> The exact time that many programmers were enlightened about the AI capabilities and the frequency of their posts.
I attribute that to the holidays. Many people finally had the time to goof around with these tools. At least that's how it happened to me.
It was an incredible experience. I implemented a few features quickly and in a much better way than I could otherwise. Realized how many tiny holes my app had and a few suboptimal patterns I was using. Made me worry about my career, initially, but after using for a while, I now see it as going up the chain of abstraction. Only thing I'm not doing is writing code by hand. Im still having to do everything else like thinking about architecture and the big picture, keeping it dry and maintainable, debugging, etc - but with a lot of help from LLMs. Sometimes it's 10x and sometimes you wasted sometime, you know, just like how using packages made us go up the chain.
AI is basically Leonard from Memento. Very capable. Knows how the world works broadly. Can't make new memories. Need context (tattoos, notes, and polaroids). Misunderstandings things.
I briefly feel bad for them but then I remind myself who am I to judge how they perceive things? It is possible that they get the same enjoyment from the story with all the effects and artifacts these TVs have. When I was a kid we had this smallish (probably 14-15") B/W TV set in my kitchen. Sometimes my whole family would watch a movie on that TV set and we were all absorbed into the movies, it didn't matter the TV set was small and colorless, back then I hadn't even seen a TV broadcast in colors. It's all relative I guess. Sometimes I think this soap opera effect is even worse than watching movies on that small TV set form my childhood but then again, who am I to judge?
The soap opera effect drives me nuts. I just about can't watch something when it's on. It makes a multimillion dollar movie look like it was slapped together in an afternoon.
LOGO was my first interaction with a computer back in 1996. We had to write one program in LOGO in our computer class and we were allowed to play one of the following three games for rest of the period: Dangerous Dave, Paratrooper, or Prince of Persia.
I got an Amstrad PCW handed down to me from my dad as my first PC around the same time.
Booted always with disk 1 and that was Locoscript and learned typing on that thing.
When I discovered there is a second disk that boots you in some dark and hidden alternative mode (read: CP/M) I felt like a hacker.
Hidden inside this cave was the only program the manual mentioned in this section: Logo! I did not know that my PC could display anything except characters and it was. so. amazing. to see self-drawn lines on that thing.
We learned the same lessons for the parts of CPU, computer generations, Babbage and co for 5 years. Our lab exams was more means than ends, so `pir*2` will carry more marks than `3.14r*r`.
I attribute that to the holidays. Many people finally had the time to goof around with these tools. At least that's how it happened to me.
It was an incredible experience. I implemented a few features quickly and in a much better way than I could otherwise. Realized how many tiny holes my app had and a few suboptimal patterns I was using. Made me worry about my career, initially, but after using for a while, I now see it as going up the chain of abstraction. Only thing I'm not doing is writing code by hand. Im still having to do everything else like thinking about architecture and the big picture, keeping it dry and maintainable, debugging, etc - but with a lot of help from LLMs. Sometimes it's 10x and sometimes you wasted sometime, you know, just like how using packages made us go up the chain.
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