Armin was once one of the most prolific programmers in Python.
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Armin was once one of the most prolific programmers in Python. Says he never writes code anymore. Seeing more and more people like him write stuff like this on what are supposedly computer programming forums. https://lobste.rs/s/qmjejh/ai_is_slowly_munching_away_my_passion#c_jcgdju
Notably, once a person crosses this threshold, I see them still hang out on programming forums, but they never talk about any of the puzzles of programming anymore. Only about running agents. Which feels strange and sad. Why hang out on the forums at all then?
@cwebber pre llms I used to hear this kind of talk from people who ascended to Distinguished Engineer or Technical Fellow or something
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@cwebber I think I'm comfortable waiting til the economics sorts itself out (and fortunate to work a software engineering job where at the moment they don't really care which tools I use). Like, if it turns out Anthropic is making a profit off of their $20/mo plan and it is genuinely making developers 50% more productive then I get it. But, at the same time, it could absolutely turn out that I'd have to pay $500/mo to be 10% more effective and at that point I won't really care to jump on that.
Similarly, last week I was in a meeting for an hour to discuss the impacts of changing one line of code, so while there are parts of my job that are coding-heavy maybe my "software engineering" role as a whole isn't limited by how fast I can read/write code and I doubt an LLM would help me out in that situation.
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Feeling FOMO about AI? Well here's my advice!
Stay on top of what's happening. Which doesn't really require *using* the tools. Just see what people are doing.
Whether or not you do use it, stay a practitioner. And don't fall for the FOMO.
Your career won't end because you're not making the choice to use AI. (If your employer makes you use it, that's another thing.)
If you use AI, use it for "summarize and explore" tasks. DO NOT use it for *generate* tasks. That's a different thing.
If you want to differentiate yourself, *learning skills* is the differentiation space right now.
These things are easy to pick up. You can do it whenever. But keep learning.
If you see generated examples, don't paste or accept them. Type them in by hand! The hands on imperative: actually trying things congeals core ideas.
And if it doesn't help your career... well, your consolation prize is: you'll stay interesting.
@cwebber it’s a struggle for me to talk about using LLM tools as an accessibility tool that helped me start being able to program again because it helps me manage the brain fog and engage with my code and actually think again.
Versus this, where people who can code decide to stop? And give up on their craft?
How does someone talk about this nuance at all when any use is usually quite correctly pilloried?
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@cwebber it’s a struggle for me to talk about using LLM tools as an accessibility tool that helped me start being able to program again because it helps me manage the brain fog and engage with my code and actually think again.
Versus this, where people who can code decide to stop? And give up on their craft?
How does someone talk about this nuance at all when any use is usually quite correctly pilloried?
@aurynn @cwebber this and also engaging with the craft of making computers do things without having to deal with code all that much. I have drawn out my software since I can remember and didn’t realize that the coding part never really was what I enjoyed.
It’s liberating and I can finally really engage with the topics that I always pursued (language design, ui design, operating systems, distributed systems, embedded) without having to remember if it’s list.sort() or sort(list). Hearing over and over that I’m rotting cognitively is a bit dismaying when I am finally unshackled.
Being able to go back to all the creativity and inspired work of the 70-80ies when people didn’t settle on what we are still using now and be “let’s try that” imo is truly embracing the craft and history of computing.
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Armin was once one of the most prolific programmers in Python. Says he never writes code anymore. Seeing more and more people like him write stuff like this on what are supposedly computer programming forums. https://lobste.rs/s/qmjejh/ai_is_slowly_munching_away_my_passion#c_jcgdju
Notably, once a person crosses this threshold, I see them still hang out on programming forums, but they never talk about any of the puzzles of programming anymore. Only about running agents. Which feels strange and sad. Why hang out on the forums at all then?
@cwebber ai is the cure for curiosity. every impulse to learn now has an immediate, plausible sounding answer. is the answer correct? often not, but the impulse is immediately quelled. interesting enough to appear magical, but bland and tedious enough to trick you into thinking the real journey would have been bland and tedious.
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@cwebber ai is the cure for curiosity. every impulse to learn now has an immediate, plausible sounding answer. is the answer correct? often not, but the impulse is immediately quelled. interesting enough to appear magical, but bland and tedious enough to trick you into thinking the real journey would have been bland and tedious.
@aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place "AI is the cure for curiosity" is a powerful line, I'm gonna steal it forever
