'Make sure you don't fall behind!!!' is my least favourite type of post about ai. There's resllt nothing to learn about ai. You're just typing and telling it what to do.
We are going from the era of manual, line-by-line mental model transcription to one where software engineers can focus on data structures, software architecture and algorithms.
I love being able to quickly bring out the program that is already running in my head without having to worry about the grind of typing it into a format that the compiler understands. Dealing with API names. Syntax. Language quirks. Library gotchas. A sizeable portion of my successful career as a software engineer was spent on the tiresome process of interacting with a text editor/IDE to get a program to do what I wanted.
I was there when people were still coding assembly. A slow torture where the simplest things took forever to get right.
Once I've mentally solved the problem, the fun is mostly over for me. Pure vibe coding is dull and unsustainable with current technology for all but the simplest systems; AI-assisted coding, on the other hand, rekindled my passion for computers.
I like your constructive outlook and I want to believe that we can now focus on the bigger picture, but I'm not really seeing it around me. Most everyone I know that's "AI-pilled" has spent the newfound capacity on throughput instead of altitude.
Is anyone actually seeing a shift towards improved structure rather than more code, faster? We seem to be living in the Gatling-gun version of the picture John Carmack drew when modernity also ushered into precision marksmanship...
Have you tried live programming (smalltalk, LISP)? Or a proper Edit-Compile-Run cycle with a good editor?
A lot of people are bashing old practices, but from y standpoint, it always seems like a lack of proper (usage of) tooling to streamline the coding phase of building software.
Yep. Having to type the code is a form of accidental complexity, and with it gone, you can focus more on the problem to solve, getting it down faster.
Of course it's possible for it to go off the rails. Consider that a wildly swung sword can do damage you can't do with your bare hands. To prevent this, constrain your model to the solution shape you want by grounding it; give it contact with reality; ways to run the code it's generating and refine it to meet your goals; granular tests; etc.
The new job is in how you wield the tools and it is at least as complex as the old.
It's funny, but to relax I was reading Tim Berners-Lee's FAQ for kids. He has a section about "I'm interested in Math -- what exciting stuff is there we don't do at school?". What a joy it is to see a person who believes in the public domain, and who we have everything to thank for right now, saying "The main thing is, to have fun."
Because someone profits from it. If your man had truly embraced Zen after, y’know, becoming wealthy enough to never need anything, it feels like freedom from want would have come pretty easy. Instead we have to find our examples in poor people after they die.
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13 comments:
I understand why people value the code John Carmack has released but I do not understand why people value his public statements.
"eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id"[0]
"Great! I think Microsoft has been a good parent company for gaming IPs"[1]
By sheer coincidence, John Carmack is peddling machine generated code.[2]
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxg...
[1] https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1308069857913720832
[2] https://80.lv/articles/john-carmack-s-agi-startup-keen-techn...
1st link is broken
'Make sure you don't fall behind!!!' is my least favourite type of post about ai. There's resllt nothing to learn about ai. You're just typing and telling it what to do.
the point of AI hype is to increase shareholder value.
We are going from the era of manual, line-by-line mental model transcription to one where software engineers can focus on data structures, software architecture and algorithms.
I love being able to quickly bring out the program that is already running in my head without having to worry about the grind of typing it into a format that the compiler understands. Dealing with API names. Syntax. Language quirks. Library gotchas. A sizeable portion of my successful career as a software engineer was spent on the tiresome process of interacting with a text editor/IDE to get a program to do what I wanted.
I was there when people were still coding assembly. A slow torture where the simplest things took forever to get right.
Once I've mentally solved the problem, the fun is mostly over for me. Pure vibe coding is dull and unsustainable with current technology for all but the simplest systems; AI-assisted coding, on the other hand, rekindled my passion for computers.
I like your constructive outlook and I want to believe that we can now focus on the bigger picture, but I'm not really seeing it around me. Most everyone I know that's "AI-pilled" has spent the newfound capacity on throughput instead of altitude.
Is anyone actually seeing a shift towards improved structure rather than more code, faster? We seem to be living in the Gatling-gun version of the picture John Carmack drew when modernity also ushered into precision marksmanship...
Have you tried live programming (smalltalk, LISP)? Or a proper Edit-Compile-Run cycle with a good editor?
A lot of people are bashing old practices, but from y standpoint, it always seems like a lack of proper (usage of) tooling to streamline the coding phase of building software.
Yep. Having to type the code is a form of accidental complexity, and with it gone, you can focus more on the problem to solve, getting it down faster.
Of course it's possible for it to go off the rails. Consider that a wildly swung sword can do damage you can't do with your bare hands. To prevent this, constrain your model to the solution shape you want by grounding it; give it contact with reality; ways to run the code it's generating and refine it to meet your goals; granular tests; etc.
The new job is in how you wield the tools and it is at least as complex as the old.
Why are we always at war?
It's funny, but to relax I was reading Tim Berners-Lee's FAQ for kids. He has a section about "I'm interested in Math -- what exciting stuff is there we don't do at school?". What a joy it is to see a person who believes in the public domain, and who we have everything to thank for right now, saying "The main thing is, to have fun."
https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Kids.html
Because someone profits from it. If your man had truly embraced Zen after, y’know, becoming wealthy enough to never need anything, it feels like freedom from want would have come pretty easy. Instead we have to find our examples in poor people after they die.
This post brought to you by DraftKings. Reach Nirvana and its five bucks off your next bet on the Bardo!
Resubmission of I recently went through a translation of Musashi's Book of Five Rings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49660833 (1 comment)
https://xcancel.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2098443262214230095 for convenience