7 ms·

I got out of tech about 5 years ago, before AI really took off. I still do a lot of personal projects and now never use AI. I tried it a bit (only free plans) b

by wkjagt 17d ago

I got out of tech about 5 years ago, before AI really took off. I still do a lot of personal projects and now never use AI. I tried it a bit (only free plans) but noticed how much it caused me to no longer be able to think through a solution myself. I thought I was learning a lot from it but for some reason whatever I learned from it didn't stick. So now I'm no longer using it at all. I do realize that this is very specific to my situation of course.

echelon 17d ago
I really do not get all of y'all claiming this causes you to "not be able to think". I worked on six nines active active payments infra that handled billions in daily transaction volume. I've built laser projection systems to play interactive games on skyscrapers. That ability is not atrophying. I'm able to do 10-20x what I was able to do before AI, and I'm able to work at a breadth, depth, and level of polish that was previously impossible without mastering other diciplines (CSS, design, etc). With AI, I've built several video games, my own SRS software, my own productivity software, and a business making $5M ARR and growing 70% month on month. I've now done more hardware projects in the past eight months than I have in the last ten years. I might even start doing physics and bio (I did my undergrad in biochem) if I can find the time. I'm also back to making movies. I was a major hobbyist filmmaker before the pandemic. I've shot dozens of films. They're extremely logistically complex and take so much time, and I was never capable of working in the high fantasy or sci fi genres I wanted to. Seedance is scratching so many of my itches it isn't even funny. It's like a gift from the gods. I'm working more now than ever before, and I'm turning those hours of writing pointless glue code or testing new libraries and frameworks into actual productive work. Getting real work done. 2010-2020 felt like tech dystopia to me. Cellphone incrementalism, walled gardens, adtech, crypto, locked down devices. It was a pale shadow of the excitement of the early web. Personal websites, kids making Flash games, the indie web, p2p, people building stuff being 70% of the internet. For the first time in a long time, I feel extremely hopeful about the future and excited to work with tech again. tl;dr - I can still write in cursive, but it turns out I just don't need to as I write my movie. I do not get you folks who claim this is bad. This is magical.
- brookst 17d ago
  Hear hear. I do not understand the people who bemoan the loss of slide rules and books of trig tables in the era of graphing calculators. I’m with you — I’m producing more and better art, with a deeper understanding of the art which comes from scale. My music is more innovative, my simulations are richer and more fun, I can wake up in the morning with a new idea and have a prototype in hours. It is magical.
  - Jcampuzano2 17d ago
    Big difference is when you use a calculator or other tools, you still have to interpret and know what to enter. With modern AI, you basically just ask for something and what used to be days worth of work magically appears, you didn't really think through a single thing when it comes to implementation, architecture etc unless you made a conscious effort to audit that. We also generally still encourage students to learn how to do certain operations and what they mean without a calculator before letting them rely on it to make things quicker. If you never knew what a sin/cos was you'd never even know when to use those or why they even exist on a calculator. AI is a step up where you literally don't have to know what those are, you could just take a picture and ask for the solution and it would do that all for you if you let it. In reality modern AI is a massive test of willpower. You can completely let go of the reigns and it will happily do everything for you.
    - brookst 16d ago
      I appreciate your reply and framing, but it strikes me as a spirited opposition to delegation. Or at least a strong assertion that AI use is similar to managing an organization. The reins metaphor is also interesting and cuts both ways: riders don’t expect to do the walking themselves, and setting direction is not the same as doing (even understanding, or being able to do) the work.
  - claytongulick 17d ago
    > Hear hear. I do not understand the people who bemoan the loss of slide rules and books of trig tables in the era of graphing calculators. Why do you think so many people prefer to listen to live music over an album playing on a jukebox? Live music doesn't have the polish and perfection of a studio recording, it's much less efficient to have to manually play instruments than to just hit "play" on a song. So why bother? I think it's because we're looking at things wrong all over the place. Similar to live music, I definitely prefer to read code written by a real human. I can get in their head, understand how they were reasoning to solve a problem, even if there were problems with their reasoning. When I hear all the breathless takes about AI "productivity" improvements, my brain just circles aback to the old saw about activity over achievement. What are your outputs? What is activity and what is achievement? A business person brags that AI is able to generate a report for them that used to require lots of manual work linking spreadsheets. OK. What was the value of the report? What was the goal? I like to follow this all the way down- - Widget sales report Why? - To inform inventory and production decisions, as well as marketing Why? - So that the company can make money? So that the founders can be proud of their product? So that the product can improve lives in some way? Why? - So that the people working can have improved lives, and/or more status in society Why? - So that collectively by competing with each other in structured ways, humans as a whole thrive and benefit Etc... OK. Where does AI fit into this? What has it taken away from the human experience, and how had it affected all of these goals? The goal isn't code. It isn't even the product that the code makes - it's the reward signaling that you get from cooperating and competing with other people. When you short circuit your efforts at creation by using AI, it feels the same to me as saying you're putting on a live music show, but instead just hitting "play" on an album.
tempest_ 17d ago
Difference between taking your own notes and skimming someone else's. I have found in the last year I "get more done" but I learn less. Whats even worse is if I burn though my token quota I am less likely(and less able) to "switch to manual". LLMs make an ocean of decisions and assumptions very quickly and if you don't slow it down very intentionally (and lose the promise of the AI providers are pitching) you will quickly not have a good idea of how systems work.
- brookst 17d ago
  It’s funny, I’m the exact opposite. I’ve tackled projects at scales I could never have done before, and learned more than I would have. My actual coding ability is probably lower, but I’ve learned so much about music theory and production, CAD, and statistics. All because my hobby projects can go so much further than before.
  - hello_moto 17d ago
    Will that knowledge stick? Given that you blasted through many things relatively quick?
    - dalmo3 17d ago
      As someone in a similar journey, I say: No, the knowledge won't stick. OTOH, the output might stick? Then the question becomes do you value knowledge for its own sake or for what it enables you to do? I don't have an answer.
      - brookst 16d ago
        What an insightful response. I thought about that for a while, and its a great way to reframe some of this debate about the desirability of using AI.
    - brookst 17d ago
      I’ve never been a cram for the test kind of person. I do best when using knowledge in an ongoing basis. Regardless of AI, things I studied intensely a decade ago but never use are by and large gone, whereas things I use frequently stay and deepen. I don’t expect it to be any different with AI, but YMMV.
yoyohello13 17d ago
There was a well known phenomenon people called ‘tutorial hell’ where when learning to program you could understand all the code from tutorials, but when it came time to actually create your own solutions for stuff you got stuck. I think AI is basically enabling eternal tutorial hell, you never actually need to break out of it anymore.
- nunez 17d ago
  Same thing happens when you're learning a (human) language.
  - yoyohello13 17d ago
    Yeah it shows up in all learning really. Putting theory in to practice is a crucial component of learning.
- Mabusto 17d ago
  This has happened to me with Rust. I read the book, did the interactive tutorials and then started on a small project and couldn’t really code anything! This is familiar territory for me as I prefer to do a breadth first survey of something I’m trying to learn before digging in to an actual project with depth to make all the mistakes and blunders that make you actually good at something. AI can still be a huge help here. I don’t really use AI to write the actual code. I will be tooting along, in the flow state, and then bang off a question or request like “how would you write this block of code” “how does this API work?”, and then just take what it says under advisement. I find as soon as I start accepting what the AI says without critical thinking or just hitting the “apply block” button, it’s time to take a break. I use CoPilot and I barely touch 40% token spend per month and to me it’s the best way to work, I am always engaged, have a full mental model of what I’m working on, and have someone pushing back and criticizing what I’m writing. This gets you out of tutorial hell, but keeps you motivated because you’re not always staring at a blank code window wondering where to start.
- DrewADesign 16d ago
  The common denominator is cargo cultism. AI coding is really just trying to make cargo cult coding sustainable.

