Nursie

What if I, as someone employing you, don't specifically need someone to look at the code?

We may not be quite there yet, but what if automations using LLMs can do it faster than software engineers who look at the code can, and to an acceptable standard?

> all while the same people acting like they’re productive.

Are they delivering features, capabilities, updates, refactors etc? Faster than those who are "looking at the code" ?

Don't get me wrong, I've spent 25 years reading and writing code, I'm pretty sure I'm quite good at it, though I wouldn't claim to be any sort of superstar. My job has changed immeasurably in the last year, and I'm starting to wonder if "reading the code" won't go the same way as "verifying the assembly that the C compiler spits out to make sure it's correct"

As someone who made a reasonable reputation for himself by being a meat proxy for google search for years (Hey, go ask him, he knows about loads of stuff...) I'm surprised anyone even notices if others are just doing auto-reviews.

> I always saw the software engineering field as being comprised of two groups of people: people who are devs because they are passionate about building software, and people who don't actually enjoy software but joined the field because it's a job that pays well.

There's a third motivation hiding in there, people who were passionate about coding, rather than building software. It's a subtle difference but an important one. Folks whose primary focus is building and delivery are having a field day with LLMs because they've found a way to build and deliver in far less time with far less resource. Folks who have been more passionate about the coding itself are finding that their legs have been shot out from under them, because what they enjoyed and where they thought their value lay is becoming less relevant.

I absolutely get the frustration here, but conversely I think some companies now are seeking to remove the human from the loop as much as possible. That interactive AI-assisted workflow? That's a mid-state, why not instead have a multi-stage automation pipeline, to digest a set of requirements, build granular jira tickets for the work, come up with acceptance criteria, implement test harness additions for those, build the code, test it, iteratively review the code from several different viewpoints (security, minimalism, performance etc), and post it as a PR? Sure, you probably want a plan-review checkpoint, and the agents should stop and ask when they need to know something from their human overseers, but ... we're going more automated in general.

> When hiring I don't have a narrow range in mind, it can be 50% or more.

As an occasional hiring manager, having this sort of flexibility sounds really nice!

Unfortunately I have to define my requirements and justify a fairly narrow range when I want to add to my team, so it's not something I get to enjoy. There have definitely been candidates who stand out from the crowd and have higher expectations, that I have not been able to offer to.

> It’s great at bread and butter stuff, but not at specialised ideation.

This is fundamentally different from your earlier, stronger claim that - "The very best LLM can answer is the answer you can expect from an online forum like Reddit or a book/paper published more than a year ago."

I use a less popular java framework quite a lot, Micronaut (I want to move away from it, but that's a different discussion).

When trying to solve problems with its behaviour, I can watch as Claude digests the framework source to come up with suggestions, identify bugs that are causing behaviour regressions, and generally unlock stuff that I've previously found very frustrating. Frustrating because the documentation covers a tiny amount of what's in there, and frustrating because there's little online discourse about any of it to refer to.

Is this earth shattering in itself? Probably not. But it's certainly better than you can find from "an online forum like Reddit or a book/paper published more than a year ago".

It's also far easier to find information through LLMs for another niche I play in, certificate authorities, than it is on the open web. Try to look up anything to do with certificates and you'll just get guided to endless "Why my certificate not work? Browser says no?" discussions, because actually creating certificate authorites is again very niche , not widely discussed and a lot of what you need to leverage in any given language isn't well documented because "you'll never need to do this". Well actually...

> The very best LLM can answer is the answer you can expect from an online forum like Reddit or a book/paper published more than a year ago.

Hard disagree.

Claude is able to come up with solutions in very niche areas where there is little discussion on the web, because it takes steps to digest the source of (for instance) frameworks and libraries, and can then use/advise on lots of esoteric options, edge-cases and all sorts of stuff that doesn't get discussed on the open web.

As the sibling poster said, this isn't insulting another ethnicity's cuisine, it's insulting the quality of the product on offer in much of the UK.

I'd invite you to do a comparison. Here is a picture of a 'real' doner kebab or shwarma style kebab, raw - https://www.jidlonacestach.cz/data/obrazky/2026/01/pripraven...

Notice the recognisable layers of meat and fat, the cap of fat to melt in and keep it all moist.

Now here is what you're more likely to get in most generic UK high-street kebab shops - https://www.kirkskebabs.co.uk/raw-kebab-meat/

Notice the homogenous, pink-slime sorta texture going on? And take a look at those ingredients...

Now, if you're going to places serving the former, cool! That's probably some tasty eating. But the latter is why kebab shops in the UK are held in such low regard.

It’s really not. It’s doner kebab. Which most of them say on the menu and/or on the front of the shop.

