, then it wouldn't have
| hurt much at all.
| jmye wrote:
| The argument about bitcoin was against it being "the future of
| currency". There is no point, whatsoever, to "getting in early"
| to that.
|
| If everyone had been talking about it like the casino that it
| actually is, then sure - some people made some good bets, and a
| lot of people made bad ones trying to get in early. Imagine
| being the person who sold all your bitcoin for whatever other
| stupid memecoin, to "get in early"?
|
| It's not a real counter-argument, it's just "I had a lot of
| dumb luck on this one specific thing, aren't you silly for not
| guessing as well as me".
| A_Duck wrote:
| Crypto isn't bad because it failed to make early adopters rich --
| it did make them rich. It's bad because it has horrible
| externalities in scams, war crimes / sanctions evasion, organised
| crime -- which most of those early adopters were well aware of.
| gonzalohm wrote:
| All those apply to AI too, no?
| edent wrote:
| You can make pretty much the same arguments for LLMs.
| Pollution, corruption, and war are all things I'm keen to
| avoid.
| aduwah wrote:
| Not to defend crypto, but this all applies to fiat too
| hparadiz wrote:
| For whatever reason the folks on here refuse to understand
| that for a big chunk of this planet people get paid in
| inflationary currencies that they used to have to immediately
| convert to dollars and then stuff under a mattress because
| the local banking system is corrupt. In that environment
| cryptocurrency is a god send.
| emoII wrote:
| I think you can actually replace crypto with LLMs/Diffusion
| models in this sentence and it will still hold true
| xondono wrote:
| The way early adopters got rich was by scamming others, so not
| sure I see your differentiation there
| dgxyz wrote:
| I make my money cleaning up all the stupid fads. The tail end of
| the curve is profitable.
| fdghrtbrt wrote:
| Guy who's ok with being left behind (crypto, AI) did a MSc on the
| metaverse. Sounds like he tried to go with the hype once, got
| burned.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Some might call that learning from our mistakes.
| jmye wrote:
| People don't believe in that anymore. If your gut instinct
| was wrong, you're not only bound to it for all time, but
| you'd best angrily double down at every opportunity. God
| forbid you "flip flop" or consider new information, or
| whatever.
| topaz0 wrote:
| Fortunately the LLM will always see that your gut instinct
| was right all along.
| edent wrote:
| You're welcome to read my MSc and see if I was "going with the
| hype" https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.10542
|
| The answer was quite the opposite. I wanted to see if the
| technology lived up to the hype. The answer, unsurprisingly was
| no. If only Zuck had listened to me :-)
| fdghrtbrt wrote:
| Wanna comment on why you'd be spending your time and energy
| doing free work for facebook?
| simianwords wrote:
| Its interesting to see this author's historical takes about AI.
|
| IMO it reads a little desperate and very much like the hype bros
| but from opposite side. Take a look at the articles if you don't
| believe.
|
| https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/ai/
|
| - I'm OK being left behind, thanks!
|
| - Unstructured Data and the Joy of having Something Else think
| for you
|
| - This time is different
|
| - How close are we to a vision for 2010?
|
| - AI is a NAND Maximiser
|
| - Reputation Scores for GitHub Accounts
|
| - Agentic AI is brilliant because I loath my family
|
| - Stop crawling my HTML you dickheads - use the API!
|
| - Removing "/Subtype /Watermark" images from a PDF using Linux
|
| - LLMs are still surprisingly bad at some simple tasks
|
| - Books will soon be obsolete in school
|
| - Winners don't use ChatGPT
|
| - Grinding down open source maintainers with AI
|
| - Why do people have such dramatically different experiences
| using AI?
|
| - Large Language Models and Pareidolia
|
| - How to Dismantle Knowledge of an Atomic Bomb
|
| - GitHub's Copilot lies about its own documentation. So why would
| I trust it with my code?
|
| - LLMs are good for coding because your documentation is shit
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > IMO it reads a little desperate and very much like the hype
| bros but from opposite side.
|
| I would coin it Chill Guys, and I claim on average they are
| more often correct than hype bros. We all know the old saying
| that nobody ever was fired for selecting an established
| solution/technology. Being chill, staying safe, it's more
| beneficial in real business. Just wait until the hype has
| normalized and then start dabbling with the new, when all
| others starting doing it also. You may not be the frontrunner
| of a new wave, but you can still ride it well. You are only
| really left behind when everyone changed, and your income
| starts drying up, until then, it's just business as usual.
|
| And always remember: when ChatGPT started its hype, many were
| predicting Googles death and the end of Web searches. Now, 3(?)
| years later, Google is still around, the search is still going
| strong, and Gemini is seriously competing with ChatGPT. Hypes
| come fast and die fast.
| simianwords wrote:
| this particular person seems to be more wrong than right
| though.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Agree with the message, coding since 1986, I have learned to not
| suffer from FOMO and wait for the dust to settle.
|
| Ironically one might even get projects to fix the mess left
| behind, as the magpies focus their attention into something else.
|
| In the case of AI, the fallacy is thinking that even if ridding
| the wave, everyone is allowed to stay around, now that the team
| can deliver more with less people.
|
| Maybe rushing out to the AI frontline won't bring in the
| interests that one is hoping for.
|
| EDIT: To make the point even clearer, with SaaS and iPaaS
| products, serverless, managed clouds, many projects now require a
| team that is rather small, versus having to develop everything
| from scratch on-prem. AI based development reduces even further
| the team size.
| bogzz wrote:
| It's a horrifying feeling facing the possibility that the career
| I spent so much time and money to get into is fading away. Sure,
| LLMs are not there yet, and they might not ever quite get there.
| But will companies start hiring again? If productivity has gone
| up, and it seems like it has, then no.
|
| So, a decade of hanging by a thread, getting by and doubling down
| on CS, hoping that the job market sees an uptick? Or trying to
| switch careers?
|
| I went to get a flat tire fixed yesterday and the whole time I
| was envious of the cheerful guy working on my car. A flat tire is
| a flat tire, no matter whether a recession is going on or whether
| LLMs are causing chaos in white collar work. If I had no debt and
| a little bit saved up I might just content myself with a humble
| moat like that.
| jghn wrote:
| > But will companies start hiring again?
|
| Anecdata, but the few people I know who were looking to switch
| gigs all had multiple offers within a few weeks. One thing they
| all had in common was taking a very targeted approach with
| their search and leveraging their networks. Not spamming
| thousands of resumes into the ether.
| jmye wrote:
| > leveraging their networks
|
| Just finished a search - agree. The resume process is
| fundamentally broken, but a strong network makes it
| irrelevant. Lean on connections - there's a _ton_ of
| opportunity out there.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| so you either are well connected or you starve, got it
|
| guess it's death and destitute for introverts
|
| edit: please explain the downvotes, i'm curious why you think
| i'm wrong
|
| if what op says it's true, that today only networking works,
| then it easily follows that if for some reasons you do not
| have a network then you don't get hired
| bogzz wrote:
| Seems like that is the case, yes.
| jghn wrote:
| Anyone who has been in the industry for several years or
| more should have people they can reach out to. That's not
| being well connected.
|
| This is really just a reversion to how things used to work,
| relying on human connections. People seemed to manage to
| get jobs 30 years ago just fine
| tavavex wrote:
| What if you weren't in the industry for several years or
| more? New grads are completely walled off from the
| industry because very few employers are willing to give
| them a shot anymore, even at minimum wage and no other
| demands from this most desperate worker segment. The few
| connections I scraped together weren't helpful because
| barely anyone is hiring juniors anymore. Having one of
| the resumes on top of someone's pile is only helpful if
| they ever get to using it. If you're at the lower end of
| the market, you have to be very exceptional or very
| lucky. Otherwise, you're done for.
| lionkor wrote:
| I'm currently involved in the hiring process in our
| company, selecting engineers for my team. If someone
| applies who has the programming language we ask for in
| their CV, they get a first interview. If they can read
| code, and write VERY basic code, they will get through at
| least the first 2 rounds without any issues.
|
| If people put down the AI, and actually learn how to write
| a `for` loop, they would be more hire-able than 50% of
| candidates.
|
| > "Guess it's death [...] for introverts"
|
| There is a meritocracy somewhere in our capitalist system.
| Not everyone participates, but it exists.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| OP was saying the only way to get hired is through work
| connections
|
| of course if the process doesn't involve networking then
| we don't have a problem, we agree on that
| jghn wrote:
| > OP was saying the only way to get hired is through work
| connections
|
| That is not at all what I said. Please do not
| misrepresent.
|
| I said they took a targeted approach *and* exercised
| their networks. Those are two separate things.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| > One thing they all had in common was taking a very
| targeted approach with their search and leveraging their
| networks
|
| Right, so they applied to a couple of jobs and it worked
| for them?
|
| I'm sorry, do you understand how uncommon and rare that
| is? sure, if their domain was REALLY niche and the jobs
| weren't publicly advertised, then i could see how that
| would work. but the experience is VASTLY different
| outside such niche cases
| jghn wrote:
| They applied to a couple of jobs where they were certain
| the fit would be good, and didn't mindlessly spam their
| resume to some bot. They got in touch with the right
| people, and worked it out from there. Because they had
| done their homework, the path was easier for them.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| yes, that's exactly what you said before. you're not
| engaging with what i'm saying at all.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Bro I'm an introvert and I have work connections. It isn't
| hard.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| > I have work connections.
|
| > It isn't hard.
|
| you're not an introvert then
| miah_ wrote:
| I've worked in tech since the late 90's and recently became an
| apprentice potter. My work in pottery is so much more
| fulfilling than any tech work I've done. I wish I had started
| sooner.
|
| I'm still working in tech, and likely will forever in a much
| reduced capacity. But pottery is my life now.
| samiv wrote:
| I cannot but agree. It's a massive skill leveling where
| software development is transforming from high skilled coding
| to low skilled prompting.
|
| For an old dog like myself it feels an unjust rug pull.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I don't think it's a psychologically positive self
| identification to see yourself merely as a gatekeeper and
| toll extractor rent seeker who only makes a living by
| withholding agency and skill from others.
|
| I know many jobs are about giving partial access to secrets
| or insider knowledge etc but I simply can't see myself
| accepting that this is my value proposition.
|
| No, let the pie grow. Let more people be able to do more
| things. Use the new capabilities to do even more. See how you
| can provide genuine value in the new environment. I know it
| isn't easy. There are many unknowns. But at least
| aspirationally I see that as the only positive way forward.
|
| The same thing has happened to many jobs. 100 years ago being
| a photographer was a difficult skill. They must have felt a
| rug pull when compact cameras became mainstream and they were
| no longer called to take all family pictures. Surely the
| codex writers felt a rug pull when printing became
| widespread. Typesetters when people could use word processors
| on their PC with font settings. Prop designers and practical
| effects people when movies switched to vfx. Etc etc.
| jwolfe wrote:
| > I don't think it's a psychologically positive self
| identification to see yourself merely as a gatekeeper and
| toll extractor rent seeker who only makes a living by
| withholding agency and skill from others.
|
| That's an incredibly uncharitable reading of the parent
| comment. At no point in history prior to maybe this year
| could you argue that working in software was gatekeeping,
| toll extracting, or rent seeking. Being a highly skilled
| craftsperson creating software for those who can't or don't
| want to is a very psychologically positive self
| identification. Lamenting that the industry is moving away
| from highly skilled craftspeople is also perfectly valid,
| even if you believe that it is somehow good for society,
| which is yet to become clear.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| They complained about the skill leveling where now lower
| skilled people can also do what needed higher skill
| before. You toiled to learn the craft, now there is a
| fast track to those results. That's what the rug pull is.
|
| Yes, producing software was value. (It of course still is
| as of today, we are talking about what may be coming). My
| plead is to continue searching for ways to contribute
| value. Don't resign to a feeling that the only way to
| hold on is if you try to stop others from knowing about
| or being able to use the skill leveling tech. This makes
| one bitter and negative. Embrace it, aspire to be happy
| about it.
|
| Its like getting scooped in science. In research, I
| always try to reframe it to be happy that science has
| progressed. Let me try to learn from it and pivot my
| research to some area where I can contribute something.
| Sulking about having been scooped does not lead to
| positive change and devalues ones own self-image.
| samiv wrote:
| The problem is that we don't live in a society where the
| benefits of new technology benefit all.
|
| We're about to pull the rug underneath all knowledge
| workers. This will disrupt wage earners lives. This will
| disrupt the economy.
|
| You might feel great about when things become cheaper but
| remember that when things are cheap it's only because
| costs are low and when costs are low the revenues are low
| and when revenues are low salaries are low too. Keep in
| mind that one party's cost is other party's revenue.
|
| The economy is ultimately one large circle where the
| money needs to go around. You might think of yourself a
| winner as long as someone else's salary drops to zero and
| you still get to keep your income but eventually it will
| be you whose income will also be disrupted.
|
| Just something to keep in mind.
|
| And also we're going to just not rug pull on the
| individual knowledge workers but businesses too. Any
| software company with a software product will quickly
| find themselves in a situation where their software is
| worth zero.
|
| Also this comment about gatekeeping is absolutely stupid.
| It's like saying trained doctors and medical schools are
| gatekeeping people from doctoring. It would be so much
| better if anyone could just doctor away, maybe with some
| tool assistance. So much fantastically better and
| cheaper? Right! Just lay off those expensive doctors and
| hire doctor-prompters for a fraction of the price.
| polothesecond wrote:
| > We're about to pull the rug underneath all knowledge
| workers. This will disrupt wage earners lives. This will
| disrupt the economy.
|
| It will put and end to the middle class entirely, but
| that's the intent.
|
| The reality is a lot of people who were formerly middle
| or upper middle class, and even some lower class
| populations will face steep, irreversible "status
| adjustment".
|
| I'm not talking about "we used to be able to take
| vacations and now we can't". I'm talking about "we used
| to be highly paid professionals now we're viciously
| competing for low paid day labor (gig work) to hopefully
| be able to afford the cheap cuts this week".
| bonoboTP wrote:
| You can make a living, if: you have a way to modify your
| behavior in a way such that it compels another human
| being to reciprocate and modify their behavior in a way
| that you find beneficial for your life. All of money and
| economics in the end boils down to this. If you no longer
| have any kind of behavior that your neighbors and
| community see as valuable enough to modify their behavior
| to benefit you and keep you around, then we will be in
| trouble.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > We're about to pull the rug underneath all knowledge
| workers. This will disrupt wage earners lives. This will
| disrupt the economy.
|
| to tie back to the actually article, if you believe a rug
| pull is imminent then you got to get off the rug. Idk,
| you have to make a decision because we're certainly at a
| fork in the road. There's no guarantee waiting will
| result in a better outcome nor one saying it will be a
| worse outcome. There's going to be winners and losers
| always and lot of it is really just luck in timing. I
| guess, in reality, the careers we've built come down to a
| flip of a coin; stay on the rug, get off the rug.
|
| /i'm thinking of buying a welding truck and getting in to
| that, then hire a welder and rinse repeat until i have a
| welding business. There's plenty of pipe fence in my neck
| of the woods and i see "welder wanted" all over the place
| so there's opportuntiy too.
| samiv wrote:
| Good luck to you and your welding business. Personally
| I'm getting to a point where I'm just "too old" (and
| grumpy) to start over, so I guess for me it's going to be
| a retirement to some LOCO that I can afford.
| draftsman wrote:
| LLMs have lowered the bar for the unskilled person to create
| shit software. I have used Opus 4.6 on a number of projects,
| and it still spits out buggy, and sometimes, flat out broken
| code. I was actually surprised when it completely
| hallucinated the names of query params for an HTTP request in
| my code, when in the prompt I had explicitly given it the
| exact names it needed to use. I thought these frontier models
| were supposed to be game changing.
| js8 wrote:
| > LLMs have lowered the bar for the unskilled person to
| create shit software.
|
| So? Demand the source code. Run your own AI to review the
| quality of the code base. The contracting company doesn't
| want to do it? Fine, find one that will.
| daveguy wrote:
| Add another layer of jank to review the original jank?
| That doesn't sound like a very helpful solution. But the
| companies selling AI will love it!
| tofuahdude wrote:
| Why unjust? Who promised you that the way software is made
| will stay static?
|
| Our software industry has specialized, for decades, in "rug
| pulling" / changing / "disrupting" other industries on a
| massive scale.
|
| I find it pretty ironic when engineers make these statements
| in that context.
| samiv wrote:
| Whether you like it or not but the society is built on
| certain social constructs and agreements.
|
| Do you think it's fair that when the society moves
| underneath, the capitalistic system moves its tectonic
| plates it's the individual who has to bear the cost of
| that?
|
| Abd let's be clear only software devs are just sucking it
| up. You think lawyers and doctors would allow themselves to
| be laid off en masse and be replaced with trainees who just
| prompt the computer?
|
| Also what will happen when high wage earners start loosing
| their discretionary income. The whole service sector for
| starters will be shaken.
|
| Just imagine some big tech company laying off 10k
| engineers. Making 0.3m per year. That's 3b dollars that
| disappear from the incomes and thus from the economy and
| just stays in the pockets of the capital holders.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i made this point a few comments up but i think what's
| happening to the software dev industry is what happened
| to the journalism industry when the web really came into
| its own and everyone was now a journalist. There were
| even books written by tech people about how great
| "creative destruction" is heh now the shoe is on the
| other foot. How many "old dinosaurs" did web development
| and software dev in general put out of business? My neck
| is on the line too but even i have to chuckle at that a
| little bit.
| samiv wrote:
| yep you're absolutely right. the value in journalism and
| journalistic output was based on the scarcity, i.e. the
| cost of publishing reduced the amount of available
| content. With web the costs were obliterated so the
| content exploded and the value of any individual piece
| dropped to essentially zero. When it's worth zero your
| revenues are zero and zero revenues you can't really pay
| for any journalism.
|
| So then you have no choice but to seek alternative
| revenue streams (ads, data mining) and in fact this
| becomes the thing, since the original thing no longer
| produces a revenue.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I think looking at what the web did to the journalism
| industry as a model to what's happening to the software dev
| industry is worth while. Journalism didn't go away but it did
| completely change. Many old school journalists just couldn't
| adapt and left the industry, many papers died too.
| samiv wrote:
| Many things only have value because of scarcity.
|
| Digital products such as "photoshop" have had value because
| people need a tool like that and there's only a limited
| number of competition, i.e. scarcity. The scarcity exists
| because of the cost. I.e. the cost of creating
| "photoshop"creates limit for how many "photoshops" exist.
| When you bring down the cost you'll have more "photoshops"
| when you have more "photoshops" as the volume increases the
| value decreases. Imagine if you can just tell claude "write
| me photoshop", go take a dump and come back 30 mins later
| to a running photoshop. You wouldn't now pay 200USD for a
| license, now would you? You'd pay 0USD.
|
| If you now create a tool that can (or promises it) can
| obliterate the costs, it means essentially anyone can
| produce "photoshop". And when anyone can do it it will be
| done over and over and at which point they're worth zero
| and you can't give them away.
|
| The same thing has happened to media publishing, print
| media -> web, computer games etc.
|
| Then the problem is that when your product is worth zero
| you can no longer make a business by creating your product,
| so in order to survive you must look into alternative
| revenue streams such as ads, data mining etc. None of which
| are a _benefit_ to to the product itself.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| I doubt software development will stay as "low skilled
| prompting", or that it is even low skilled prompting right
| now. Productive LLM usage goes beyond typing in better
| prompts and involves things like improving guardrails (eg
| type definitions and tests), context (docs and "skills" and
| MCP servers), and management strategy (instructing
| specialized agents together). It seems natural that there
| will be high skill AI coding to differentiate engineers, at
| least until superintelligent AGI emerges and kills us all.
| samiv wrote:
| Oh I cannot agree with this at all.
|
| If you think any programming task at hand one must have at
| least some reasonable grasp of formalism, boolean logic,
| predicate logic, then understanding the software developing
| concepts, your APIs frameworks, language constructs etc and
| finally the domain knowledge.Most of this goes away when
| changing from coding to prompting.
|
| I was just doing some computer graphics work myself doing
| Signed Distance Fields and Claude just literally
| regurgitated code that I could just adopt (since it works)
| without understanding any of the math involved.
|
| I'd say that prompting is at least two orders of magnitude
| easier than coding.
| yunwal wrote:
| > A flat tire is a flat tire, no matter whether a recession is
| going on or whether LLMs are causing chaos in white collar
| work.
|
| There's really not much stopping changing tires from being
| automated away. Further standardization of tires or wage
| increases would probably do the trick.
|
| There's still plenty of software to be created. You'll probably
| have to learn some ML tricks or whatever, but there's nothing
| going away, just changing as software has always done.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _There's really not much stopping changing tires from being
| automated away._
|
| Sounds like you've never changed a tire. Or at least not
| outside of a very controlled environment.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Are most cars not just undoing the lock, the bolts,
| switching the tire and redoing the bolts and locks?
|
| How are these put on in the first place on an assembly
| line?
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| This is the funniest possible answer to "Sounds like
| you've never changed a tire. Or at least not outside of a
| very controlled environment."
|
| "Oh, you think I've never changed a tire? Well here is my
| abstract high level understanding of the steps to
| changing a tire! And have you considered the
| quintessential controlled environment for putting tires
| onto cars?"
| tayo42 wrote:
| We all change tires with a jack and a spare? It's like a
| simple skill? I don't get the point your making then?
| nogridbag wrote:
| The tire is the black rubber that's mounted to the wheel.
| Tire shops don't give you a new wheel when you get a flat
| tire.
| thankyoufriend wrote:
| The "edge cases" make a simple task like this more
| difficult. What if the nuts are stripped? What if the
| terrain under/around the car is uneven or not solid
| ground? What if it's raining or snowing or hailing? What
| if the driver of the car is irrationally upset and kicks
| your tire-changing robot over? What if a tire change was
| requested, but it's clear (to a human) that there is more
| work that needs to be done?
| eks391 wrote:
| Every new successful tool doesn't start by trying to meet
| _every_ need or edge case. They perfect the main case,
| and then edge cases in priority of likelihood.
|
| Car washes are automated even though they haven't
| answered the edge cases of how to wash your car when your
| car is rolled on its side or a terrorist is actively
| blowing up the equipment. They simply only operate when
| your car is right side up (and other conditions, like in
| neutral, wipers off, and a driver who is willing to not
| exit the vehicle) and when there aren't active bombings
| on the building. And other "edge" cases.
|
| Just because there is a possibility for something to not
| work, doesn't make it useless. Automated tire
| replacements could start with very rigid cases where they
| are applicable, and expact the scope slowly to allow more
| cases, like a bent wheel or poor weather.
| yunwal wrote:
| Then you see a mechanic for the 5% of cases where it's
| weird? If you think AI is replacing 100% of software
| engineers anytime soon, idk what to tell you.
| eks391 wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure. I have been impressed by several
| things that seem to be complex but a way to be automated
| was found. Sure a no controlled environment is not
| conducive to automation, but who said a tow truck wouldn't
| be a part of the process? Washing a car has been automated
| with the precursor that the car is brought to the
| controlled environment first.
|
| I have even replaced car tires before and yet still have
| this opinion.
| fragmede wrote:
| https://www.pitproauto.com/ is working on that!
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| You must be joking that being a car mechanic is anything like
| it was 20 years ago.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| The vast majority of tires that need to be repaired or
| replaced (and the processes to do so) haven't changed much if
| at all, though. And there are entire franchises that pretty
| much only do tires. Same with many other manual labor tasks.
|
| These are predictable jobs with very few variables that there
| is still no sign of automation replacing any time soon. They
| often don't suck as bad as people think. One of the most
| enjoyable jobs I had was on an assembly line, because my mind
| was mostly free to wander. It was almost like meditation.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Hm, why don't you just go do it then? Seems strange to
| spread this knowledge and create competition for yourself.
|
| Theres a reason most people want a white collar job and
| send their kids to college instead of to such manual jobs.
| bogzz wrote:
| Money.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| > most people want a white collar job and send their kids
| to college
|
| Part of the reason for my prior comment is the clear fact
| that a not-insignificant percentage of white collar jobs
| are being massively devalued at the moment, which means
| many people who thought they'd be able to send their kids
| to college with income from such jobs won't.
|
| Considering that the field of robotics is so far behind
| LLMs in terms of clear value outside of niche industrial
| applications, I think manual labor is about due for a
| resurgence. There may be some major rebalancing
| happening. The big question for laborers will be - as it
| has always been - what can I do that sucks the least but
| also allows me to pay for a decent life? Answers will
| vary.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I'm not sure how long this state of robotics will last.
| Dexterity is improving very fast. Robots are getting
| cheaper and cheaper.
|
| But also, a lot of the manual labor is quite expensive
| and only affordable as long as there are white collar
| workers who can pay for fancy bathroom remodelings and
| landscaping and so on. I don't know how a big deluge of
| reskilled pipefitters and HVAC technicians will be able
| to find work. Will everyone just pay each other to do a
| bunch of handy work for each other?
| briHass wrote:
| This is the point missed by many. The trades are in high
| demand, right now, because of a labor shortage and demand
| from upper-middle class individuals without any DIY
| skills. A generation or two of pushing kids into college,
| and an almost disparaging view of 'getting your hands
| dirty' has built this perfect storm.
|
| However, besides a few trades that use
| unions/licensure/apprenticeship as an artificial supply
| limit, most trades are only limited by a willingness to
| do the work. A few decades ago, trade work was much less
| expensive, because supply was higher and many did their
| own DIY, which limited what prices the market would
| tolerate.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| There is infinite amount of software to be made. Desires and
| wants never get satisfied. There will simply be more software,
| more features, more supported platforms, more bug checks, more
| tests, more CI/CD, more docs, more websites, more services,
| more more more. Once we solve something, we have a million new
| desires that we want to solve. There will be plenty of work in
| software, up until the time when really all knowledge work can
| be replaced. At that point all bets are off.
| thejokeisonme wrote:
| I'm also being on Jevon's paradox in the case of software.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
| tavavex wrote:
| Do you think all software demands are completely elastic? I
| don't share your confidence, it feels like it's applying the
| desired conclusion to the premise. For sure, newer technology
| prompts new solutions and new tools to use with it, but some
| industries are much less flexible than others. If your
| business serves a certain number of clients - for example,
| companies that work in a specific industry that's growth-
| constrained - then making software twice as easy to make
| isn't going to double the number of their clients. That
| business you work for will either have to look at expanding
| into a different market, or, more realistically, lay off all
| the unneeded workers. There's a lot of businesses that work
| like that. What are they going to grow into?
