You _think_ you're thinking as hard. Reading code != writing it. Just like watching someone do a thing isn't the same as actually doing it.

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keithluu 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Well, depending on the scope of work, they may be still thinking hard, just on a higher level. That is, thinking about the requirements, specification, and design.

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abm53 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Correct… reading code is a much more difficult and ultimately, productive, task.

I suspect those using the tools in the best way are thinking harder than ever for this reason.

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dns_snek 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> reading code is a much more difficult

Not inherently, no. Reading it and getting a cursory understanding is easy, truly understanding what it does well, what it does poorly, what the unintended side effects might be, that's the difficult part.

In real life I've witnessed quite a few intelligent and experienced people who truly believe that they're thinking "really hard" and putting out work that's just as good as their previous, pre-AI work, and they're just not. In my experience it roughly correlates to how much time they think they're saving, those who think they're saving the most time are in fact cutting corners and putting out the sloppiest quality work.

	▲	d-us-vb 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It depends on the language, paradigm (or lack thereof), quality/accuracy of the names. My work’s codebase is 30 years of never-refactored C++. It takes an exceptional amount of focus and thinking to get even a cursory understanding of anything a particular method or class does or why it’s there. But for languages like C, I agree with you (as long as function pointers aren’t used abused).

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William_BB 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sure. Reading a book is a much more difficult and ultimately, productive, task than writing a book.