bcooke

Going to the grocery store is a similar example. For a while I was big on getting my groceries delivered. But then I started to realize that the amount of time it took to fill my cart was basically the same amount of time it took in the actual store, so I wasn’t really saving much time or convenience at all… plus I was missing out on some intrinsic joy of discovering and picking things myself.

I think that’s kind of the point. People won’t be touch typing on a desktop keyboard. They’ll be using their voice or phone keyboards. They’re certainly proficient at that.

Very well said.

And when you say it like that, I have to wonder how much of this is a natural consequence of RHLF on such a grand scale, when you have millions of people pretty much much skimming chat responses or operating outside their depth and giving unqualified feedback to the models.

Seems like a lot of people may be reinforcing what sounds smart over what is smart.

Also as an aside: funny how much the LLMs continue to mirror the human communication they’re trained on

The “whining” stems from watching the communication style obviously degrade, and it’s a huge problem for people who want to use this stuff to build and instead continually fight the tools.

Like so many other products, people are moving too fast and shipping things that move the ground under people’s feet needlessly.

All this while we’re beaten to death with the marketing and false promises, and the broader consequences (ex: layoffs, stress, crazy expectations) caused from all this.

Obviously what Anthropic and co have built is amazing and people aren’t losing sight of that. That’s actually the key part of the frustration.

So no, this is not whining. This is the natural response you get when you make bad product decisions.

If you don’t want to get feedback, don’t sell products.

Ah ok thanks for the clarification. And thank you sorentwo for your fantastic work – I've been loving my switch to the Elixir ecosystem thanks to the efforts of folks like you.

Can you expand on why you chose to use CRDB with Oban? I have no opinion here, I’m genuinely curious as someone using Oban myself (with Postgres). I haven’t hit the point of really needing to scale it out yet and I’d rather avoid the traps others have figured out.

> (because, you know, I was getting paid to write code and that's the only way I could actually get it done)

I'm going to assume you were getting paid to build software that solved problems and created value for your customers and stakeholders. Writing code has always been just one activity that's part of the job, and developers forget that and make statements like this! That's the parent poster's point. I'm not saying it's not an extremely important part of the job, or that people don't often collaborate poorly in ways that take away from the sacred deep work time, but framing it as "I get paid to do X and not Y" is just a highly limiting way to look at or talk about the role.

> No developer was ever unhappy to communicate

I've worked with engineers all over the spectrum in terms of their styles, beliefs, and preferences... and some of them are frankly not very interested in getting out of their comfort zone (like heads down, writing code and being alone), and optimizing for the group rather than themselves.

So yes, they are in fact unhappy to communicate (in a general sense), because of how tedious and uncomfortable communication often is.

I'm not saying it's irrational or immoral, or not driven by the types of past poor experiences you mention, but in my experience it's often pretty obviously suboptimal and highly frustrating to work with.

How do you think it changed the world? I don’t think that was an especially prescient thing to say/write at that time. The idea that software was poised to continue to grow in 2011 was pretty obvious to most people. It is true that some companies were undervalued and many VCs and other folks were scarred from the dotcom bust.

But if you go back and read it, you might notice that a lot of the companies and software he discussed and predictions along with them failed to be true or lasting.

I think mostly it was a good catchphrase.

They’ve lost a whole lot of people in prominent roles over the past few years. I wonder how much of the misfires and general thrash in product direction is a result of brain drain and/or so many hands changing. Or maybe I’m confusing cause and effect… hard to tell

I originally thought AI-assisted writing would help synthesize what felt like original ideas I had, that I just wanted to get out there without the laborious task of editing. I didn't expect the writing to end up feeling so incredibly tired and watered-down, but upon more reflection on how the models actually work, it's not all that surprising. Uniqueness in writing is both in the style/structure and the message, and all AI seems to do is find the local maximum of both. Lately I've found myself going back to writing things myself (not all the time, depends on the task), and wishing there was a way I could just completely eliminate the slop from certain things I look at. I worry about all our minds, and the garbage-in, garbage-out net effect of this.

Maybe that's why the writing feels so terrible. The AI is attempting to maximize every sentence while simultaneously expanding on just a few actually meaningful points. And the net result of that dissonance is this rage-inducing vapidity. It's the written equivalent of the Uncanny Valley.

Taking principled stands should absolutely be respected.