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Competing software companies will offer more and more
| advanced software that handles more use cases, faster,
| better, with more features, with more compatibility, with
| more flexibility, with more integrations, with more ease of
| use, with more etc etc. They will propose software
| solutions for things that are currently not economical to
| provide. And other competing software companies will have
| to match that or do even more.
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| I think the bigger issue is not that LLMs are taking away
| developer jobs, but the current geopolitical crisis (the
| collapse of the US empire and the end of the neoliberal era) is
| leading towards an imminent economic catastrophe, and that
| would be enough to pop not only the AI bubble, but an even
| bigger "IT bubble" that has been proliferating since the 90s.
|
| Programmers (and other white collar jobs) were able to
| luxuriously coast along the ZIRP era because capital
| (replenished _twice_ via quantitative easing) was cheap and
| plentiful, and because the elites at the top had to pump huge
| amounts money to create a shared fantasy of the "technological
| future" that validates the neoliberal era. Now that the reality
| of the actual "physical economy" (the economy of making
| tangible _things_ ) has clawed back at us because of that
| forbidden three-letter word (war), we all realize that doubling
| and tripling oil prices were actually dictating our lives
| rather than some "Skynet AI" crap, and thus our fantasy
| simulacra of "virtual" play-things have now come to an end. Oh
| and we all found out that most of SaaS was actually bullshit
| anyway. In fact, if it could be completely replaced by AI then
| it was already pretty bullshit in the first place.
|
| So, for smart STEM people uninterested in programming and only
| looking for a stable career, I think they would be better off
| by just doing engineering work that's a bit more tangible, like
| robotics, manufacturing, shipbuilding, construction, etc. (Or
| anything related to war, but only if you're able to stomach
| what you're doing.) If you don't like to sit all day for a
| salary, then niche blue collar work can also be a good option,
| since general-purpose robotics (Physical AI?) is still too far
| away because of many, many issues that's just too long to
| explain here. I still think if you like programming then you
| should stick to it in the long run - there will be a very cold
| winter because of the combination of LLMs, AI bubble pop, and
| general economic depression, but for those who survive this era
| there will be an opportunity because of the shortage of skilled
| programmers (since no-one bothered to hire juniors after the
| pop, no one will grow to become seniors themselves!) Computing
| will still be with us forever, just not in a way that investors
| thought that it's going to "engulf the world".
| drstewart wrote:
| I would say if all of your doomastrophizing comes to light
| (the myriad of collapses and depressions and winters in your
| post), then there is no opportunity for anyone anywhere, and
| we should all stock up on bullets and cigarettes while we
| can.
|
| But something tells me you won't do that.
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| Yup, absolutely! People before us already lived through the
| Great Depression, people already lived through two World
| Wars, and despite all that there were still some
| technological advancements made and some good opportunities
| amongst the chaos! There's obviously going to be pains from
| transitioning into a new world order, but humanity will
| still keep on living. Just don't expect the next world to
| be the same as before!
|
| I think it's important to know and practice your passion,
| even if you have to work on something different to pay the
| bills. You can only be good at something if you really like
| it, and you never know what opportunity you'll stumble onto
| if you're ready for it.
| tavavex wrote:
| > A flat tire is a flat tire, no matter whether a recession is
| going on or whether LLMs are causing chaos in white collar
| work. If I had no debt and a little bit saved up I might just
| content myself with a humble moat like that.
|
| Bad idea. Automotive repair is barely a moat, because you don't
| need that much training to work those jobs. There's a lot of
| people who want to do it. And cars are definitely susceptible
| to recessions - if fewer people are buying cars, if there's a
| shift to transit, if your locality builds more pedestrian-
| friendly infrastructure, if businesses that use work vehicles
| are forced to close, then your demand drops and everyone
| already in the field is forced to compete with one another.
|
| For moats, look for things that are complex (not everyone can
| do it), licensed and always needed.
| dakolli wrote:
| The kid who showed his work in detail in math class is doing
| better in life 9/10 times than the kids that only knew how to use
| a calculator. Now consider how well the people who think you just
| need to know how to yell at the calculator are going to do?
|
| When Maps apps came around, people totally lost the brain muscle
| for being able to navigate. Using LLMs is no different, people
| over reliant on these tools are simply ngmi. They are going to be
| totally reliant on their favorite billionaire being willing to
| sell them competency via their thinking machines.
|
| I would caution everyone to consider if the Billionaires who are
| screaming that you're going to be left behind, laid off and
| redundant if you don't (pay them to) use their brain nerfing
| machine, whether or not they have your best interest at heart.
|
| You're not going to be left behind.
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
| dakolli wrote:
| Who the hell downvotes this lol
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I think that framing your observations in terms of
| "Billionaires who are screaming" about a "brain nerfing
| machine" doesn't help think about the issues clearly or
| contribute to a healthy discussion.
| Hasslequest wrote:
| Firstly, you can run the LLMs on your own machine. So I find
| the proprietary/moat narrative weak.
|
| Secondly, I find that correct usage of LLMs can accelerate
| learning. My brother used an LLM to generate flash cards for a
| driver's license test. I use LLMs to digest a ton of text and
| debug issues that would have been impossible to find (I would
| have given up) Have it generate, explain, review, compare code
| or general writing.
|
| It is like having access to wise old man in every field. They
| may have inferior reasoning capability, and their memory may
| falter, but they have seen everything in their corpus and are
| great at pointing you to external references. And you can
| delegate them to busywork.
| dakolli wrote:
| > Firstly, you can run the LLMs on your own machine. So I
| find the proprietary/moat narrative weak.
|
| You cannot run useful models on consumer hardware, sorry this
| is wrong and will always be the case. Atleast for 10 years
| until GPUs with 48GB vRAM depreciate. This is a limitation of
| llm architecture. You cannot post train a <1T Param model to
| a place where it competes with frontier model capability. If
| you think you 70b param models (which still require 5k in
| GPUs) are useful, you are being dishonest with yourself.
|
| It costs about $60-80k to run a 1T param model at your house
| like Kimi 2.5 .. which is the only size model that's going to
| get anywhere close to a foundation model's capability. Nobody
| is going to spend close to 100k to run a mediocre open source
| model as opposed to spending $200.00 a month. Its a
| ridiculous notion.
| stiiv wrote:
| > If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to
| pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing
| not yours.
|
| Broadly speaking, I think this is a wise assessment. There are
| opportunities for productivity gains right now, but it I don't
| think it's a knockout for anyone using the tech, and I think that
| onboarding might be challenging for some people in the tech's
| current state.
|
| It is safe to assume that the tech will continue to improve in
| both ways: productivity gains will increase, onboarding will get
| easier. I think it will also become easier to choose a particular
| suite of products to use too. Waiting is not a bad idea.
| nemomarx wrote:
| It also seems like skills with particular tech (prompt
| engineering, harnesses, mixture of experts set ups) doesn't
| always necessarily pay off when there's a sea change. Hard to
| predict what you'll want in a few years anyway, right?
| stiiv wrote:
| Agreed! Investing lightly at this stage seems smart if your
| time/attention budget is tight.
| bdcravens wrote:
| In my experience (and this may be confirmation bias on my
| part), casting a wide net and trying out new tech, while you
| maintain depth in the area relevant at the time, makes you
| ready for what's coming, even when you don't know what that
| may be.
| zephen wrote:
| Curiosity is good and helps with your personal development,
| for sure.
|
| OTOH, tfa specifically said:
|
| > I feel the same way about the current crop of AI tools.
| I've tried a bunch of them. Some are good. Most are a bit
| shit. Few are useful to me as they are now. I'm utterly
| content to wait until their hype has been realised.
|
| So, it's not like he's being deliberate ignorant, rather
| simply deliberately slow-walking his journey.
| dakolli wrote:
| All of these occulted skills, that we literally can't explain
| why they work are akin to gamblers superstitions. If I write
| something this way, it works. Its like a gambler who think
| they order in which the push the buttons on the slot machine
| makes a difference.
|
| Kind of weird tools also incorporate addictive gambling
| game's UX design. They're literally allowing you to multiply
| your output: 3x, 4x, 5x (run it 5 times for a better shot at
| a working prompt). You're being played by billionaires who
| are selling you a slot machine as a thinking machine.
| zephen wrote:
| > All of these occulted skills, that we literally can't
| explain why they work are akin to gamblers superstitions.
|
| Yes, it's hard to see how, at this moment in time, "Anybody
| can write code with an LLM" is so different from "Anybody
| can make money in the stock market."
|
| The underlying mechanisms are completely different, of
| course, and the putative goal of the LLM purveyors is to
| make it where anybody really can write code with an LLM.
|
| I'm typically a nay-sayer and a perfectionist, but many
| not-so-great things become and stay popular, and this may
| fall into that category.
|
| > Kind of weird tools also incorporate addictive gambling
| game's UX design.
|
| It's unclear it started out this way, but since it's
| obviously _going_ this way, it is certainly prudent to ask
| if some of this is by design. It would presumably be more
| worrisome if there were only a single vendor, but even with
| multiple vendors, it might be lucrative for them to design
| things so that "true insider knowledge" of how to make
| good prompts is a sought-after skill.
| dw_arthur wrote:
| Even two or three years ago I had ideas for projects but I
| could see the models were not ergonomic for my uses. I
| decided to wait for better models and sure enough the agentic
| models showed up which are much easier to use.
|
| Next thing I'm waiting on is building a new server for a
| powerful locally hosted LLM in 5 years. No need to go through
| the headaches and cost of doing it now with models that may
| not be powerful enough.
| bonesss wrote:
| Past the sea change: half the reason those prompt and harness
| solutions seem to work are LLM-lies, the testing is gassing
| you about how it works and the efficacy, defaulting to 'yes'.
|
| If you test specific features of those solutions over time
| you see very inconsistent results, lots of lies, and
| seemingly stable solutions that one-shot well but suddenly
| experience behaviour changes due to tweaks on the backend.
| Tuesdays awesome agent stack that finally works is loading
| totally different on Thursday, and debugging is "oh, sorry,
| it's better now" even when it isn't. Compression, lies, and
| external hosting are a bad combo.
|
| Sometimes I imagine a world where computers executed programs
| the same way each time. You could write some code once and
| run it a whole calendar month later with a predictable
| outcome. What a dream, we can hope I guess.
| skydhash wrote:
| People are doing toy projects and praising them, while some
| are testing them in real world situations and not findings
| them that useful. But the former is labelling the latter as
| luddites and telling them they will be left behind.
| abustamam wrote:
| As someone on the intersection of both (I've built a lot
| of vibe coded toy projects and lead a vibe coding
| initiative at work), they're both right and both wrong.
|
| For a single dev team, vibe coding is great. Write specs,
| write plans, write code. I know what the project wants
| and needs because I'm the target market.
|
| At work, I haven't written more than a few lines of code
| since December. But I work with other people vibe coding
| this same project. Lots of changing requirements and
| rapid iteration. Lots of mistakes were made by everyone
| involved. Lots of tech debt. Sure, we built something in
| 2 mos that would have otherwise taken us 6 mos, but now
| I'm fixing the mess that we caused.
|
| I think the critical difference is the attitude towards
| our situation. My boss said to fix the AI harness so we
| can vibe code more confidently and freely. But other
| bosses might cut their losses and ban vibe coding. Who's
| right? I dunno. In both cases I'd just do what my boss
| wants me to do. But it's not that I don't want to be left
| behind. I don't want to lose my job. There's a
| difference.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > (prompt engineering, harnesses, mixture of experts set ups)
|
| Prompt engineering as a specific skill got blown out of
| proportion on LinkedIn and podcasts. The core idea that you
| need to write decent prompts if you want decent output is
| true, but the idea that it was an expert-level skill that
| only some people could master was always a lie. Most of it is
| common sense about having to put your content into the prompt
| and not expecting the LLM to read your mind.
|
| Harnesses isn't really a skill you learn. It's how you get th
| LLM to interact with something. It's also not as hard as the
| LinkedIn posts imply.
|
| Mixture of Experts isn't a skill you learn at all. It's a
| model architecture, not something you do. At most it's worth
| understanding if you're picking models to run on your own
| hardware but for everything else you don't even need to think
| about this phrase.
|
| I think all of this influencer and podcast hype is giving the
| wrong impression about how hard and complicated LLMs are. The
| people doing the best with them aren't studying all of these
| "skills", they're just using the tools and learning what
| they're capable of.
| fantasizr wrote:
| somehow the ai bros are saying creating .md files is the real
| ingenuity, and couldn't be learned in say half a day. There's
| absolutely no rush to keep up with the latest code producing
| tools especially when they're all "pay to play".
| postalcoder wrote:
| The thing is, this post is hitting a straw man. ngmi culture
| was deeply toxic and pervasive in crypto. I think the people
| who are really into LLMs are having a blast.
| stavros wrote:
| I'm definitely having a blast, but I agree with the author.
| You're not going to get left behind, the "getting left
| behind" rhetoric was just cryptocurrency pump-and-dumpers.
| It's fine to wait and not engage if you don't want to.
| postalcoder wrote:
| I agree with you, which is why I think it's a straw man.
| How many real devs are actually banging the "you're getting
| left behind!" drums?
| foolserrandboy wrote:
| The executives are, not the devs.
| bena wrote:
| You're using a no-true-Scotsman to accuse the author of a
| strawman.
|
| Consider that.
| apsurd wrote:
| It can be implicit though.
|
| The llm person having a blast is compelled to push
| everyone to see what they see. If they have a leadership
| role at their company, then the getting-left-behind drum
| does get banged in the form of "ai native company
| transformation" initiatives.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Lots, and not just online. I run into them regularly in
| my office, and so do my friends and family in tech. One
| of my coworkers is now spending all his time writing
| SKILLs, he's convinced that we'll never need to solve
| operational issues again if we have the right SKILLs.
| Fraterkes wrote:
| I think FOMO-aligned ai stuff is fairly common on HN,
| doesn't mean it's always deliberately manipulative.
| mekael wrote:
| I had an heavy ai user on my team say that "those who
| learn how ti use the tools wont get fired, those who dont
| are gone". I used it to generate a bunch of cfn and it
| worked fine from an example and a couple line prompt,
| doesnt seem that hard to learn to me.
|
| Now reviewing the 1k lines it generated and making sure
| its secure, thats going to take me longer than writing it
| by hand.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, I think this is it. If you don't learn to use them,
| you'll be much slower than people who do, but also
| they're not really that hard to learn, so it's not super
| urgent.
| mekael wrote:
| I'm still confused about the things I'll be slower in
| though, and I'm being sincere with that confusion. If
| it's "boilerplate", then I haven't done enough research
| or pick a library which has little to none of that, or
| I'm not using the template(s) built into whatever
| framework I am using.
|
| For example, in one of the projects I'm working on, I'm
| using the VSA pattern. I have the list of 50 to 75
| features I need to implement and what "categories" they
| slot into, I have all of the frameworks and libraries
| picked out, and I have built out "feature templates" with
| all of the boilerplate setup (I'm reusing these over
| multiple projects going forward). for each of the
| features all I need to do is
|
| 'ftr new {FEATURE_TYPE} {FEATURE_NAME} {OUTPUT_FOLDER}'
|
| and then plug int the domain specific business logic.
|
| I'll most likely use Claude/Codex/Whatever to write out
| some of my tests, but the majority of the 'boilerplate'
| is already done and I'm just sorting out the pieces that
| matter / can't be automated.
|
| Am I missing something huge with these tools?
|
| Don't get me wrong, for doing reverse engineering they're
| great helpers and I've made a tonne of progress on
| projects that had been languishing.
| stavros wrote:
| I find that can write features 5-10x faster with these
| tools than by hand, at a comparable level of quality
| (though it hasn't been long enough for me to judge
| what'll happen in a year).
| mekael wrote:
| Would you be able to give an example of a feature? For my
| example, I need to query an ancient undocumented database
| , pull back a pile of data, do some validations on it,
| and then show it to the user or pass it along with
| another processing step. The human part is researching
| the database and the data living in it, and implementing
| the validation(s) while talking to a business user,
| everything else can be templated.
| stavros wrote:
| Oh yes, this is what LLMs excel at. Introspecting a
| database, either the schema or the live data, running a
| few checks to see whether all the data had the same shape
| (or how many different shapes it has), writing
| validations to catch edge cases, they do this extremely
| quickly and pretty accurately, whereas it would have
| taken me hours of trawling.
|
| Then I can look at the output and say things like "what
| if the data is lowercase?" or anything else I suspect
| they may have missed. A few rounds of these and I have a
| pretty good feel for the quality of the resulting checks,
| while taking a few minutes of my attention/tens of
| minutes of wallclock time to do.
|
| I have a more detailed example here:
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-i-write-software-with-
| llms/
|
| I'd share all my plans but I once found that the LLM used
| my actual phone number as test data, so I don't share
| those any more, just in case.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Now reviewing the 1k lines it generated and making sure
| its secure, thats going to take me longer than writing it
| by hand.
|
| Then you still need to learn how to use the tools to
| speed up reviewing the code.
| mekael wrote:
| If I don't have experience with the underlying
| framework/language/thing being modified, it makes it
| quite difficult to trust the actual review. In this
| example, I haven't worked heavily with Cloudformation, so
| I can't call b.s if it leaves a database instance exposed
| to the wider public internet rather than in my company's
| private VPC.
| logicchains wrote:
| You can ask the agent to check that it doesn't leave a
| database instance exposed to the public, and present you
| with proof for you to check (references to the code and
| the relevant Cloudformation documentation). Then repeat
| this for all the things you'd normally want to check for
| in a code review.
| mekael wrote:
| In that case I'm just moving the reading of the
| documentation from reading it as I'm writing the yaml to
| when I'm doing a code review. Not saying it isn't helpful
| to have a pair researcher, just seems like I'm moving
| things around .
| archagon wrote:
| You're not actually doing engineering if you're just
| vibe-coding, reviewing, and testing all the way down.
| What the hell is that? Just a weird simulacrum of
| software development that will break apart in
| unpredictable ways. Security consultants are going to
| have very lucrative careers in the coming years.
| bleuarff wrote:
| I don't know for devs, but that's the message we get from
| upper management.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I have personally heard people say this at work. It's not
| a strawman, there really is a message of "you'll be left
| behind" out there.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Devs don't make hiring and firing decisions.
| plagiarist wrote:
| I'm not worried about being left behind technologically,
| but I am worried about being left behind after every
| company on the planet decides we need N years experience in
| AI to be employable.
| stavros wrote:
| I already have 30 years of experience in LLMs, if you
| believe my CV, so I'm not worried.
| augusto-moura wrote:
| What I get a bit annoyed is companies forcing AI tools, getting
| usage metrics and actively hunting the engineers that don't use
| the tool "enough", I've never seen anything like it for a
| technically optional tool. Even in the past, aside from
| technical limitaions, you were not required to use enough of a
| tool.
|
| It just sounds like a giant scheme to burn through tokens and
| give money to the AI corps, and tech directors are falling for
| it immediately.
| layer8 wrote:
| > I've never seen anything like it for a technically optional
| tool.
|
| It has often been the case for technologies though, like "now
| we're doing everything in $language and $technology". If you
| see LLM coding as a technology in that vein, it's not a
| completely new phenomenon, although it does affect developers
| differently.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Well the tech or the language had some feature to it that
| lead you to using it. By definition LLM coding doesn't. It
| is like the job requirement turned into "ask jeff to write
| all your code and if you don't we won't hire you."
| layer8 wrote:
| Technologies were imposed by management whether it made
| sense or not. Like, "all data exchange formats now have
| to use XML", or "all applications must be J2EE now",
| because it was the new hot thing. "You" weren't making
| that choice, management imposed it. That's the parallel
| I'm drawing.
| sarchertech wrote:
| That was usually only the case where everyone had to be
| using it or it didn't work.
|
| One person hand coding and one person having Claude still
| results in the same output that is compatible with each
| other.
|
| This is more like mandating that you use vim. I've never
| some something like that before in 20+ years.
| layer8 wrote:
| > That was usually only the case where everyone had to be
| using it or it didn't work.
|
| Absolutely not, a lot was done just because it was pushed
| as the current fashion and advertised to be solving
| problems that either weren't applicable to the concrete
| use case or that it didn't actually solve.
| augusto-moura wrote:
| Language and technology are normal, but we are talking
| about a metered code editor, nobody have asked me to "use X
| hours of IntellijIDEA" in the past, or "use git enough or
| be fired". Tools are never required to be used when they
| are not needed
| luisgvv wrote:
| I'm just using Copilot CLI for mindless stuff and set it to
| the premium models to meet the quota, as long as they can't
| see the prompts I think I should be fine
| butlike wrote:
| You're not going to get fired. Don't worry about it :)
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Same, but with Opus 4.6.
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| Yeah, I found this strange as well, if the tech is so amazing
| why do developers need to be forced to use it?
| dash2 wrote:
| Maybe there's a positive externality: your individual
| learning percolates to others and benefits the firm as a
| whole.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| What is there to learn? If anything developers are still
| the one's training and enhancing the models by giving
| them more feedback cycles and what works and what
| doesn't.
| debatem1 wrote:
| I'm encouraging my folks to try it pretty hard because A)
| I've personally seen the productivity gains and B) using it
| is at first deeply weird/uncomfortable. Sometimes you've
| got to convince people to push through that kind of thing.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How you objectively measuring success?
|
| _93% of Developers Use AI Coding Tools. Productivity
| Hasn 't Moved._ - https://philippdubach.com/posts/93-of-
| developers-use-ai-codi... - March 4th, 2026
| nightski wrote:
| They measured 16 developers and called it a "study"? That
| is amusing. Not to mention it was conducted almost a year
| ago, the tools have already changed dramatically.
| tehjoker wrote:
| So just run a new study this year. I do think the tools
| have improved, but it should show up empirically. The
| only people for whom the urgency of "right now" is
| present is for the C-suite and investor class who are
| fighting to make sure they survive, but it might also be
| a crisis of their own making. Don't confuse your identity
| as a worker with the identity of the capitalist class.
| jmalicki wrote:
| You should be able to just develop software on your
| cellphone, right?
|
| Do you have an empirical study to support that your
| employer should buy you a laptop and possibly a monitor
| or two to help your productivity?
|
| If there's no study, why should we believe it?
|
| It's like "A study found that parachutes were no more
| effective than empty backpacks at protecting jumpers from
| aircraft."