by wkjagt 17d ago

echelon 17d ago

I really do not get all of y'all claiming this causes you to "not be able to think". I worked on six nines active active payments infra that handled billions in daily transaction volume. I've built laser projection systems to play interactive games on skyscrapers. That ability is not atrophying. I'm able to do 10-20x what I was able to do before AI, and I'm able to work at a breadth, depth, and level of polish that was previously impossible without mastering other diciplines (CSS, design, etc). With AI, I've built several video games, my own SRS software, my own productivity software, and a business making $5M ARR and growing 70% month on month. I've now done more hardware projects in the past eight months than I have in the last ten years. I might even start doing physics and bio (I did my undergrad in biochem) if I can find the time. I'm also back to making movies. I was a major hobbyist filmmaker before the pandemic. I've shot dozens of films. They're extremely logistically complex and take so much time, and I was never capable of working in the high fantasy or sci fi genres I wanted to. Seedance is scratching so many of my itches it isn't even funny. It's like a gift from the gods. I'm working more now than ever before, and I'm turning those hours of writing pointless glue code or testing new libraries and frameworks into actual productive work. Getting real work done. 2010-2020 felt like tech dystopia to me. Cellphone incrementalism, walled gardens, adtech, crypto, locked down devices. It was a pale shadow of the excitement of the early web. Personal websites, kids making Flash games, the indie web, p2p, people building stuff being 70% of the internet. For the first time in a long time, I feel extremely hopeful about the future and excited to work with tech again. tl;dr - I can still write in cursive, but it turns out I just don't need to as I write my movie. I do not get you folks who claim this is bad. This is magical.