Of course it’s not a literal elephant leg, but it is highly-processed mystery meat.

It’s not shwarma at most of them mate, it’s highly processed doner, and the reason most of us would only touch them after 15 pints is we know what’s in it, or rather we know that we don’t know what’s in it. They’re extremely high fat and high salt, and there’s a multi-decade history of the manufacturers being busted for shenanigans.

Jellied eels? I don’t think most British people have ever eaten those except maybe on a dare.

I’m going to be charitable and assume you’ve only ever been to a small part of the East End of London, where you can get jellied eels (not the case in much of the country) and where there is likely a diverse enough community that actual decent shwarma exists.

Because if you’re eating doner kebabs regularly, from whatever vendor you come across in most of the UK, all I can say is you might want to check your heart health.

> I think you did.

Cool.

I'll be waiting here for you to quote and link exactly where I did this -

"It's disingenuous to pretend that you can't get decent food in the UK if that's what you are looking for"

And “that you can't buy terrible food in other countries such as Australia too.”

Or you could apologise. Up to you really.

And until then I’ll be ignoring anything else you have to say, because I think what’s actually disingenuous is to make things up and accuse people of them.

About five years, I don’t believe for a second the market has changed that much across the country in that time.

Yes, you can get good Turkish food in a lot of places, and good Turkish food is delicious.

But the post I was responding to called out kebab shops in particular as excellent and I wouldn’t want people thinking they can get ‘good’ food in the average high-street kebab place.

Don’t get me wrong, it hits the spot after a skinful… but high-quality it is not. See my sibling post about the various meat-scandals.

> It's disingenuous to pretend that you can't get decent food in the UK if that's what you are looking for.

Just as well I said nothing of the sort then eh?

> That's called shwarma

What, the elephant leg? In the UK it's mostly Doner - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab

And doner kebabs on sale in kebab shops in the UK are of very dubious origin. There have been a variety of scandals over the years about the origins of the meat.

About 20 years ago I read an article in the metro newspaper about the origins of the meat, a study having been done, which found that most kebab meat in the UK was not what it said it was. A significant proportion contained a mix of lamb, beef, pork and unknown meats. And at that time most of the allegedly 'halal' doners on the market contained pork.

Recently one of the UK's biggest suppliers of kebab meat was fined for selling doner meat that advertised 87% lamb, but was found to be using large quantities of fat and skin, with meat making up between 10 and 50% depending on which source you read. The 'meat' itself, where it was even from sheep was largely neck trim and mutton trim, and they were using goat as well without labelling it - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy736xme2vvo

Maybe you found some good places in east London that were actually making their shawarma on-site. But the standard of a generic 'kebab' in the UK has always been known to be awful.

Ugh, really?

As a Brit that’s moved to Australia let me say the kebab shops here are a revelation. The meat is nicely cooked, generally identifiable, and not swimming in grease. The bread is usually more like real Greek gyros bread, the salad fresh…

My memories of Kebabs in the UK is of very dubious slices of something coming off the elephant-leg at the back of the store, nothing you would ever consider when sober.

Second hand, usually donated goods, sold to fund a charity.

Are there no similar stores in the US?

Why would they have a positive influence on the local economy?

They don’t need more than a handful of people to operate.

> I am not in SV and i don't have a single irl tech friend.

Then you are not at all like the author, who is specifically decrying the loss of tech-related avenues to meet people, and calls them out as his only ways of meeting people.

You've done some sort of mental back-flip by this point in the thread, and are ignoring what the author wrote about themselves and how they meet people.

My favourite is “Going off like a frog in a sock”

But there are many to choose from. “Face like a dropped pie” is another gem.

These are somewhat orthoganal - young people are lonelier != everyone else has a fixed supply of friends and can never make more.

Nor does it change the fact that the author, who clearly does want to socialise, would benefit from doing something outside of their tech bubble and widening their horizons beyond "things that could conceivably further my career".

I think there are some valid points to be made about how people's socialising patterns are changing in the light of modern interactions with tech, but also about using US social habits as a proxy for everyone else's. I've rarely entertained people in my home even during my most sociable times, pubs, clubs and restaurants much more frequently figure in my calendar.

All that and the author of this article still needs to get out and touch grass.

It's true, but it's far from the only way to break the ice.

Really on top of the particularly narrow viewpoint the OP has on life and human relations, I find the core notion itself absurd - "In the future because of X, Y and Z, why will people bother to socialise?"

Because ... people like socialising.

Sorry, but I very much disagree.

Firstly, it made no mention of showing off to potential mates, to my reading. But have no fear, regardless of scarcity people will have ways to signal fitness to find mates and build hierarchies out of it, we're very good at that. It might come down to fashion choices, leisure activity choices, really anything.

