Everytime I read one of these "I don't use AI" posts, the content is either "my code is handcrafted in a mountain spring and blessed by the universe itself, so no AI can match it", or "everything different from what I do is technofascism or <insert politics rant here>". Maybe Im missing something, but tech is controlled by a handful of companies - always have been; and sometimes code is just code, and AI is just a tool. What am I missing?
I was embarrassed recently to realize that almost all the code I create these days is written by AIs. Then I realized that’s OK. It’s a tool, and I’m making effective use of it. My job was to solve problems, not to write code.
I have a little pet theory brewing. Corporate work claims that we hire junior devs who become intermediate devs, who then become senior devs. The doomsday crowd claim that AI has replaced junior and intermediate devs, and is coming for the senior devs next.
This has felt off to me because I do way more than just code. Business users don’t want get into the details of building software. They want a guy like me to handle that.
I know how to talk to non-technical SMEs and extract their real requirements. I understand how to translate this into architecture decisions that align with the broader org. I know how to map it into a plan that meets those org objectives. And so on.
I think that really what happens is nerds exist and through osmosis a few of them become senior developers. They in turn have junior and intermediate assistant developers to help them deliver. Sometimes those assistants turn out to be nerds themselves, and they spontaneously transmute into senior developers!
AI is replacing those assistant human developers, but we will still need the senior developers because most business people want to sit with a real human being to solve their problem.
I will, however, get worried when AIs start running businesses. Then we are in trouble.
I’ve been tempted to define my life in a big prompt and then do something like: it’s 6:05. Ryan has just woke up. What action (10min or less) does he take? I wonder where I’ll end up if I follow it to a T.
I suggest you have a look at Bell Labs, Xerox and Berkeley, as a simple introduction to the topic - if you thing OSS came from "the goodness of their hearts" instead of a practical business necessity, I have a bridge to sell you.
I would also recommend you to peruse the last 50 years for completely reproductible, homegrown or open computing hardware systems you can build yourself from scratch without requiring overly expensive or exotic hardware. Yes, homegrown CPUs exist, but they "barely work" and often still rely on logic gates. Can you produce 74xx series ICs reliably in a homelab setting? Maybe, but for most of us, probably not. And certainly not for the guys ranting about "companies taking over".
If can't build your computing devices from scratch, store bought is fine. If you can, you're the exception and not the rule.
You are not missing much. Yes there will be situations where AI won’t be helpful, but that’s not a majority
Used right, Claude Code is actually very impressive. You just have to already be a programmer to use it right - divide the problem into small chunks yourself, instruct it to work on the small chunks.
Second example - there is a certain expectation of language in American professional communication. As a non native speaker I can tell you that not following that expectation has real impact on a career. AI has been transformational, writing an email myself and asking it to ‘make this into American professional english’
Not much. Even the argument that AI is another tool to strip people of power is not that great.
It's possible to use AI chatbots against the system of power, to help detect and point out manipulation, or lack of nuance in arguments, or political texts. To help decipher legalese in contracts, or point out problematic passages in terms of use. To help with interactions with the sate, even non-trivial ones like FOI requests, or disputing information disclosure rejections, etc.
AI tools can be used to help against the systems of power.
? Maybe Im missing something, but tech is controlled by a handful of companies - always have been
I guess it depends on what you define as "tech", but the '80s, '90s, and early '00s had an explosion of tiny hardware and software startups. Some even threatened Intel with x86 clones.
It wasn't until the late '90s that NVIDIA was the clear GPU winner, for instance. It had serious competition from 3DFX, ATI, and a bunch of other smaller companies.
> but the '80s, '90s, and early '00s had an explosion of tiny hardware and software startups
Most of them used intel, motorola or zilog tech at some capacity. Most of them with a clock used dallas semiconductor tech; Many of them with serial ports also used either intel or maxim/analog devices chips.
Many of those implementations are patented, and their inner designs were generically, "trade secrets". Most of the clones and rebrands were actually licensed (most of 80x51 microcontrollers and z80 chips are licensed tech, not original). As a tinkerer, you'd receive a black box (sometimes literally) with a series of pins and a datasheet.
If anything, i'd say you have much more choice today than in the 80s/90's.
There's a lot of overlap between "AI is evil megacapitalism" and "AI is ineffective", and I never understood the latter, but I am increasingly arriving to the understanding that the latter claim isn't real, it's just a soldier in the war being fought over the former.
We shape the world through our choices, generally under the umbrella of deterministic systems. AI is non-deterministic, but instead amplifies the concerns by a few wealthy corporations / individuals.
So is AI effective at generating marketing material or propagating arguably vapid value systems in the face of ecological, cultural, and economic crisis? I'd argue yes. But effective also depends on an intention, and that's not my intention, so it's not as effective for me.
I think we need more "manual" choice, and more agency.
Open source library development has to follow very tight sets of style adherence because of its extremely distributed nature, and the degree to which feature development is as much the design of new standards as it is writing working code. I would imagine that it is perhaps the kind of programming least well suited to AI assistance.
AI speeds me up a tremendous amount in my day job as a product engineer.
> AI speeds me up a tremendous amount in my day job as a product engineer.
Sure, there are specialized and non-specialized models.
I was asking if you've measured your "tremendous speed-up" using AI or you just feel like it is a "tremendous speed-up". As the research indicates you may feel like you are sped up 20% while you are actually 20% slower. I'm not saying that you don't actually have a speed-up from AI.
Ineffective at what? Writing good code, or producing any sort of valuable insight? Yes, it's ineffective. Writing unmaintainable slop at line rate? Or writing internet-filling spam, or propagating their owners' points of view? Very effective.
I just think the things they are effective at are a net negative for most of us.
