I do stuff that actually matters too! The FPGA Lisa is just a fun project that I work on in my spare time, but I'm also a PhD student and I like to think that I contribute useful stuff to the body of knowledge of computer engineering through research.
My personal philosophy on this is that in the grand scheme of things, there is almost nothing that "really matters". So you might as well spend as much of your time as is reasonable doing something fun.
Oh, I completely agree. But I admit I'm a bit of a retro enthusiast and preservationist at heart, so I was curious what "mattered" to a rando HN commenter :P
I think a lot of the impressions of AI generating slop is a case of garbage in/garbage out. You need to learn HOW to ask for things. Just asking "write code to do X" is wrong in most cases. You have to provide some specifications and expectations just like working with a junior engineer. You also can't ask "write me a module that does X". You need to design the module yourself and maybe ask AI for help with each specific individual endpoint.
These juniors you're complaining about are going to get better in making these requests of AI and blow right past all the seniors who yell at clouds running AI.
How will these juniors get better at making those requests when it sounds like they're not interested in understanding what's happening and the implications of it? That requires a degree of introspection which doesn't appear to be taking place if they're just copy/pasting stuff back and forth to LLMs.
> I think a lot of the impressions of AI generating slop is a case of garbage in/garbage out.
I've been coding for 25 years and what I feel reading posts & comments like in this thread is what I felt in the first few days of that black-blue/white-gold dress thing. I legitimately felt like half the people were trolling.
It's the same with LLM assisted coding. I can't possibly be getting such good results when all the rest are getting garbage, right? Impostor syndrome? Are they trolling?
But yeah, I agree fully with you. You need to actively try everything yourself, and this is what I recommend to my colleagues and friends. Try it out. See what works and what doesn't. Focus on what works, and put it in markdown files. Avoid what doesn't work today, but be ready because tomorrow it might work. Use flows. Use plan / act accordingly. Use the correct tools (context7 is a big one). Use search before planning. Search, write it to md files, add it in the repo. READ the plans carefully. Edit before you start a task. Edit, edit edit. Use git trees, use tools that you'd be using anyway in your pipelines. Pay attention to the output. Don't argue, go back to step1, plan better. See what works for context, what doesn't work. Add things, remove things. Have examples ready. Use examples properly. There's sooo much to learn here.
This will get written off as victim blaming, but there’s some truth here.
I don’t use Claude code for everything. I’ve fallen off the bike enough times to know when I’ll be better off writing the changes myself. Even in these cases, though, I still plan with Claude, rubber duck, have it review, have it brainstorm ideas (“I need to do x, I’m thinking about doing it such and such way, can you brainstorm a few more options?”)
> These juniors you're complaining about are going to get better in making these requests of AI and blow right past all the seniors who yell at clouds running AI.
I agree with your comment up to a point, but this is pretty similar to pilots and autopilots. At the end of the day you still need a pilot to figure out non standard issues and make judgement calls.
The junior blowing past is as good as how long he will take to fix this issue that all the credits/prompts in the world are not solving. If the impact is long and costs enough your vibe coders will have good instantaneous speed but never reach the end.
I am optimist about AI usage as a tool to enhance productivity, but the workflows are still being worked out. It currently is neither fire all devs, nor No LLM allowed. It is definitely an exciting time to be a senior though :)
I was an artistic kid and essentially came up with my own distinct handwriting "font". It was beautiful. 35 years later, all typing, I've lost most of it. Now my handwriting is illegible especially because that "font" is still the way I write but I don't have the muscle memory to execute it any more. The whole use it or lose it is very real.
Why's that? Uncle Bob seems pretty clear that most of your code should be free of side effects, and that necessary state mutation should be isolated to one place. Carmack is saying the same thing.
I'm old so... I remember when someone having a beeper was awe inspiring. "Oooh that dude must be a doctor!" After a while it became more like "Oh that dude's sketchy" and finally "Oh wow that dude must be poor"
1. Wow! That's so cool!
2. Why didn't someone this smart spend that time to build something that really matters?