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Comment by galleywest200 | Hacker News Reader

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galleywest200·

Can these people not just create a diagram with their own hands? Literally a pencil and paper.

I am at the point where I would prefer a poorly human drawn diagram with terrible handwriting over AI slop.

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If you scroll far enough down the linked page, you’ll see they’re knocking off poor handwriting too!

I do that. My slide decks these days are hand scribbled.

It is not the making of the diagram that is the problem, but often the fact I have no idea how to put it visually. AI is awesome at this.

Now, does that justify the harm? Not for me, but this issue is way out of my league.

The point of a diagram is that you have something in your head to turn into the diagram. There's no point if you can't do it yourself and the image generator is coming up with it for you.

I disagree. Diagrams are a type of visual communication, and not everyone is good at translating things to visual. I open an excalidraw with clear concepts in my head, but nothing comes out of it. I try C4 or flow diagrams, and I spend an excessive amount of time refactoring them to end up mediocre anyway. Not just me, I know MANY developers that are amazing at explaining things but are mind-blocked when drawing simple circles and arrows.

Helping us navigate things we aren't good at has been one of the main selling points of AI.

It's not translation if it's completely AI generated to begin with. Instead of addressing your mental deficits (which sound severe), you're offloading it and making the problem worse.

Learn how to draw simple circles and arrows, this is the epitome of learned helplessness.

But then he wouldn't have a justification for AI companies to rob people! And you are suggesting robbing himself of this justification!

You have lack of practice and OCD if you’re constantly refactoring but “always end up mediocre”.

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