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2018/12/22/6790830...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I think my employer should buy me a laptop and possibly a
| monitor or two to help my productivity because I
| subjectively feel they'd be helpful, and I have the
| market power to insist on tools that I subjectively feel
| are helpful. If my CEO announced that monitors are super
| important and everyone will be tracked on monitor space
| usage going forwards, I would still want to see evidence
| that this is going to accomplish something.
| jmalicki wrote:
| Your CEO likewise subjectively feels all of their
| employees using AI will be helpful, and has the market
| power to insist that their employees use them.
|
| When engineers demand evidence that AI is productive, but
| not that having laptops and monitors are productive, it
| screams confirmation bias. "I'm right, you're wrong" as a
| default prior.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I wouldn't call it _confirmation_ bias, but you 're right
| that is my prior. If an executive and a line worker
| disagree about whether a tool is useful, I assume unless
| presented with evidence to the contrary that the
| executive is wrong.
|
| I would emphasize that I don't think there's anything
| particularly wrong with the converse either. If an
| executive is just absolutely convinced that dual monitors
| are a scam and nobody needs more than their laptop
| screen, they can run their company that way, and I'm sure
| there are many successful companies with that philosophy.
| roarcher wrote:
| > It's like "A study found that parachutes were no more
| effective than empty backpacks at protecting jumpers from
| aircraft."
|
| Are you under the impression that we don't bother to
| empirically prove things that seem obvious, like the
| safety benefits of parachutes? You don't think parachute
| manufacturers test their designs and quantify their
| performance?
| jmalicki wrote:
| There are no randomized controlled trials that parachutes
| save lives.
|
| This is repeatedly used as an example in the medical
| community about the limits of randomized controlled
| trials. This isn't some impression - your impression that
| such evidence exists is wrong.
|
| There might be some parachute company tests about
| effective of velocity, etc., but there are no human
| trials.
|
| Why? Because that would be unethical.
| roarcher wrote:
| > There are no randomized controlled trials that
| parachutes save lives.
|
| It's a good thing "randomized controlled trials" aren't
| the only kind of empirical evidence, then.
|
| We know the limits of how fast a human can safely land.
| Parachute manufactures have to prove that their designs
| meet the minimum performance specifications to achieve a
| safe speed. This proof is not invalidated by the fact
| that it doesn't include throwing some poor bastard with a
| placebo parachute out of an airplane to demonstrate that
| he dies on impact.
|
| Also, the answer to your original question is yes. There
| are numerous studies showing that multiple monitors
| improve productivity.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Depending on the effect size a sample size of 16 can be
| plenty.
| archagon wrote:
| > _Not to mention it was conducted almost a year ago, the
| tools have already changed dramatically._
|
| There is no point at which this argument will not be
| made. Therefore, it is a useless argument.
| notlenin wrote:
| > Not to mention it was conducted almost a year ago
|
| false. The article is from 4th of March 2026, less than a
| month ago.
| mkl wrote:
| From the first sentence of the article proper: "A study
| published in July 2025".
| jmalicki wrote:
| I've also never seen an optional tool become a step change
| like this
|
| Even moving from assembly language to compiled languages was
| not as much of a step change.
| mh- wrote:
| The only thing I've mandated for engineers is that folks
| _give it a try_ occasionally, as models, best practices, and
| tooling improves.
|
| I'm currently tracking exactly two numeric metrics: total
| MAUs (to track the aforementioned), and total DAUs (to gauge
| adoption and rightsize seat-licensed contracts.)
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Whats your plan for when someone flatly refuses?
| mh- wrote:
| I'll cross that bridge when I get there. No one who works
| for me has refused to be paid to try out a new technology
| when I ensure the time is set aside for them to do so.
| jrjeksjd8d wrote:
| Why do you care so much? If these are really revolutionary
| tools that vastly optimize work, why bother forcing people
| to "try new models and best practices"?
|
| If the benefit is there people will use it or get left
| behind, there's no sense having a mandate that people
| resentfully try the new tooling.
|
| Imagine you had a developer who writes Java using vim. It
| sounds insane but they are just as productive as everyone
| else. Then you mandate they have to try IntelliJ every
| quarter, just to see if maybe they like it now. You're just
| going to piss them off and reduce their productivity by
| mandating their workflow.
|
| FWIW in the face of these kind of mandates I have been
| using tokens but ignoring the output. So it's costing my
| employer money and they have a warped metric of whether the
| tool is actually useful.
| ianm218 wrote:
| > Why do you care so much? If these are really
| revolutionary tools that vastly optimize work, why bother
| forcing people to "try new models and best practices"?
|
| If AI makes an employee 10X more productive they get a
| slight pay raise maybe, but the company makes
| substantially more money or gets substantially more
| output. So there is a large difference in incentives.
| mh- wrote:
| This is true, though I believe savvy employees have
| leverage to ensure they participate in a larger share of
| that upside. As you can see from other comments, lots of
| people will just drag their heels and not give it a good-
| faith attempt, so it'll often average out in the way you
| predict.
| xantronix wrote:
| Are you budgeting time to allow people to properly
| evaluate LLMs and possibly struggle with them? This is
| not the sort of new tool whose utility is universally
| immediately obvious to all builders and craftsmen out
| there. Are you willing to pay down the likely debt of
| some individual contributors never clicking with this, or
| being outright resentful to towards the technology or the
| mandates? There is a LOT of self-selecting bias from LLM
| proponents assuming everybody else is willing or able to
| travel the same path as them.
| mh- wrote:
| _> Are you budgeting time to allow people to properly
| evaluate LLMs and possibly struggle with them?_
|
| Great question. That is absolutely the goal. My take is
| that building with LLMs - at least with the current
| popular harnesses like Claude Code - is a skill on its
| own, and people need time to develop that skill and also
| to figure out where these tools might fit into their
| workflows.
|
| _> Are you willing to pay down the likely debt of some
| individual contributors never clicking with this or being
| outright resentful to towards the technology or the
| mandates?_
|
| I'll be honest as I have been elsewhere in the thread: A
| few years from now, I don't know what the state of the
| technology or its adoption will be, or what expectations
| of software engineers at large will be.
|
| But for the foreseeable future, yes, absolutely, I'm
| willing to give engineers the time and space to develop
| familiarity and comfort with the tools, as long as
| they're engaging in good faith.
|
| edit: oops, didn't mean to dodge the last part of your
| question (re: resentment): I genuinely don't know the
| answer to how I'll handle that, but I'm also sure it'll
| happen. Hopefully I'll still be in a position to speak
| publicly about how one can deal with those challenges.
|
| edit 2: also, thank you for the thoughtful questions and
| dialogue.
| mh- wrote:
| _> FWIW in the face of these kind of mandates I have been
| using tokens but ignoring the output. So it 's costing my
| employer money and they have a warped metric of whether
| the tool is actually useful._
|
| What you're _actually_ doing here, from my POV, is
| incentivizing your employer to use more invasive metrics
| when they tried to stay hands-off and mandate the
| absolute bare minimum of "uh, give it a shot and see if
| you think it's useful right now."
|
| The analytics that Claude Enterprise exposes are _far_
| more intrusive than _I_ would want to be subjected to as
| an engineer, so I rolled out a compromise. I don 't even
| track _who_ the active users are, currently.
|
| But maybe you're right, and there are enough people
| sabotaging the metrics out of spite, that there's a
| reason they provide the other data.
|
| I hope that the engineers in my org are more mature than
| that, and would be willing to just say "I'm not currently
| using it", but thanks for giving me something to think
| about.
| kaffekaka wrote:
| I think one side of the issues folks are having is that
| combined with the mandate to use these tools, there is
| also an expectation or assumption that the developers
| will instantly get X% more productive. Like, "you must
| use this tool and you will be twice as productive".
|
| Where I work there as certainly been that kind of
| discussions, "we need to use AI for this, because no
| offense but you are simply not fast enough". And this
| from people who do not understand software development
| and has never worked with it. They have only read the
| online stuff about 20X speeds and FOMO. (And my workplace
| is generally quite laid back and reasonable. I am sure
| many other places are much more aggressively steered.)
| ryandrake wrote:
| > mandate the absolute bare minimum of "uh, give it a
| shot and see if you think it's useful right now."
|
| That's not the bare minimum, though. The bare minimum is:
| "if you are meeting or exceeding your job expectations,
| great work, keep using the tools that are working for
| you."
|
| To a productive employee, merely saying "just try out AI,
| it might help" feels like the boss saying "just try out
| astrology or visit a psychic for a reading. You might
| find it interesting."
| sarchertech wrote:
| >more invasive metrics
|
| If you have accurate metrics to gauge developer
| productivity then use them.
|
| But you don't because if you did you'd be a billionaire.
|
| What you have is metrics that can measure developer
| busyness. If you use those metrics all you'll do is run
| your good devs off and keep the ones who can't find new
| jobs.
|
| So you'll have to do what anyone who manages software
| teams has always done and trust your line managers to
| manage your devs.
|
| When it comes to people wasting tokens, most people
| aren't gonna to do it with the intent to fuck your
| metrics. But if you tell people you are measuring
| something they will find a way in increase that metric
| whether it results in anything productive or not.
| jrjeksjd8d wrote:
| When the CEO, CTO and Director are all saying "everyone
| has to use AI" I think it's pretty naive to think people
| will speak out openly. The bare minimum would be making
| the tools available and letting people do their jobs.
|
| Go ahead and spend more time collecting more granular
| metrics spying on your employees. Apparently there aren't
| more valuable things for you to do than micromanaging
| individual developers.
| GetTheFacts wrote:
| >If these are really revolutionary tools that vastly
| optimize work, why bother forcing people to "try new
| models and best practices"?
|
| "If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you
| would need to get the police at the gates to keep order
| in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart
| the natural love of learning by leaving the natural
| method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and
| insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or
| capacity for. The college, which should be a place of
| delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the
| young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally
| their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective.
| Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by
| awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise
| instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils
| precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The
| marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for
| boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on
| a professor."
|
| -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
| tjpnz wrote:
| Making the tools available is one thing, but saying you're
| mandating their use at any level sounds like micro
| management to me. How would you feel if one of your
| subordinates started telling you how to do your job? I'm
| sure you would be mightily pissed off about it.
| mh- wrote:
| I don't think telling people what their job is counts as
| _micro management_. Part of their job right now is
| staying abreast of technological developments and
| experimenting with new ways of working.
|
| Re: some of them being upset about it- probably. Some
| people are also upset about being required to use Jira. I
| personally dislike using Okta.
| skydhash wrote:
| It is micromanagement. If the job are not being done, the
| best way is to investigate what current practices are
| blocking people from doing it (the answer is probably
| meetings and bad communication). The worst way is to
| present a tool as a silver bullet for tasks you're not
| doing and not accountable for.
| mh- wrote:
| Where am I presenting the tool as a silver bullet? You
| seem to be confusing me with someone else in this thread,
| or making the mistake of turning this into a polarized
| conversation of "AI is a panacea" vs "AI is worthless".
|
| I engaged in the thread in good faith, and am transparent
| about what I'm doing and why. I also clarified that _part
| of the job_ in my org is experimenting with these tools.
| skydhash wrote:
| The complaint in the thread is that management is forcing
| AI tooling usage. If part of your job is to experiment
| with these tools, then like any experiment, the correct
| way is to share the findings with a report detailing the
| methodology and findings. But no one is doing that AFAIK.
| It's all superlatives.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Have you ever monitored and encouraged the use of a
| particular text editor or IDE? If you had an employee
| whose manager thought was a high performer, but you
| noticed they used notepad would you encourage that they
| regularly give vim a try?
|
| The reason we force people to use Jira is because it only
| works if everyone uses it.
|
| AI doesn't work like that. If it does enhance
| productivity 50% then use will spread and the
| expectations of your line managers will naturally go up
| and the holdouts won't be able to keep up.
|
| Or only the exceptional ones will. And in that case why
| do you care how they do it?
| zephen wrote:
| I don't doubt you, but I'm out of the loop.
|
| Who does this?
| forgetfulness wrote:
| My uncle leads IT support teams, the org is measuring AI
| use in writing reports and tickets. The org has very poorly
| structured and obsolete processes (he's trying to
| straighten them up as he goes), AI will probably amplify
| the lack of structure, by making it easier for the work to
| _look_ as if someone carefully reviewed the issues and
| followed procedure.
|
| A friend is a team lead in an org that's mandating
| vibecoding via "Devin", a lesser known player an
| "architect" chose after shallow review. The company also
| has endemic process issues and simply can't do deployments
| reliably, it's behind the times in methodology in every
| other respect. Higher ups are placing their trust in a
| B-list agentic tool instead of fixing the problems.
|
| Anyway, I wouldn't be caught dead working at either of
| those two shops even before the AI rollout, but this is
| what's going on in the IT underworld.
| genthree wrote:
| I _hate_ the AI assistants for ticket-writing. The
| beneficial use there would be to prompt for possibly-
| useful information that 's not present, or call out
| ambiguity and let the writer decide how to resolve any of
| that. Coaching, basically. Suggesting actual text to
| include, for people who aren't already excellent at
| ticket-writing, just leads to noisier tickets that take
| more work to understand ("did they really mean this, or
| did the LLM just prompt them to include it and they
| thought sure, I guess that's good?")
|
| [EDIT] Oh and much of your post rings true for my org.
| They operate at a fraction the speed they could because
| of organizational dysfunction and failure to use what's
| already available to them as far as processes and tech,
| but are rushing toward LLMs, LOL. Yeah, guys, the
| slowness has nothing to do with how fast code is written,
| and I'm suuuuure you'll do a great job of integrating
| those tools effectively when you're failing at the
| basics....
| forgetfulness wrote:
| Lots of organizations don't want to accept that their
| velocity issues are quality issues. It's often a view
| held by an old guard that was there when the business
| experienced growth by adding features, while not having
| to bear any maintenance burden. The people who remain are
| either also oblivious to this, or simply have stopped
| caring.
|
| LLM-generated code hits all the right notes, it's done
| fast, in great volumes, and it even features what the
| naysayers were asking for. Each PR has 20 pages of
| documentation and adds some bulk to the stuff in the
| tests folder, that can sit there looking pretty. How
| wonderful! Hell, you can even do now that "code review"
| that some nerd was always complaining about, just ask the
| bot to review it and hit that merge button.
|
| Then you ask the bot to generate the commands again for
| the deploy (what CI pipeline?) and bam! New features
| customers will love. And maybe data corruption.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Well before offices were computerized at all some of the
| manual processes turned out to be more effective than
| after full computerization was completely accomplished.
| Which was sometimes decades later so nobody could tell
| which workflows it actually applied to, or wouldn't
| believe it anyway by the 21st century.
|
| It was truly quite rare to have such well-honed manual
| processes though, the "average" place had a lot of
| elements that were far from perfect but still benefited
| after the computerization dust had settled. Then at the
| opposite end of the spectrum were companies where
| everything was an absolute shitshow, maybe since the
| beginning.
|
| That's kind of where Conway's Law comes from, if you
| benchmark against a manual shitshow that has built up
| over the years, and replace it with a computerized
| version, you get a shitshow on steroids. The only other
| choice would have been to spend the appropriate number of
| years manually undoing the shitshow before making any
| really bold moves.
|
| Now AI can really take things to a whole 'nother level,
| not just on steroids but possibly violating Conway's Law
| . . . squared.
| adelie wrote:
| my company (mid-size, publicly traded) is mandating [x]
| hours spent on AI per week. i have no idea how they're
| planning on measuring this, and as far as i can tell,
| neither does management.
|
| suppose it's better than counting lines of code, though.
| HolyLampshade wrote:
| > I've never seen anything like it for a technically optional
| tool
|
| Cloud had a very similar vibe when it was really running
| advertising to CIO/CTOs hard. _Everything_ had to be jammed
| into the cloud, even if it made absolutely no sense for it to
| be run there.
|
| This seems to come pretty frequently from visionless tech
| execs. They need to justify their existence to their boss,
| and thus try to show how innovative and/or cost cutting they
| can be.
| genthree wrote:
| I think this is the result of a c-suite that has never
| actually done the work of the businesses they're running.
| The MBAificiation of management. Of course they constantly
| do brain-dead shit, they literally don't have a clue how
| anything actually works in "their" own business.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| They've been vibe-driving businesses long before we've
| started vibe-coding software.
| gopher_space wrote:
| There weren't really any failure states for the ZIRP
| "lifestyle CEO". If you remember old black and white
| movies about pigeons from psych 101 it's been that level
| of conditioning for how many years now?
|
| If your CEO doesn't look like a taxi dispatcher he's just
| moving his wings around waiting for a food pellet.
| HolyLampshade wrote:
| I was trying to think of a way to word this exact
| argument. I think it's especially easy when your business
| technology is not your primary means of revenue
| generation. Having these execs understand how things work
| is significantly less critical in these scenarios, so it
| becomes much easier to hire for alternative
| characteristics (golf game, pedigree, gender, whatever).
| rurp wrote:
| I agree with you but man the absurdity of aggressively
| pushing cloud or AI adoption as a cost cutting move is off
| the charts.
| HolyLampshade wrote:
| Easier to justify monthly costs than big capital asks
| (even if your infra is depreciated at a normal rate) is
| where I think many saw (incorrectly) cost savings. It's
| also a bit of these execs mortgaging the future, banking
| on either being out of their role when the real cost
| comes due or that people will have incredibly short
| memories (not a wild assumption).
| bee_rider wrote:
| "Cloud" seems like a better comparison than stuff like
| cryptocurrency. AI seems totally over-hyped but with some
| obvious sensible use-cases.
| aquariusDue wrote:
| That and microservices in lieu of a monolith. Or how about
| being the odd one out a few years ago when suggesting a MPA
| instead of a SPA when it made sense. I like to think where
| at the point of everybody is rebuilding their portfolio
| website with Angular 1 but this time it's Claude Code and a
| SaaS instead.
| _doctor_love wrote:
| _> Cloud had a very similar vibe when it was really running
| advertising to CIO /CTOs hard. Everything had to be jammed
| into the cloud, even if it made absolutely no sense for it
| to be run there._
|
| 100% accurate - some of us are old enough to have lived
| through a few of the mini-revolutions in between the mega-
| revolutions of Internet/Web in the 1990s and now AI/LLM in
| the 2020s.
|
| We are in the "stupid phase" of adoption still. C-level
| people have to follow the herd and they are being evaluated
| on keeping up with everyone else. Idiotic mandates are a
| way to cause things to happen short-term even though
| everyone knows long-term it will have to be re-done.
|
| Consultants gonna make a looooooooot of money this coming
| decade.
| afpx wrote:
| It's really insane what is happening. My wife manages 70
| software developers. Her boss mandated that managers replace
| 50% of the staff with AI within a year. And, she's scrambling
| trying to figure out if any of the tools actually work and
| annoying her team because she keeps pushing AI on them.
| Unsurprisingly it's only slowed things down and put her in a
| terrible position.
| komali2 wrote:
| > Her boss mandated that managers replace 50% of the staff
| with AI within a year
|
| I bet we could replace nearly all the CEOs in the country
| with chatgpt controlling a ceo@thatcompany.com email and
| nobody would notice.
| bikelang wrote:
| We'd probably get better outcomes too.
| plagiarist wrote:
| For society, yeah, since the AI training corpus is more
| normal people than sociopaths. Shareholders would be mad,
| I bet.
| throwaway29130 wrote:
| Brutal. But probably all too common. One of my clients has
| very suddenly gone all-in on agentic AI and they're in this
| crazy hurry. (Probably the most annoying part is they want
| to automate stuff that I built a POC for using GPT-4o, two
| years ago - at the time they saw no use for it, but now
| they're all-in on the hype.)
|
| This started literally two weeks ago and a couple of days
| ago I talked to one of the admin people who wanted an
| update on the progress I'd made with sanding off some of
| the rough edges of the very rough implementation that the
| managing partner had put in place (he bought a Mac Mini,
| put OpenClaw on it, then gave it admin access to a whole
| pile of stuff!) I said I needed a couple more days. "Okay,"
| she said, "but I need this quickly, because we're firing
| people next week."
|
| They have literally gone from no agentic AI, to discovering
| OpenClaw, to firing people, in a two-week time span.
|
| When economists say that the predicted job losses as a
| result of AI have not yet shown up in the data, I'm
| genuinely befuddled. Either we don't have long to wait to
| start seeing them, or there's something wrong with the
| data, because you can't tell me what I just described above
| is an isolated phenomenon.
|
| I also have to say: I've always enjoyed working with this
| client, but this experience has been a huge turnoff on a
| number of different levels.
| genthree wrote:
| For a non-tech case of this, my wife worked at a place
| that fired like 80% of their writers _in anticipation of_
| huge speed-ups they expected from LLMs, a couple years
| ago.
|
| They had to hire a bunch of them back less than two
| months later. The speed-ups were approximately nil and
| making the editors edit AI slop all day long had them all
| close to quitting.
|
| They didn't even wait to see if there were any actual
| benefits, they just blindly fired a bunch of people based
| on marketing lies. I can only assume they're the same
| sorts who fall for Nigerian Prince scams.
| graemep wrote:
| Maybe what they really want her to do is get rid of 50% of
| her staff and the AI is just an excuse? In that case she
| should focus on "who can we do without?" rather than "how
| can we replace people with AI?"
| PedroBatista wrote:
| They perks and dread of middle management...
| genthree wrote:
| We're doing that in my office, forced Cursor use. A good
| chunk of the "edited by AI" lines in my history were just
| auto-completing about the same as a traditional intellisense-
| alike would do (and actually Cursor doesn't seem to supply
| that, which is frequently annoying and wastes my time, in
| particular when I need to make sure it hasn't hallucinated a
| method or property _on an object it should be able to "see"
| the definition of_, which it does constantly; IDK maybe
| there's a setting somewhere, but I don't have to fiddle with
| settings in vanilla VSCode to get that...)
|
| It's actually kinda useful in some cases, but the UI is
| terrible and it needs to integrate much better with existing
| tools that are superior to it for specific purposes, before
| I'll be happy using it. I'd say the productivity gains are a
| wash, for me, so far. Plus it's entirely too memory-hungry,
| I'd just come to accept that a text editor takes a couple GB
| now (SIGH), and here it comes taking _way more_ than that.
| hibikir wrote:
| It's using a bad tool to try to aim at something reasonable-
| ish: Developers not taking advantage of the tools in places
| where it's very easy to get use out of them. I have coworkers
| like that: One spent 3 days researching a bug that Claude
| found in 10 minutes by pointing it at the logs in the time
| window and the codebase. And he didn't even find the bug,
| when Claude nailed it in one.
|
| But is this something that is best done top to bottom, with a
| big report, counting tokens? Hell no. This is something that
| is better found, and tackled at the team level. But execs in
| many places like easy, visible metrics, whether they are
| actually helping or not. And that's how you find people
| playing JIRA games and such. My worse example was a VP has
| decided that looking at the burndown charts from each team
| under them, and using their shape as a reasonable metric is a
| good idea.
|
| It's all natural signs of a total lack of trust, and thinking
| you can solve all of this from the top.
| sarchertech wrote:
| The thing is we've always had people who spend more time on
| their tooling or learn different tools and perform better.
|
| I've seen people use notepad and I've seen people who are
| so good at vim that they look like they're on editing code
| directly with their mind.
|
| Your particular example is extreme and my guess is the
| coworker is just not great at debugging. I use Claude all
| the time for finding bugs, but it fails fairly frequently
| though. I think there's probably advantage to having some
| people who don't use it that often, so you have someone to
| turn to when it fails.
|
| I'm definitely not exercising my debugging skills as much
| as I used to and I'm fairly confident they've atrophied.
| toraway wrote:
| That, and an objective comparison measuring time saving
| should include all time that went into learning,
| configuring, maintaining the tool.
|
| And ideally a sample large enough to capture any wasted
| time from dead ends in other tasks where the tool may
| actually fail to solve the problem.
|
| I've definitely lost a couple hours here and there from
| when it felt like I was _right_ on the verge of CC fixing
| something but never actually got there and finally had to
| just do it myself anyway.
| diehunde wrote:
| As an employee of a big tech company doing this, it's all
| fear mongering. We are being told that if everyone doesn't
| use these tools, our competitors will wipe the floor with us
| because they are using them and will ship features 10x
| faster. But many engineers are suspicious as well.
| zrail wrote:
| It's baffling, to be honest. I'm at a fintech that is
| currently pushing very hard at this, but in the same breath
| talking about how we're not a pure software play. I just
| don't understand where they're coming from.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I'm at a big tech company top and essentially no one is a
| true believer more than 3 or 4 levels down from the top.
| We're all just trying to keep our use metrics high enough
| to not get noticed.
|
| But for those top layers, I've never seen so much FOMO in
| all my life. We're a very slow moving company but they act
| like we've got 2 weeks to go "AI first" or we're dead in
| the water. I've never seen such a successful hype cycle.
| I'm pretty sure it's the bots that are accelerating it so
| far behind a normal hype cycle.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| > t just sounds like a giant scheme to burn through tokens
| and give money to the AI corps, and tech directors are
| falling for it immediately.
|
| This is exactly what's happening. The top 5 or 6 companies in
| the s&p 500 are running a very sophisticated
| marketing/pressure campaign to convince every c-suite down
| stream that they need to force AI on their entire
| organization or die. It's working great. CEOs don't get fired
| for following the herd.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| ~40-50% of the S&P500 rely on this continuing.
|
| _S &P 500 Concentration Approaching 50%_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47384002 - March 2026
|
| > No of course there isn't enough capital for all of this.
| Having said that, there is enough capital to do this for a
| at least a little while longer. -- Gil Luria (Managing
| Director and Analyst at D.A. Davidson)
|
| _OpenAI Needs a Trillion Dollars in the Next Four Years_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45394071 - September
| 2025 (8 comments)
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Elon Musk is planning to put his AI company into the
| SpaceX IPO, and accelerate getting it into the major
| indices, effectively making pension funds, banks and
| individual investors his bag holders.
|
| Patric Boyle has a video on this in case you care for the
| details.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| I guess it's possible for the top companies to have spent
| so much already, that now the best move is to convince the
| next tier to do the same otherwise those competitiors may
| pull ahead without such a financial handicap.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Yes it's very weird - why is my CEO being so nosy about my
| text editor all of a sudden? Stay in your lane, buddy.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| > _I 've never seen anything like it for a technically
| optional tool_
|
| If you broaden the comparison (only a little bit) it looks
| suspiciously like employees being forced to train their own
| replacement (be that other employees, or factory automation),
| a regular occurrence.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Yeah this is the thing I think many don't want to see.
