Comment by tinthedev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tinthedev | Hacker News Reader

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I don't like AI coding, but I can't say it's not useful. Most of the arguments in this article can be disarmed by taking the abstraction "one step up". LLM generated modules and software, microservices, whatever your level of abstraction... now need to be composited together. You go and deal with higher order problems, factories, generation, etc.

Is it a way to develop critical bits of code, depths of your business logic? Absolutely not. Can it solve a lot of boilerplate and support logic? Absolutely yes.

Seeing "AI Companies as Bad Actors"... can't fully disagree there. There's far too many far too dodgy things about these businesses, and I trust them as far as I can audit them (not very far). And the missing argument's the cognitive decline of using these things to think for us. I try to keep myself sharp by still manually doing a fair amount of things in my life. I refuse to automate _everything_ - especially the stuff I do for fun. Having an LLM manage hobby-adjacent stuff is a quick trip to burnout land, especially once fixing the thing becomes "the hobby"... and it does.

> I try to keep myself sharp by still manually doing a fair amount of things in my life.

This is an absolute larp. No doubt you use a washing machine and not a washboard. Hand coding in a few years will be like using the washboard when there's a washing machine.

How about you compare like to like? Hmmm.

Like using a calculator. I use one, but I still use paper math too, and calculate manageable sums/multiplications in my head. I'd feel dull otherwise.

GPS. I use one, but I still pay attention to the route and keep a sense of direction. “Why bother knowing where you are when the machine can tell you?” isn't really an argument for outsourcing your own brain.

Or more generally: it’s perhaps not the best idea to make the entirety of your reasoning ability dependant on something external to you. Doubly so if that’s a tool with a subscription model.

The reason I do maths in my head is that the interface to anything else is still not good enough, or at least my handling of it isn't. Looking and handling a phone takes me out of the situation in a way that feels worse than doing the thing in my head.

If it didn't, if the neural computer interface was real and seamless, I would use that for sure. Come to think of it, I probably wouldn't even notice.

I don't think your example is any better or more common. You're the first person I've heard who does math on paper to stay sharp.

Washing machine suppliers don't charge per wash, per month nor are at the risk of disappearing off the planet due to trillions of dollars of fraudulent circular investment. Thus I don't think I need to worry about the washboard at the moment.

> Washing machine suppliers don't charge per wash, per month

Even ignoring the ongoing electricity and maintenance costs of using a washing machine, plenty of people around the country choose every week to use a pay per wash laundromat rather than a bucket and a washboard. Heck I used to rent a washer and dryer in an apartment, paying per month for the convenience of not using the pay per wash on site laundromat.

When you hand code you build an incremental understanding of how the code works. This can be very valuable in cases where precision is needed and change is costly.

The skill of using LLMs for code generation is in recognising these scenarios; knowing when to use it and when to not.

Using a washing machine and a washboard have the same end goal. "I need to wash these clothes, this is a tool that I can use to do that".

If your end goal is "get this piece of software out the door as quickly as possible" then yea - drop the ticket into Jira, that's what the business probably wants anyway.

If you want to garner a deeper understanding of a system, exercise your critical thinking / creative problem solving abilities, improve pattern recognition and memorization abilities... You probably aren't going to get that from "fix ticket-1485, no mistakes"

To me, writing code manually really digs into those "critical thinking skills" at a low level - logic bugs, tracing complex code paths, hell even troubleshooting a syntax issue exercises pattern recognition skills.

It's the same reason I don't use LLMs for communicating with other humans. I think that understanding LLM output, crafting a sentence, highlighting the critical points, and using proper terminology in my OWN writing style requires good language skills and keeps me sharp.

To each their own, but it takes 15-20 minutes a day to rock a leetcode problem and is a great way to get the brain moving.

Not sure I get the "you're a dinosaur" approach. Let people handcode if they want, if they're not performing at work they will be put on PIP or fired, or we'll all be out of a job because AI is so good.

you can practice "critical thinking" at any levels. I bet you don't practice "critical thinking" in ASM or raw binary.

So instead of asking the clanker "fix ticket 1734", you can ask it to write the function that input x and output y, in that file. You still, in some way, "practice critical thinking", while not manually writing code.