Secondly, every example of how this person connects with others is to do with technology and career advancement. He wasn't asking knowledgable friends for advice, he was asking questions to strangers about linux on IRC. He doesn't talk about social groups or sports clubs, he was talking about communities of practice and his professional work. He values learning only for career advancement.

Those ways of building relationships might disappear, but old ladies will still get together to crochet and natter. Middle aged men will still make and drink beer together, or practice woodworking skills. Younger guys and gals will still form sports teams. And people will still learn for the love of learning.

You know, things which already happen away from the screen. Ordinary, everyday human stuff.

tl;dr - touch grass, the article says a lot more about the author's life than our future prospects as humans.

That whole "I made my friends on IRC asking about linux, if AI renders this obsolete how am I going to meet anyone?" screams (to use a fairly dismissive neologism) "touch grass".

> University (really all education beyond teaching people to speak) will be pointless

Errr, not so sure that holds up to scrutiny really. Lots of folks enjoy learning in various forms for its own sake, rather than purely to increase their income level.

> As a teenager I ... went on the IRC chatrooms to get help. And in the process I made friends. ... AI disintermediates everyone, so that we no longer need each other. I still have friends, but I’m running off this pre-AI supply of friends I met through communities of practice.

Maybe learn to connect to other humans in circumstances outside of the professional/technological?

I think this is a very bleak take by someone whose experiences aren't really that in tune with how other humans exist. I can get better beer at the bottle shop, I can get cheaper beer at the bottle shop compared to the cost of all the equipment I need. Why then do I persist in home-brewing?

It's because I find it fulfilling, and I find the understanding and practice of the art satisfying.

The last chance to stop that particular albatross was lost under Theresa May, who was advised that it was already over-budget and wouldn't deliver value for money, and had to guarantee a pretty eye-watering price per kWh at the taxpayer's expense.

I can only think that the UK must need the reactor products for something defence related, because little else makes sense.

It’s also about energy security - why expose your energy markets to insane fluctuations in international fossil-fuel markets if you don’t have to? Surely the last few years have shown that energy independence is a critical social and defence policy now?

For many/most countries, investing in renewables is the best, cheapest and fastest way to move in that direction.

Which benzos was he peddling? I don’t recall that.

I remember him touting a substance he called “chaperon”, about ten years back, as an alcohol alternative. But it wasn’t a benzo, it was somewhere in the phenethlyamine superfamily IIRC (the internet tells me it was MEAI, a substituted, cyclized PEA).

He now has a company selling non-alcoholic spirit substitutes based on herbal ingredients, called Sentia, and is trying to get approval for something called “alcarelle” but I have no idea what class of substance that is and it hasn’t yet made it to market so saying it didn’t catch on seems a touch premature.

I don’t agree with the characterisation of him as naive, in fact I think his book delves into the societal and social effects of drugs quite well. The only way he could be considered naive IMHO is that he seems to have expected politicians to listen to reason.

I don't believe this was the case, at least not openly, until Trump made it part of his platform. His personal ego injury has accelerated this massively, and fed into the right-wing cookersphere all over the place.

America has recently done a huge amount to undermine faith in its own democracy, and that has been gleefully spread around the world. Absent any evidence. It's gross.

> Google TV, the default interface on most Android TV devices, puts a large banner at the top of the home screen promoting whatever Google wants you to watch next.

You know, I don't give a shit about that, that's fine. Recommend me some stuff to watch, I'm here to watch stuff, I might even like what you're punting and give it a go. I might have forgotten there's a new season of whatever it is. I even quite like some of the inline recommendation stuff.

What made me switch to App-only mode was that ads started appearing for general consumer products. So this writeup is interesting, if/when they make app-only mode advertise shampoo at me I'll probably have a go with that launcher.

My opinion is that it’s a lot like the brief trend for describing yourself as a prompt engineer when getting images out of models like DALL-E 2.

Yeah, for five minutes you needed to use a specific style, very specific language patterns and what have you, in order to get results that were a cut above. But then the models and the harnesses got better and that moment passed.

So the real story here is that seed oils are a proxy, you haven’t necessarily seen any effect from removing them from your diet (consistent with the actual evidence here) but by cutting out processed junk you’ve lost a load of weight.

Congrats on the weight loss (genuinely), but it’s very unlikely seed oils are any sort of factor in themselves.

> seed oils

Oh dear, someone gets their health advice from streamers and podcasters rather than actual health professionals.

The seed oil thing is nonsense.

> Eating clean proper ruminant meat will not be bad for you

Eating too much beef is bad for you in a variety of ways, it's associated with high blood pressure and high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

It's frickin' delicious, but it's not some panacea superfood, quite the opposite.