brookst 17d ago
Hear hear. I do not understand the people who bemoan the loss of slide rules and books of trig tables in the era of graphing calculators. I’m with you — I’m producing more and better art, with a deeper understanding of the art which comes from scale. My music is more innovative, my simulations are richer and more fun, I can wake up in the morning with a new idea and have a prototype in hours. It is magical.
- Jcampuzano2 17d ago
  Big difference is when you use a calculator or other tools, you still have to interpret and know what to enter. With modern AI, you basically just ask for something and what used to be days worth of work magically appears, you didn't really think through a single thing when it comes to implementation, architecture etc unless you made a conscious effort to audit that. We also generally still encourage students to learn how to do certain operations and what they mean without a calculator before letting them rely on it to make things quicker. If you never knew what a sin/cos was you'd never even know when to use those or why they even exist on a calculator. AI is a step up where you literally don't have to know what those are, you could just take a picture and ask for the solution and it would do that all for you if you let it. In reality modern AI is a massive test of willpower. You can completely let go of the reigns and it will happily do everything for you.
  - brookst 16d ago
    I appreciate your reply and framing, but it strikes me as a spirited opposition to delegation. Or at least a strong assertion that AI use is similar to managing an organization. The reins metaphor is also interesting and cuts both ways: riders don’t expect to do the walking themselves, and setting direction is not the same as doing (even understanding, or being able to do) the work.
- claytongulick 17d ago
  > Hear hear. I do not understand the people who bemoan the loss of slide rules and books of trig tables in the era of graphing calculators. Why do you think so many people prefer to listen to live music over an album playing on a jukebox? Live music doesn't have the polish and perfection of a studio recording, it's much less efficient to have to manually play instruments than to just hit "play" on a song. So why bother? I think it's because we're looking at things wrong all over the place. Similar to live music, I definitely prefer to read code written by a real human. I can get in their head, understand how they were reasoning to solve a problem, even if there were problems with their reasoning. When I hear all the breathless takes about AI "productivity" improvements, my brain just circles aback to the old saw about activity over achievement. What are your outputs? What is activity and what is achievement? A business person brags that AI is able to generate a report for them that used to require lots of manual work linking spreadsheets. OK. What was the value of the report? What was the goal? I like to follow this all the way down- - Widget sales report Why? - To inform inventory and production decisions, as well as marketing Why? - So that the company can make money? So that the founders can be proud of their product? So that the product can improve lives in some way? Why? - So that the people working can have improved lives, and/or more status in society Why? - So that collectively by competing with each other in structured ways, humans as a whole thrive and benefit Etc... OK. Where does AI fit into this? What has it taken away from the human experience, and how had it affected all of these goals? The goal isn't code. It isn't even the product that the code makes - it's the reward signaling that you get from cooperating and competing with other people. When you short circuit your efforts at creation by using AI, it feels the same to me as saying you're putting on a live music show, but instead just hitting "play" on an album.

tempest_ 17d ago

Difference between taking your own notes and skimming someone else's. I have found in the last year I "get more done" but I learn less. Whats even worse is if I burn though my token quota I am less likely(and less able) to "switch to manual". LLMs make an ocean of decisions and assumptions very quickly and if you don't slow it down very intentionally (and lose the promise of the AI providers are pitching) you will quickly not have a good idea of how systems work.

brookst 17d ago
It’s funny, I’m the exact opposite. I’ve tackled projects at scales I could never have done before, and learned more than I would have. My actual coding ability is probably lower, but I’ve learned so much about music theory and production, CAD, and statistics. All because my hobby projects can go so much further than before.
- hello_moto 17d ago
  Will that knowledge stick? Given that you blasted through many things relatively quick?
  - dalmo3 17d ago
    As someone in a similar journey, I say: No, the knowledge won't stick. OTOH, the output might stick? Then the question becomes do you value knowledge for its own sake or for what it enables you to do? I don't have an answer.
    - brookst 16d ago
      What an insightful response. I thought about that for a while, and its a great way to reframe some of this debate about the desirability of using AI.
  - brookst 17d ago
    I’ve never been a cram for the test kind of person. I do best when using knowledge in an ongoing basis. Regardless of AI, things I studied intensely a decade ago but never use are by and large gone, whereas things I use frequently stay and deepen. I don’t expect it to be any different with AI, but YMMV.

yoyohello13 17d ago

There was a well known phenomenon people called ‘tutorial hell’ where when learning to program you could understand all the code from tutorials, but when it came time to actually create your own solutions for stuff you got stuck. I think AI is basically enabling eternal tutorial hell, you never actually need to break out of it anymore.

nunez 17d ago
Same thing happens when you're learning a (human) language.
- yoyohello13 17d ago
  Yeah it shows up in all learning really. Putting theory in to practice is a crucial component of learning.
Mabusto 17d ago
This has happened to me with Rust. I read the book, did the interactive tutorials and then started on a small project and couldn’t really code anything! This is familiar territory for me as I prefer to do a breadth first survey of something I’m trying to learn before digging in to an actual project with depth to make all the mistakes and blunders that make you actually good at something. AI can still be a huge help here. I don’t really use AI to write the actual code. I will be tooting along, in the flow state, and then bang off a question or request like “how would you write this block of code” “how does this API work?”, and then just take what it says under advisement. I find as soon as I start accepting what the AI says without critical thinking or just hitting the “apply block” button, it’s time to take a break. I use CoPilot and I barely touch 40% token spend per month and to me it’s the best way to work, I am always engaged, have a full mental model of what I’m working on, and have someone pushing back and criticizing what I’m writing. This gets you out of tutorial hell, but keeps you motivated because you’re not always staring at a blank code window wondering where to start.
DrewADesign 16d ago
The common denominator is cargo cultism. AI coding is really just trying to make cargo cult coding sustainable.