But the real savings? Repetitive code. I suck at it, I always make typos and it’s draining. I just toss in a table or an api response and tell it what I want and boom
Get better at it, manually, or you’ll suck at it forever. It’s a skill like anything else.
I’ve been doing it for more than a decade without help, I’m not any better at spelling or misclicks
And to be clear, I can do it - I just really, really don’t want to. I hate it so much, my eyes glaze over and I have to force myself every second of the way. It’s not interesting, there’s no puzzles involved… It’s basically data entry
It’s not interesting, there’s no puzzles involved… It’s basically data entry
So? Show me an industry that’s 100% interesting all the time. Artists still have to stretch and gesso their canvases. Rock stars still have to deal with band drama and touring logistics. Directors have to work their budgets and wrangle big egos. Why should software, which is basically using fancy math to tell the dumbest guy in the room exactly what to do, be any different?
There’s this awful idea that everything should be fun and nobody should struggle with anything or be forced to do anything menial. We want to be instant experts without going through the boring or hard stuff. And we’re willing to offload more and more of this onto proprietary black boxes in exchange for… what?
I agree, but I acknowledge we could be at a “cursive writing” moment where something that was once a critical skill becomes irrelevant. That’s sort of a pending question at this point.
I mean I’ve spent a lot of time writing regex to automate large sets of changes. Sometimes it can be a bit fiddly to get the regex just so. Like replacing direct field access with getters where you have to find the field access and change .foo to .getFoo() and the capitalization can take a couple of tries to get just right.
With AI you can literally just say “replace all direct field access (e.g. thing.foo) with getters and setters” and the AI will do it in under a second. It will still be a very useful skill to be able to do things like that with regex because not everything is so easy to communicate to the AI, but it will become less frequently needed and a lot of developers who never learned that skill will get by using AI and just doing the rare things AI can’t do with repetitive keyboarding.
I see cursive writing brought up a lot in these conversations and I don’t think it applies. Firstly, the cognitive load of writing code is higher than writing your letters so they join up. You’re not just making sure you write the letters correctly, you’re also following the syntax rules of the language you’re writing. And while you’re writing, you’re reinforcing those rules in your head. Yes, initially it’s hard and boring.
And yeah, sometimes you get it wrong or forget to capitalize. That is a feature, not a bug. The more you do it, the easier it gets. I spent a couple weeks trying to use CoPilot and at the end I still had to correct its shitty code, which either hallucinated features I wasn’t implementing, or hallucinated syntax rules I wasn’t using. It was like spending a sprint trying to get a subpar intern up to speed. At the end of those two weeks, my manual coding accuracy took a noticeable hit.
I complained to higher-ups and they told me “oh it’s definitely a skill getting the prompt written correctly”, which was patronizing and irritating. Would I rather spend time getting good at asking the proprietary magic thinky box to maybe write good code this time, or would I rather get better at coding?
I mean I’ve spent a lot of time writing regex to automate large sets of changes. Sometimes it can be a bit fiddly to get the regex just so. Like replacing direct field access with > getters where you have to find the field access and change .foo to .getFoo() and the capitalization can take a couple of tries to get just right.
At least you’re learning more about regexes when you do this. Yes, there’s menial bullshit in coding. There’s menial bullshit in every field. Some of it gets abstracted away (syntax highlighting to help with comprehension), some of it gets kicked around and ultimately does not impress (VB’s drag-and-drop coding), and some of it stays because it’s necessary. Nobody likes doing manual stuff, but sometimes it’s preferable to trying to automate it.
Also, I’ve never heard of anyone paying $20 a month for the privilege of not writing in cursive, or being unable to write because they don’t have internet. Something to think about.
You’re not just making sure you write the letters correctly, you’re also following the syntax rules of the language you’re writing. And while you’re writing, you’re reinforcing those rules in your head.
I get where you’re coming from, but I’ve worked with a lot of bad developers who never got the hang of this even as mid-level developers. On the other hand, I understand the utility of knowing how to do these things for ourselves. There are a number of “black-box” libraries that were just an absolute mystery to me until I tried implementing them myself and began to see these libraries are usually not complex so much as they are thorough in covering edge cases that 90% of users will never care about.
It would definitely be a shame if these tools caused new developers to bypass fundamental skill development. My only hesitation is the number of developers who should’ve developed those skills and never did before AI. There’s something wrong either with how developers are learning or who is getting into development.
I spent a couple weeks trying to use CoPilot and at the end I still had to correct its shitty code, which either hallucinated features I wasn’t implementing, or hallucinated syntax rules I wasn’t using.
