thor_molecules

I think there is a bit of cognitive dissonance that comes with trying to build stuff with LLM technology.

LLM’s are inherently non-deterministic. In my anecdotal experience, most software boils down to an attempt to codify some sort of descision tree into automation that can produce a reliable result. So the “reliable” part isn’t there yet (and may never be?).

Then you have the problem of motivation. Where is the motivation to get better at what you do when your manager just wants you to babysit copilot and skim over diffs as quickly as possible?

Not a great epoch for being a tech worker right imo.

The apologists be damned. This article nails it. A grand reduction. Not a bicycle; a set of training wheels.

Where is the dignity in all of this?

> ...far too many unknown unknowns often paired with expectations of prompt (and cheap) solutions to complicated issues.

That describes pretty much all of my "full-stack" experience.

What sort of job/background do you have where you are writing low level drivers? I'd love to get into that side of things but I don't know where to start.

> Many people who first entered senior roles in 2010-2020 are finding current roles a lot less fun.

This resonates with me.

I find that the current crop of new tech (AI) produces a lot of cognitive dissonance for me in my day-to-day work.

Most initiatives/projects/whatever around AI seems to be of the "digging your own grave" variety - making tools to replace software engineers.

Definitely not fun.

I reach for the ~/bin/thing approach when I want the utility to be useable from vim.

For example, if I define an alias thing, vim won't know about it.

But as a executable on my $PATH, I can do any of the following:

  :%!thing
  :'<'>!thing
  :.!thing

A good example is on my work machine, I can't install jq because reasons. However I do have python, so I have a simple executable called fmtjson that looks like this:

  #!/bin/sh
  python -m json.tool --indent 2

When I want to format some json from vim, I just run:

  :%!fmtjson

Easy to remember, easy to type. Plus I can use it in pipes on the cli.

https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive/blob/b068eaf1e6cbe35d1... for reference, an example from a tpope plugin

Consider exposing commands that the user can then assign to their own preferred keybindings instead of choosing for them

After reading the comments, the themes I'm seeing are:

- AI will provide a big mess for wizards to clean up

- AI will replace juniors and then seniors within a short timeframe

- AI will soon plateau and the bubble will burst

- "Pshaw I'm not paid to code; I'm a problem solver"

- AI is useless in the face of true coding mastery

It is interesting to me that this forum of expert technical people are so divided on this (broad) subject.

That's very interesting! Love finding little nooks and crannies like this

I have an iris, I would highly recommend. Similar to a Moonlander (not as many keys though).

https://keeb.io/collections/iris-split-ergonomic-keyboard/pr...

You pretty much summarized what I've been thinking about for the past couple years.

Question is, what can we do about it? Thats where I really start to feel powerless, the challenge seems insurmountable.

Hi! :)

Yeah the huge time sink aspect is definitely real. It gets much harder to justify when you already working 40+ hrs a week or have kids or whatever.

Going back to the earlier analogy, music has the same problem as programming in that the stuff you do for money doesn't necessarily translate to making you better at your craft. You end up being a factory that just produces the same thing over and over instead of growing in your craft.

I see this a lot at my job currently (I'm guilty of it as well) - speed is usually prioritized over anything else, and so bad patterns end up getting copied and "lifted and shifted" everywhere.

It's hard to find the balance.

Whoa how cool to spot you in the wild on HN! I listen to your podcast, thank you for the awesome content.

When I was younger and more idealistic I took a chance and got a bachelor's in music. It didn't work out, but when I later became a programmer, one of things I took with me was this idea of "total immersion" - e.g. just hanging around and listening/watching the more experienced people do their thing.

Nice to see that I'm not alone in this idea!

yeah this is really good - thank u

are you me? hah :/

So in this case, you've let a new dev commit to a code base without review.

Then, instead of informing them of best practices and giving them time to re-work the code, you'd just fire them?

Interesting strategy.

Very interesting, and frankly inspiring to see you get this creative.

The Bone Clocks is fantastic - probably my #1 go-to when someone asks me for a book recommendation.

Sounds like a Lisp or Jupyter Notebook workflow (or maybe more broadly, the "literate programming" paradigm)

I'm not sure how to do this with a SpringBoot/NodeJs app that you would find in 90% of shops

Genuinely curious - why do you value "overall productivity" so much?

If you like symbols and fancy terminal stuff, I'd also like to recommend any of the Nerd Fonts - all free.

https://www.nerdfonts.com/

I second the recommendation for "NotJustBikes", very eye-opening in regards to city planning and infrastructure

awesome, thanks!

What is the "Bryan Cantrill at Joyent" you're referring to?

If UHK would make a bluetooth/wireless model I would buy one in a heartbeat