| Imagine a bunch of farm laborers being trained to use a
| tractor/reaper early on its development. Certainly they'd
| think it's cool and convenient, because it is. But if it
| works out, then most of those farm laborers are now
| obsolete, and a handful of them can now replace the rest.
| And indeed this is why agricultural employment went from
| the majority of jobs to a footnote.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Tech directors, CEOs, managers, etc tend to be people with a
| certain personality and ( learned behaviors/thinking ) just
| like "technical people".
|
| Yes, they tend to be incredible gullible to certain things,
| over-simplistic and over-confident but also very "agile" when
| it comes to sweep their failures under the rug and move on to
| keep their own neck in one piece. At this point in time even
| the median CEO knows AI has been way overhyped and they over
| invested to a point of absolute financial insanity.
|
| The first line of defense about the pressure to deliver is to
| mandate their minions to use it as much as possible.
|
| We spent a fortune on this over-rated Michelin star
| reservation, and now you kids are going to absolutely enjoy
| it, like it or not goddammit!
| khriss wrote:
| This is largely due to the age old fact that corporations
| rarely make decisions based on actual data, introspection,
| and good judgment. Usually the decision is made first and
| then the justifications are invented afterwards.
|
| In this case, every executive is terrified of being "left
| out" in the AI race. As we saw with the mass layoffs across
| companies, most of CEO decision making is just adhering to
| herd behavior. So it is literally better for execs to have
| shoveled a shit ton of money into 'strategic' AI initiatives
| and have them fail than potentially deal with the potentially
| remote chance of some other exec or company succeeding with
| 'AI enabled transformation'.
|
| What makes it even more fun is that nobody really has a good
| understanding of how to measure the ROI of AI. Hence we have
| people burning a lot of money due to FOMO and no easy way of
| measuring the outcome, which is usually how the foundations
| for good Ponzi schemes are laid.
|
| This is unlikely to end well. However, as usual, it's us, the
| common plebs, who will suffer regardless of outcome.
| II2II wrote:
| I almost entirely agree with the author's assessment of new
| technology. Yet that statement rubbed me the wrong way.
|
| Sometimes it is better to get into things early because it will
| grow more complex as time goes on, so it will be easier to pick
| up early in its development. Consider the Web. In the early
| days, it was just HTML. That was easy to learn. From there on,
| it was simply a matter of picking up new skills as the
| environment changed. I'm not sure how I would deal with picking
| up web development if I started today.
| apsurd wrote:
| The web/html is a great analogy. I too am in no rush to be
| hyper effective with LLMs. In fact i want to deliberately
| slow down because ai-native coding is so exhausting.
|
| That said, your point about the leverage of learning html and
| web in the early days compared to now rings true. pre-
| compiled isomorphic typescript apps are completely
| unrecognizable from the early days of index.html
| topaz0 wrote:
| And yet, at some point most web developers will have picked
| it up after the "raw html" era -- that point has probably
| come, even.
| ashwinsundar wrote:
| This isn't a good example - people were completing 6-month
| bootcamps and getting $100k offers to do web development not
| too long ago, decades after the web and HTML took off. After
| a few years they were making as much as anyone who learned
| HTML and Web 1.0 back in the 90s.
|
| Are the bootcampers better developers? Probably not. But they
| still were employable and paid relatively the same.
| mekoka wrote:
| "It will grow more complex" is never a good reason to get
| into things early. It's just your mind playing FOMO tricks on
| you.
|
| Many developers who picked up the web in the early years
| struggle with (front-end) web development today. It doesn't
| matter if they fetched jQuery or MooTools from some CDN as it
| was done in the mid 00s. Once the tooling became too
| complicated and ever changing they couldn't keep up as front-
| end dilettante. It required to commit as professionals.
|
| If you started today, you'd simply learn the hard way, as
| it's always been done: get a few books or register for a
| course. Carve some time every day for theory and practice.
| All the while prioritizing what matters the most to get stuff
| done quickly _right now_ , with little fluff. You will not
| learn Grunt, Bower, and a large array of historic tech.
| You'll go straight for what's relevant today. That applies to
| abstractions, frameworks, and tooling, but also to the
| fundamentals. You'll probably learn ES6+ and TS, not JS WAT.
| A lot of the early stuff seems like an utter waste of time in
| retrospect.
|
| This is true for all tech. If you knew nothing about LLMs by
| the end of this year, you could find a course that teaches
| you all the latest relevant tricks in 5 to 10 hours for 10
| bucks.
| bdangubic wrote:
| > Once the tooling became too complicated and ever changing
| they couldn't keep up as front-end dilettante. It required
| to commit as professionals.
|
| The best professionals did not fall for insanity of the
| modern front-end dilettante and continued hacking shit
| without that insanitity.
|
| > You will not learn Grunt, Bower, and a large array of
| historic tech. You'll go straight for what's relevant
| today.
|
| which will be outdated "tomorrow" just like grunt/bower...
| are looked at today
|
| > A lot of the early stuff seems like an utter waste of
| time in retrospect.
|
| This cannot be further from the truth, if you learned
| Javascript early, like _really_ learned it, that mastery
| gets you far today. The best front-end devs I know are
| basically Javascript developers, everything else is "tech
| du jour" that comes and goes and the less of it you invest
| in the better off you'll be in the long-run.
|
| > If you knew nothing about LLMs by the end of this year,
| you could find a course that teaches you all the latest
| relevant tricks in 5 to 10 hours for 10 bucks.
|
| Hard disagree with this unless you are doing simple CRUD-
| like stuff
| aquariusDue wrote:
| Yeah, I still get use out of XMLHttpRequest to this day
| good thing I got in early and variable hoisting isn't
| gonna get me! /s
|
| A lot of snark aside there's a bit of a false dichotomy
| (I think) here at work. Whenever or wherever your jumping
| in point is into $something it will always pay dividends
| to learn the fundamentals of that $something well and
| unless you interact with older iterations on that
| $something then you'll never have to bother learning the
| equivalent of Grunt, Gulp, Stylus, Nunjuncks and so on
| for that $something.
|
| With that being said it's also good to put aside time
| once a year to check out a good recommended (and usually
| paid) course from an established professional aimed at
| busy professionals.
|
| As for LLMs I feel it's slowly becoming a thing big
| enough where people will have to consider where to focus
| their energy starting with 2027. Kinda like some people
| branched from web development into backend, frontend and
| UI/UX a good while back. Do you want to get good at using
| Claude Code or do you want to integrate gen AI features
| at work for coworkers to use or customers/users? It's
| still early days just like when NodeJS started gaining a
| lot of traction and people were making fun of leftpad.
| mekoka wrote:
| > The best professionals did not fall for insanity of the
| modern front-end dilettante and continued hacking shit
| without that insanitity.
|
| "Front-end professional" and "no tooling" have been
| exclusive propositions since the early 2010s. You either
| learned to use tools or you were out of the loop.
|
| > which will be outdated "tomorrow" just like
| grunt/bower... are looked at today
|
| Not really. Historically, the main problem with front-end
| development has not been change, but the pace of it.
| That's how it ties in with the current discussion
| regarding the (now) ever-changing terrain of LLM-assisted
| coding. Front-end development is still changing today,
| but it's coalescing and congealing more than it's
| revolving. The chasms between transitions are narrowing.
| If you observe how long Webpack lasted and familiarity
| with it carried over to using Vite, it's somewhat safe to
| expect that the latter will last even longer and that its
| replacement will be a near copy. Someone putting time to
| learn front-end skills today might reap the benefits of
| that investment longer.
|
| > if you learned Javascript early, like really learned
| it, that mastery gets you far today.
|
| I did. I got a copy of the Rhino book 4th ed. and read it
| cover to cover. I would not advise to learn JS today with
| historical references. JS was not designed like most
| other languages. It was hastily put together to get
| things done and it had a lot of "interesting", but
| ultimately undesirable, artifacts. It only slowly turned
| into a more sensible standard after-the-fact. Yes, there
| are some parts that are still in its core identity, but a
| lot in the implementation has changed. Efforts like
| "Javascript: The Good Parts", further standardization,
| and TS helped to slowly turn it into what we know today.
| You don't need to travel back in time for that mastery.
| Get a modern copy of the Rhino book and you'll be as good
| as the best of them.
| apsurd wrote:
| No, this thread and sub-discussion is about specifically
| early web fundamentals. The web is special in this sense,
| it's intentionally long-lived warts and all. So the
| fundamentals pay outsized dividends. The rube goldberg
| machine that is modern JS dev _still_ spits out an
| index.html result.
|
| Being a good professional developer means getting the
| primitives and the data model not horribly pointed in the
| wrong direction. So it's extremely helpful to be aware of
| those primitives. And the argument "nobody is better off
| knowing assembly as a primitive" doesn't hold because as-
| said the web is literally still html files. It's right
| there in the source.
| mekoka wrote:
| The discussion is centered around the idea that "adopting
| early" provides some future proofing in a rapidly
| evolving (and largely non-standard) terrain. I share the
| FA's position that it does not.
|
| > The web is special in this sense, it's intentionally
| long-lived warts and all. So the fundamentals pay
| outsized dividends.
|
| Fundamentals pay dividends, but what makes you think that
| what you learn as an early adopter are fundamentals?
| Fundamentals are knowledge that is deemed intemporal, not
| "just discovered".
|
| The historical web and its simplicity are as available to
| anyone today as it was back then. People can still learn
| HTML today and make table-based layouts. HTML is still
| HTML, whether you learned it then or today. But if back
| then you intended to become a professional front-end
| developer, you would still have to contend with the
| tremendous difficulties that some seem to have forgotten
| out of nostalgia. You'd soon have to also learn CSS in
| its early and buggy drafts, then (mostly non-standard)
| JavaScript (Netscape _and_ IE6) and the multiple browser
| bugs that required all kinds of hacks and shims. Then you
| 'd have to keep up with the cycles of changing front-end
| tools and practices, as efforts to put some sense into
| the madness were moved there. Much in all that knowledge
| went nowhere since it was not always part of a
| _progression_ , but rather a set of competing cycles.
|
| Fundamentals are indisputably relevant, but they're
| knowledge that emerges as victorious after all the fluff
| of uncertainty has been left behind. Front-end
| development is only now settling into that phase. With
| LLMs we're still figuring out where we're going.
| apsurd wrote:
| Good points and thoughtful reply.
|
| You're right, fundamentals are distilled, so to think
| they are free just by getting in early is likely
| backwards. And earning one's professional chops doesn't
| stop or start based on when you enter.
|
| Web dev definitely is nostalgic. I miss the early days
| but I also conveniently erased ie6, binding data to HTML,
| the need for backbone and jQuery to do anything. hmmm
| yeah doesn't matter when you start, it's all a grind if
| you dig deep enough.
| mekoka wrote:
| > I also conveniently erased ie6
|
| Also known as PTSD-induced amnesia, haha. We all tried to
| forget.
| sarchertech wrote:
| This sounds exactly right. I'm someone who learned the
| web back when IE6 was something we wished everyone was
| on, and also someone who learned the fundamentals of the
| web and CS in general enough to try writing a book about
| it to teach everyone else.
|
| Picking up the web early didn't help with the latter. I
| spent most of my early time memorizing tips and tricks
| that only applied to old browsers. I didn't pick up the
| fundamentals till I went back to school for CS and took a
| networking class.
| apsurd wrote:
| web fundamentals and web development fundamentals are
| different.
|
| How HTML, CSS and javascript come together is extremely
| relevant to developers 20 years ago and today.
|
| I do support and agree with the parent comment, see the
| discussion, but I do credit getting into web development
| when it was raw and open paid dividends for me. Todays
| ecosystem is opaque in comparison. You don't think
| there's more friction today?
| vunderba wrote:
| I think this applies a bit less to the AI sphere, which has
| the _purported_ goal of making things easier and more
| automated over time. 90% of the time if you have an AI
| question you can just... ask the LLM itself.
|
| Remember all the hoopla over how people needed be a "prompt
| engineer" a couple years back? A lot of that alchemy is
| basically totally obsolete.
|
| Think about the hoops you had to jump through with early
| GenAI diffusion models: tons of positive prompt suffixes
| ("4K, OCTANE RENDER, HYPERREALISTIC TURBO HD FINAL
| CHALLENGERS SPECIAL EDITION") bordering on magical
| incantations, samplers (Euler vs. DPM), latent upscalers, CFG
| scales, denoising strengths for img2img, masking workflows,
| etc.
|
| And now? The vast majority of people can mostly just describe
| desired image in natural language, and any decent SOTA model
| can handle the vast majority of use cases (gpt-image-1.5,
| Seedream 4, Nano-banana).
|
| Even when you're running things locally, it's still
| _significantly_ easier than it used to be a few years ago,
| with options like Flux and Qwen which can handle natural
| language along with a nice intuitive frontend such as
| InvokeAI instead of the heavily node-based ComfyUI. (which I
| still love but understand it 's not for everybody).
| gradus_ad wrote:
| But it's so easy to try something like Claude Code. It's not
| like you need to get up to speed. There is no learning curve*,
| that's the nature of AI. Just start using it and you'll see why
| it has attracted so much hype.
|
| *I should qualify that "using" CC in the strict sense has no
| learning curve, but really getting the most out of it may take
| some time as you see its limitations. But it's not learning
| tech in the traditional sense.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I think it comes down to your own personality, appetite, and
| also how external factors like hype might impact you (resent,
| annoyance, curiosity, excitement).
| we_have_options wrote:
| I've been playing with it on weekends for the last few
| months. 9 out of 10 projects, it's failed.
|
| Projects as simple as "set up a tmux/vim binding so I can
| write prompts in one pane and run claude in the other".
| Fails.
|
| I've been coding for over 20 years.
|
| If there is no learning curve, why doesn't it work for me?
| You can't say I'm not using it right, because if that was
| true, then all I need to do is climb the learning curve to
| fix that, the curve that you say doesn't exist.
| gradus_ad wrote:
| Did it not work after the first try and you gave up? Did it
| not produce any usable code that you could hand tweak or
| build off of? I want to understand your definition of
| "failed" here.
| laserlight wrote:
| What's your definition of "working"? Do you consider it
| working, when you have to put more effort into prompting
| back-and-forth than writing it the old way?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I've used Claude Code to do everything from vibe-code
| personal apps including a terminal on top of libghostty to
| building my perfect desktop environment on NixOS (I'd never
| used Nix until then).
|
| I'm not sure why it isn't working for you. Maybe your
| expectation is a perfect one-shot or else it has zero
| value, and nothing in between?
|
| But my advice is to switch gears and see the "plan file" as
| the deliverable that you're polishing over implementation.
| It's planning and research and specification that tends to
| be the hard part, not yoloing solutions live to see if
| they'll work -- we do the latter all the time to avoid
| 10min of planning.
|
| So, try brainstorming the issue with Claude Code, talk it
| through so it's on the same page as you, ensure it's done
| research (web search, docs) to weigh the best solutions,
| and then enter plan mode so it generates a markdown plan
| file.
|
| From there you can read/review,tweak the plan file. Or have
| it implement it. Or you implement it. But the idea is that
| an LLM is useful at this intermediate planning stage
| without tacking on additional responsibilities.
|
| I think by "no learning curve" they are referring to how
| you can get value from it without doing the research you'd
| need to use a conventional tool. But there is a learning
| curve to getting better results.
|
| I learned my plan file workflow just from Claude Code
| having "Plan Mode" that spits out a plan file, and it was
| obvious to me from there, but there are people who don't
| know it exists nor what the value of it is, yet it's the
| centerpiece of my workflow. I also think it's the right way
| to use AI: the plan/prompt is the thing you're building and
| polishing, not skipping past it to an underspecified
| implementation. Because once you're done with the plan,
| then the impl is trivial and repeatable from that plan,
| even if you wanted to do the impl yourself.
|
| I'm way past the point of arguing anything here, just
| trying to help.
| mat_b wrote:
| > So, try brainstorming the issue with Claude Code, talk
| it through so it's on the same page as you, ensure it's
| done research (web search, docs) to weigh the best
| solutions, and then enter plan mode so it generates a
| markdown plan file. From there you can read/review,tweak
| the plan file. Or have it implement it. Or you implement
| it.
|
| This is exactly the workflow that works very well for me
| in Cursor (although I don't use their Plan Mode - I do my
| version of it). If you know the codebase well this can
| increase your speed/productivity quite a bit. Not trying
| to convince naysayers of this, their minds are already
| made up. Just wanted to chime in that this workflow does
| actually work very well (been using it for over 6
| months).
| aquariusDue wrote:
| The first time I saw something like this in action was in
| a video about agentic blabla features in VS Code on the
| official VS Code YouTube channel. Pretty much write a
| complete and detailed specification, fire away and hope
| for the best. The workflow kinda clicked for me then but
| I still find a hard time adjusting to this potential new
| reality where slowly it won't make sense to generally
| write code "by hand" and only intervene to make pinpoint
| changes after reviewing a lot of code.
|
| I've been reading a book about the history of math and at
| some points in the beginning the author pointed out how
| some fields undergo a radical change within due to some
| discovery (e.g. quantum theory in physics) and the
| practitioners in that field inevitably go through this
| transformation where the generations before and after
| can't really relate to each other anymore. I'm
| paraphrasing quite a bit though so I'll just recommend
| people check out the book if they're interested: The
| History of Mathematics by Jacqueline Stedall
|
| And the aforementioned VS Code video, if I remember
| correctly:
| https://youtu.be/dutyOc_cAEU?si=ulK3MaYN7_CPO76k
| 6DM wrote:
| It doesn't work if you're treating it like a peer engineer.
| It only works if you treat it like you're a customer with
| no concern with how it works behind the scenes.
|
| That's what's being asked of me in my last two jobs. Vibe
| code it, if it's bad just throw it away and regenerate it
| because it's "cheap". The only thing that matters is that
| you can quickly generate visible changes and ship it to
| market.
|
| Out of frustration I asked upper management (in my current
| job), if you want me to use AI like that then I'll do it.
| But when it inevitably fails, who is responsible? If
| there's no risk to me, I will AI generate everything
| starting today, but if I have to take on the risk I won't
| be able to do this.
|
| Their response was that AI generates the code, I'm
| responsible for reviewing it and making sure it's risk
| free. I can see that they're already looking for
| contractors (with no skin in the game) that are more than
| willing to run the AI agents and ship vibe code, so I'm at
| a loss on what to do.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > If there is no learning curve, why doesn't it work for
| me?
|
| Because LLMs are not actually good at programming, despite
| the hype.
| Kiro wrote:
| Failing 9 out of 10 times for such simple tasks is indeed
| puzzling. I have no idea what you're doing to achieve that
| but I'm impressed.
| nDRDY wrote:
| Then what is the point? If what I'm doing can be done by
| Claude, as operated by someone who "doesn't need to get up to
| speed", then I really need to look at another career.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > There is no learning curve*, that's the nature of AI.
|
| There isn't? Then why is it that whenever devs have tried it
| and not achieved useful results, they're told that they just
| haven't learned how to use it right?
| laserlight wrote:
| "You're holding it wrong." is the most common response I
| get, when I talk about problems I had with LLM-assisted
| coding.
| leptons wrote:
| You aren't holding it wrong, the truth is AI is a mixed
| bag, leaning towards a liability.
|
| If people really counted all the time they spend coddling
| the AI, trying again, then trying again and again and
| again to get a useful output, then having to clean up
| that output, they would see that the supposed efficiency
| gains are near zero if not negative. The only people it
| really helps are people who were not good at coding to
| begin with, and they will be the ones producing the
| absolute worst slop because they don't know the
| difference between good and bad code. AI is constantly
| trying to introduce bugs into my codebase, and I see it
| happening in real-time with AI code completion. So, no
| you aren't "holding it wrong", the other people are no
| different than the crypto-bro's who were pushing
| blockchain into everything and hoping it would stick.
| laserlight wrote:
| > If people really counted [...]
|
| Exactly. I counted and reported my results in a previous
| thread [0].
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272913
| leptons wrote:
| I've started "racing" Claude when I have a somewhat
| simple task that I think it should be able to handle. I
| spend a few minutes writing out detailed instructions,
| which I already knew because I had to do initial
| discovery around the problem domain to understand what
| the goal was supposed to be. It took a while to be
| thorough enough writing it down for Claude, which is time
| I did not need to spend if I had just started writing the
| code myself - I'm sure the AI-bro's aren't considering
| the time it takes just to write down instructions to
| Claude vs just start coding.
|
| So then Claude starts discecting the instructions. I
| start writing some code.
|
| After a while Claude is done, and I've written about two
| or three dozen lines of code. Claude is way off, so I
| have to think about why and then write more instructions
| for it to follow. Then I continue coding.
|
| After a while Claude is done, and I've written about
| three dozen more lines of code. Claude is closer this
| time, but still not right. Round 3 of thinking about how
| Claude got it wrong and what to tell it to do now. Then I
| continue coding.
|
| After a while Claude is done (yet again), and I've
| written a lot more code and tested it and it's working as
| needed. The output Claude came up with is just a little
| bit off, so I have it rework the output a little bit and
| tell it to run again.
|
| I downloaded the resulting code Claude wrote and compared
| it to my solution, and I will take my solution every
| single time. Claude wrote a bloated monstrosity.
|
| This is my experience with "AI", and I'm honestly not
| loving it.
|
| It does sometimes save me time converting code from one
| language to another (when it works), or implementing
| simple things based on existing code (when it works), and
| a few other tasks (when it works), but overall I end up
| asking myself over and over "Is this really how
| developers want the future to be?"
|
| I'm skeptical that these LLM-based coding tools will ever
| get good enough to not make me feel ill about wasting my
| time typing instructions to them to produce code that is
| bloated and mostly not reusable.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Imagine you are a JS dev and github comes out with a new
| search feature that's really good. it lets you use
| natural language to find open source projects really
| easily. So whenever you have a new project you check to
| see if something similar exists. And instead of starting
| from scratch you start from that and tweak it to fit what
| you want to do.
|
| If you were the type of person who makes tiny toy apps,
| or you worked on lots of small already been done stuff,
| you'd love doing this. It would speed you up so much.
|
| But if you worked on a big application with millions of
| users that had evolved into it's own snowflake through
| time and use, you'd get very little from it.
|
| I think I probably could benefit from looking at existing
| open source solutions and modifying them a lot of the
| time, and I kinda started out doing that at first. But
| eventually you realize that even though starting with
| something can save you time, it can also cost you a ton
| of time so it's frequently a wash or a net negative.
| leptons wrote:
| Nothing you described in this comment is only achievable
| with "AI". I've been able to search for and find open
| source projects since forever, and fork them and extend
| them, long before an LLM was a glimmer in Sam Altman's
| beady eye.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Because the AI bros hyping it up are incapable of admitting
| that the hype is overblown. That would mean they have
| nothing to sell you, so of course they aren't going to say
| that.
| adriand wrote:
| I think working with the technology gives you powerful
| intuitions that improve your skill and lead to better
| outcomes, but you don't really notice that that's what's
| happening. Personally speaking - and I suspect this is true
| of most people in general - I have very poor recollections of
| what it was like to be really bad/new at things that I am now
| very skilled at.
|
| If you have try teaching someone something from the absolute
| ground up, you will quickly realize that a huge number of
| things you now believe are "standard assumptions" or
| "obvious" or "intuitive" are actually the result of a lot of
| learning you forgot you did.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| I tried it. Either I don't know how to use it, or it just
| doesn't work.
| artine wrote:
| I gave Claude Code with Sonnet 4.6* a try a few weeks ago. I
| pointed it at a hobby project with less than 1kloc of C
| (about 26,500 characters) across ~10 modules and asked it to
| summarize what the project does. It used about $0.50 worth of
| tokens and gave a summary that was part spot on and part
| hallucinated. I then asked it how to solve a simple bug with
| an easy solution. It identified the right place to make the
| fix but its entire suggested solution was a one-liner
| invoking a hallucinated library method.
|
| I use LLMs pretty regularly, so I'm familiar with the kinds
| of tasks they work well on and where they fall flat. I'm sure
| I could get at least some utility from Claude Code if I had
| an unlimited budget, but the voracious appetite for tokens
| even on a trivially small project -- combined with a worse
| answer than a curated-context chatbot prompt -- makes its
| value proposition very dubious. For now, at least.
|
| * I considered trying Opus, but the fundamental issue of it
| eating through tokens meant, for me, that even if it worked
| much better, the cost would dramatically outweigh the
| benefit.
| xigoi wrote:
| It's only "easy to try" if you're okay with using proprietary
| software and having to rely on an evil megacorporation that
| engages in cyber-warfare.
| archagon wrote:
| Not to mention sucking on a monthly subscription tit that
| will go up in price by an order of magnitude once the
| market is captured.
| nunez wrote:
| There's no learning curve if you don't care about token
| spend.
| imtringued wrote:
| I think this is particularly evident with AI.
