AI is not a tool. Its an addiction. Maybe the first dozen times (more likely: never) you use it “as a tool”. Very quickly, you depend on it. You need it to refactor. Then you need it to debug. Then you need it to write. Next thing you know, you spend 0 time writing code (the fun part) and 100% of your time as a reviewer (the worst part). Suddenly it isnt fun. A few fools even get TWO AI MODELS, one to write, the other to debug.
Its a virus. I cannot tell you how many 300+ line commits ive rejected because they straight up dont do what the person said they do or also do some extremely asinine 2nd thing that breaks other pieces of code (which they would know if theyd actually used it).
A tool requires input. A hammer can never do anything i dont explicitly tell it to do. A good word editor does exactly what i want it to do. A good compiler does exactly what it says it will do. AI does not. Ai is a glorified autocomplete, and i dont want my code to be automatically generated. Its asking for thousands of issues down the line. If AI was any good, Windows would be a usable platform by now.
Dont get me wrong; i know that it is sometimes used as a tool by people, and meticulously checked over, but more often than not, it isnt.
I totally agree. I’m watching people lose their drive to create and it’s so sad. They’re getting high off the satisfaction of “creating” without the work.
…and then they lose access to their wündertool and they can’t do anything.
I have it create things for me that I would otherwise never have. I wanted an app for dream tracking. They were either pay walled, didn’t have the features I wanted, or both. Ai created what I wanted in a weekend. That’s just one example. I’ve created many single use apps as well.
If I’m at a takeaway store I take a photo of the board and it makes me an interactive menu that totals the price of what everyone wants and let’s us browse without trying to see the board and get in people’s way.
I don’t expect anyone else to use these. I don’t expect anyone else to want to use them. Though they’re welcome to. But if I can have a thing create exactly what I want and use it why not?
“but what if it has a bug and you lose a year of journals”. Well it created me manual timestamped backups as well as automatic timestamped backups to oauth Dropbox in a dedicated folder without the app having access to the rest of my Dropbox. It could crash everything and I would have every single thing safe in 2 places up to the most recent entry. And they’re just text files. I could take them anywhere if AI disappeared and the app broke tomorrow. I could just continue writing in notepad in the worst case until I found something else. But the app looks nicer and does interesting things.
The alternative to this isn’t me learning to code and spending months creating them. The alternative is them never existing.
agreed, a tool that you have to actively fight to do something well is a garbage tool. it’s like trying to cut some chicken meat with a knife that’s magnetically drawn to living beings. You can make some nice diced chicken with it, but it is way more likely that you’ll slip up and cut off your finger than with an actual knife.
regardless of the original intention, the purpose of generative “AI” is to become a manager that’s out of touch with the actual creation process, so at best no one will know how something works, at worst no one will be able to fix it if it breaks.
A calculator that produces incorrect output from some input is broken. An LLM that produces broken code from a precise description is working as advertised.
A calculator isn’t a sycophant text extruder offered by megacorps via predatory tactics and doesn’t require half a little of water to operate last time I checked
I think AI is a tool but very advanced tool. AI is great tool but very unpredictable in many cases. I think it should be used because it makes coding more effective but as you say it kill every fun in coding. As Linus said tool is not important if code is great. If you used AI and its good then why not. Sometimes you can write worse code then AI. But on other side yes it can be hard for repository owners when they must reject tons of shit code created with AI. So it have advantages and disadvantages and when do you want some fun (or maybe some security stuff) don’t use it.
An unpredictable tool is a useless tool. A hammer does what it says it will: apply force at the head. AI straight up lies, is objectively wrong, or doesnt work. Thats a garbage tool.
Eventually youre going to ask it to do something you dont know how to do, and you wont be able to fact check it. Thats when the harm happens (or just mild inconvenience, but in my professional case, harm).
If the linux kernel breaks due to a bug introduced by AI or built on a pile of code no one truly understands, we’re set back anyways. Better to avoid that and make sure all code is human written/understood
Weird, i disagree with Linus.
