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▲ darkwater 5 days ago

For all the folks on the "reduce mental burden", "reduce cognitive load" train, are you all aware that this basically means you are exercising less your brain day in and day out, and in the end you will forget how to do things? You will learn how to guide an AI agent, but until the day an AI agent is perfect (and we don't know if we will ever see that day), you are just losing inch by inch your ability to actually understand what the agent is writing and what is going on.

I'm pretty radical on this topic but for me cognitive load is good, you are making your neurons work and keep synapses in place where they matter (at least for your job). I totally accept writing down doc or howto to make doing some action in future easier and reduce that cognitive load, but using AI agent IMO is like going to bike in the mountain with an electrical bike.

Yes, you keep seeing the wonderful vistas but you are not really training your legs.

▲theshrike79 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

This, to me, feels like you're complaining to the 45 year old builder that they should be using a hammer instead of a nail gun.

I know how to nail a nail, I've nailed so many nails that I can't remember them all.

My job is to build a house efficiently, not nail nails. Anything that can make me more efficient at it is a net positive.

Now I've saved 2 hours in the framing process by using a nail gun, I have 2 extra hours to do things that need my experience. Maybe spot the contractor using a nail plate in the wrong way or help the apprentice on their hammering technique.

▲darkwater 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

IMO it's different. That's why I brought the e-bike similitude: climbing even mild mountains or hills with your own legs will actually make your legs, heart and lungs stronger in the process. So you get both the wonderful views (building the house or delivering the software) but also you get improved health (keeping your mind trained on both high level thinking and low level implementation vs high level only). We might say that using a hammer constantly will develop more your muscles, but in carpentry there are still plenty of manual work that will develop your muscles anyway. (and we still don't have bricks laying machines)

▲LinXitoW 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Ironically, e-bikes, at least in the EU, are having the exact opposite effect. More people that don't normally ride bikes are using e-bikes to get about. The motor functions not as a replacement, but as a force multiplier. It also makes "experimenting" easier, because the motor can make up for any mistakes or wrong turns.

Caveat: In the EU, an e-bike REQUIRES some physical effort any time for the motor to run. Throttles are illegal.

▲aleph_minus_one 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Ironically, e-bikes, at least in the EU, are having the exact opposite effect. More people that don't normally ride bikes are using e-bikes to get about.

At least in Germany people rather joke that the moment e-bikes became popular, people began to realize that they suddenly became too unathletic to be capable of pedaling a bicycle. I know of no person who uses an e-bike who did not ride an ordinary bicycle before.

> In the EU, an e-bike REQUIRES some physical effort any time for the motor to run.

The motor must shut off when 25 km/h is reached - which is basically the speed that a trained cyclist can easily attain. So because of this red tape stuff, e-bikes are considered to be useless and expensive by cyclists who are not couch potatoes.

▲theshrike79 4 days ago | parent [-]

But they still cannot assist 100%, there needs to be effort from the user.

Otherwise they would be considered e-scooters and would have different rules and regulations applied.

▲darkwater 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, you pedal with almost zero effort when flat and with a little more effort when uphill. Obviously if you are going to go up the Tourmalet you will run out of battery pretty soon, but that's not the context most e-bikers use them.

▲sillyfluke 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In that it fits the LLM situation quite well. LLMs remove the anxieties around coding for newbies at scale better than they make indisputable productivity gains for senior developers, similar to how e-bikes help with newbies more than cyclists.

▲darkwater 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I know that's what many people, especially elder one, say but this is still a hill I will die on :) They are mostly used to go in mostly flat roads, like some slow-speed motorcycle that needs some low effort. The ones using them outside paved road, using them as multipliers, are the ones that already did mountain biking when they were younger and they want to continue doing it at a higher level their age would permit without (which it's perfectly fine!).

▲closewith 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> So you get both the wonderful views (building the house or delivering the software) but also you get improved health (keeping your mind trained on both high level thinking and low level implementation vs high level only).

The vast majority of developers aren't summitting beautiful mountains of code, but are instead are sifting through endless corporate slop.

> We might say that using a hammer constantly will develop more your muscles, but in carpentry there are still plenty of manual work that will develop your muscles anyway.

