Comment by outworlder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by outworlder | Hacker News Reader

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Sure, if it is just about installing a package. But installing a program, reading documentation, then configuring the right settings, confirming it is doing what you want it to do, find out that's something wrong, going back to the docs... all of that can be automated.

And it's not just about installing, it's also about fixing issues. I had an intermittent DNS issue that I was not able to track down, and I didn't have enough time to dedicate myself to instrumenting my devices to chase it. I dropped a single line to an agent. It quickly wrote a test script, kept monitoring, when the problem manifested it tracked it down to a wrong IPV6 DNS config, crafted the pull request to fix it on my router (I have the homelab configured via gitops, local gitea).

I was also playing a windows game on linux and I had a weird mouse issue. Reading forums and bug trackers didn't do the trick and I threw the towel. I asked the agent. It grabbed the system (and game) logs, and figured out a fix. In a couple of minutes.

I would eventually find those issues, given enough time. But I don't have to anymore.

> But installing a program, reading documentation, then configuring the right settings, confirming it is doing what you want it to do, find out that's something wrong, going back to the docs... all of that can be automated.

It certainly can be automated. What you gain in productivity you loose in proficiency and self-reliance since you're depending on others, an artificial 'other' in this case but it is more or less like asking your nerdy friend to install that Linux thing for you. When it breaks you'll have to ask that nerdy friend again, or that agent again in this case. When the agent is unavailable it is just as if the nerdy friend went on holiday leaving you to fend for yourself.

You may be OK with this dependency but it is good to realise it exists. Could you still fix things after having used agents for a few months or years? Probably not, at least not without you needing to read all that documentation, try and test, fail, go back to the documentation and try again until you get it to work.

> an artificial 'other' in this case but it is more or less like asking your nerdy friend to install that Linux thing for you. When it breaks you'll have to ask that nerdy friend again

It's either asking that nerdy friend again, 2 years from now when it breaks. Just like you would your own documentation and/or SO or Google. Zero difference except one saves you time.

Well, yes, or you make sure you can do that stuff yourself by actually doing it instead of leaving it to an agent. If you have to do it often you can leave some to agents but still do a few yourself so that you keep up to date and also can check whether what the agents do makes sense. You'll still save time, it might not even cost you any real time if you can handle a few cases while the agents take care of the others and you both finish around the same time. The agents may have done 10 times as much work as you did in that time but since you'd otherwise just have been waiting for them to do their thing you're not losing anything while you gain (or keep) experience.

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