You can use gen AI entirely in the spirit of craft. For instance if you need to consume, implement or extend some open source software you can load it up in an agent IDE and ask “How do I?” questions or “how is it that?” questions that put you on a firm footing.

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danjl 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I was afraid the puzzle-solving was over. But it wasn't—it just moved up a level.

The craft can move up a level too. You still can make decisions about the implementation, which algorithms to use, how to combine them, how and what to test -- essentially crafting the system at a higher level. In a similar sense, we lost the hand-crafting of assembly code as compilers took over, and now we're losing the crafting of classes and algorithms to some extent, but we still craft the system -- what and how it does its thing, and most importantly, why.

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gassi 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And contribute your changes back upstream, right?

	▲	autoexec 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Do we even want a bunch of people contributing slop upstream when (assuming it does anything worthwhile in the first place) somebody has to actually review/correct/document that code? A handful of well intentioned slop piles might be manageable, but AI enables spewing garbage at an unprecedented scale. When there's a limited amount of resources to expend on discussing, reviewing, fixing, and then finally accepting contributions a ton of AI generated contributions from random people could bring development to a halt.

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bluefirebrand 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You don't need AI for this, we've had search engines and good online resources for decades

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simianwords 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Being blunt here but this is a good example of dogmatic thought.

AI is leaps and bounds better than google at searching.

“You don’t need google for this, we have had public libraries for decades” energy.

	▲	wreath 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yeah to get the definitive answers, sure AI is quicker. Google is more like the librarian pointing you at possibly good resources to get your answers from after reading the materials and there are a lot of good learning opportunities there. LLMs just give you the answer and robs you of those opportunities.
	▲	wolvesechoes 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> dogmatic thought. Dogmatism sometimes seems like a better thing compared to mind so open that wind blows through it without obstacles.

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reverius42 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Current AI is much, much better than current search engines (which themselves seem worse than they were decades ago, for some reason).

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bigstrat2003 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It really isn't. AI has nothing on a good search engine like Kagi.

	▲	simianwords 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is easily disproven. I mean how can someone still believe this? Wow! I can come up with many examples that would take you ages to search in Kagi vs one prompt in ChatGPT. You really should be updating.

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wiseowise 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

False. Have you even used google in the last 6 years or so? The results are so bad that I stopped using it altogether. It pops up sometimes when I mistype something in a search bar, but that’s it.

And don’t make me laugh about “good online resources”. SO went downhill and is just a graveyard at this point where everything is frozen in time. It has some good discussions (that LLMs ingested), but that’s it.

You can hate LLMs all you want, but they’re godsend for interactive discussion with the material.