i wish the tech industry would just collapse already

[hwll@sunny.garden]

@hefka @eniko yeah I spend a lot of time thinking about games without computers. I love computer games, but I guess I could make do

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@eniko @sabik @bri7

I'm so confused: half the software devs I know hate Agentic/GenAI with a passion, and even if they try it it just holds them back. The other half is convinced it is the best thing ever and they are certain that it increases their productivity.

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@dragonfi @sabik @bri7 this is easily explained by the study that showed that engineers who reported feeling more productive with AI were actually less productive

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@eniko @sabik @bri7 I need to find that article again.

[bri7@social.treehouse.systems]

@eniko @dragonfi @sabik I honestly think the AI is hacking time perception.

the divide is people who are having fun with it vs not

[bri7@social.treehouse.systems]

@eniko @dragonfi @sabik it’s sort of working like a slot machine. It gets the answer right often enough to erase the time that passed while it gave wrong answers- people don’t realise it woulda been faster to just struggle through the problem themselves- that’s not as fun- therefore feels like it takes longer

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@bri7 @eniko @sabik

I guess, as someone with Autism, I ignore a lot of the surface details and what remains is a useless yes-man who falsifies data all the time. So, the most I can use it for is pointing me in the general direction of the files I need to edit.

[sabik@rants.au]

@bri7 @eniko @dragonfi
Not even fun, necessarily; could also be similar to slot machines

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@bri7 @dragonfi @sabik also even when it gets stuff wrong you're doing a lot of "work" in terms of prompting and reading its output and all that stuff so that *feels* productive even though it's actually not

[bri7@social.treehouse.systems]

@eniko @dragonfi @sabik but further, understanding the code it produces takes just exactly as long as understanding any stranger’s code always has, and that debt needs to get paid sooner or later

[dzwiedziu@mastodon.social]

@eniko
Don't negotiate with terrorists.

[sabik@rants.au]

@bri7 @eniko @dragonfi
Except there's no intent behind the code, and there's probably more of it

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@sabik @bri7 @eniko

I think this is why it just tires me out, instead of working with my code, I need to re-read and understand the new generated one.

[bri7@social.treehouse.systems]

@dragonfi @sabik @eniko i think it does have intent- the prompter’s intent; not any of its own. it seems to do best with problems that look kind of like translation. which is also its limitations; it can’t really do any work you didn’t already do. it can only transform it into a different “language”.

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@sabik @bri7 @eniko

In addition, when I do it the hard way I get a good understanding of what is happening. With generated code, I can at most verify that it works, with a high chance that some details -- that I would have stumbled into otherwise -- would completely elude me.

[sabik@rants.au]

@dragonfi @bri7 @eniko
Reducing the number of people who understand the code, which is often already smaller than ideal

[bri7@social.treehouse.systems]

@dragonfi @sabik @eniko the whole think kind of reminds me of this bit of UI research done in the 1980s, that whenever i talk about it here i get a whole bunch of people really mad at me:

keyboard shortcuts don’t save any actual time. But they do make it feel like you’re saving time.

this really upsets the vim people

[bri7@social.treehouse.systems]

@dragonfi @sabik @eniko the sense i get is that some people really don’t want to accept that their perceptions of reality could possibly be inaccurate

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@bri7 @sabik @eniko

I um... ehem. Yes it might. I use vim.

[bri7@social.treehouse.systems]

@dragonfi @sabik @eniko well, there’s the thing that even if keyboard shortcuts does save time, it’s as we just established optimising the wrong thing; most of the time spent programming is reading and understanding code. None of these tools make that more efficient or faster