AI is not a tool. Its an addiction. Maybe the first dozen times (more likely: never) you use it “as a tool”. Very quickly, you depend on it. You need it to refactor. Then you need it to debug. Then you need it to write. Next thing you know, you spend 0 time writing code (the fun part) and 100% of your time as a reviewer (the worst part). Suddenly it isnt fun. A few fools even get TWO AI MODELS, one to write, the other to debug.
Its a virus. I cannot tell you how many 300+ line commits ive rejected because they straight up dont do what the person said they do or also do some extremely asinine 2nd thing that breaks other pieces of code (which they would know if theyd actually used it).
A tool requires input. A hammer can never do anything i dont explicitly tell it to do. A good word editor does exactly what i want it to do. A good compiler does exactly what it says it will do. AI does not. Ai is a glorified autocomplete, and i dont want my code to be automatically generated. Its asking for thousands of issues down the line. If AI was any good, Windows would be a usable platform by now.
Dont get me wrong; i know that it is sometimes used as a tool by people, and meticulously checked over, but more often than not, it isnt.
I totally agree. I’m watching people lose their drive to create and it’s so sad. They’re getting high off the satisfaction of “creating” without the work.
…and then they lose access to their wündertool and they can’t do anything.
I have it create things for me that I would otherwise never have. I wanted an app for dream tracking. They were either pay walled, didn’t have the features I wanted, or both. Ai created what I wanted in a weekend. That’s just one example. I’ve created many single use apps as well.
If I’m at a takeaway store I take a photo of the board and it makes me an interactive menu that totals the price of what everyone wants and let’s us browse without trying to see the board and get in people’s way.
I don’t expect anyone else to use these. I don’t expect anyone else to want to use them. Though they’re welcome to. But if I can have a thing create exactly what I want and use it why not?
“but what if it has a bug and you lose a year of journals”. Well it created me manual timestamped backups as well as automatic timestamped backups to oauth Dropbox in a dedicated folder without the app having access to the rest of my Dropbox. It could crash everything and I would have every single thing safe in 2 places up to the most recent entry. And they’re just text files. I could take them anywhere if AI disappeared and the app broke tomorrow. I could just continue writing in notepad in the worst case until I found something else. But the app looks nicer and does interesting things.
The alternative to this isn’t me learning to code and spending months creating them. The alternative is them never existing.
agreed, a tool that you have to actively fight to do something well is a garbage tool. it’s like trying to cut some chicken meat with a knife that’s magnetically drawn to living beings. You can make some nice diced chicken with it, but it is way more likely that you’ll slip up and cut off your finger than with an actual knife.
regardless of the original intention, the purpose of generative “AI” is to become a manager that’s out of touch with the actual creation process, so at best no one will know how something works, at worst no one will be able to fix it if it breaks.
The same argument can be made about calculators.
A calculator that produces incorrect output from some input is broken. An LLM that produces broken code from a precise description is working as advertised.
A calculator isn’t a sycophant text extruder offered by megacorps via predatory tactics and doesn’t require half a little of water to operate last time I checked
You could say the same about a compiler
Sure, but, like, you wouldn’t.
I think AI is a tool but very advanced tool. AI is great tool but very unpredictable in many cases. I think it should be used because it makes coding more effective but as you say it kill every fun in coding. As Linus said tool is not important if code is great. If you used AI and its good then why not. Sometimes you can write worse code then AI. But on other side yes it can be hard for repository owners when they must reject tons of shit code created with AI. So it have advantages and disadvantages and when do you want some fun (or maybe some security stuff) don’t use it.
An unpredictable tool is a useless tool. A hammer does what it says it will: apply force at the head. AI straight up lies, is objectively wrong, or doesnt work. Thats a garbage tool.
Eventually youre going to ask it to do something you dont know how to do, and you wont be able to fact check it. Thats when the harm happens (or just mild inconvenience, but in my professional case, harm).
If the linux kernel breaks due to a bug introduced by AI or built on a pile of code no one truly understands, we’re set back anyways. Better to avoid that and make sure all code is human written/understood