|
| The early adopters started years ago and they've seen
| improvements over time that they started attributing them to
| their own skill. They tell you that if you didn't spend years
| prompting the AI, it will be difficult to catch up.
|
| However, the exact opposite is happening. As the models get
| better, the need for the perfect prompt starts waning. Prompt
| engineering is a skill that is obsoleting faster than
| handwriting code.
|
| I personally started using codex in march and honestly, the
| hardest part was finding and setting up the sandbox. (I use
| limactl with qemu and kvm). Meanwhile the agentic coding part
| just works.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| This is true in my experience.
|
| I waited until it seemed good enough to use without having to
| spend most of my time keeping up with the latest magical
| incantations.
|
| Now I have multiple Claude instances running and producing
| almost all of my commits at work.
|
| Yes, with a lot of time spent planning and validating.
| randusername wrote:
| Counterpoint:
|
| Mistakes are less costly in the beginning and the knowledge
| gained from them is more valuable.
|
| Over-sharing on social media. Secret / IP leaks with LLMs. That
| kind of thing.
|
| I agree:
|
| FOMO is an all-in mindset. Author admits to dabbling out of
| curiosity and realizing the time is not right for him
| personally. I think that's a strong call.
| wslh wrote:
| We've seen multiple ideas/products get quickly absorbed into
| frontier models, OSS, or well-funded startups. The cycle from
| "interesting idea" to "commoditized feature" is getting very
| short. Personally, there were three of these in the last year.
|
| And even if your product is genuinely great, distribution is
| becoming the real bottleneck. Discovery via prompting or search
| is limited, and paid acquisition is increasingly expensive.
|
| One alternative is to loop between build and kill, letting
| usage emerge organically rather than trying to force
| distribution.
| vablings wrote:
| There really isn't anything special to using AI anyways it's
| not rocket science. Sometimes I will use AI to write me some
| tailwind tags, sometimes I will use AI to write me a static
| site for a custom report.
|
| Most of my AI usage comes from doing things I don't enjoy doing
| like making a series of small tweaks to a function or block of
| code. Honestly, I just levelled the playing field with vim
| users and its nothing to write home about
| theptip wrote:
| Ok, here is the risk of being left behind - if we have
| moderately fast take-off, the 1-2 years required to upskill in
| AI might mean you find yourself unemployable when your role
| gets axed.
|
| I don't think folks are taking seriously the possible worlds at
| the P(0.25) tail of likelihood.
|
| You do not get to pick up this stuff "on a timescale of my
| choosing", in the worlds where the capability exponential keeps
| going for another 5-10 years.
|
| I'm sure the author simply doesn't buy that premise, but IMO
| it's poor epistemics to refuse to even engage with the very
| obvious open question of why this time might be different.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think there's such a thing as a "fast take-off" where
| human experience with 2026-era LLM coding remains
| economically relevant.
| msabalau wrote:
| But they have engaged with it, and made an assessment about
| it's current utility.
|
| We have no reason to believe that they won't keep an eye on
| this.
|
| Little to nothing about AI tools so far suggests that that
| one can't just as easily pick the skills later. Tools that
| will get "exponentially better" will almost certainly be
| unrecognizable to someone desperately engaging with them now,
| for not other reason the sake of "having 1-2 years of
| experience"
|
| Someone might reasonably choose to to bet on the upside. That
| doesn't imply that everyone else ought to fearfully hedge.
| duskdozer wrote:
| Eh, I'm not super worried. After all, Every six months or so,
| the latest model changes _everything_ and the former model
| was complete garbage. It 's not just a new model--it's a new
| paradigm shifting the landscape of agentic development.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| Counter point. It's always advantageous to learn and grow as
| things evolve. This way you have an active role and maybe a say
| in how it will evolve. And maybe you could contribute towards
| that evolution (despite poor execution openclaw showed what
| LLMs could be doing)
|
| > There are a 16,000 new lives being born every hour. They're
| all starting with a fairly blank slate.
|
| Not long ago we were ridiculing genZ for not knowing why save
| icon looks like a floppy disk.
|
| Do you want to feel like that in next 5-10 years?
| marcd35 wrote:
| I agree with this point. There is absolutely a 'left behind'
| gap that is under-explored.
|
| My last job was a cable technician - making house calls to
| fix wifi, satellite tv, phone issues. Mostly elderly
| residents. The majority of them all were computer and phone
| illiterate. They were slow adopters to the fast-moving
| technology and many of them did not know how to operate their
| devices after we (UI/UX/hardware/software engineer 'we')
| removed them.
|
| I wonder if this also has contributed to the elderly
| lonliness problem - sure its probably mostly related to
| physical companionship, acceptance of aging, etc, but the
| world that they knew (in general and the technological world
| they grew up in) is no longer recognizable.
| skydhash wrote:
| But maybe it doesn't matter that much to them. I don't know
| how to skin a rabbit, but that knowledge could be handy in
| some situations. But I don't see myself being in that
| situation other than accidentally.
|
| My mother has a phone, but only use it to call. She has
| never needed a computer even though I spent my teenage
| years glued to one. But I have like 1 percent of a skill in
| cooking.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Exactly. We look at older people and think "oh, look at
| those poor souls. They don't know X and Y technologies
| and they keep doing things the old way! They must feel so
| left behind." Nothing is further from the truth. My whole
| life I've lived in neighborhoods full of people 20+ years
| older than me and not once did I have a neighbor or
| friend who I thought was overwhelmed with the pace of
| modern life and upset about how different the world was
| becoming from what they are used to. This is a trope.
| People are resilient and adaptive, and as you get older
| you learn how to embrace new things that actually help
| and reject new things that don't. As I get older, I find
| myself just not caring about a lot of things that younger
| people care about and not doing a lot of things they do.
| I don't use social media, I still pay for things with
| cash and checks, I don't understand or care about the
| Kardashians or reality tv. My phone is 8 years old. I
| listen to prog rock and new wave music, and I probably
| couldn't name a single popular musical performer today
| (besides Taylor Swift because I have a daughter). I don't
| feel even slightly "left behind" or "obsolete."
| td2 wrote:
| The counterpoint is that you will learn jank.
|
| If you started early webdev, you learned lots of tricks, that
| dont benefit a modern webdev. E.g soap, long polling, the
| JsonP workaround... and so on
|
| Many of the Llm frameworks will be seen simular. Mcp is
| already kinda heading in the obsolete direction imo, as
| skills took over
| skydhash wrote:
| I've learned a lot of stuff that don't really benefits me
| right now, but now and then I encounter a situation that
| made me happy that I did. It may never happens for some,
| but at the time, I was probably happy learning it.
|
| But there's some stuff that I don't bother explore in depth
| because my time is finite and I don't really need it. And
| anything LLM tooling is probably easier than a random JS
| framework. Vim's documentation is probably longer than
| cursor's.
| agentultra wrote:
| One area where it may end up leaving you behind is if you're
| looking for a job right now. There are _a lot_ of companies
| putting vibe coding in their job requirements. The more
| companies that do this the harder it will be to find employment
| if you're not adopting this tool /workflow.
| logicchains wrote:
| Even if it reaches the end state of AGI, e.g. AI that's smarter
| and more capable than 90% of humans, there'll still be a huge
| learning curve to using it well, as anyone who's tried managing
| very smart humans can attest.
| abustamam wrote:
| Broadly speaking I agree. But the reality for many SWEs is that
| if they don't learn new AI tools they'll get let go. It's use
| AI or be replaced by AI (or, more accurately, be replaced by
| someone using Ai) for many folks.
|
| I think it's a luxury to be able to ignore a trend like AI.
| crypto was fine to ignore because it didn't really replace
| anyone, but Ai is a different beast
| gamerdonkey wrote:
| > It's use AI or be replaced by AI
|
| I think they want to sell that perception, but the biggest
| thing the tech execs want in their SWEs is fear.
|
| Fear that makes us stay in our jobs, even when raises and
| bonuses stagnate, because the market is scary with all the
| "AI layoffs" (which have largely been regular downsizing with
| the AI label slapped on).
|
| Fear that makes us use the LLMs and then put in extra hours
| when we don't see the 10x productivity gains that they
| expect.
|
| Fear that makes us erode our own skills and become dependent
| on these gatekeepers to maintain even a base level of
| productivity.
|
| So much of the advertising and discussion around AI is based
| around fear. It's inevitable. It will take your job. Render
| you useless. It will render humanity useless. You better get
| in now, or you'll both lose your job and could end up in a
| virtual hell
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk).
| abustamam wrote:
| I think you're right that it is fear. But it's kind of a
| self fulfilling fear. Teams are requiring employees to use
| AI, probably because of this fear. Maybe it isn't directly
| taking my job, but it is necessary for me to use Ai to keep
| my job.
| sarchertech wrote:
| You can always hang your shingle and work for clients
| directly.
| gamerdonkey wrote:
| I agree that it's self-fulfilling. I just feel that it's
| being used more as a tool for compliance than for direct
| productivity.
| abustamam wrote:
| That certainly could be true for some teams. Personally I
| think AI has directly improved my productivity. There's
| certainly sharp edges and we definitely shot ourselves in
| the foot more than a few times in ways we wouldn't have
| without AI, but by and large we've built an internal app
| where no human wrote a single line of code. I don't think
| we'd have been able to build it in 2 months without AI.
| We could have gone faster but the bottleneck was product
| and user testing, not code.
| ozim wrote:
| I think it was challenging 2 or 3 years ago. I plunged a year
| ago and it already was quite easy to use mainstream tools. I
| could run some local models with Ollama by just installing it.
| I could use coding assistance in VSCode. Connecting with http
| API to use AI within applications you build was also easy for
| local models or cloud.
|
| There are loads of BS tools out there of course but I don't use
| that many tools.
| isk517 wrote:
| I've let tech pass me by many times, then the tech that passed
| me which I was never in a position to use got replaced by the
| next big tech innovation. I've found that you can climb aboard
| the train at anytime since everything new is a lot easier to
| get started on than learning C and having to manually allocate
| memory.
| spwa4 wrote:
| This is the central thing that changes in a person with age.
| When you are born, the only thing you do is pick up new things.
| Literally nothing else. When you're young, picking up new
| things is how you improve your social position. It's what you
| do to even be talked to in the first place. It's what you do to
| get a girl/boyfriend, or be the best student in class, or to be
| the best (or worst even) employee at your first job ...
|
| Once you have a good social position, or at least one you're
| happy with, you stop doing this, and you grow ever more
| irritated at others doing it ... because it's _your_ social
| position that they 're coming after. And they're younger, more
| motivated and hungrier. More than that, a decent chunk of these
| people want a better social position, even if that means taking
| yours.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Sure, but this is mostly irrelevant because software dev is
| one of the youngest fields. Something like 70% of
| professional devs are under 35 depending on which survey you
| look at. And the number of CS graduates exploded over the
| last decade.
|
| The only reason the numbers aren't even more tilted is
| because people stopped hiring juniors 2 years ago. But
| they're out there, and if there's a new technology around
| that makes them vastly more productive than the seniors
| today, there's nothing stopping companies from hiring them.
| casey2 wrote:
| No. It just assumes there is no utility in the underlying tech,
| someone who believes vaccines don't work could make the same
| argument. Most people trust Morgan-Stanley when it comes to
| financial instruments more than some bozo on the internet.
|
| You do have to drag stubborn people, kicking and screaming,
| into the future or they will continue using old tech. The
| article is framed in the past tense, "someone tried", "the
| crypto grift was". As if it's not currently swallowing the
| world. I guess he is so maximally sensible that he self-assess
| faster than MS and realizes bitcoin just isn't for him every
| time.
|
| He has a strange hyper-specific definition of utility and
| productivity, (wrote my MSc, had fun) don't count.
| m463 wrote:
| I don't know, I kind of wonder if this applies to all
| technologies equally.
|
| for example, (dodging the whole full-self-driving controversy)
| tesla cars have had advanced safety features like traffic aware
| cruise control and autosteer for over a decade.
|
| so, buying into safety early...
|
| for other technologies, there's sort of the rugpull effect. The
| people who get in early enjoy something with little drama vs
| the late adopters. ask people who bought into sonos early vs
| late, probably more exampless of this.
|
| so getting technology the founders envisioned, vs later
| enshittified versions.
| eqmvii wrote:
| A lot of people feel this way.
|
| But IMO the most fruitful thing for an engineering org to do
| RIGHT NOW is learn the tools well enough to see where they can be
| best applied.
|
| Claude Code and its ilk can turn "maybe one day" internal
| projects into live features after a single hour of work. You
| really, honestly, and truly are missing out if you're not looking
| for valuable things like that!
| stiiv wrote:
| > Claude Code and its ilk can turn "maybe one day" internal
| projects into live features after a single hour of work. You
| really, honestly, and truly are missing out if you're not
| looking for valuable things like that!
|
| You're right, it's possible. But you might be both
| overestimating the ease of onboarding and underestimating the
| variety of tasks and constraints devs are responsible for.
|
| I've seen Claude knock out trivial stuff with a sufficiently
| good spec. But I've also seen it utterly choke on a bad spec or
| a hard task. I think these outcomes are pretty broadly
| established. So is the expectation that the tech will get
| better. Waiting isn't unwise.
| smugma wrote:
| Waiting may not be "unwise" but acting now may be optimal.
| Even though tooling may be much better in 12 months, if it
| can improve quality or time now, that's a net benefit.
|
| Bikers in the Tour de France used to not wear helmets. They
| were seen as uncouth ("why jump on the bandwagon?"). Helmets
| today are way better than they were then. But if the utility
| provided is greater than the cost, of course it makes sense
| to act sooner.
|
| I'm not explicitly arguing for investing in AI or other
| newfangled tech, I'm arguing that the premise of waiting may
| be "sounded" but also "leaves money on the table", or in some
| cases, lives.
|
| The author talks about vaccines as a counter example but
| doesn't really address the cost/benefit in any detail.
| lopis wrote:
| You're only missing out if that's what you want to do. Not
| every software developer is interested in creating new software
| projects from scratch in an hour, or at all. It's totally find
| to do software development as a job, and then close your laptop
| and not see it until Monday. Learn the tools that suit when
| when you need them.
| remus wrote:
| > You're only missing out if that's what you want to do.
|
| Who writes software and doesn't have a list of "I'll fix this
| one day" issues as long as their arm?
|
| This is honestly one of the things I enjoy most at the
| moment. There's whole classes of issues where I know the fix
| is probably pretty simple but I wouldn't have had time to
| sort it previously. Now I can just point claude at it and
| have a PR 5mins later. It's really nice when you can tell
| users "just deployed a fix for your thing" rather than "I've
| made a ticket for your request" your issue is on the never-
| ending backlog pile and might get fixed in 5 years time if
| you're lucky.
| subarctic wrote:
| Claude code makes it so easy to do things the "right way"
| that it also makes it really easy for you to let scope
| creep get out of hand. I have a personal project that I
| haven't deployed yet that in some ways is way
| overengineered for its purpose. It's hard to blame the tool
| though, it's always telling me I'm making it more
| complicated than it needs to be but I don't listen
| nkozyra wrote:
| Not advocating for crypto here, but the ROI evaluations here are
| a bit incongruous.
|
| The risk of getting in early on crypto is you lose a little
| money. The risk of not is missing out on money. You can't simply
| replay that later, the way that you could invest the time to
| catch up on how git works.
| romaniv wrote:
| > weaponisation of FOMO
|
| This is in an excellent characterization of the kind of marketing
| tactic I see all over social media right now and that I find
| absolutely disgusting.
|
| The keyword here is _fear_. Despite faux-positive veneer, the
| messaging around certain technologies (especially GenAI) is
| clearly designed to induce anxiety and fear, rather than inspire
| genuine optimism or pique curiosity. This is significant, because
| fear is one of the most powerful tools to shut down rational
| thinking.
|
| The subliminal (although not very subtle) message there is
| something very primitive. "If you don't join our group, you will
| soon starve to death." This is radically different from how most
| transformative technologies were promoted in the past.
| Theodores wrote:
| I think AI is not quite the same as crypto when it comes to
| FOMO. At the peak of the craze you could not write on HN that
| 'crypto is nonsense' unless you wanted to be modded down to
| oblivion, to be shadow banned forever. I exaggerate, but not
| much.
|
| With AI people are able to say 'this is nonsense' without
| people getting the pitchforks out.
|
| As for myself, I don't have the bandwidth to learn how to do
| clever things with AI. I know you just have to write a prompt
| and it all happens by magic, but I have been burned quite
| badly.
|
| First off, my elderly father got tricked out of all of his
| money and my mother's savings, which were intended for my
| niece, when she comes of age. It was an AI chatbot that did the
| deed. So no inheritance for me, cheers AI, didn't need it
| anyway!
|
| Then there was the time I wanted to tidy up the fonts list on
| my Ubuntu computer. I just wanted to remove Urdu, Hebrew and
| however many other fonts that don't have any use for me. So I
| asked Google and just copied and pasted the Gemini suggestion.
| Gemini specified command line options so that you could not
| review the changes, but the text said 'use this as you can
| review changes'. I thought the '-y' looked off, but I just
| wanted to do some drawing and was not really thinking. So I
| typed in the AI suggestion. It then began to remove all the
| fonts and the window manager, and the apps. It might as well
| have suggested 'sudo rm -fr /'.
|
| This was my wakeup call. I am sure an AI evangelist could blame
| me for being stupid, which I freely admit to. However, as a
| clueless idiot, I have been copying and pasting from Stack
| Overflow for aeons, to never be tricked into destroying all my
| work.
|
| My compromise is to allow some fun with cat pictures, featuring
| my uncle's cat, with Google Banana. This allows me to have a
| toe in the water.
|
| Recently I went on a course with lots of people with few of
| them being great intellects. I was amazed at how popular AI was
| with people that have no background in coding. They have
| collectively outsourced their critical thinking to AI.
|
| I did not feel the FOMO. However, I am old enough to remember
| when Word came out. I was at university at the time and some of
| my coursemates were using it. I had genuine FOMO then. What is
| this Word tool? I was intimidated that I had this to learn on
| top of my studies. In time I did fire up Word, to find that
| there was nothing to learn of note, apart from 'styles', which
| few use to this day, preferring to highlight text and making it
| bold or biglier. I haven't used a word processor in decades,
| however, it was a useful tool for a long time.
|
| Looking back, I could have skipped learning how to use a word
| processor, to stick to vi, latex and ghostscript until email
| became the way. But, for its time, it was the tool. AI is a bit
| like that, for some disciplines, you can choose to do it the
| hard way, using your own brain, or use the new tools. However,
| I have been badly burned, so I am waiting it out.
| hparadiz wrote:
| When did ignorance become a virtue? Or is it the contrarian
| montra?
| bdcravens wrote:
| I see you haven't spent much time on Twitter the past 10 years
| :-)
| hparadiz wrote:
| <insert no body quits twitter rick and Morty meme>
|
| This isn't Twitter though.
| aavci wrote:
| How else can you be in the right place and right time to discover
| a problem to solve that can't be seen from afar?
| babarock wrote:
| I don't understand the rush to be "the first". Facebook isn't the
| first social media, Google isn't the first search engine, iPhone
| is not the first smart phone, Microsoft is not the first OS, the
| list goes on.
|
| Clearly there's an advantage for being an early adopter, but the
| advantage is often overblown, and the cost to get it is often
| underestimated.
| wolframhempel wrote:
| There's value in being early - in the right thing.
|
| - If you'd invested in Bitcoin in 2016, you'd have made a 200x
| return
|
| - If you'd specialized in neural networks before the transformer
| paper, you'd be one of the most sought-after specialists right
| now
|
| - If you'd started making mobile games when the iPhone was
| released, you could have built the first Candy Crush
|
| Of course, you could just as well have
|
| - become an ActionScript specialist as it was clearly the future
| of interactive web design
|
| - specialized in Blackberry app development as one of the first
| mobile computing platforms
|
| - made major investments in NFTs (any time, really...)
|
| Bottom line - if you want to have a chance at outsized returns,
| but are also willing to accept the risks of dead ends, be early.
| If you want a smooth, mid-level return, wait it out...
| bombcar wrote:
| Some of those things involve a bit of money as a gamble; others
| require some time learning tooling that can be repurposed
| (mobile game developers can obviously do mobile apps), and
| others would be dedicating years of your life into something
| that may be a dead end.
| jghn wrote:
| A friend told me about bitcoin in early 2010, back when the
| coins were effectively free. I laughed at the idea and called
| it stupid.
|
| I still think it's stupid, but I'd be a whole lot richer if I
| went along with it at the time!
| wolframhempel wrote:
| To be fair, I remember being about ten years old and berating
| my friend who just told me that he had something called
| "Rebel Assault" on a CD how this was completely impossible as
| CDs could only store music and how he was a complete idiot
| for believing otherwise... :-)
| irishcoffee wrote:
| I distinctly remember staring at my check/bank/debit card
| laying on the desk in front of my keyboard, all the info
| punched in to buy $500 of bitcoin for something like $0.29 a
| coin.
|
| Didn't pull the trigger. I just tell myself I'd have sold
| them when they doubled in price or they'd have been hacked in
| one of the mt. gox attacks and I'd have lost them anyways.
|
| Today it would be about 120m. Oh well.
| jghn wrote:
| Same. there's no chance I'd have the riches associated with
| those coins. Or at least that's how I manage to sleep at
| night.
|
| There was a local food delivery service at the time that
| accepted bitcoin. Can you imagine looking back on life and
| realizing you spent the equivalent of $1M on a burrito?
| cheevly wrote:
| My roommates and I literally bought a pizza with our
| stash of bitcoins. So yes, we fully understand how this
| feels.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| You would probably have sold early for a relatively small
| amount too.
|
| I bought 10ish BTC at some point for almost nothing, sold
| them for a low 4-digit amount thinking they were stupid
| anyway. I still think they were stupid but it turns out they
| could have paid off my house easily. Oh well.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Question is whether you sold _all_ or just a segment. If
| you bought 100 btc early on, sold 99 of them, you 'd still
| have something worth a deposit for a house or a car now,
| which is still life-changing.
| tartoran wrote:
| Or bought btc early on and forgot about it. Then
| haphazardly attenpting to find it on some old HD when the
| price skyrocketed.. There was a guy who combed through a
| trash landfill to recover a HD that presumably had dozens
| of millions in BTC
| irusensei wrote:
| IMO the only way you'd be rich with bitcoin would be if you
| forget about your coins and reminded of it years later or if
| you were a hardcore "fix the money fix the world hodl"
| believer.
|
| Otherwise you would most likely have sold during one of huge
| crashes or values, attempted trade and lost it all, invested
| into the new shitcoin NFT or whatever or just got hacked
| along the way.
| jghn wrote:
| indeed. even if I didn't lose them along the way or have
| them stolen via hack, I would have cashed out back when
| they were outlandishly priced at $100. I never would have
| held on to them this long.
|
| But even $100 would have been nice given you could still
| pop them out for free on a standard PC back then with
| mining software.
| anticorporate wrote:
| There may be _financial_ value in being early (if you 're
| lucky), but there are other values in waiting.
|
| My goal in life is not to maximize financial return, it's to
| maximize my impact on things I care about. I try to stay
| comfortable enough financially to have the luxury to make the
| decisions that allow me to keep doing things I care about when
| the opportunities come along.
|
| Deciding whether something new is the right path for me usually
| takes a little time to assess where it's headed and what the
| impacts may be.
| 0x3f wrote:
| > My goal in life is not to maximize financial return, it's
| to maximize my impact on things I care about.
|
| In the vast majority of cases, financial returns help
| maximize your impact on the things you care about. Arguably
| in most cases it's more effective for you to provide the
| financing and direction but not be directly involved. That's
| why the EA guys are off beng quants.
|
| The only real exceptions are things that specifically require
| you personally, like investing time with your family, or
| developing yourself in some way.
