Resist "AI"

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• Hacker News
• I'm not sure how valuable this advice is. From what I can see, Jeffries hasn't been involved in actual software development for decades (he is ~87 and has a lot of great accomplishments under his belt, but in the year 2026, 0% of his income relies upon him generating solutions for paying clients in a competitive space, and probably hasn't for a long, long time).

  For some reason HN readers love this sort of content, largely by periphery players who mostly think it gives them an angle for clicks. And, I mean, as someone who uses lots of AI to delight clients and stay competitive, you be you. It leaves more for me.

  by llm_nerd
• I must again point out that we're not even certain yet that we're "losing" any programming capability, and we're not certain the tradeoff isn't worth it.

  All of these arguments presuppose we're losing something that's not worth losing.

  I want someone to start one square earlier and argue to me why that matters. I've read enough of these "your skills are atrophying!" arguments; I'm also making like 10x as much revenue as I did through a business that delights my clients. Why should I care about my "skills" if I'm still able to make money, pursue hobbies, and enjoy life?

  I just don't think it's that serious.

  by adamtaylor_13
• Bad blog.

  > I do not come to you with clean hands. > I am not here to dictate morality

  These two things contradict eachother.

  > My primary focus here will be software development > Environmental Harm > Stanley Tucci

  These three things also contradict eachother.

  > If we lived in a post-scarcity

  Maybe this is your real problem, and you're just confusing cause and effect.

  > We need to resist “AI” so that thousands, perhaps millions of people do not die

  Hyperbole.

  > Look up the “Eliza effect”. Even the weakest conceivable program like this was seductive. These new ones are masters of seduction.

  Sounds like software development alright.

  This person has a familiar name, I'm sure he is amazing at something. This blog is not the peak of his work.

  EDIT:

  > I quote “AI” to emphasize that these things are not intelligent.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

  by vouwfietsman
• I've never understood the water argument... yes, it takes a lot of water in the initial setup to fill the water cooling loops, but isn't not constantly burning water, right? it gets cooled off again and goes around the loop
  by voidUpdate
• Why? AI is enriching my life and letting me focus on solving hard problems. I don't believe in the sentience crap and am just using it at face value for what it is, a useful productivity tool. Every software developer's main purpose is to automate and reduce the amount of boring manual labour required. By this logic, should people in the past have "resisted the software development department"?
  by borzi
• The important question is: Will my work competitor also resist AI? We have no way to organize this, and hence, as they say, "resistance is futile".
  by unified101
• Why are we glossing over the fact that it's all trained on stolen code, stolen art, stolen books? It's unethical to use it, it's unethical to take money for it. It should be either free or killed. I really don't understand why we just collectively accepted that.
  by czpl
• I admittedly flip-flop on this quite a bit. I use LLMs in my work and for a bunch of pet projects I don’t really care much about.

  For the pet projects, it’s not really a big deal. I’m the only user, and I as the user don’t care how it works under the hood.

  Work is a different story. I have never felt more disconnected from my work than in the last 6-8 months. It takes a huge mental toll to read into our code and figure stuff out, almost like I just got hired and I’m working on new code for the first time. I’m asked to read “specs” written by LLMs that are unintelligible and I find my brain disconnecting immediately. Tickets, also written by LLMs pose the same problem.

  I’m asking teammates questions because I want their answer and I’m told to just ask Claude.

  None of this feels good, it may be where the industry is heading but as a professional it feels wrong.

  by cautiouscat