The trades destroy human bodies over time and lead to awful health outcomes.

Most developers will and should take any opportunity to reduce cognitive load, and will instead spend their limited cognitive abilities on things that matter: family, sport, art, literature, civics.

Very few developers are vocational. If that is you and your job is your identity, then that's good for you. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that's a normal or desirable situation for others.

▲AlecSchueler 5 days ago | parent [-]

> The vast majority of developers aren't summitting beautiful mountains

I'm not sure you're approaching this metaphor the right away. The point is that coding manually is great cognitive exercise which keeps the mind sharp for doing the beautiful stuff.

> The trades destroy human bodies over time and leads to awful health outcomes.

Again, you're maybe being too literal and missing the point. No one is destroying their minds by coding. Exercise is good.

▲johnisgood 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I am using LLMs, too, and I do not consider myself thinking less. I still have to be part of the whole process, incl. architectural process among other things that require my knowledge and my thinking.

▲AlecSchueler 5 days ago | parent [-]

I use them too and actually agree with you that the cognitive load is somewhat comparable. I was only pointing out what seemed like an abuse of the metaphor.

▲closewith 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> I'm not sure you're approaching this metaphor the right away. The point is that coding manually is great cognitive exercise which keeps the mind sharp for doing the beautiful stuff.

No, I'm challenging the metaphor. Working the trades isn't exercise - it's a grind that wears people out.

> Again, you're maybe being too literal and missing the point. No one is destroying their minds by coding. Exercise is good.

We actually have good evidence that the effects of heavy cognitive load are detrimental to both the brain and mental health. We know that overwork and stress are extremely damaging to both.

So reducing cognitive load in the workplace is an unambiguous good, and protects the brain and mind for the important parts of life, which are not in front of a screen.

▲AlecSchueler 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> We actually have good evidence that the effects of heavy cognitive load are detrimental to both the brain and mental health. We know that overwork and stress are extremely damaging to both.

I don't think this is fair either, you're comparing "overwork and stress" to "work." It's like saying we have evidence that extreme physical stress is detrimental ergo it's "unambiguously" healthier to drive than to walk.

Maybe you could share your good evidence so we can see if normal coding tasks would fall under the umbrella of overwork and stress?

▲closewith 5 days ago | parent [-]

We have plentiful evidence and studies on the effect of even moderate day-long cognitive work has on cognitive ability and on the effect of stress.

This is so well-founded that I do not have to provide individual sources - it is the current global accepted reality. I wouldn't provide sources for the effect of CO2 emissions on the climate or gravity, either.

However, the opposite is not true. If you have evidence that routine coding itself improves adult brain health or cognitive ability, please share RCTs or large longitudinal studies showing net cognitive gains under typical workloads.

▲AlecSchueler 5 days ago | parent [-]

Again you're conflating things and are now also moving goalposts (overwork->moderate work) and asking me for very precise kinds of studies while refusing to even point towards the basis for your own claims. On top of this you're implying that I'm some kind of lunatic by associating my questions with climate denial.

It's clear that you're more interested in "winning" than actually have a reasonable discussion so goodbye. I've had less frustrating exchanges with leprechauns.

▲closewith 5 days ago | parent [-]

Come on. We’ve had decades of occupational-health research on cognitive load, stress, and hours. The pattern is clear. Higher demands and longer hours raise depression risk. Lab and field work shows day-long cognitive tasks produce measurable fatigue, decision drift, and brain chemistry changes. These are universally accepted.

And yet, you now want me to source individual studies on those effects in a HN thread? Yes, in this instance you are approaching flat-earth/climate-change-denial levels of discourse. Reducing cognitive load is an unambiguous good.

If you think routine coding itself improves brain health or cognitive ability, produce the studies showing as you demanded from me, because that is a controversial claim. Or you can crash out of the conversation.

▲darkwater 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> No, I'm challenging the metaphor. Working the trades isn't exercise - it's a grind that wears people out.

If your job is just grinding out code in a stressful and soul-crushing manner, the issue lies elsewhere. You will be soon either grinding out prompts to create software you don't even understand anymore or you will be replaced by an agent.