We are using CoPilot. As a code-completion engine it is handy. I’m much more skeptical about the new code it writes. Like you, I have not had good experiences with that.
Also, I’ve never heard of anyone paying $20 a month for the privilege of not writing in cursive, or being unable to write because they don’t have internet. Something to think about.
You’re right. Tool access is certainly something to think about. I have more nuanced thoughts, but I don’t want to disagree just to disagree, you know?
Get better at it, manually, or you’ll suck at it forever. It’s a skill like anything else.
I’ve been doing it for more than a decade without help, I’m not any better at spelling or misclicks
And to be clear, I can do it - I just really, really don’t want to. I hate it so much, my eyes glaze over and I have to force myself every second of the way. It’s not interesting, there’s no puzzles involved… It’s basically data entry
So? Show me an industry that’s 100% interesting all the time. Artists still have to stretch and gesso their canvases. Rock stars still have to deal with band drama and touring logistics. Directors have to work their budgets and wrangle big egos. Why should software, which is basically using fancy math to tell the dumbest guy in the room exactly what to do, be any different?
There’s this awful idea that everything should be fun and nobody should struggle with anything or be forced to do anything menial. We want to be instant experts without going through the boring or hard stuff. And we’re willing to offload more and more of this onto proprietary black boxes in exchange for… what?
I agree, but I acknowledge we could be at a “cursive writing” moment where something that was once a critical skill becomes irrelevant. That’s sort of a pending question at this point.
I mean I’ve spent a lot of time writing regex to automate large sets of changes. Sometimes it can be a bit fiddly to get the regex just so. Like replacing direct field access with getters where you have to find the field access and change .foo to .getFoo() and the capitalization can take a couple of tries to get just right.
With AI you can literally just say “replace all direct field access (e.g. thing.foo) with getters and setters” and the AI will do it in under a second. It will still be a very useful skill to be able to do things like that with regex because not everything is so easy to communicate to the AI, but it will become less frequently needed and a lot of developers who never learned that skill will get by using AI and just doing the rare things AI can’t do with repetitive keyboarding.
I see cursive writing brought up a lot in these conversations and I don’t think it applies. Firstly, the cognitive load of writing code is higher than writing your letters so they join up. You’re not just making sure you write the letters correctly, you’re also following the syntax rules of the language you’re writing. And while you’re writing, you’re reinforcing those rules in your head. Yes, initially it’s hard and boring.
And yeah, sometimes you get it wrong or forget to capitalize. That is a feature, not a bug. The more you do it, the easier it gets. I spent a couple weeks trying to use CoPilot and at the end I still had to correct its shitty code, which either hallucinated features I wasn’t implementing, or hallucinated syntax rules I wasn’t using. It was like spending a sprint trying to get a subpar intern up to speed. At the end of those two weeks, my manual coding accuracy took a noticeable hit.
I complained to higher-ups and they told me “oh it’s definitely a skill getting the prompt written correctly”, which was patronizing and irritating. Would I rather spend time getting good at asking the proprietary magic thinky box to maybe write good code this time, or would I rather get better at coding?
At least you’re learning more about regexes when you do this. Yes, there’s menial bullshit in coding. There’s menial bullshit in every field. Some of it gets abstracted away (syntax highlighting to help with comprehension), some of it gets kicked around and ultimately does not impress (VB’s drag-and-drop coding), and some of it stays because it’s necessary. Nobody likes doing manual stuff, but sometimes it’s preferable to trying to automate it.
Also, I’ve never heard of anyone paying $20 a month for the privilege of not writing in cursive, or being unable to write because they don’t have internet. Something to think about.
I get where you’re coming from, but I’ve worked with a lot of bad developers who never got the hang of this even as mid-level developers. On the other hand, I understand the utility of knowing how to do these things for ourselves. There are a number of “black-box” libraries that were just an absolute mystery to me until I tried implementing them myself and began to see these libraries are usually not complex so much as they are thorough in covering edge cases that 90% of users will never care about.
It would definitely be a shame if these tools caused new developers to bypass fundamental skill development. My only hesitation is the number of developers who should’ve developed those skills and never did before AI. There’s something wrong either with how developers are learning or who is getting into development.
We are using CoPilot. As a code-completion engine it is handy. I’m much more skeptical about the new code it writes. Like you, I have not had good experiences with that.
You’re right. Tool access is certainly something to think about. I have more nuanced thoughts, but I don’t want to disagree just to disagree, you know?