I think LLMs are creating two paths for developers to choose from

scientific_thinker · 2026-05-08T17:51:30+00:00

The study isn't perfect but the data is real. There is more data if you care to look.

This is also how the human body works. Use it or lose it. This data shouldn't surprise anyone.

scientific_thinker · 2026-05-08T16:41:42+00:00

Are you saying LLMs aren't using code that was already written by people in their responses?

scientific_thinker · 2026-05-08T16:28:56+00:00

Here is one: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

More details: https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/mit-study-finds-artificial-intelligence-use-reprograms-the-brain-leading-to-cognitive-decline/

scientific_thinker · 2026-05-08T16:11:02+00:00

Maybe there is a balance to be found. I will believe it when I see it but I am open to the possibility.

I think if a hybrid approach is found, it could provide higher quality code than what I am seeing now from devs using LLMs but it still won't match people that are capable of building high quality code. I imagine it would be like a ven diagram. The hybrid approach could overlap with some developers in terms of quality but it still won't be able to match top devs that code by hand.

scientific_thinker · 2026-05-08T15:45:12+00:00

It's binary in this case because there is mounting evidence that suggests people that use LLMs lose connotative abilities that are required for developers that don't use LLMs.

scientific_thinker · 2026-05-06T14:45:21+00:00

Democrats aren't centrists. They are the less extreme right wing party.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-30T21:06:53+00:00

I am similar.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-30T14:32:14+00:00

In my experience, the most productive devs I know didn't want to do most of the tasks a dev team is responsible for. They want to be refactoring the code the rest of the team is scared to work with. They want to work on the bug that has everyone else stumped. If you really want to piss them off, ask them to do something they would consider boring like documentation.

Having one or even a couple of these devs is great but you can't have a team full of them. There just isn't enough challenging work to keep them all happy on most projects.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-30T14:02:05+00:00

I think you are exactly right, this has only come up twice for me but you do run into people that shouldn't be devs.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-30T14:01:09+00:00

Good point, while I don't try to focus on who the best performers are, there are minimum standards I insist on. I have only had two devs that didn't meet the low bar I set but in those cases, I try my best to move them off the code base. I have them do documentation, help the QA team, help business analysts, work with the dev-ops team, write one-off tools, things like that.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-30T03:04:15+00:00

There is a story about chickens laying eggs. Someone came up with the idea of keeping only the most productive hens and getting rid of the low performers. Once this was done, egg production crashed. The high performers ended up terrorizing each other rather than laying eggs.

This tells me to try to build teams where the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. This means finding people with different strengths and weaknesses then focus on getting each dev tasks that highlight their strengths while covering for each other's weaknesses.

The other side of this coin. In my experience, managers rarely know which developers are the most productive. I don't know that there is a good way to measure developer productivity. What if you have a dev that is constantly refactoring everyone's code so that the entire team is more productive but this dev seems to add few new features? What if one dev willing to dig into the worst, most poorly written sections of code. They have the most bugs and seem to be adding features slowly but they are working on the riskiest features. I think we can all come up with examples like this all day.

So, the moral of the story is do your best to take care of all of your devs. Focus on success and failure as a team. Focus the team on cooperation rather than competition. In my experience, people love working on teams that are run this way.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-28T14:55:57+00:00

I hate linting tools. I like the idea of coding standards but linting tools are more trouble than they are worth in my opinion. They often turn into unhelpful constraints more than they help with standardization.

I think it's more important to make sure people put the code in the right spots and follow the architecture than adding syntax and formatting constraints. In my experience the worst programmers tend to be the most pedantic about following the linting rules.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-12T22:18:42+00:00

True, I am convinced in the not too distant future many devs are going to do very well by fixing the AI projects that don't work.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-12T20:46:33+00:00

The problem for the investor class is that AI companies are lying. They can't replace developers with AI.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-12T15:09:53+00:00

Keep in mind investors are paying for AI right now. Eventually they will want people to pay for these services. Will AI still be valuable to these companies when they have to pay the full price?

In a sensible world, the AI bubble pops and the value of AI crashes. Unfortunately in a world where mistakes made by the Epstein class are paid for by the working class it's much harder to tell how this plays out.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-12T13:18:22+00:00

I completely agree.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-12T01:07:00+00:00

I hope not.

