i wish the tech industry would just collapse already

[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

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@bri7 @sabik @eniko

I think vim binds achieve two things for me:

1. I don't get RSI from Emacs or navigating 4 submenus.
2. Familiarity means I stay in the flow instead of wrangling the UI. I believe a good CLI would achieve the same.

Mouse is better at spatial and analog selection/manipulation. Keyboard is better at reproducibility and precise, well-defined actions.

I would never try to select an object in Blender via keyboard, but typing [E]xtrude 1.0, or text searching for Subdivide in the comman menu certainly beats using mouse only.

[bri7@social.treehouse.systems]

@dragonfi @sabik @eniko right. it feels faster

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@bri7 @sabik @eniko

Bad UX involving precise positioning of the mouse can pull me out of flow though.

Although, accidentally pressing CapsLock in vim also does that.

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@bri7 @sabik @eniko

Not just faster, more precise and less fiddly. But that is 3D modeling.

I also agree that it doesn't worth the effort to learn keybinds you don't use a hundred times a day. (Look at pro Starcraft players, they have a valid reason to learn their most used keybinds to increase their Actions Per Minute.)

For code editing, I agree that there is no real difference between: (Shift-arrow to select line, Backspace) and "dd". I'm reading code way more than I write it.