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| > That's why the EA guys are off beng quants.
|
| Or in prison for fraud.
| ashwinsundar wrote:
| I didn't realize maximizing money is the way to achieve
| moral excellence. It's interesting how Puritanical the EA
| folks are
| 0x3f wrote:
| There is no moral excellence but which you invent for
| yourself. But given the first principle or goal of
| 'having the most impact', maximizing money is often quite
| useful.
| ashwinsundar wrote:
| Or, utilitarianism
| anticorporate wrote:
| I knew this canned rebuttal was coming and almost addressed
| it in my previous comment.
|
| I've not found this to be true at all, for a variety of
| reasons. One of my moral principles that extreme wealth
| accumulation by any individual is ultimately harmful to
| society, even for those who start with altruistic values.
| Money is power, and power corrupts.
|
| Also, the further from my immediate circle I focus my
| impact on, the less certainty I have that my impact is
| achieving what I want it to. I've worked on global
| projects, and looking back at them those are the projects
| I'm least certain moved the needle in the direction I
| wanted them to. Not because they didn't achieve their
| goals, but because I'm not sure the goals at the outset
| actually had the long term impact I wanted them to. In
| fact, it's often due to precisely what we're talking about
| in this thread: sometimes new things come along and change
| everything.
|
| The butterfly effect is just as real with altruism as it is
| with anything else.
| 0x3f wrote:
| But you're not supposed to accumulate the wealth, you're
| supposed to forward it to your elected causes.
| anticorporate wrote:
| Being a quant is inherently accumulating and growing
| someone's wealth for them, even if it's not your own.
|
| If there were a way to be a true Robin Hood and only
| extract wealth from the wealthy and redistribute that to
| poor, I'd call that a noble cause, although finance is
| not my field (nor is crime, for that matter) so it's not
| for me.
|
| My chosen wealth multiplier is working at a community-
| owned cooperative, building the wealth for others
| directly.
| 0x3f wrote:
| Not sure about this because many charities are designed
| to spend their income, rather than hoard it. A big part
| of choosing which charity to donate to is, or should be,
| how effective they are in spending what you give them.
| anticorporate wrote:
| I mean, I'm not arguing that if you can find a way to
| make a large amount of money in an ethical way without
| enriching yourself or the wealthy further and then find a
| way to accurately evaluate charities to maximize impact,
| that you shouldn't do that. But there are several very
| difficult problems embedded in that path, and I could
| easily sees just solving all of those problems becoming a
| full-time job by itself.
|
| I also, candidly, haven't ever seen anyone successfully
| do that.
| komali2 wrote:
| > Arguably in most cases it's more effective for you to
| provide the financing and direction but not be directly
| involved. That's why the EA guys are off beng quants.
|
| The EA guys aren't the final word on ethics or a fulfilling
| life.
|
| Ursula K. Le Guin wrote that one might, rather than seeking
| to always better one's life, instead seek to share the
| burden others are holding.
|
| Making a bunch of money to turn around and spend on
| mosquito nets might seem to be making the world better, but
| on the other hand it also normalizes and enshrines the
| systems of oppression and injustice that created a world
| where someone can make 300,000$ a year typing "that didn't
| work, try again" into claude while someone else watches
| another family member die of malaria because they couldn't
| afford meds.
| 0x3f wrote:
| Nobody is asking about ethics or a fulfilling life. We
| are talking about maximum _impact_.
| danny_codes wrote:
| > The only real exceptions are things that specifically
| require you personally, like investing time with your
| family, or developing yourself in some way.
|
| So, the things that matter the most for most people?
|
| Studies pretty consistently show that happiness caps off at
| relatively modest wealth.
| 0x3f wrote:
| That's not their stated goal. Their stated goal is to
| maximize impact, not their own happiness.
| danny_codes wrote:
| Impact is nebulous. For example, Zuckerberg has had
| impact but it's been almost entirely negative. The world
| is a worse place for him having existed.
| 0x3f wrote:
| It being signed doesn't make it nebulous.
| Devasta wrote:
| I want to cure lung cancer, therefore as an Effective
| Altruist(tm) I maximize my income by selling cigarettes to
| children outside playgrounds. The money will go towards
| research in my will, and in the meantime the incidence of
| lung cancer in teenagers will incentivize the free market
| to find a cure!
|
| People don't become quants because they are EAs, they
| become EAs to justify to themselves why they became quants.
| 0x3f wrote:
| Being a quant is not that interesting and if you're not
| redirecting the money you're not really an EA, are you?
|
| Your first paragraph is just a standard response to
| utilitarianism, although a poor one because it doesn't
| consider EV.
|
| Nonetheless I'm not quite sure why merely mentioning EA
| draws out all these irrelevant replies about it. It was
| incidental, not an endorsement of EA.
| demaga wrote:
| None of those examples are useful.
|
| 1. 2016 was years after Bitcoin was developed. So you could
| still make 200x returns without being early adopter.
|
| 2. Is this even true? I'd bet scraping experts or people who
| can fine tune LLMs have easier time finding a job than
| classical ML academics.
|
| 3. Candy Crash was released when iPhone was on its 5th
| iteration.
|
| If anything, you just added to OPs points. Being an early
| adopter gives limited advantage.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| to be fair a friend of mine made one of the first flashlight
| apps on iOs and made a tidy sum out of it.
|
| I think the question really is about how well you hit your
| timings. You can have held bitcoin but sold it went it hit
| $5k or less. You can have a technical advantage in a given
| field but somehow waste it (dead startup, serious illness)
| and lose your timing. Nobody knows what the right timings
| are, but I think the OP is pushing for a more consistent risk
| investment strategy and setting up the timings to raise the
| floor significantly at the cost of losing some of the best
| possible ceilings.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Almost everyone chasing those returns would be better off
| investing in index funds.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Index funds give you something like the expected value over a
| huge class of possible investments.
|
| What you aim for if you want to invest early is rather a
| probability distribution of
|
| - get rich with a small (but nevertheless realistic)
| probability p
|
| - get something between little, nothing, and loosing a little
| bit with probability 1-p
|
| This is a very different offering than the profit probability
| distribution that index funds give you.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What you aim for if you want to invest early_
|
| Sure. I'm saying someone pursuing that portfolio will
| probably end up underperforming an index. Most new early-
| stage VCs do.
|
| > _get something between little, nothing, and loosing a
| little_
|
| Broadly speaking, when your investment outcomes don't
| differentiate between anything and zero, you're mostly
| going to get zero.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > I'm saying someone pursuing that portfolio will
| probably end up underperforming an index.
|
| This holds if you consider "underperforming" to be a
| comparison of expected values.
|
| On the other hand, if you consider "probability of
| getting a really huge payoff" to be the measure by which
| the investments are compared, the index fund is the one
| that looses in the comparison.
| mahemm wrote:
| Would you be comfortable using this same logic to invest
| most of your net worth in lottery tickets/betting on
| black in a casino? If not, I'd be curious to hear what is
| different in that for you.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Would you be comfortable using this same logic to
| invest most of your net worth in lottery tickets/betting
| on black in a casino?
|
| I wouldn't "invest" in lottery tickets because for these
| p is far too small (exception: if I found a loophole in
| the system of the lottery, which has been found for some
| lotteries). For casinos, there is additionally the very
| important aspect that the casino will scam you (if you
| start winning money (for example by having found some
| clever strategy that gives you an advantage), the
| security will escort you out of the building and ban you
| from entering the casino again).
|
| So, to give an explanation of the differences:
|
| - Because "the typical run" for such an investment will
| be loosing, you should never invest your whole net worth
| (or a significant fraction thereof) into such an
| investment. The advice that I personally often give is to
| use index funds or stock investments for generating the
| money for investments that are much more risky, but have
| huge possible payouts.
|
| - You should only do such an "early investment" if you
| have a significant information advantage over the average
| person. Such an advantage is plausible, for example, if
| you are deeply interested in technology topics
|
| - Lottery tickets have an insanely small p (as defined in
| my comment). You only do "early investments" into topics
| where the p is still small, but not absurdly bad. The
| difference is that for lottery tickets the p is basically
| well-known. On the other hand, for "early investments",
| people can only estimate the p. Because of your
| information advantage from the previous point, you can
| estimate the p much better than other people, which gains
| you a strong advantage in picking the right "early
| investments" to choose.
|
| But be aware that this is a strategy for risk-affine
| people. If you aren't, you better stay, for example, with
| index funds.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _this is a strategy for risk-affine people_
|
| If you're paying a fair price for the risk, sure. Most of
| the examples you gave seemed to be in deep speculative
| territory to the point that they don't very much resemble
| anything economic.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you consider "probability of getting a really huge
| payoff" to be the measure by which the investments are
| compared_
|
| That's gambling. You're truncating the curve below the
| top. It's a terrific strategy for middlemen. Its expected
| value is lower than index investing.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Sure, you could take calculated risks for predictable returns
| over a long enough time scale.
|
| Or you could take what's in the box!!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Only if it's leveraged.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > - If you'd specialized in neural networks before the
| transformer paper, you'd be one of the most sought-after
| specialists right now
|
| > - If you'd started making mobile games when the iPhone was
| released, you could have built the first Candy Crush
|
| I disagree:
|
| Concerning the first point: how neural networks are today is
| very different from how they were in former days. So, the
| knowledge of neural networks from the past does only very
| partially transfer to modern neural networks, and clearly does
| not make you a very sought-after specialist right now.
|
| Concerning your second point: the success of mobile games is
| very marketing-centric. While it is plausible that being early
| in mobile games development when the iPhone was released might
| have opened doors in the game industry for you, I seriously
| doubt whether having this skill would have made you rich.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I can confirm your response to the point you can first
| imtringued wrote:
| There's also the problem that there is currently a huge
| transformer monoculture in the AI space. Everything gets
| better if you throw transformers at the problem.
|
| If you had worked on anything other than a transformer based
| architecture post 2016, such as Mamba or RWKV, you would have
| wasted your time.
|
| Mamba 3 is the third iteration and somehow I doubt that it
| will catch on.
| rob wrote:
| I should've started registering a bunch of two and three
| character and generic .com domains in the early 90s when
| registration was free.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Crucially those are all investments. Just like creating AI or
| buying data centers to run AI is an investment. Whereas merely
| using AI feels more like being in the general population of
| consumers. The shape of the outlay for it is un-investment-
| like. A monetary investment is a big charge up front, not a
| monthly fee. A skills investment looks like effort spent
| learning, but I mean how difficult is it to type reasonably
| precise English? Conclusion: you're a customer, not an
| investor, so you can start any time.
| not_a_bot_4sho wrote:
| Wow, shots fired here for me.
|
| I was ahead of the game with my intimidate expertise in
| ActionaScript and Silverlight! I made 3D engines in browsers
| well before WebGL was a spec.
|
| It was quite profitable for a few years, then _poof_. Dead end
| lol
| mock-possum wrote:
| In all fairness I _was_ an actionscript specialist, and up
| until 2010 or so I was making REAL good money doing contract
| flash work -
|
| Luckily I was also doing frontend work alongside, so when the
| time came to transition to html+css+javascript, it wasn't much
| of a move at all, it was just putting down AS and focusing
| fully on JS
| fermentation wrote:
| There's really no need to be "early" for something like this.
| I've seen coworkers who've never used agentic coding pick it up
| and know everything that need to in ~2 days. The people who
| really dive in and are running orchestrated agents overnight
| are in general not building much of real value.
| hakunin wrote:
| > If you'd invested in Bitcoin in 2016, you'd have made a 200x
| return
|
| Except you would've probably sold it at any of 1.5x, 2x, 4x, or
| 10x points. That's what people keep missing about this whole
| "early bitcoin". You couldn't tell it will 2x at 1.5x, you
| couldn't tell it will 4x at 2x, and so on.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| I'm suprised nobody has mentioned that Claude is the realization
| of all this blockchain work - an internet computer you rent time
| from where the computation is measured in tokens :)
| bdcravens wrote:
| You just described time-sharing. Cryptocurrency mining is much
| different, in that you can commit computation resources and
| never get paid.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| Indeed it's much more similar to time sharing than cloud
| compute.
|
| But time sharing was never as global and accessible. It was a
| group in a company or in a university sharing a specific
| machine.
|
| The currency discussion is different too. Time sharing was
| just a local fee. Now people are talking about the tokens
| themselves can do for them.
| hparadiz wrote:
| HN is generally sleeping on the next big tech that is
| coming for running this stuff locally. Which is quite
| performant and will soon be in everything.
| keiferski wrote:
| I actually think the opposite approach might be the most optimal
| one, at least from a monetary perspective. That is, be on the
| cutting-edge of something, but be willing to bail out at the
| moment its future starts seeming questionable. Or even more
| specifically, maximize your foothold in it while minimizing your
| downside.
|
| Bitcoin is a good example: if you bought it 15 years ago and held
| it, you're probably quite wealthy by now. Even if you sold it 5
| years ago, you would have made a ton of money. But if you quit
| your job and started a cryptocurrency company circa 2020, because
| you thought crypto would eat the entire economic system, you
| probably wasted a lot of time and opportunities. Too much
| invested, too much risked.
|
| AI is another one. If you were using AI to create content in the
| months/years before it really blew up, you had a competitive
| advantage, and it might have really grown your
| business/website/etc. But if you're now starting an AI company
| that helps people generate content about something, you're a bit
| late. The cat is out of the bag, and people know what AI-speak
| is. The early-adopter advantage isn't there anymore.
| WindyMiller wrote:
| But you can't be on the cutting-edge of everything, and there
| are opportunity costs.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| Maybe - but that's also a style of life definition, isn't it. I
| did not care at all about Bitcoin, and I'm still pretty fine. I
| even think, sitting Bitcoin out was better for me, because who
| (vrosdly speaking) cares about it today (besides speculating
| with it)?
| CodingJeebus wrote:
| Yeah it looks reasonable when you only pick success stories for
| your examples.
|
| If you sold the farm to get in early in the Metaverse, you're
| totally hosed now because that was a dead end. The idea of
| digital real estate was as terrible then as it is now.
| keiferski wrote:
| I specifically wrote this:
|
| > Or even more specifically, maximize your foothold in it
| while minimizing your downside.
| epolanski wrote:
| Ah yeah, the beauty of hindsight knowledge.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| How do you know what not to invest in then? Bitcoin wasn't the
| only cryptocurrency fifteen years ago. It wasn't even the first
| digital currency. If you hop on every bandwagon, you'll go
| broke far more then you become wealthy. Just look at all the
| people who poured money into NFTs or digital real estate in the
| metaverse or Dogecoin or whatever.
|
| It's easy to say "well of course I would have invested in
| Google in 1999" but there was nothing in 1999 to say that
| Google was going to be as big as it was. Why not Lycos or
| Dogpile or AskJeeves?
|
| How many people dedicated their careers to Flash, only to have
| it die at the hands of Steve Jobs and HTML5? It's not just
| about bailing out: lots of folks had to _start over_ because
| taking advantage of the opportunity means actually investing
| real time and money. "As a tulip bulb producer, I would have
| simply stopped producing tulip bulbs when it started to seem
| questionable." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
| keiferski wrote:
| I don't think you're understanding my point. Hopping on the
| bandwagon is explicitly _not_ "maximizing your foothold while
| minimizing your downside," nor is it early-stage almost by
| definition. An early stage technology with an uncertain
| future cannot have a bandwagon.
|
| I think the logical thing to do is to invest a minor amount
| of time/money across a broad spectrum of new promising tech.
| If you had been aware of and bought $500 of Bitcoin in 2010,
| you'd be a billionaire today. The early people involved with
| NFTs also did very well.
|
| The Flash example is specifically the opposite of my point.
| Flash was a lucrative skill for a period of time, but at a
| certain point it became very clear that it didn't have a
| future.
| cj wrote:
| If applying that advice were as easy as it sounds, there
| would be many more billionaires in the world.
|
| If only Mt Gox didn't vaporize all of my bitcoin in the
| early 2010's :(
| keiferski wrote:
| I didn't say it was easy, I was just thinking
| theoretically, as a strategy that was the opposite of the
| OP.
| subarctic wrote:
| What is the broad spectrum of new promising tech today? How
| much time and money should you invest in each one?
|
| This question is easy to answer in hindsight but it's not
| trivial to answer in the moment. I like your mindset though
| xondono wrote:
| Except that strategy gets you killed through a thousand paper
| cuts.
|
| What would have you done when the Bitcoin fork happened 50/50?
| Would you have gone int ICOs? Which ones? Etc...
|
| There's simply too many "new things", so by trying to get
| exposure to them you'll be massively in the red.
|
| Let's say you get into 1000 "new things", and you strike it
| lucky and hit BTC. You'd had to buy BTC in early 2013, hold it
| over the whole period and sold at the historical maximum _for
| you to be at break even_.
|
| If instead of buying 1000 "new things", you've put your money
| into the S&P you'd be at +250% by the same time.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _be on the cutting-edge of something, but be willing to bail
| out at the moment its future starts seeming questionable_
|
| The problem is this leaves you undifferentiated from every hype
| chaser in Silicon Valley. Our world is littered with folks who
| went to coding school, traded Bitcoin, did something in the
| metaverse and blogged about AI. That jack-of-all-trades
| knowledge _can_ be useful. But only if you're making unlikely
| connections. Having the same cutting-edge familiarity as every
| tech journalist doesn't that make.
|
| Better: develop deep knowledge and expertise in something.
| Anything. Not only does this give you _some_ ability to
| recognize what expertise looks like from afar, it also lets you
| dip into new topics and have a chance at seeing something
| everyone else hasn't already. That, in turn, gives you the
| ability to be a meaningful first mover.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > That is, be on the cutting-edge of something, but be willing
| to bail out at the moment its future starts seeming
| questionable
|
| Counterpoint, I sold all my Bitcoin in 2011 when Mt Gox got
| hacked and the price plummeted 80%. Would have done it again
| after their 2014 hack too if I had any left.
|
| > Bitcoin is a good example: if you bought it 15 years ago and
| held it, you're probably quite wealthy by now
|
| But you just said bail the moment it's future starts to be
| questionable. If you follow that you would have never held it
| for 15 years.
| LeonidasXIV wrote:
| If you bought into NFTs when they were hot you would have lost
| money. Not every new tech is worth investing immediately.
| keiferski wrote:
| When they were hot is not when they were new.
| aavci wrote:
| FOMO is making me feel like I should mess around with openclaw
| but I can't see any use cases that I can't accomplish with other
| tools. What should I do based on this article?
| kxrm wrote:
| Why do you need a reason to try anything?
|
| Just go out and prove how useless it is. If, during your
| testing, you find that it has no good use case, toss it.
|
| Waiting for others to validate a tech for you is a mistake IMO.
| edent wrote:
| I recommend going to the pub with some friends and having a
| chat about anything that isn't work.
| aavci wrote:
| Nice blog btw
| bombcar wrote:
| Don't just do something, stand there!
|
| Like investing in index funds, a big part of it is psychology
| of the individual as Jeeves would say.
|
| Find a way to scratch the FOMO itch without taking on too much
| risk.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| That's a reasonable strategy. I don't think spreading FOMO is
| good. But pragmatically, I enjoy working with the latest crop of
| AI models regarding all sorts of computer tasks, including coding
| but many other sysadmin stuff and knowledge organization.
|
| I didn't pick them up until last November and I don't think I
| missed out on much. Earlier models needed tricks and scaffolding
| that are no longer needed. All those prompting techniques are
| pretty obsolete. In these 3-4 months I got up to speed very well,
| I don't think 2 years of additional experience with dumber AI
| would have given me much.
|
| For now, I see value in figuring out how to work with the current
| AI. But next year even this experience may be useless. It's like,
| by the time you figure out the workarounds, the new model doesn't
| need those workarounds.
|
| Just as in image generation maybe a year ago you needed five
| loras and controlnet and negative prompts etc to not have weird
| hands, today you just no longer get weird hands with the best
| models.
|
| Long term the only skill we will need is to communicate our wants
| and requirements succinctly and to provide enough informational
| context. But over time we have to ask why this role will remain
| robust. Where do these requirements come from, do they simply
| form in our heads? Or are they deduced from other information,
| such that the AI can also deduce it from there?
| 0xblinq wrote:
| Comparing these tools to the crypto or NFTs hype is so out of
| touch with reality.
|
| This is more on the scale of the invention of the press, the
| telegraph, or the internet itself.
|
| "I'm ok being left behind, I will join this Internet thing when
| it really becomes useful"...
|
| Ok... you do you. Hope you don't get there too late.
| WolfeReader wrote:
| The behaviors of NFT advocates and AI advocates are shockingly
| similar.
|
| Remember how NFTs were supposed to be the future or art
| ownership, and all it amounted to was awful pictures of bored
| apes and ahegao lamas? The NFT bros _proudly_ displayed their
| shitty art - not because it was good, but because it signaled
| their allegiance.
|
| Now go on to any pro-AI blog. Look at the images. They've
| stopped trying to edit out the AI errors - they proudly display
| images with garbled text and bad anatomy. Just like before, it
| signals allegiance to AI consumption.
|
| Even the last sentence of your post is the same sentiment as
| "have fun staying poor" was for the crypto bros.
| polothesecond wrote:
| > The behaviors of NFT advocates and AI advocates are
| shockingly similar.
|
| It's the same people every time. Stupid, gullible idiots.
|
| Remember when HN was obsessed with the room temp
| superconductivity fraud a few years back? Remember the
| zealous indignation at anyone suggest skepticism? The empty
| attempts to downplay their rabid stupidity afterwards?
| jmye wrote:
| > Hope you don't get there too late.
|
| Too late for _what_? Could no one start a viable internet
| business in 2005, or were they all taken in 1998? Is it
| impossible to learn machine learning today, if you weren 't
| jumping into Tensorflow in 2015? Do you think it's impossible
| to learn OpenClaw today, if you weren't playing with it six
| months ago, and do you think there might not be a successor
| that "wins" and is easier to learn and use six months from now,
| or will I have "gotten there too late" to possibly leverage or
| learn agents?
|
| I just don't understand what it is you think anyone will be too
| late for, unless this is just self-justification and snide ego-
| boosting.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| In 1998 or 2005 two persons could single-handedly start a
| Google or a Facebook. Not possible anymore today in Internet.
|
| But in AI a single person created OpenClaw.
|
| It's called low-hanging fruits.
| jmye wrote:
| > But in AI a single person created OpenClaw.
|
| Do you think no one can create anything alone ever again?
| Or can they only do it by adopting the bleeding edge?
|
| > It's called low-hanging fruits.
|
| 1 in a million ideas are 1 in a million, and they don't
| require being a bleeding edge adopter of anything. Do you
| think no one can create a better version of a first-try
| service? Is the agentic world now closed because someone
| built a mediocre version of it?
|
| For a start-up based board, this point-of-view just feels
| so sad and myopic.
| linsomniac wrote:
| >I didn't use Git when it first came out.
|
| This really hinges on what you mean by "didn't use git".
|
| If you were using bzr or svn, that's one thing.
|
| If you were saving multiple copies of files ("foo.old.didntwork"
| and the like), then I'd submit that you're making the point for
| the AI supporters. I consulted with a couple developers at the
| local university as recently as a couple years ago who were still
| doing the copy files method and were struggling, when git was
| right there ready to help.
| intrasight wrote:
| Pretty sure he meant he didn't use Git.
|
| I'm still stuck with TFS and SVN in my day jobs but use Git on
| and off on side projects. I really wish all my clients would
| just switch to Git.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Git is old and busted, jj is the new hotness.
| jmye wrote:
| Was "when it first came out" a confusing limiter, there? I
| guess it seems like the article was making the point that
| jumping on git the day it came out could've just meant learning
| the betamax of repos, and that it was better to wait a bit to
| see what mature tech looked like, rather than waiting until
| 202X to realize that saving multiple file versions was
| suboptimal.
|
| I don't understand how this, at all, makes "the point" for
| anyone.
| LeonidasXIV wrote:
| Using Git when it came out would have probably meant to use
| Cogito, which has been dead for such a long time by now.
|
| Or have bet on Mercurial. Which is also close to dead. Or
| darcs, which has been big in certain environments and now
| practically extinct.
| xigoi wrote:
| Git may have an arcane interface, but if you learn it, you can
| be sure what exactly will happen when you run a Git command.
| Unlike with LLMs.
| kxrm wrote:
| As someone further down the road in my career, I would argue that
| waiting is your prerogative but you do so at your own peril.
|
| I made these kind of mistakes early in my career, stuck it out
| with PHP for far too long ignoring all the changes with frontend
| design trends, react, etc. I was using jQuery far too late in my
| career and it really hurt me during interviews. What I was doing
| was seen as dated and it made ageism far worse for me.
|
| Showing a portfolio website that was using tables instead of
| divs.
|
| I had to rapidly skill up and it takes longer than you think when
| you stick too long with what works for you.
|
| If AI truly is a nothing-burger than guess what? Nothing lost and
| perhaps you learned some adjacent tech that will help you later.
| My advice is to NEVER stop learning in this field.
|
| Learning is your true superpower. Without that skill, you are a
| cog that will be easily replaced. AI has revealed to me who among
| my colleagues is curious, and a continuous learner. Those virtues
| have proven over the course of my 25+ year career in technology
| to be what keeps you relevant and marketable.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think the point isn't "wait forever and never learn" but
| simply "you don't have to be at the forefront of the wave" -
| because the real ones will lift everything, and you can come it
| a bit later.
|
| It is easy NOW to look back and see the optimal path for a web
| developer, but was that obvious from the start? How many killer
| technologies lie unused today?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Okay, this text was pretty good. Refreshing to read something
| that doesn't seem written by AI too (would be ironic given the
| contents).
|
| The only scenario where I think it pays off to be on top of the
| hype is of you are chasing money sloshing around the latest hype.
| You know, the hustle culture thing. If that's not your thing,
| waiting until things are established (if they ever get there) is
| harmless.
|
| And yeah, AI as it is now is at best moderately useful. I use it
| on a daily basis, but could do without it with little harm.
| Krssst wrote:
| > Refreshing to read something that doesn't seem written by AI
| too (would be ironic given the contents).
|
| As much as I dislike the idea of not writing/checking code I am
| responsible for, it was a surprise to me seeing a few
| "anti/limited AI in coding" articles that don't pass an LLM
| detector. (I know those are not perfect but not much else one
| can do).
