I think it's more: when I don't have access to a compiler I am useless. It's better to go for a walk than learn assembly. AI agents turn our high-level language into code, with various hints, much like the compiler.

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professoretc 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If my compiler "went down" I could still think through the problem I was trying to solve, maybe even work out the code on paper. I could reach a point where I would be fairly confident that I had the problem solved, even though I lacked the ability to actually implement the solution.

If my LLM goes down, I have nothing. I guess I could imagine prompts that might get it to do what I want, but there's no guarantee that those would work once it's available again. No amount of thought on my part will get me any closer to the solution, if I'm relying on the LLM as my "compiler".

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satvikpendem 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What stops you from thinking through the problem if an LLM goes down, as you still have its previously produced code in front of you? It's worse if a compiler goes down because you can't even build the program to begin with.

In my opinion, this sort of learned helplessness is harmful for engineers as a whole.

	▲	macNchz 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah I actually find writing the prompt itself to be such a useful mechanism of thinking through problems that I will not-infrequently find myself a couple of paragraphs in and decide to just delete everything I've written and take a new tack. Only when you're truly outsourcing your thinking to the AI will you run into the situation that the LLM being down means you can't actually work at all. An interesting element here, I think, is that writing has always been a good way to force you to organize and confront your thoughts. I've liked working on writing-heavy projects, but often in fast-moving environments writing things out before coding becomes easy to skip over, but working with LLMs has sort of inverted that. You have to write to produce code with AI (usually, at least), and the more clarity of thought you put into the writing the better the outcomes (usually).

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JoshuaDavid 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think if you're vibe coding to the extent that you don't even know the shapes of data your system works with (e.g. the schema if you use a database) you might be outsourcing a bit too much of your thinking.

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kasey_junk 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why couldn’t you actually write out the documents and think through the problem? I think my interaction is inverted from yours. I have way more thinking and writing I can do to prep an agent than I can a compiler and it’s more valuable for the final output.

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nunez 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Installed on your machine vs. cloud service that's struggling to maintain capacity is an unfair comparison...

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ofjcihen 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Still misses the mark. You aren’t useless in the same way because you are still in control of reasoning about the exact code even if you never actually write it.

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noosphr 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If your compiler produced working executable 20% of the time this would be an apt comparison.

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jwrallie 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The difference is that there is a company that can easily take your agents away from you.