This analogy works pretty well. Too much time doing everything in it and your muscles will atrophy. Some edge cases will be better if you jump out and use your hands.

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WorldMaker 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's also plenty of mech tales where the mech pilots need to spend as much time out of the suits making sure their muscles (and/or mental health) are in good strength precisely because the mechs are a "force multiplier" and are only as strong as their pilot. That's a somewhat common thread in such worlds.

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ekidd 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes. Also, it's a fairly common trope that if you want to pilot a mech suit, you need to be someone like Tony Stark. He's a tinkerer and an expert. What he does is not a commodity. And when he loses his suit and access to his money? His big plot arc is that he is Iron Man. He built it in a cave out of a box of scraps, etc.

There are other fictional variants: the giant mech with the enormous support team, or Heinlein's "mobile infantry." And virtually every variantion on the Heinlein trope has a scene of drop commandos doing extensive pre-drop checks on their armor.

The actual reality is it isn't too had for a competent engineer to pair with Claude Code, if they're willing to read the diffs. But if you try to increase the ratio of agents to humans, dealing with their current limitations quickly starts to feel like you need to be Tony Stark.

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hedgedoops2 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For me the idea of "people piloting mech suits" brings up lost kids, like Shinji from nge.

	▲	bitwize 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Funny, because I was thinking of Evangelion's predecessor, Gunbuster, in which cadets are shown undergoing grueling physical training both in and out of their mechs to prepare for space combat.

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bitwize 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You don't need to be Tony Stark. But, "if you're nothing without the suit then you don't deserve it."

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specproc 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I like the electric bike as a metaphor. You can go further faster, but you quickly find yourself miles from home and out of juice, and you ain't in shape enough to get that heavy bugger back.

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fragmede 10 hours ago | parent [-]

As long as we're beating the metaphor... so don't do that? Make sure you charge the battery and that it has enough range to get you home, and bring the charger with you. Or in the LLMs case, make sure it's not generating a ball of mud (code). Refactor often, into discrete classes, and distinct areas of functionality, so that you're never miles from home and out of juice.

	▲	SpaceNoodled 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At that rate, I would already be there if I had just walked.