AI lets you pick the parts you want to focus on and streamline the parts you don't. I get zero joy out of wrestling build tools or figuring out deploy scripts to get what I've built out onto a server. In the past side projects would stall out because the few hours per week I had would get consumed by all of the side stuff. Now I take care of that using AI and focus on the parts I want to write.

Also just.. boring code. Like I'm probably more anti-AI than most, but even I'll acknowledge it's nice to just be like... "hey this array of objects I have, I need sorted by this property" and just have it work. Or how to load strings from exotic character encodings. Or dozens of other bitchy little issues that drag software dev speed down, don't help me "grow" as a developer, and/or are not interesting to solve, full stop.

I love this job but I can absolutely get people saying that AI helps them not "fight" the computer.

I've always believed that the dozens of 'bitchy little issues' are the means to grow as a developer.

Once you've done it, you'll hopefully never have to do it again (or at worse be derivatives). Over time you'll have a collection of 'how to do stuff'.

I think this is the path to growth. Letting a LLM do it for you is equivalent to it solving a hard leetcode problem. You're not really taxing your brain.

>Letting a LLM do it for you is equivalent to it solving a hard leetcode problem. You're not really taxing your brain.

But things like "hey this array of objects I have, I need sorted by this property" are not hard leetcode problems

They're precisely the kind of tedious, but not taxing, problems that we prefer to farm out to someone else. Like asking a junior to do it.

My point is that it's tempting and irresistible (based on other comments in this thread) to move from basic attribute sorting, to basic CRUD, SQL queries, CSS/Tailwind, typescript error resolution then using it for Dijkstra, because why not?, it's so nice.

Then we're just puppetmasters pulling the strings (which some think this is the way the industry is going).

> I get zero joy out of wrestling build tools or figuring out deploy scripts to get what I've built out onto a server.

And for me (and other ops folks here I'd presume), that is the fun part. Sad, from my career perspective, that it's getting farmed out to AI, but I am glad it helps you with your side projects.

Yeah, that is one of my main uses for AI: getting the build stuff and scripts out of the way so that I can focus on the application code. That and brainstorming.

In both cases, it works because I can mostly detect when the output is bullshit. I'm just a little bit scared, though, that it will stop working if I rely too much on it, because I might lose the brain muscles I need to detect said bullshit.

Im super interested to know how juniors get a long. i have dealt with build systems for decades and half the time its just use google or stackoverflow to get past something quickly, or manually troubleshoot deps. now i automate that entirely. and for code, i know what good or not, i check its output and hve it redo anything t5hat doesnt pass my known stndards. It makes using it so much easier. the article is so on point

Has anybody tried getting an LLM to pitch them an idea for software that they then implement themselves? I might actually try that now...

Huge plus one. Useful to bridge hotel wifi so all my devices connect automatically, also useful as an ad-hoc router that fits into my travel pack.

NFL players have unique skills, are highly valued, and are represented by a union. Same with most other major sports.

It’s not about distance, it’s about burst. It sucks to go on a ride where you fall behind or have to all-out every time there’s a hill or you need to accelerate after a stoplight. May only need 50-100w, but makes it so people can keep up with the group and have a fun time.

That's their entire strategy. Shrink government causing government to become ineffective, which provides evidence that government should shrink even more.

AKA "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

Home prices have dramatically exceeded inflation for a long time, so you're getting advice from people who reaped huge appreciation gains. Now housing prices are hitting affordability limits, interest rates are less appealing, so it's unclear if the future will look like the past.

Interest rates for home-ownership are a ratchet, though. If they ever go down (and they do fluctuate over the course of decades), and you are financially stable (this may or may not be the case at the right time) you can generally refinance to lock-in the lower rate.

That only applies to mortgages in the US for the most part. Everywhere else you only finance for 3-5 years at a time.

Freezing a card doesn’t mean the debt is erased. They can still take you to collections.

But it’s a difference to object their claims while you still have your money instead of being in debt while you try to get your money back

"your honor, they provided the credit card to prove their identity for the free plan and now we want to collect 100k"

And then they pull out the invoice where they prove without any doubt that you actually used pay-per-use services and ran up a 100k bill because you failed to do any sort of configuration.

I didn't use them, some bots did. Sort it out with them.

> I didn't use them, some bots did. Sort it out with them.

For you to put together this sort of argument with a straight face, you need to have little to no understanding of how the internet in general, services and web apps work. Good luck arguing your case with a judge.

Shrug. You give them a credit card for identity verification for a free tier. Amazon knows they don't stand a chance, so they always waive the bill "just this once". Won't even need to argue anything before a judge ;-)

I’ve not read the fine print but I’d be worried that there would be something in there that allows this.

There are light-years between what a company thinks their ToS “allow” and what a court would actually determine is allowed. Plenty of ToS clauses in major contracts are unenforceable by law.

In this situation if it were to actually go to court I’d expect the actual bill to get significantly reduced at the very least. But because it’s a completely bullshit charge based on bandwidth usage (which costs them nothing) it won’t go anywhere near that and will just get written off anyway.

Courts can be rather capricious, I’d rather avoid them as best as possible, even if you are likely to win having to fight something like this in court is punishing.

This is sidestepping that the market for CS degrees has gone from new grads making more than median income to some of the highest unemployment among college grads. I hope this is temporary, but the problem right now isn't focus or goal setting. It's that the entry rung to the ladder ceased to exist.

I don't think that's the case. I think an implied point is separating the "I want to be programming computers in 5 years" folks from the "I want a stable job with good pay" folks. If you are in the latter point, then the entry-rung to the ladder disappearing means you should probably switch majors!

As long as the U.S. government does nothing to address outsourcing, this issue will remain permanent. People often blame AI, but it is a much smaller problem compared to the outsourcing of jobs to countries like India or the Philippines.

Disagree with logic that most will sell. Many people will incur high tax bills (if the property appreciated) or transaction costs to move. People who bought in the 2010s have mortgage rates that don’t exist anymore. Many had a reason to live in the area to begin with.

- Many will rebuild to move back

- Some will sell their lots to investors

- Some will rebuild using insurance money to flip upon completion

I’m a huge fan of https://github.com/VirtusLab/git-machete

Looks great, like a combination of the gh cli and the many options available for maintaining chains of stacked branches!