| bombcar wrote:
| That's really the big difference - if you're a startup or
| founder (or apparently even an billionaire CEOwner) you gotta
| chase the hype because your customers _are_ the VCs
| /shareholders and if you are NOT chasing hype they're going to
| have serious doubts about you.
|
| As an employee (perhaps even a highly stock-option compensated
| one) the equation is very different. Perhaps you're aligned if
| you're an employee of a startup/AI obsessed company. But for
| the vast majority they're not.
| bdcravens wrote:
| This is fine so long as you don't confuse stubbornness for
| caution. As technologies lose favor, and others suggested you
| expand your toolset, don't post about your frustration while
| you're standing in the unemployment line.
| aaurelions wrote:
| Why launch Voyager-1 if, in X years, no matter how far it flies,
| we'll catch up to it and overtake it using a new version?
| bdcravens wrote:
| Without lessons learned from Voyager-1 the successors would
| never be built.
| krackers wrote:
| Because the planetary alignments won't allow for another launch
| any time soon... which I guess has a natural correspondence in
| that the macroeconomic conditions (read: bubble) mean that now
| is a great time to play around with things while they're
| basically giving it away to get you hooked.
| dakolli wrote:
| I love the Cryptocurrency analogy. The LLM hype monkeys are the
| same people that were screaming that NFTs/Digital Art was going
| to replace all the traditional art in gallaries in 10 years. They
| are literally the same people, and they are all addicted to money
| and hype. Ignore them..
|
| Did handmade Swiss watch movements lose all demand when Asia
| started mass manufacturing watches? No. There is always going to
| be more demand for quality over slop. Its the same reason that
| handmade clothes are worth 100x more than clothes at a department
| store.
|
| This is all by design too, these billionaires selling thinking
| machines are trying to make us all dependent on their fountain of
| tokens. Don't fall for it. Just like how maps apps made everyone
| reliant on Google/Apple for your ability to navigate around your
| own city, these billionaires want to do the same think with your
| ability to think, build, plan and even learn/read.
|
| Don't fall for this scam, unlike other hype cycles like NFTs and
| Crypto this will actually damage more than just your bank
| account, it will fry your brain if you become over reliant on it.
|
| Take a second and consider why these LLM tool companies design
| their products like slot machines. They put multipliers in there
| UIs (run this x3,x4,x5) times so that you inevitably treat the
| thing like a slot machine. And it is like a slot machine, you
| have no way to control the results its quite random, in the case
| of llms they just have a better payout percentage, at the cost of
| making your brain become dopamine and structurally dependent on
| their output. They convince people there is some occulted art in
| the formation of a prompt, like a gambler who thinks if they
| press buttons in a certain order they'll get better results or
| many other gambling superstitions.
|
| If you're writing software please take a moment to breath, and
| ask yourself if its really that useful to have piles of code
| where you have little idea how things work, even if they do.
| Billionaires will sell you on the idea that this doesn't matter
| because the llm, that you conveniently have to pay them to use,
| will always be able to fix that bug.
|
| Don't fall for the ruling classes trick, they want you reliant on
| this thing so they can tell you that your input isn't as
| valuable, and therefor your salary and skills are not as
| valuable. We have to stop this now.
| darkhorse13 wrote:
| There's a shocking amount of overlap between AI & Crypto/NFT
| bros:
|
| https://mystudentfailedtheirmid.substack.com/p/theres-a-shoc...
| Hasslequest wrote:
| You can run the LLMs on your own machine
| dakolli wrote:
| It costs about 60-80k to run a 1T param model at your house..
| which is the only size model that's going to get anywhere
| close to a foundation model's capability.
| jwsteigerwalt wrote:
| At some point you commit the time to learn what you need to. I
| like to think of the analogy to SEO. The veterans in the industry
| are not who they are because they were at the front of the line.
| It's because they have the 15 years of experience under their
| belt.
| rileymichael wrote:
| i've said this before, but the "left behind" narrative is FUD
| nonsense. as an llm avoider i've never felt further _ahead_ than
| now. all of my peers who never bothered to learn their tools
| (which gave tangible benefits) have opted into deskilling
| themselves further.
|
| it's readily apparent who has bought into the llm hype and who
| hasn't
| mocmoc wrote:
| Wouldn't play that game with LLM's
| another-dave wrote:
| On the otherhand, when Cloud Computing started to come in, I knew
| a bunch of sysadmins. Some were in the "it'll never take off"
| camp and no doubt they know it now, kicking and screaming.
|
| But the curious early adopters were the ones best positioned to
| be leading the charge on "cloud migration" when the business
| finally pulled the trigger.
|
| Similarly with mobile dev. As a Java dev at the time that Android
| came along, I didn't keep abreast of it - I can always get into
| it later. Suddenly the job ads were "Android Dev. Must have 3
| years experience".
|
| Sometimes, even just from self-interest, it's easier to get in on
| the ground floor when the surface area of things to learn is
| smaller than it is to wait too long before checking something
| out.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > On the other[ ]hand, when Cloud Computing started to come in,
| I knew a bunch of sysadmins. Some were in the "it'll never take
| off" camp and no doubt they know it now, kicking and screaming.
|
| > But the curious early adopters were the ones best positioned
| to be leading the charge on "cloud migration" when the business
| finally pulled the trigger.
|
| From a technological perspective, these sysadmins were right:
| in nearly all cases (exception: you have a low average load,
| but it is essential that the servers can handle huge spikes in
| the load), buying cloud services is much more expensive overall
| than using your own servers.
|
| The reason cloud computing took of is that many managers
| believed much more in the marketing claims of the cloud
| providers than in the technological expertise of their
| sysadmins.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Yeah, most companies _still_ should not be using cloud for
| stuff. I think a lot of people here who work for startups don
| 't get that, because cloud makes a ton of sense if you're a
| new business that has a hundred other higher priorities than
| spending capital on infrastructure and sysadmins. But for
| most companies? They are better off with on prem.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > Suddenly the job ads were "Android Dev. Must have 3 years
| experience".
|
| So just read up on it and say you do. They don't really need 3
| years experience, so you don't really need to have it.
| bitwize wrote:
| Employers check your work history. You'd better be able to
| back up having the amount of experience they require with
| paid, value-delivering work at past employers, or they'll
| pass.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Many actually do not check anything.
| bitwize wrote:
| I've never actually encountered one who didn't. Just like
| I've never been able to actually quit on Tuesday and walk
| into my next role on Thursday the way Hackernews told me
| "any halfway decent developer" should be able to do. They
| tend to ask about this sort of thing in interviews too
| and if you prove not to have the required background, you
| are considered weak and filtered out.
|
| Anyways, checking happens often enough that the risk of
| being considered a liar and a fraud for claiming
| experience you don't have is high.
| aworks wrote:
| I was an engineering manager an for decades and I did first
| technical phone screening of a very large number of
| candidates. I couldn't really assess someone's design and
| programming skills. So I would pick a particular area they
| were promoting and go as deep as I could on it, both on the
| technology and their project experience using it. I weeded
| out lots of candidates, saving my engineers' interview time
| for more suitable candidates. And my teams were good at
| giving me feedback when I let someone unqualified e slip
| through...
| mablopoule wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're downvoted, but this is the right take
| IMO. I hate cheating and lying in general, but in any job
| posting you have to separate what are the actual requirement
| in term of knowledge versus what can be realistically learned
| on the job / doing a prototype in a weekend.
|
| Of course don't fraud by like pretending you're a
| statistician when you have absolutely no mathematical
| background, but also don't take at face value the "Must have
| {x} years of experience in {y} tech" requirement when you
| know you have the necessary work experience to have a good
| grasp on it in a few weekend prototypes, and you also know
| that the job doesn't actually require deep expertise of that
| particular tech.
|
| I did the same for my first React.js job, and I didn't feel
| bad because 1) I was honest about it and did not sold myself
| as a React expert, and 2) I had 10 years of front-end
| development, and I understood web dev enough to not be
| baffled by hooks and the difference between shallow copy vs.
| deep copy of a data structure, so passing technical test was
| good enough for it.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > But the curious early adopters were the ones best positioned
| to be leading the charge on "cloud migration" when the business
| finally pulled the trigger.
|
| lol no. There's nothing actually different about managing VMs
| in EC2 versus managing physical servers in a datacenter. It's
| all the same skills, and anyone who is competent in one can
| pick up the other with zero adjustment.
| swagmaster8008 wrote:
| Maybe in a greenfield environment, but this I disagree with
| your assessment in an enterprise setting. Have you worked
| with orgs that have on-prem + cloud and are migrating? It is
| a massive pain and regardless of whether it's easy, people
| and orgs don't want to do it.
| rewgs wrote:
| But here's the thing: learning Android dev is nothing like
| "learning" to use an LLM.
|
| Obviously there are tons of tools and systems building up
| around LLMs, and I don't intend to minimize that, but at the
| end of the day, an LLM is more analogous to a tool such as an
| IDE than a programming language. And I've never seen a job
| posting that dictated one must have X number of years in Y IDE;
| if they exist, they're rare, and it's hardly a massive hill to
| climb.
|
| Sure, there's a continuum with regards to the difficulty of
| picking up a tool, e.g. learning a new editor is probably
| easier than learning, say, git. But learning git still has
| nothing on learning a whole tech stack.
|
| I was very against LLM-assisted programming, but over time my
| position has softened, and Claude Code has become a regular
| part of my workflow. I've begun expanding out into the ancilary
| tools that interact with LLMs, and it's...not at all difficult
| to pick up. It's nothing like, say, learning iOS development.
| It's more like learning how to configure Neovim.
|
| In fact, isn't this precisely one of the primary value
| propositions of LLMs -- that non-technical people can pick up
| these tools with ease and start doing technical work that they
| don't understand? If non-technical folks can pick up Claude
| Code, why would it be even _kind_ of difficult for a developer
| to?
|
| So, I'm with the post author here: what is there to get left
| behind _from_?
| aworks wrote:
| "must have X number of years in Y IDE"
|
| Not quite on topic but as an engineering manager responsible
| for IDE development, explaining to recruiters and candidates
| I wanted engineers who developed IDEs, not just used them.
| Unfortunately, that message couldn't get through so I saw
| many resumes claiming, say 5 years of Eclpse experience, but
| I would later determine they knew nothing of the internals of
| an IDE.
|
| Presumably, people now claim 3 years of machine learning
| experience but via ChatGPT prompting.
| nsfmc wrote:
| > For every HTML 2.0 you might have tried, you were just as
| likely to have got stuck in the dead-end of Flash.
|
| i'll just say, and i understand this is not the point of the
| article at all, but for all its faults, if you got in on flash as
| earl as html 2.0 and you were staring at an upcoming dead-end of
| flash in say, 2009, you also knew or had been exposed at that
| time to plenty of javascript, e4x and what were essentially
| entirely clientside SPAs, providing you a sort of bizarro view of
| the future of react in a couple of years. honestly, not a bad
| offramp even if flash itself didn't make it.
| sd9 wrote:
| > If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to
| pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing
| not yours.
|
| In contrast to the current top comment [1], I don't think this is
| a wise assessment. I'm already seeing companies in my network
| stall hiring, and in fact start firing. I think if you're not
| trying to take advantage of this technology today then there may
| not be a place for you tomorrow.
|
| I find it hard to empathise with people who can't get value out
| of AI. It feels like they must be in a completely different
| bubble to me. I trust their experience, but in my own experience,
| it has made things possible in a matter of hours that I would
| never have even bothered to try.
|
| Besides the individual contributor angle, where AI can make you
| code at Nx the rate of before (where N is say... between 0.5 and
| 10), I think the ownership class are really starting to see it
| differently from ICs. I initially thought: "wow, this tool makes
| me twice as productive, that's great". But that extra value
| doesn't accrue to individuals, it accrues to business owners. And
| the business owners I'm observing are thinking: "wow, this tool
| is a new paradigm making many people twice as productive. How far
| can we push this?"
|
| The business owners I know who have been successful historically
| are seeing a 2x improvement and are completely unsatisfied. It's
| shattered their perspective on what is possible, and they're
| rebuilding their understanding of business from first principles
| with the new information. I think this is what the people who
| emerge as winners tomorrow are doing today. The game has changed.
|
| Speaking as an IC who is both more productive than last year, but
| simultaneously more worried.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47454614
| jghn wrote:
| > between 0.5 and 10
|
| Hopefully not too many people are "enhanced" to the tune of
| 0.5x!
| sd9 wrote:
| That was deliberate. Some people report that it slows them
| down - fine.
| coldpie wrote:
| > I find it hard to empathise with people who can't get value
| out of AI. It feels like they must be in a completely different
| bubble to me.
|
| I think it depends on why you do programming. I like
| programming for its own sake. I enjoy understanding a complex
| system, figuring out how to make change to it, how to express
| that change within the language and existing code structure,
| how to effectively test it, etc. I actively like doing these
| things. It's fun and that keeps me motivated.
|
| With AI I just type in an English sentence, wait a few minutes,
| and it does the thing, and then I stare out the window and
| think about all the things I could be doing with my life that I
| enjoy more than what just happened. I find my productivity is
| way down this year since the AI push at work, because I'm just
| not motivated to work. This isn't the job I signed up for. It's
| boring now.
|
| The money's nice, I guess. But the joy is gone. Maybe I should
| go find more joy in another career, even if it pays less.
| sd9 wrote:
| Oh, I agree entirely. The new paradigm is entirely
| unsatisfying to me too. It's not the same work that I trained
| my entire life to get good at, and the new work is not as
| fun. I trained to get good at this work because I just loved
| it since I was first introduced to it at ~10. I would have,
| and was, doing it for free for years.
|
| Unfortunately that doesn't change my outlook on where all
| this is headed.
| coldpie wrote:
| Perhaps, then, you can actually empathize with people who
| don't get value from it :) I used to enjoy the work, now I
| don't, so I'm posting on HN and daydreaming about other
| careers, instead of doing something useful.
| sd9 wrote:
| Yeah, maybe empathise was the wrong word. I certainly
| empathise with the feelings, I just struggle to see how
| people cannot use it to get more done.
|
| I'm also daydreaming about other careers instead of doing
| something useful.
| coldpie wrote:
| > I just struggle to see how people cannot use it to get
| more done.
|
| To be blunt about it, there's a decent chance I'll be
| quitting this job later this year, largely because of the
| AI push. I just hate these tools and I do not want to
| work this way. Losing an employee is a pretty big cost to
| the company. I guess the AI stuff is probably worth it to
| them, but there's a downside to it, too.
| sd9 wrote:
| Yeah I agree with you, and I think a lot of people feel
| the same. It's totally different now and it's not what I
| signed up for. Maybe I'll get used to it, idk.
|
| I hope everything works out well for you.
| randusername wrote:
| > I find it hard to empathise with people who can't get value
| out of AI
|
| > But that extra value doesn't accrue to individuals, it
| accrues to business owners.
|
| What is value?
|
| Is a 2X faster lumberjack 2X as valuable? Sure
|
| Is a 2X faster programmer 2X as valuable? At what, fixing bugs?
| Adding features? That's not how the "ownership class" would
| define value.
|
| Productivity is a measure of efficiency, not growth. Slashing
| labor costs while maintaining the status quo is still a big
| productivity gain.
| sd9 wrote:
| > Slashing labor costs while maintaining the status quo is
| still a big productivity gain.
|
| Maybe I didn't express myself properly, but I think we agree,
| at least on this point?
|
| Besides this effect, of enabling smaller teams to produce the
| same results, I think there is a larger effect coming where
| fundamentally different structures produce the same or better
| results as last year. I just don't think we've completely
| figured out what that looks like yet.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The irony is that if LLMs live up to their potential then the
| value of software development as a skill is going to plummet, at
| least as far as something to do for others. I say it's ironic
| because obviously the people most interested in using LLMs for
| software development are software developers, and most are not
| working independently. It'd be like if we were all proactively
| getting involved in training our own replacements.
|
| I was highly skeptical of this happening not that long ago, but I
| have to say that it seems increasingly likely. LLMs are still
| quite mediocre at esoteric stuff, but most software development
| work isn't esoteric. There's the viable argument that software
| development largely isn't about writing code, but the ability to
| write code is what justifies software developer salaries, because
| there's a large barrier to entry there that most just can't
| overcome. The 80/20 law seems to apply to everything, certainly
| here - 80% of your salary is justified from 20% of what you spend
| your time doing.
|
| It's quite impossible to imagine what this will do to the overall
| market, because while this sounds highly negative for software
| developers, we're also talking about a future where going
| independent will be way easier than ever before, because one of
| the main barriers for fully independent development is gaps in
| your skillset. Those gaps may not be especially difficult, but
| they're just outside your domain. And LLMs do a terrific job of
| passably filling them in.
|
| It'd be interesting if the entire domain of internet and software
| tech plummets in overall value due to excessive and trivialized
| competition. That'd probably be a highly disruptive but
| ultimately positive direction for society.
| homeonthemtn wrote:
| I think this is a carry over from the early 2000s boom and bust
| mindset. That if you jump in early enough on nearly any
| technology, you'll become a billionaire. So hop on board our
| burning platform!
|
| In general, we as a society have not adjusted to technology.
| We've gone through to much change to have any stable base lines.
| So we're going to float in insanity for a while until things
| finally settle down. Probably 2 wars, a famine, and several
| periods of resource scarcity away still, but we'll get there one
| day...
| LaGrange wrote:
| > Have fun being poor
|
| Not going to lie, I'd rather be poor. Not destitute - I've been
| poor but not destitute and I'd rather not go desperate - but
| poor? As in (because "poor" is very imprecise and can imply
| anything between utter poverty to "not owning three homes") like
| having a low paying job but still enough to pay rent?
|
| I'd rather be that than do AI assisted software development.
| Genuinely the only thing stopping me now is that there's actually
| way more skill and qualifications in most low-paying jobs than a
| typical software developer imagines, and acquiring those takes
| time and money itself. But by now I know multiple people who made
| the jump even before the latest madness, and they're all happier.
| Some still code, but don't even publish. Some are like "I haven't
| used a proper computer in _months_ this is great." All work hard
| jobs at odd hours. None regret.
| thr0w wrote:
| > What is there to be left behind from?
|
| Employment?
| danielbln wrote:
| A great blog article for 2023. In 2026 I think the wait is over..
| quantified wrote:
| > I wrote my MSc on The Metaverse. Learning to built VR stuff was
| fun, but a complete waste of time. There was precisely zero
| utility in having gotten in early.
|
| Wonderful life lesson on hype cycles. I am curious if hype
| literacy will join media literacy in academia.
| mvrckhckr wrote:
| It's a personal choice, and both early and late(er) can be valid
| rational choices if it's you who is making the choice and not
| just following a crowd (or even a single person).
| bartread wrote:
| I mean, whatever, man.
|
| This line, as one example:
|
| > For every HTML 2.0 you might have tried, you were just as
| likely to have got stuck in the dead-end of Flash.
|
| Like a lot of tech Flash had its moment in the sun and then faded
| away, but that "moment" lasted a decade, and plenty of people got
| their start because of or built successful businesses around it.
| Did they have to pivot as Flash waned? Sure, but change is part
| of life.
|
| I'm sorry but I find the take expressed in this piece to be
| absolutely miserable and uninspiring.
|
| But, hey, congratulations on the 20:20 hindsight, I suppose.
| fantasizr wrote:
| the main value being created is by selling courses and convincing
| people they're late and need to catch up
| raincole wrote:
| > If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to
| pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing
| not yours.
|
| I mean... yeah? It's obviously true. However people use LLM
| coding today not because they're "afraid of being left behind" or
| "investing into a new tech" or whatever abstract reasoning. It's
| because they're already reaping the benefit right away. It takes
| just a few hours to go through like 80% of the learning curve.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "There are a 16,000 new lives being born every hour. They're all
| starting with a fairly blank slate. Are you genuinely saying that
| they'll all be left behind because they didn't learn your
| technology in utero?"
|
| This is a great framing.
| furryrain wrote:
| I'm less convinced.
|
| To keep and/or increase my current compensation, I have to be
| competitive in the software development market.
|
| (Whether I need AI to remain competitive is another matter.)
|
| The 16,000 new babies will be competing in different markets.
|
| Oh, and of those 16,000 babies, many are born in far less
| fortunate circumstances, they're already far behind their
| cohort. :/
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _keep and /or increase my current compensation, I have to
| be competitive in the software development market_
|
| Author's point is that competitiveness can come in many
| forms. Having the same AI proficiency as everyone else isn't
| differentiating. (And it isn't table stakes.)
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Isn't that what is implied by the toughest job market yet for
| junior level candidates? Author is very confident that the
| answer to his question is "no".
| mablopoule wrote:
| I think the implication is that even though the technological
| landscape is evolving, it's not as if people born in the 60's
| couldn't foray into computer science because they arrived too
| late to study the ENIAC first.
| Tade0 wrote:
| To me the main question is the long term pricing.
|
| It is said that major providers more than break even on what
| they're charging.
|
| But at the same time that's not the point of capitalism, is it?
| The point is to charge close to the _value_ you 're providing.
|
| My lunch money is approximately $10 and I often blow through as
| much in Claude tokens generously provided by the company which
| hired me. But I'm not getting $10 value from those tokens, but
| much more.
|
| The cost of entry to this market is extremely high. Should
| Anthropic win and become an almost monopoly, it is bound to keep
| increasing prices to the point, where the value it's providing
| matches the cost.
|
| That's the endgame of every AI company out there. It's worth
| using these tools now, while there's still competition and moats
| weren't established.
| fantasizr wrote:
| This is where I landed too. At least in the js frameworks
| "wars" it was reading the docs and prototyping angular and
| react for free. To try and keep up with the latest AI tools
| you're expected to spend ~$1k / year.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| Luckily the models were built on copyrighted materials so
| hopefully the big players won't have strong legal standing to
| kill off model destilling. Then, with models like current
| deepseek or kimi k2.5, you are perhapy 1/2 years behind in
| their capabilities at the fraction of the cost. For real
| inference costs, look at prices on openrouter. For hobby, I
| wasn't able to burn trough more than $5 in a month.
| StilesCrisis wrote:
| I don't think there's a universe where Google stops competing
| here, though. The second Anthropic gets greedy, there will be
| alternatives.
| Tade0 wrote:
| My worry is are two or even three companies at the top enough
| for healthy competition? You're not limited to one product -
| arguably it's better to have multiple subscriptions.
|
| If they decide to increase pricing in lockstep just like
| FAANG applied RTO policies, we as consumers are going to get
| the short end of the stick.
| layer8 wrote:
| > But at the same time that's not the point of capitalism, is
| it? The point is to charge close to the _value_ you 're
| providing.
|
| The question is how large the value delta will be from open
| models. And I'm not sure if the cost of entry is really
| "extremely" high comparatively if as you project the market
| will be so profitable. Surely investors will see a chance to
| get a larger piece of that profit. While model training is
| costly, there is a ceiling imposed by the training material
| being limited (at least for text). LLMs also don't have a
| network-effect moat like social media has, or a web search moat
| like Google has, or a chip technology moat like TSMC has. It's
| unclear if a significant moat will emerge.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| NVIDIA Jensen predicted today that soon engineers will spend
| $20k in tokens every month.
