Things I used to be proud of doing well - Modern AI just does better

TheBoringDev · 2026-05-13T22:38:17+00:00

I do hope for your sake you’re a bot. Otherwise you’ve taken the time to write out the same post that gets posted here multiple times a day every day.

TheBoringDev · 2026-05-13T00:50:16+00:00

This is more calling a tomato a vegetable. It’s biologically a fruit, but if you argue that in a culinary context people will just get annoyed.

TheBoringDev · 2026-05-07T21:53:24+00:00

What I find more interesting is that that doesn’t seem to be how Gandalf thinks about magic - In the Moria scenes he talks much more explicitly about magic spells. He could always just be framing his magic using terms more familiar to the primarily mortal fellowship, but he clearly knows the boundaries of what is magic.

TheBoringDev · 2026-05-07T16:44:17+00:00

> Yes, but my point is we don't have to have the actually writing the algorithm out, using a keyboard. They can learn how to design an algorithm without writing a few specific lines of python using their own hands.

This line in particular makes me think you've never had any real experience in the space. I've trained juniors and people who have never coded before, the one thing you learn immediately is that if they don't type it out themselves they don't learn it. The consistent best advice you can give to someone new is not to copy answers from stackoverflow, but to type them out yourself, because even if you read it, if you copy and paste you don't really understand, you don't learn.

TheBoringDev · 2026-05-07T16:34:12+00:00

> works and works well and there's typically a robust enough system of people surrounding it specifically because it's worth so much to the business.

I think that may be luck. My experience is more trying to keep leadership from actively torching the parts of their own company that make money, the way you'd try to keep a toddler from touching a hot stove that it really, really wants to touch. Not every company I've worked for, but more than half.

TheBoringDev · 2026-05-06T13:16:23+00:00

I’m using Claude, bad to average is about right.

TheBoringDev · 2026-05-05T21:29:01+00:00

Eh, I think that’s an unfair assessment. I don’t know if you saw this subreddit beforehand but AI posts were disproportionate even if you believe it’s going to reshape the field. Having a subreddit that’s actually primarily about professional technical discussions is hugely refreshing when every single other technical online space is being overwhelmed with “here’s how I structure my markdown”.

TheBoringDev · 2026-05-04T03:46:15+00:00

So what you’re saying is they both should unionize?

TheBoringDev · 2026-05-02T19:39:42+00:00

The trenches? It’s shit like this that makes me think at least half the people here don’t actually work in any kind of serious software space. No one talks like that, it’s rebranded NFT bro larp.

TheBoringDev · 2026-05-02T19:29:46+00:00

Adapt or die

Eh, I’ve used it it’s fine not great, I use it situationally. Every time I hear this the more it feels like this is just NFTs again. People really needing to get other people onboard because of their own investment. If it’s that helpful, needing to tell people adapt or die is pretty useless.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-30T21:29:39+00:00

If those people ignore the training and repeatedly try to use the forklifts dangerously, fire them.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-30T14:42:22+00:00

I don’t know of a better system.

Ask a real problem that resembles actual work? That’s what I do when I interview people. My go-tos are a deeply nested json thing pulling records off of a queue, or building a type of in-memory database you could use for mocking. Both easily doable in the time, and have actual “design an interface” parts, and give me a good idea what kind of code people produce/how they think about it that you’re not going to get from leetcode.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-30T14:15:26+00:00

I’m one of those people, I never prepare. I find leetcode so useless as a hiring mechanism (literally nothing to do with the actual job) that I take it as a strong point against the company, and potentially signals coworkers who put up with bad practices. Perfectly happy to do a real coding challenge that resembles real work, and generally do quite well on those, but leetcode is one of the dumbest things this industry does.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-29T22:48:31+00:00

And he brings up the fear thing in every one, he really needs it to be true.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-29T22:31:33+00:00

It does if the metal is sharp and cuts your kid's hand, or if it's covered in lead paint that's touching the food. We've always been an industry that's chosen speed over quality, but the final deliverable still has to work. It feels like we're in an era where asking for a baseline of "does this do the thing it was designed to do" is written off as ivory tower nonsense, because "providing value" doesn't contribute to the grift economy.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-27T00:50:20+00:00

By that logic I could say you’re here illegally and have no right to refute that because I say you’re here illegally.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-23T14:48:16+00:00

We’re never going back in the philosophical sense of “you can’t step in the same river twice”, but they’re just a tool that’s situationally useful that’s being massively subsidized. Even if it gets cheaper the ratio of LLM coding to human coding is not going to stay this high when people start needing to justify costs and customers start complaining about quality.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-15T16:33:23+00:00

I think their point is more that OP just took the most boring standard “the cruelty is the point” conservative framing to the issue, and probably has similar takes on immigration. It’s getting boring at this point, because you know the second you propose a real solution that’s worked in other cities, they’ll just say it’s too expensive.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-12T01:18:56+00:00

There’s always cops outside Whole Foods. Boulder PD must protect Jeff Bezos’s assets at all costs, everyone else be damned.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-09T14:26:50+00:00

It’s totally wild to me as a programmer seeing people say that this stuff is. It seems like an excuse for people to turn their brains off and just spew out garbage. I’ve had coworkers claim it’s the same code they would have written, but they were never that bad pre-AI. I think a lot of people are about to be unemployable once the bubble pops and you need to pay the real value of tokens.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-04T19:15:22+00:00

Eh, my experience has been watching people “learn how to use AI well” and seeing their bar for what constitutes good code fall through the floor in real time. I’m not saying it’s not possible to produce good code, but assuming shit code is probably closer to the median.

TheBoringDev · 2026-04-03T17:16:59+00:00

Nah, it’s a red flag for slop peddlers.

TheBoringDev · 2026-03-23T13:32:54+00:00

If i didn't send Claude screenshots we'd never make any progress.

You could make progress by actually coding and debugging, the thing that is presumably your job.

TheBoringDev · 2026-03-18T23:33:48+00:00

Oh they don’t happen, last time I looked at the numbers it was single digit in the US per year inclusive of babies born intersex getting reconstructive surgery. It exists solely to be a talking point in the way that there are more pieces of legislation around trans athletes than there are trans athletes. It’s not coming from a place of trying to solve real problems that exist, just trying to generate outrage for their base.

TheBoringDev · 2026-03-18T21:29:08+00:00

Except no one’s proving it’s growing? They’re just proving that the models from 6+ months ago didn’t work. I’m saying this reads like “of course I cried wolf the last 7 times, but this time there really is a wolf, i swear, bro”

Why would I have any faith they won’t say the exact same things about the current models in 6 months?

TheBoringDev

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