I second this. This* is the matter against which we form understanding. This here is the work at hand, our own notes, discussions we have with people, the silent walk where our brain kinda process errors and ideas .. it's always been like this since i was a kid, playing with construction toys. I never ever wanted somebody to play while I wait to evaluate if it fits my desires. Desires that often come from playing.

Outsourcing this to an LLM is similar to an airplane stall .. I just dip mentally. The stress goes away too, since I assume the LLM will get rid of the "problem" but I have no more incentives to think, create, solve anything.

Still blows my mind how different people approach some fields. I see people at work who are drooling about being able to have code made for them .. but I'm not in that group.

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doug_durham 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'll push it back against this a little bit. I find any type of deliberative thinking to be a forcing function. I've recently been experimenting with writing very detailed specifications and prompts for an LLM to process. I find that as I go through the details, thoughts will occur to me. Things I hadn't thought about in the design will come to me. This is very much the same phenomenon when I was writing the code by hand. I don't think this is a binary either or. There are many ways to have a forcing function.

	▲	hed 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think it's analogous to writing and refining an outline for a paper. If you keep going, you eventually end up at an outline where you can concatenate what are basically sentences together to form paragraphs. This is sort of where you are now, if you spec well you'll get decent results.
	▲	agumonkey 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I agree, I felt this a bit. The LLM can be a modeling peer in a way. But the phase where it goes to validate / implement is also key to my brain. I need to feel the details.

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CTDOCodebases an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder over the long term how programmers are going to maintain the proficiency to read and edit the code that the LLM produces.

	▲	agumonkey an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Personally I planned to allocate weekly challenges to stay sharp.

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blibble 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I see people at work who are drooling about being able to have code made for them .. but I'm not in that group.

people seem to have a inability to predict second and third order effects

the first order effect is "I can sip a latte while the bot does my job for me"... well, great I suppose, while it lasts

but the second order effect is: unless you're in the top 10%, you will now lose your job, permanently

and the third order effect is the economy collapses as it is built on consumer spending

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Akranazon 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Everything you have said here is completely true, except for "not in that group": the cost-benefit analysis clearly favors letting these tools rip, even despite the drawbacks.

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gtowey 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe.

But it's also likely that these tools will produce mountains of unmaintainable code and people will get buried by the technical debt. It kind of strikes me as similar to the hubris of calling the Titanic "unsinkable." It's an untested claim with potentially disastrous consequences.

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rapind 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> But it's also likely that these tools will produce mountains of unmaintainable code and people will get buried by the technical debt.

It's not just likely, but it's guaranteed to happen if you're not keeping an eye on it. So much so, that it's really reinforced my existing prejudice towards typed and compiled languages to reduce some of the checking you need to do.

Using an agent with a dynamic language feels very YOLO to me. I guess you can somewhat compensate with reams of tests though. (which begs the question, is the dynamic language still saving you time?)

	▲	zingar 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Tests make me faster. Dynamic or not feels irrelevant when I consider how much slower I’d be without the fast feedback loop of tests.

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agumonkey 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh I'm well aware of this. I admitted defeat in a way.. I can't compete. I'm just at loss, and unless LLM stall and break for some reason (ai bubble, enshittification..) I don't see a future for me in "software" in a few years.

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acedTrex 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yep, its a rather depressing realization isnt it. Oh well, life moves on i suppose.

I think we realistically have a few years of runway left though. Adoption is always slow outside of the far right of the bell curve.

	▲	agumonkey an hour ago \| parent [-]
		i'm sorry if I pulled everybody down .. but it's been many months since gemini and claude became solid tools, and regularly i have this strong gut feeling. i tried reevaluating my perception of my work, goals, value .. but i keep going back to nope.