Armin was once one of the most prolific programmers in Python.

[cwebber@social.coop]

Armin was once one of the most prolific programmers in Python. Says he never writes code anymore. Seeing more and more people like him write stuff like this on what are supposedly computer programming forums. https://lobste.rs/s/qmjejh/ai_is_slowly_munching_away_my_passion#c_jcgdju

Notably, once a person crosses this threshold, I see them still hang out on programming forums, but they never talk about any of the puzzles of programming anymore. Only about running agents. Which feels strange and sad. Why hang out on the forums at all then?

[cwebber@social.coop]

Steve Klabnik also had an interview on lobste.rs. There's a lot in it! It's a cool read! https://alexalejandre.com/programming/steve-klabnik-interview/

And then it gets to the AI part and he's just like "oh I don't write code anymore".

And notably Steve Klabnik has a lot to say about code, but it's *all in the past*.

Lots of brilliant people are becoming non-practitioners.

[wordshaper@weatherishappening.network]

@cwebber What's telling, I think, is that all these people go on about how much they're doing and how great AI is to help them build more *but there's no actual demonstrable stuff being done.* I mean, if AI was some kind of Nx multiplier you'd think we'd be getting N times more actual functionality out of software but mostly it seems like the N multiplier only applies to blog posts about how AI multiplies their programming.

[cwebber@social.coop]

Feeling FOMO about AI? Well here's my advice!

Stay on top of what's happening. Which doesn't really require *using* the tools. Just see what people are doing.

Whether or not you do use it, stay a practitioner. And don't fall for the FOMO.

Your career won't end because you're not making the choice to use AI. (If your employer makes you use it, that's another thing.)

If you use AI, use it for "summarize and explore" tasks. DO NOT use it for *generate* tasks. That's a different thing.

If you want to differentiate yourself, *learning skills* is the differentiation space right now.

These things are easy to pick up. You can do it whenever. But keep learning.

If you see generated examples, don't paste or accept them. Type them in by hand! The hands on imperative: actually trying things congeals core ideas.

And if it doesn't help your career... well, your consolation prize is: you'll stay interesting.

[gugurumbe@mastouille.fr]

@cwebber I was quite curious LLMs, but I recently had a disappointing experience. I had a common latex problem, but with a more unusual technology stack. It went to “Do this — I get an error — OK do that —…” for a few rounds, nothing surprising. At some point I crossed a line, and it went “OK there’s no way to do what you want with this tech”. As usual, 30 seconds of grepping around in the source code gave me the solution.
Anyway, I wouldn’t trust it for summarize and explore.

[cwebber@social.coop]

@gugurumbe I'm not saying people *should* use it for summarize and explore, I'm saying that's a different category of concern, if done with a local model.

However, I'll also point out you were trying to debug LaTeX, which I would argue is a nearly impossible task no matter how many resources are thrown at it ;)

[gugurumbe@mastouille.fr]

@cwebber My XKCD-style password is so strong you can’t crack it: “undefined reference begin document”

https://xkcd.com/936/