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| The biggest issue is - you will be left behind, in the end. This
| is the race you cannot win. You can try as much as you like,
| spend free time trying to catch up, and you, most likely, will
| lose. If you play this game, you've already lost.
|
| I am actually surprised by people willingly trying to be more
| _productive_ , like... machines. And then crying when machines
| are proven to be better at being machines than meatbags.
| nailer wrote:
| I'm glad I missed: GraphQL, Kubernetes, Microservices, the
| Metaverse.
|
| I'm glad I jumped early on: Linux, Python, virtualization, cloud,
| nodejs, Solana.
|
| I wish I'd gotten into Rust and LLMs earlier.
| hsaliak wrote:
| My experience so far tells me that the default path with AI
| tooling is that it lets us create without learning. So the author
| is right in that they can pay for a seat in this revolution
| whenever they want.
|
| A practitioner with more experience maybe a few percentage points
| more productive, but the median - grab subscription, get tool,
| prompt, will be mostly good enough.
| nclin_ wrote:
| I think this is true at the solo developer scale, but I suspect
| experience will be much more evident when working with a team.
| m132 wrote:
| The thing is, Bitcoin, at least before cryptocurrencies were
| picked up by "tech bros", was originally a way to disconnect from
| the corrupt, centralized banking system.
|
| LLMs, at the moment, are all about giving up your own brain and
| becoming fully dependent on a subscription-based online service.
| halapro wrote:
| The last comment is ridiculous. Newborns have a literal lifetime
| to catch up--rather, they will learn what they need when they
| need it.
| quantified wrote:
| Actually, given the path their world is on (in the USA anyway),
| it's true. Falling economic opportunity, worsening physical
| environment, social atomization, increased indebtedness, etc.
| drstewart wrote:
| You mean in Canada:
|
| https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canada-falls-in-the-
| wor...
|
| https://financialpost.com/news/canada-manufacturing-
| longest-...
|
| https://thehub.ca/2026/02/02/canadas-spiralling-debt-
| problem...
| grim_io wrote:
| Devs who never mentored or never had to delegate/explain the work
| to be done to someone else, might be in for a rough first few
| weeks/months.
|
| It is a skill, but not a special AI specific skill.
| tutanosh wrote:
| I understand and empathize with his sentiment, but I think he is
| missing the point. Using AI effectively as an engineer requires a
| paradigm shift in terms of how you work. You cannot approach your
| work as you did in the past, and use AI and expect it to be a big
| improvement. In fact, if you do that you will likely be
| disappointed, and worse off. Shifting your paradigm is one of the
| hardest things you can do, even more so if you have been in the
| field for a while, but it is also the most rewarding, and opens
| up many new possibilities. It's not about being left behind, as
| much as it is about limiting yourself unnecessarily, by staying
| in your comfort zone.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| _It 's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass
| off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another
| dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob:
| I have eight different bosses right now._
| neya wrote:
| > I'm OK being left behind, thanks!
|
| > It is 100% OK to wait and see if something is actually useful.
|
| > I took part in a vaccine trial
|
| > Getting Jabbed With EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE!
|
| This is such a weird article. The author presents so many
| contradictory anecdotal experiences against the author's own
| conclusion.
| marand23 wrote:
| I think he used it as a counter-example where it made sense to
| him to be early. But you don't always have to be early, is his
| point, I think.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I heard from a senior leader at Amazon that "Today, I am choosing
| how I fail". This has echoed in my head for many years.
|
| At any moment, you are failing at thousands of things that you
| may not even know about, and that is the gist of what I took away
| from it. The thing is that you have to be OK when you
| intentionally choose to not invest in something as regret is
| ultimately a poison.
|
| The other thing is this: you are not obligated to bring people
| with you and you have a choice of free association.
| lowken wrote:
| There's a lot of truth to this post. I'm very pro AI, and I
| believe everyone should get comfortable with it because it's not
| just the future, it's already the present. If you want to stay
| competitive in today's workforce, AI is going to be part of your
| toolkit.
|
| But on the other hand... I also only learned git when I needed it
| at a new job... So we can pump the breaks a bit.
| lionkor wrote:
| I had this with Rust. I always saw the huge hype, especially some
| years ago, and it was hugely off-putting. Ridiculous projects
| like rewriting famously full coverage branch tested projects like
| SQLite in Rust, or rewriting the GNU coreutils, and always
| spamming "blazing fast" and "written in Rust (crab emoji)" was
| very, very hostile to a C++ developer.
|
| When I eventually got around to using Rust, I was hooked, and now
| I don't use C++ anymore if I can choose Rust instead. The hype
| was not completely unjustified, but it was also misplaced, and to
| this day I disagree with most of those hype projects.
|
| It was no issue to silently pick up Rust, write some code that
| solves problems, and enjoy it as a very very good language. I
| don't feel a need to personally contact C or C++ project
| maintainers and curse at them for not using Rust.
|
| I do the same with AI. I'm not going around screaming at people
| who dare to write code by hand, going "Claude will replace you",
| or "I could vibe code this for 10 bucks". I silently write my
| code, I use AI where I find it brings value, and that's it.
|
| Recognize these tools for what they are: Just tools. They have
| use-cases, tradeoffs, and a massive community of incompetent
| idiots who like it ONLY because they don't know better, not
| because they understand the actual value. And then there's the
| normal, every day engineers, who use tools because, and ONLY
| because, they solve a problem.
|
| My advice: Don't be an idiot. It's not the solution for all
| problems. It can be good without being the solution to a
| problems. It can be useful without replacing skill. It can add
| value without replacing you. You don't have to pick a side.
| mazone wrote:
| Many companies usually want to compare themselves to Apple and at
| the same time say they are disruptors and innovators but Apple is
| probably the best company at being okey with being left behind.
| Many think about them as experts in products but for me they
| always been best att copy what others are doing and refine it,
| maybe not neccassary better technical but always seen the market
| fit better then others. Like poker, the later you need to take
| your decision the more information you have.
| nslsm wrote:
| >There are a 16,000 new lives being born every hour. They're all
| starting with a fairly blank slate.
|
| No, they are not.
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| I started working in AI/ML about ten years ago. Reasonably early.
| Today, professionally and financially I'm doing about as well as
| a typical programmer. I find the field interesting so I have no
| regrets but I tend to agree with OP.
| asim wrote:
| I'm healthily skeptical of new technology. Meaning I'm not the
| early adopter. But I've also found over the years I don't get
| left behind. I become curious at the time things are stabilising.
| Maybe on the cusp where there's still a lot of pushback but
| there's also clear value. Crypto in 2014-2017. AI in 2023-2024.
| You don't have to feel FOMO but if you're a technologist, if you
| have a healthy desire to evolve, change and learn then you'll
| naturally pick things up. I went from total crypto skepticism in
| 2014 to investing most of what I had. I went from total AI
| skepticism to doing RAG for the Quran and agentic tech for the
| small web. I think there's value in staying true to who you are
| but also naturally discovering and learning on your own timeline.
| RobinL wrote:
| For me, it's beyond doubt these tools are an essential skill in
| any SWE's toolkit. By which I mean, knowing their capabilities,
| how they're valuable and when to use them (and when not to).
|
| As with any other skill, if you can't do something, it can be
| frustrating to peers. I don't want collegeues wasting time doing
| things that are automatable.
|
| I'm not suggesting anyone should be cranking out 10k LOC in a
| week with these tools, but if you haven't yet done things like
| sent one in an agentic loop to produce a minimal reprex of a bug,
| or pin down a performance regression by testing code on different
| branches, then you could potentially be hampering the
| productivity of the team. These are examples of things where I
| now have a higher expectation of precision because it's so much
| easier to do more thorough analysis automatically.
|
| There's always caveats, but I think the point stands that people
| generally like working with other people who are working as
| productively as possible.
| jedberg wrote:
| It's more about job seeking than anything. If you jump on a fad
| early, and it turns out to be the winner, when you're looking for
| work you can say you have X years of experience with it, which
| will be a few more than most of the other candidates.
|
| It also shows a passion for learning and improvement, something
| hiring managers are often looking for signals of.
|
| But of course it's a trade off. This rewards people who don't
| have family or other obligations, who have time to learn all the
| new fads so they can be early on the winners.
| j3th9n wrote:
| Tldr; dude makes wrong choices one after the other and copes with
| it by being ok with being left behind. "I wrote my Msc on The
| Metaverse", ....
| pgwalsh wrote:
| Solid piece, very wise. AI is fun but where I find it useful with
| code is first writing more thorough comments and then writing the
| base of your tests.
|
| Writing the actual code that's efficient is iffy at times and you
| better know the language well or you'll get yourself in trouble.
| I've watched AI make my code more complex and harder to read.
| I've seen it put an import in a loop. It's removed the walrus
| operator because it doesn't seem to understand it. It's used
| older libraries or built-ins that are no longer supported. It's
| still fun and does save me some time with certain things but I
| don't want to vibe code much because it removes the joy out of
| what you're doing.
| nubg wrote:
| His ignorance is my first-mover opportunity!
| jruz wrote:
| Have fun writing code yourself /s
| hota_mazi wrote:
| Whenever I hear "It's never too late to do X", I can't help but
| think "Well in this case, there is no harm in waiting a bit
| longer, is there?".
| al_borland wrote:
| I prefer to move slower. I've accepted that I'm not going to
| create some unicorn startup (that was never an aspiration). As an
| employee at a company, my goal is to focus my time learning the
| things that are relevant to my job and that will be useful for 10
| years, not 10 weeks.
|
| Chasing every new tech will lead to burnout and disillusionment
| at some point.
|
| AI probably isn't going away in the same way NFTs largely did,
| and I use it to some degree. However, I don't see a lot of value
| of being on the bleeding edge of AI, as the shape it takes for
| those skills that will be used for the next 10 years are still
| forming. Trying to keep up now means constantly adapting how I
| work, where more time is spent keeping up on the changes in AI
| than actually doing something useful with it.
|
| After the bubble pops, I think we'll start to see a much more
| clear picture of what the landscape of AI will look like long-
| term. Who are the winners, who are the losers, and what tools
| rise to the top after the hype is gone. I'll go deeper at that
| time.
|
| Right now, the only thing I'm allowed to use at work is Copilot,
| so I just use that and don't bother messing around with much more
| in my free time.
| 1PlayerOne wrote:
| Same situation here, Copilot the only available option. But I
| get the feeling of things moving ahead...
| abrztam wrote:
| sure you can pick up any tool whenever you want, but from your
| employer's perspective AI is the best force multiplier since
| slavery, everything between it still required humans with
| leverage, the question is if your boss will need you at all by
| then
| mmmore wrote:
| One hidden premise of this is "AI tools are not useful now, even
| if they might be in the future." For example:
|
| > Few are useful to me as they are now.
|
| Except current AI tools are extremely useful and I think you're
| missing something if you don't see that. This is one of the main
| differences between LLMs and cryptocurrency; cryptocurrencies
| were the "next big thing", always promising more utility down the
| road. Whereas LLMs are already extremely useful; I'm using them
| to prototype software faster, Terrance Tao is using them to
| formalize proofs faster, my mom's using them to do administrative
| work faster.
| edent wrote:
| Cool. But every time I use them I get a wrong answer faster.
|
| I know, I know. I'm prompting it wrong. I'm using the wrong
| model. I need to pull the slot-machine arm just one more time.
|
| I know I'm not as clever as Terrance Tao - so I'll wait until
| the machines are useful to someone like me.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| > There are a 16,000 new lives being born every hour. They're all
| starting with a fairly blank slate. Are you genuinely saying that
| they'll all be left behind because they didn't learn your
| technology in utero? > No. That's obviously nonsense.
|
| That's does not obviously follow, I do worry about the ever
| increasing proportion of humanity who are no longer 'economically
| viable' and this includes people who are not yet born.
| vinayaksodar wrote:
| While you can certainly take a wait and watch approach on many
| things you also have to take a strategic bet on some otherwise
| you will never be at the forefront of any field.
| gabordemooij wrote:
| I find the hivemind terribly oppressing at times. AI tools are
| great, but in the end it seems to me that the results matter
| most. However we seem to go from hype to hype, again and again.
| It's all so tiresome. Why can't we just respect individual
| choices and focus less on the tools and more on the results?
| dist-epoch wrote:
| General idea is true, except for this particular technology.
|
| When AI will be easy to pick up and guide, guess what, there will
| be no need for a programmer to pick it up. AI will be using
| itself, Claude Manager driving Claude programmers.
|
| So leverage AI while you still can provide value doing so.
|
| It's literally a "use it or lose it situation".
| markbnj wrote:
| Adoption of a new technology has always sorted itself into
| buckets by early adopters, mainstream adopters and late adopters.
| I think this post is just demonstrating the mindset of the
| latter.
| muskstinks wrote:
| Crypto was interesting to think through and it was clear very
| early on how many flaws it has. It basically just moved the goal
| post to level deeper and it was quite an eye opener how few
| people even understood the major flaw of crypto: You can only do
| crypto savely with anything on blockchain and it has not solved
| any real issue off blockchain (which means you can literlay just
| send crypto to each other and thats it).
|
| But AI is a beast.
|
| Its A LOT to learn. RAG, LLMs, Architecture, tooling, ecosystem,
| frameworks, approaches, terms etc. and this will not go away.
|
| Its clear today already and it was clear with GPT-3 that this is
| the next thing and in comparison to other 'next things' its the
| next thing in the perfect environment: The internet allows for
| fast communication and we never have been as fast and flexible
| and global scaled manufactoring than today.
|
| Which means whatever the internet killed and changed, will happen
| / is happening a lot faster with ai.
|
| And tbh. if someone gets fired in the AI future, it will always
| be the person who knows less about AI and knows less about how to
| leverage than the other person.
|
| For me personally, i just enjoy the whole new frontier of
| approaches, technologies and progress.
|
| But i would recommend EVERYONE to regularly spend time with this
| technology. Play around regularly. You don't need to use it but
| you will not gain any gut knowledge of models vs. models and it
| will be A LOT to learn when it crosses the the line for whatever
| you do.
| danny_codes wrote:
| That hasn't been my observation and seems unlikely to be true.
| I suspect AI is a wicked learning environment. Narrow
| experience may hinder rather than help
| nromiun wrote:
| Getting early into any technology only makes sense if you are
| building your business on top of it. Or you are making money from
| it in some way. Other than that it makes sense for the rest of us
| to wait.
|
| Of course those that believe that AI will convert into AGI and
| destroy society as we know it won't be convinced.
| cheevly wrote:
| Ive been using AI/LLMs for 3 years non-stop and feel like I've
| barely scratched the surface of learning how to wield them to
| their full potential. I can't imagine the mindset of thinking
| these tools don't take extreme dedication and skill to master.
| ge96 wrote:
| If this is about vibe-coding.
|
| I remember when React was the hotness and I was still using
| jQuery, I didn't learn it immediatley, maybe a couple years later
| is when I finally started to use React. I believe this delayed my
| chance in getting a job especially around that time when hiring
| was good eg. 2016 or so.
|
| With vibe-coding it just sucks the joy out of it. I can't feel
| happy if I can just say "make this" and it comes out. I enjoy the
| process... which yeah you can say it's "dumb/waste of time" to
| bother with typing out code with your hands. For me it isn't
| about just "here's the running code", I like architecting it,
| deciding how it goes together which yeah you can do that with
| prompts.
|
| Idk I'm fortunate right now using tools like
| Cursor/Windsurf/Copilot is not mandatory. I think in the long run
| though I will get out of working in software professionally for a
| company.
|
| I do use AI though, every time I search something and read
| Google's AI summary, which you'd argue it would be faster to just
| use a built in thing that types for you vs. copy paste.
|
| Which again... what is there to be proud of if you can just ask
| this magic box to produce something and claim it as your own. "I
| made this".
|
| Even design can be done with AI too (mechanical/3D design) then
| you put it into a 3D printer, where is the passion/personality...
|
| Anyway yeah, my own thoughts, I'm a luddite or whatever
| ge96 wrote:
| It's funny too you'll hear people say they reverse-engineered
| something (not related to today's post) and you're like "wow
| that's impressive" but it turns out AI did it.
| krackers wrote:
| I mean people use IDA for decompilation instead of reading
| assembly directly, and that's counted as as valid reverse
| engineering. Why shouldn't throwing it an LLM count as well?
| I think reverse engineering is one of the fields where
| "anything goes", it doesn't matter how you get to the answer
| as long as you get there.
|
| I do agree that the notion of difficulty needs to be
| recalibrated though, seemingly impressive RE tasks can now be
| done trivially with LLMs.
| ge96 wrote:
| I wonder what the distinction is, where you draw the line
|
| Is using an LLM the same as writing JavaScript over
| Assembler? idk
|
| I guess it's the same argument of doing math yourself vs.
| using a calculator, gets the job done
|
| But yeah it goes back to my perspective of why be a
| carpenter/furniture maker when a 3D printer can just spit
| one out
|
| Why milk the cow when you can just buy the milk
| josefritzishere wrote:
| This reasoning is solid and applies equally to AI. I do not need
| it crammed into every service and forced on me thank you very
| much "If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able
| to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing
| not yours."
| waynecochran wrote:
| This is one of those posts I would like look back on in a year or
| two. I am usually a late adopter with everything. This time is
| think its different. I am seeing what AI can do with my own eyes.
| I am creating new things at light speed and figuring out this all
| works. I don't think you want to be late to the party on this
| one.
| etwigg wrote:
| I don't think the "craftsman" self-identification is going to
| work for software engineers anymore. The tool capabilities are
| too dynamic, you _have_ to be some sort of opportunistic pirate
| /entrepreneur. Sure you can jump in and get up to speed on some
| aspect of the toolchain later on, but the identity shift is the
| hard and slow part that I think it's wise to get started on ASAP.
| aworks wrote:
| If this is a real strategic shift, some will adapt and some
| won't or can't.
|
| From Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
|
| "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
| opponents... but rather because its opponents eventually die,
| and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it"
| duskdozer wrote:
| Anyone obsessively insisting others adopt $tech with threats that
| you'll be obsolete, left behind, whatever, are just selling you
| something. If anything, they should be trying to keep it a
| secret, so that they stay among the elite few who get outsized
| benefits from $tech while everyone else plays in the mud.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| It amazes me that companies are developing proprietary IP with
| somebody else's cloud-based AI that ingests and learns from
| everything that they type and it generates.
|
| These companies are paying for the privilege of having their IP
| stolen.
| sktrdie wrote:
| So? Economy is entertainment. When crypto was hype, billions were
| made and burned from building whatever entertaining thing around
| that. Now it's AI's turn. Billions will be made and burned.
| Economy is just a fun game. Let's have fun. The idea that
| everything needs to be "useful" is highly subjective. What is
| truly useful? Is it food? Shelter? Medicine?
| picafrost wrote:
| I am increasingly feeling okay with the idea of being left _out_.
| The worst parts of working professionally in a software
| development team have been amplified by LLMs. Ridiculously large
| PRs, strong opinions doubled down due to being LLM- "confirmed",
| bigger expectations coming from above, exceptionally unwarranted
| confidence in the change or approach the LLM has come up with.
|
| I am dying inside when I make a comment and receive a response
| that has clearly been prompted toward my comment and possibly
| filtered in the voice of the responder if not copied and pasted
| directly. Particularly when it's wrong. And it often is wrong
| because the human using them doesn't know how to ask the right
| questions.
|
| Fortunately, most of the fundamental technological infrastructure
| is well in place at this point (networking, operating systems,
| ...). Low skilled engineers vibe coding features for some
| fundamentally pointless SaaS is OK with me.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I remember working on a few early tools for VRML towards the end
| of the 90's... It was cool, but far from great... was remembered
| from the mention of VR in the article.
|
| That said, my only regret with Bitcoin was deleting my early
| wallets when I realized the coins were only worth $.25 ... if I'd
| had any inkling what they'd be worth someday, I'd probably have
| just bought $1000 worth back then and zipped it up until closer
| to today. I'm truly curious how many bitcoins were similarly
| deleted from existence.
| taraharris wrote:
| As long as it's not coupled with calls to tax and regulate those
| who do get in early and reap benefits from doing so, this is good
| and healthy.
|
| (I'm not the earliest adopter of crypto and AI by any means. I
| only rode up crypto a couple of times for 2X and 3X kinda gains
| on my investment, and I only started using Claude last year.)
| mindsandmach wrote:
| I'm reminded of the parable of the Chinese farmer (a quick Google
| search if you aren't familiar) when I see this sentiment. Is
| going all in on crypto good or bad? Maybe so, maybe not. We'll
| see. Is going all in on AI-assisted development good or bad?
| Maybe so, maybe not. We'll see.
|
| All I know is, I've always enjoyed building things. And I enjoy
| building things with AI-assisted tools too, so I'll continue
| doing it.
| ctoth wrote:
| The Programmer's Prayer
|
| Nothing is happening. And if it is, it's just hype.
|
| And if it isn't, it only works on toy problems. And if it
| doesn't, I'll learn it when it stabilizes.
|
| And if I can't, the gains all go to owners anyway. And if they
| don't, it's just managers chasing metrics.
|
| And if it isn't, well I'm a real programmer. And if I'm not, then
| neither are you.
| swframe2 wrote:
| I've noticed 2 very obvious trends. The high-performers who
| previously wrote the most PRs are now using AI the most
| aggressively and the number PRs they produce has almost doubled.
| The other trend is that large teams are being split into smaller
| teams that work on new products. I hope the trend is more
| projects and less grunt coding. (I know the ai coders are not yet
| L6 but I suspect they will achieve L3-L5 this year).
| _345 wrote:
| I would not have started my article with "I could get into
| Bitcoin anytime, why the rush". That is not the killer first
| example you think it is. It's been ~17 years of proof so far that
| you would've made a ton of money by simply mindlessly buying $200
| of bitcoin every month after lower risk contributions are made,
| and just holding onto it.
|
| I mean if you did that you'd have contributed ~$38K USD by 2026
| and had ~1.5B USD now if you started in 2010. BTC being so cheap
| back then dominates the whole process so to demonstrate my point
| more if you had heard about it all those years and were nervous
| about trying it and decided to wait until 2016, you'd still need
| to just put in $24K overall to come out with ~$450K by 2026.
|
| That's not biting your finger nails over the price changes, the
| hype cycles, the price drop scares. You just set and forget a
| $200 recurring buy a month and put your energy elsewhere and
| pocket half a million for basically no effort
|
| And if anything is possible in hindsight, then why in hindsight
| would you write an article acting like bitcoin was a bad decision
| to be an early adopter for
| Footprint0521 wrote:
| Say what you want but the layoffs of people who don't use these
| tools getting replaced with those who can have and continue to
| happen; I miss manual coding just as much as the next man but
| this seems like a hot take
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| It is a far better investment to attend to the eternities rather
| than the times.
| hintymad wrote:
| > If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to
| pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing
| not yours.
|
| I saw meme in X the other day, which roughly says that one does
| not have to learn if she learns slow enough in the age AI. I
| guess the undertone is that AI evolves faster than one can learn
| about the tricks of using it.
| bigbawls wrote:
| Had another 2-hour throwaway session today with an LLM.
|
| These only really happen in mature codebases tied up in complex
| business requirements.
|
| The last few times I've tried LLMs with this codebase it has not
| been fruitful.
|
| Weird because it's impressive in other areas, especially tech
| with no real users lmao
| senordevnyc wrote:
| I'm running a solo saas. In the last six months, I've added about
| $300k in ARR. There's zero chance I could have done this without
| AI. My velocity just keeps going up, month after month.
| mmargenot wrote:
| Especially when people pushing it are trying to capture your
| attention, it's good to be deliberate about the tech that you
| introduce.
| indubioprorubik wrote:
| I use AI not for what the various fraudsters hype it for. It
| utterly fails coding what i want each time. But it is a great
| tool to create things and not be censored/hindered by
| collaboration with humans. It liberates the lone nutters of the
| world to make music, create movies, do things, which society
| desperately tried to stop them from. Just because new things are
| frightening and money shies away from risk like the devil from
| holy water. Look at all those sequels. Each sequel in existence
| murdered a dozen artists hopes to create something new.
|
| A ton of it is garbage. But 1/1000 gets to realize a vision, that
| could never be marketed, never be discovered and is something new
| entirely. For that i love it and thank those who made it..
| temikus wrote:
| I'm in senior management and my take is - this is one of the very
| few times in our industry when the companies are actually both
| encouraging and investing in L&D at an unprecedented rate. When
| do you last remember a company being comfortable throwing
| 10,000$+ a year for you to learn a new skill and experiment at
| your own pace? This is why I'm encouraging my engineers so much -
| it's free training! Take it while it lasts!
| pedalpete wrote:
| Some people are comfortable living on the edge, but it isn't for
| most.
|
| I was developing in the metaverse space, and the problems we were
| facing led me to learn about the state of AI image generation
| (2018), and where the world was headed.
|
| People assume the thing you are focused on is the thing that must
| win in the end, but that just means you are too focused on your
| little part of the world to take in the bigger picture of what's
| out there.
|
| Prior to working in the metaverse (really a form of volumetric
| video, but I won't go into details), I was working in telehealth
| (2014). I did some research in augmented reality (2009), and lots
| of other areas of interest as well.
|
| Some people would say I wasted my time on these, but there was a
| mass of secondary learnings which I value every day.
| kkfx wrote:
| Honestly, those who lost money did so because they were aiming
| for profits, not for The Network State, or for having non-
| seizable money etc. On the other hand, for those who got in early
| because they were online and curious at the time, with a small
| amount of money back then has made them billionaires today, an
| extremely low risk. If they arrived a bit later, millionaires,
| still with a really soft risk.
|
| Then of course, there are MANY problems starting with BTC
| https://blog.dshr.org/2025/09/the-gaslit-asset-class.html but
| they generally aren't what most people talk about, and today,
| even if the complexity is insane, the documentation sparse, and
| the code quality questionable, Lightning is actually the only
| truly scalable solution we have for micropayments and payments of
| various amounts, generally not large ones. It has some absurd
| aspects, but that hardly matters. It works.
|
| More generally, we don't have a crystal ball; where we can, we
| diversify, certainly limiting risk but also taking a bit of a
| gamble; where we can't, we choose to watch and see how it goes,
| knowing that we'll pay for it in terms of returns.
|
| As things stand for me personally, given the level of IT
| obscenity in the traditional banking world, which in 2026 still
| doesn't have decent APIs open to retail customers, or at least
| decent export functions, shameful websites, a push towards
| completely unacceptable mobile apps, absurd limits etc etc etc,
| well, the worst CEx is less bad than the best bank. I don't trust
| either, but I distrust the CEx less than the bank, and given
| Wikileaks, Francesca Albanese, the protesters in Canada, the
| various private individuals illegally "sanctioned" by the EU
| Commission and so on, I'd say it's madness to rely on banks for
| anything more than the bare minimum.
|
| Most people today know nothing of this and don't weigh it up, but
| they will, and they'll pay for this delay with their lack of
| attention.
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