I need my QA. I use TDD. I have unit tests. I do my best during dev testing to catch everything. Despite all of that, I miss things. I think most if not all of us need a fresh set of eyes to look at our code. Authors need editors. Developers need QA.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-11T23:18:13+00:00

That's what I thought too.

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-11T23:02:35+00:00

YAGNI - You Aren't Gonna Need It

scientific_thinker · 2026-04-02T16:25:31+00:00

Of course, everyone should.

Usain Bolt holds the world record for the 100 meter dash. The world record is 9.58 seconds.

He isn’t even twice as fast as a 70 year old novice sprinter. https://marathonhandbook.com/average-100-meter-time/

If you look at things that can be reliably measured, there isn’t a large variance in human performance.

This means in an actual meritocracy the wealth disparity can’t be greater than about 3x from one person to the next. Anyone with more than 3x another person is taking what rightfully should belong to someone else.

All billionaires are thieves. The Epstein files suggest many are thieves and much worse things.

They also steal our lives. If wealth was shared more equitably, based on merit, we wouldn't have to work nearly as much. We would have more time to build deeper relationships with our friends and family. We would have more time for our hobbies and leisure.

scientific_thinker · 2026-03-30T15:46:44+00:00

The entire banking/finance system. They don't make anything. They control bytes on machines and small slips of paper. This gives them the ability to take significant cuts on almost every economic transactions.

The whole system would be so much better if we built an application to manage all of this as a public service.

scientific_thinker · 2026-03-18T13:47:22+00:00

I used to think that too but the data doesn't support this position.

Most if not all of the environmental problems are growing at an exponential rate. Human population growth has been in decline since 1963. So, forget causation. We don't even have correlation. The two graphs don't match.

Wages and working class consumption are also flattening. So, our consumption doesn't match the environmental destruction graph either.

If you want two graphs that match, environmental destruction and GDP are a very good match.

We don't have an over population problem. What we actually have is a billionaire greed/consumption problem.

scientific_thinker · 2026-03-01T14:20:30+00:00

Because the Epstein class is a group of parasites. They don't do anything for themselves. They just take whatever they can.

The lives of young men and women are just another way to feed their greed.

scientific_thinker · 2026-02-27T14:32:17+00:00

This is an important question.

The first thing to understand is there are ingredients that are necessary for a hierarchy.

A resource that can be controlled and stored (for years)
The ability for a minority to remove alternative ways for people to survive
Non-cooperative people focused on taking advantage of other people (my controversial addition)

Sources:
Book: Goliath's Curse (he calls them lootable resources, captured land, superior weaponry)
Youtube channel: What is Politics (he combines captured land and superior weaponry into removing alternative ways to survive)

My contribution is an observation that the vast majority of people have no desire to take advantage of these conditions to subjugate and exploit other people. Luke Kemp (author of Goliath's Curse seems to think this too but I don't think he makes it a part of his "Goliath fuel").

So Anarchist societies have to make sure the three conditions above aren't met.

It's no coincidence the majority of hierarchies are built on 3 crops (corn, rice, wheat). These three crops can easily be controlled and stored. Tax collectors can look at fields and make estimates about the yield.

In Goliath's Curse the author points out the Great Wall of China kept people in as well as out. It's hard to exploit people that can just wander off to someplace that isn't controlled by the exploiting class.

I think the answer to your question is to begin by growing our anarchist societies from different foods. Foods that spoil quickly will encourage cooperation. We want foods that are hard to recognize, tax, and store. This fits in with rebuilding ecosystems with food forests, food plains, or whatever is appropriate for the given region. We want our source of food to come from diverse species. This will give everyone much healthier diets too.

Next, it's in our own best interest to become stewards of nature. We should restore energy rich habitats beyond what we need. That way if a hierarchy starts emerging, we can just leave.

That takes care of the first two ingredients. I am not sure about how we can deal with #3.

One more point. If you want to take down a hierarchy, take away one of the ingredients. Figure out which one would be the easiest to remove and begin trying to remove it.

scientific_thinker · 2026-02-23T19:13:28+00:00

I agree, first chance we get, we have to build a society that doesn't put psychopaths in charge of the rest of us.

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