And by no way I'm implying you are part of the issue.

▲closewith 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> If your job is just grinding out code in a stressful and soul-crushing manner, the issue lies elsewhere.

The vast majority of developers are in or near this category. Most software developers never write code outside of education or employment and would avoid doing so if an AI provided the opportunity. Any opportunity to reduce cognitive load is welcome

I think you don't recognise how much of an outlier you are in believing that your work improves your cognitive abilities.

▲theshrike79 5 days ago | parent [-]

Exactly, not every programmer is an artesan who hones their craft on and off the clock.

Some people just write code for 8 hours, go home and never think about it on their free time.

▲theshrike79 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

But LLMs can make the soul crushing part so much easier.

I need to add a FooController to an existing application, to store FooModels to the database. The controller needs the basic CRUD endpoints, etc.

I can spend a day doing it (crushing my soul) or I can just tell any Agentic LLM to do it and no something that doesn't crush my soul, like talk with the customer about how the FooModels will be used after storing.

"But it'll produce bad code!"

No it doesn't. It knows _exactly_ how to do a basic CRUD HTTP API controller in C#. It's not an art form, it's just rote typing and adding Attributes to functions.

Because it's an Agentic LLM, it'll go look at another controller and copy its structure (which is not standard globally, but this project has specific static attributes in every call).

Then I review the code, maybe add a few comments for actual humans, commit and push.

My soul remains uncrushed, client is happy when I delivered the feature on time and I have half the day off for other smaller tasks that would become technical debt otherwise.

▲darkwater 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> My soul remains uncrushed, client is happy when I delivered the feature on time and I have half the day off for other smaller tasks that would become technical debt otherwise.

This is a very optimistic take. If you are in the type of company that just gives you boring code and tasks, you will required to use the other half-day to work on some other boring feature. This will not give us time to pay tech debt. Maybe it will do in the beginning when using AI agents has not been institutionalized yet, but once it has, you will be asked to churn out more "features"

▲mattgreenrocks 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If the mechanics of the work are “soul-crushing,” isn’t that the root cause, and the LLM is just a bandaid? I’m not saying every professional dev is enthused with all their tasks. But if you’re so eager to avoid parts of the job (however rote they are), then maybe it’s time for something new?

I can’t write this without feeling preachy, and I apologize for that. But I keep reading a profound lack of agency in comments like these.

▲theshrike79 5 days ago | parent [-]

It’s a necessary part of the job.

Like no mechanic gets pleasure from an oil change or tire rotation. They’d rather figure out an issue with an old V8

But they do it because that’s a part of the job.

▲beaugunderson 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

this is a persistent myth about eMTBs... they are still great for exercise! here's a study showing you get 94% of the heart rate on an eMTB compared to the same route on a non-eMTB: https://www.americantrails.org/resources/pedal-assist-mounta...

▲theshrike79 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

But if my goal is to ride Downhill[0] me exhausting myself riding up the hill isn't bringing any extra enjoyment for me.

With electric assist, I can get up faster and to the business of coming down the hill really fast.

We have ski-lifts for the exact same reason. People doing downhill skiing would make their legs, heart and lungs stronger in the process of walking up the hill with their skis. But who wants to do that, that's not the fun part.

And to step back from analogy-land.

I'm paid to solve problems, I'm good at architecture, I can design services, I can also write the code to do so. But in most cases the majority of the code I write is just boilerplate crap with minor differences.

With LLMs I can have them write the Terraform deployment code, write the C# CRUD Controller classes and data models and apply the Entity Framework migrations. It'll do all that and add all the fancy Swagger annotation while it's at it. It'll even whip up a Github build action for me.

Now I've saved a few days of mindless typing and I can get into solving the actual problem at hand, the one I'm paid to do. In reality I'm doing it _while_ I'm instructing the LLM to do the menial crap + reviewing the code it produced so I'm moving at twice the speed I would be normally.

