this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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Fuck AI
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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Rubber duck programming
Exactly. Not an AI phenomenon
One critical benefit of the rubber duck is that it doesn't make things up.
This is mechanically similar, I agree, but I think the rubber duck is still superior.
And, I think this should be a "lightbulb" moment for people.
You obviously haven't seen me rubber duck debug.
I disagree. The rubber duck does not propose alternatives, nor does it point out flaws.
The flaws may be wrong, but then I have to justify it, which forces me to reconsider what I've written.
It's like having a script monkey that never took a CS class to bounce ideas off of.
But if you bounce enough ideas off the junior dev, some of those ideas will stick and slowly turn them into a senior dev. On the other hand, junior devs cost money and they waste a lot of water.
The junior devs are always taken into other projects when I need them the most :/ or was at least.
Plus it's not like it matters anymore. I haven't done anything but review code and prioritize backlogs and get yelled at by management that my development team isnt under control and that business doesn't like it when I bring up things that will impact timeline when I was told the wrong priority of other shit.
I'm starting to feel like this Senior role is really just a new title for dealing with more bullshit and doing less productive work.
I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours.
Ok thank you!
Which is precisely what I use AI for.
It doesn't know how to do anything, but it can help me find flaws.
If your use for AI is just rubber duck debugging, an actual rubber duck is significantly less environmentally destructive, and will still be around after OpenAI burn through all their seed capital and can no longer convince investors to keep throwing money into their trash fire.
A lot of assumptions in that post, but I agree in general. I've been working software for too long, and I know co-pilot or whatever it's called that Microsoft has won't be around in the long run.
It's a neat tool for now. It also isn't complaining all the time which I like
I didn't know there was a term for that. Forget debugging, in my algorithms class this is how I figured a lot of stuff out the first time too. I actually don't know how else you're supposed to do it. You imagine running through a loop, what specific tasks must be accomplished, and then code those tasks.
Imagine then doing this in a chatGPT prompt! Everything will go so much faster, even if you don't press "send"!