Yeah, but if you’re specifying things at that level, you’re probably not saving any time over just typing it yourself.

Using the washing machine for a single person meal is a waste of planet resources.

Meal? Washing machine wash clothes, dishwashers wash dishes, so something may have been lost in translation.

And even so, the energy efficiency of modern dishwashers with turbidity sensors is very good, and actually can be more efficient than hand-washing, especially if that requires multiple bowls full of water.

Obviously there are limits, but if you stack during the day and stick it on overnight, then it's pretty efficient, even for a single person.

It was, a misunderstandment on my part, however if someone needs multiple bowls full of water for a single person meal, I wonder what kind of exquisite cuisine they are doing for so many pans, plates and cutlery.

Regardless of how efficient a dishwasher might be.

Both views feel extreme to me. When I was single, sometimes I used the dishwasher, and sometimes I washed by hand. In either case I wasn't wasting water, because I didn't run the dishwasher until it was full, which was roughly biweekly.

When washing by hand, I did what you imply you do, which is use much, much less than bowlfulls of water for my meal. I get what parent is saying though, because of the numerous roommates I'd had while single, some of them would use gallons of water to wash a single meals worth of dishes, i.e. the plate, cutlery, and maybe a cup. Much more if they had cooked their meal instead of microwaved it

Modern dishwasher machines are ridiculously efficient. On a normal automatic cycle, my machine will use between 3.4-6.4 gallons of water total. An average kitchen faucet is between 1.5-1.8 gallons / minute based on some spot checking of specs online. Which means it only takes running your faucet for 2-3 minutes before you're into the low side of the washing machine and just 4.5 minutes before you're using more than a fully loaded cycle in the washing machine would use. I recently had a month where we couldn't use the dishwasher and washed by hand every night. Our water usage for the month was noticeably higher for that month than it has been in any month before or since. It's really kind of crazy how good a modern dishwasher is.

He means to wash clothes. You're thinking about the dishwasher.

Yeah, my mistake.

I think this can be extended. Wasting time playing music or drawing or writing by hand would also be like using the washboard when there's a washing machine.

There is so many things that AIs can do just as well and much faster. Not just coding but all other kinds of things in art and craft. Like why sculpt anything by hand when you can just get AI do model and then 3d print it.

The answer is very different if it's a job or a hobby.

> Like why sculpt anything by hand when you can just get AI do model and then 3d print it.

Recreation is different, you're doing it for the fun of it, to learn.

This is a common misdirection. Nobody is charting with an AI song. Nobody cares about AI pop music. People are however using ai for jingles, interstitials, elevator music etc because nobody cares if some failed musician has poured his heart and soul into a theme tune for the menu of an educational dvd, they just want the end product... Nobody cares if formulaic crap is soulless, because it already was.

Washing by hand, both dishes and clothes, as well as drying them "old school" are all skills I found very practical to keep even if rarely used (hand washing dishes is pretty common when for me though if I only have one or two items...)

So why do you even need a machine in the first place if they're practical skills?

What does practical mean to you?

I don't even know how many years I have been hearing this now

> This is an absolute larp. No doubt you use a washing machine and not a washboard. Hand coding in a few years will be like using the washboard when there's a washing machine.

Stop with these terrible comparisons. Code is (mostly) expected to keep working and be maintainable for lots of time following its inception. If your clothes are clean and not destroyed, the task is complete.

The man is surrounded by technologys of convenience.... Is he manually communicating or using a computer and the internet? How does he get everywhere? What about Aircon, heating? I'm guessing he has a fridge, oven, telephone, various white goods. As he doesn't live like the Amish, how does he get his gas, water, electricity... pull then from the ground himself?

So yes, he's larping if he thinks not using an llm is the humble life

I can't make any sense of what you're saying. The only parse that comes out is "if you enjoy technological conveniences in life you must be larping if you think using LLMs for a lot of things is a bad idea".

The man said this...

> I try to keep myself sharp by still manually doing a fair amount of things in my life.

I then list a load of shit that shows hes doing next to fuck all manually.

The man is larping.

It’s more humble

Not really a good comparison, sometimes I still quickly use the washboard than load up the washing machine when all is needed is a quick rinse, or when the washing machine is running and I don't want to leave a mess.

I get what you're going for, but it's not a good comparison.

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