"But can't you just..." nope, if every project was _exactly_ the same, I'd have a template already, there are just enough differences to not make it worth my time[1]. If I had infinite time and money, I could build a DSL to do this, but again, referring to [1] - there's no point =)

It's more cost efficient to pay the LLM tax to OpenAI, Anthropic or whatever and use it as a bespoke bootstrapping system for projects.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downhill_mountain_biking

[1] https://xkcd.com/1319/

▲ApeWithCompiler 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd like to counter argue we need to shift the notion of efficiency. While the nailgun is more efficient than the hammer, both need to be operated by a real human. Including all limitations of physical and mental health. While we can improve the efficiency of the tools we should consider not to burn out humans to match the goal.

▲quickthrowman 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The builder still needs to study the plans and build a mental model of what they’re building.

A nailgun isn’t automated in the way an LLM is, maybe if it moved itself around and fired nails where it thought they should go based on things it had seen in the past it would be a better comparison.

▲ynx 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

On the contrary, I am a lot more willing to think through the contours of the problems I need to solve because I haven't drained my mental energy writing five repetitive - but slightly different - log lines and tweaking the wording slightly to be correct.

I'm training smarter, and exercising better, instead of wasting all the workout/training time on warmups, as it were.

▲danielvaughn 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It completely depends on how you use AI. If you turn off your brain entirely and just coast as much as possible, then yeah your comment would apply.

But I think of work as essentially two things - creative activity and toil. I simply use AI for toil, and let my brain focus on creativity and problem solving.

Writing my 100,000th for loop is not going to preserve my brain.

▲cpursley 5 days ago | parent [-]

This is why I recommend the functional programming map pattern ;)

▲watwut 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> are you all aware that this basically means you are exercising less your brain day in and day out, and in the end you will forget how to do things?

IDE did the same thing and we found other ways to exercise our brains. This one is really something unreasonable to worry about.

▲ehnto 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have been coding and athletic training for about as long as eachother, your anecdote works. However just like in physical training, you should really spare your energy for stuff that you enjoy and actually progresses you.

By using LLMs to do some of the stuff I have long gotten over, I have a bit more mental energy to tackle new problems I wouldn't have previously.

As well LLMs just aren't actually that competent yet, so it's not like devs are completely hands off. Since I barely do boilerplate as I work across legacy projects, there's no way Claude Code today is writing half my code.

▲fragmede 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you sit there multiplying two digit numbers in your head for fun, for the practice, to keep operating at peek mental capacity on weekends? In the name of operating at peek mental capacity, that seems like the most logical thing to do. Just wake up at 6 am Saturday morning and start multiplying numbers on your head.

If you don't wanna use AI, that's entirely up to you, but "you're gonna forget how to program if you use AI and then whatever are you going to do if the AI is down" reeks of motivated reasoning.

▲jvanderbot 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My current pattern is to manually craft during the first half of the day when I enjoy that, and during the second half when I'd be normally burnt on hard thought and not quite up for another coffee, pomodoro, theanine deep dive, I can start tackling tests, exploratory data analysis, or small bugs, and these tasks are 50% or more LLM.

So yeah, 30%-50% seems right, but it's not like I lost any part of my job that I love.

▲darkwater 5 days ago | parent [-]

That's a good approach, I like it and probably adopt it as well. I'm not dogmatically against LLMs, I just need we should think about possible consequences, and not thinking about them like a holy grail of everything.

▲rr808 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're right, but usually at the end of the day I'm completely mentally exhausted and dont want to talk to anyone. Its something I've realized is a big problem in my life. I'm actively trying to reduce mental load to leave stuff for other hobbies and social activities.

▲wiz21c 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

you are obviously not past 50 years old. At that age, eventhough I "train" (as you imply it) a lot (I code about 50 hours a week, 40 at work, the rest for my own projects; not of them easy, my job is writing numerical code for simulation and my pet project is writinga very accurate emulator (which implies physics modelling, tons of research, etc)). I can definitely feel I'm not as productive as before (before I could sustain 60 hours a week) eventhough I do feel I'm using my brain to the maximum...

So yeah, past a certain age, you'll be happy to reduce your mental load. No question about it. And I feel quite relieved when Claud writes this classic algorith I have understood long ago and don't want to re-activate in my brain. And I feel quite disappointed when Claude misses the point and I have to code review it...