> In general, I have the feeling that we are hurtling towards a world with less intentionality behind all the things we experience. Everything becomes impersonal, more noisy, etc.
You’re right - but that world is not the end of the story. The intentionality matters. Human creations matter because they connect us. I don’t know how long it will take, but people will build judgement as to what makes for good use of these tools to make meaningful things and expand our creative horizons in deeply human ways. Mind you, there will always be shallow slop. It’ll just take time for creators to learn how to use these tools to make something that isn’t slop.
> those variables were likely not known nor knowable during the design stage.
But they could have included an error factor in the designing process. I thought this was standard for manufacturing. And they could have done more robust testing which, again, I thought was pretty standard for manufacturing.
> But they could have included an error factor in the designing process.
They almost certainly did. But that error factor is a guess based on limited testing. You never know your true variability until you're building at scale. Waterfall development doesn't work in the real world any better than it does in software.
But agents do keep task lists and check the tasks off as they go. Of course it’s not perfect either but it’s MUCH better than an LLM can offer on its own.
If you are seeing an agent missing tasks, work with it to write down the task list first and then hold it accountable to completing them all. A spec is not a plan.
bro do you really not understand that that's a game played for your sake - it checks boxes yes but you have no idea what effect the checking of the boxes actually has. like do you not realize/understand that anthropic/openai is baking this kind of stuff into models/UI/UX to give the sensation of rigor.
The checkboxes inform the model as well as the user, and you can observe this yourself. For example in a C++ project with MyClass defined in MyClass.cpp/h:
I ask the model to rename MyClass to MyNewClass. It will generate a checklist like:
- Rename references in all source files
- Rename source/header files
- Update build files to point at new source files
Then it will do those things in that order.
Now you can re-run it but inject the start of the model's response with the order changed in that list. It will follow the new order. The list plainly provides real information that influences future predictions and isn't just a facade for the user.
Are you seriously saying that breaking a large complex problem down into it's constituent steps, and then trying to solve each one of them as an individual problem is just a sensation of rigour?
I'm saying that's not what the stupid bot is actually doing, it's what anthropic added to the TUI to make you feel good in your feelies about what the bot is actually doing (spamming).
Edit: I'll give you another example that I realized because someone pointed it out here: when the stupid bot tells you why it fucked up, it doesn't actually understand anything about itself - it's just generating the most likely response given the enormous amount of pontification on the internet about this very subject...
I'm not disagreeing in principle, but the detritus left after an anthropic outage is usually quite usable in a completely fresh session. The amount of context pulled and stored in the sandbox is quite hefty.
Whist I can't usually start from the exact same point in the decisioning, I can usually bootstrap a new session. It's not all ephemeral.
To your edit: I find that the most galling thing about finding out about the thinking being discarded at cache clear.
Reconstruction of the logical route it took to get to the end state is just not the same as the step by step process it took in the first place, which again I feel counters your "feelies".
To some extent, I could agree with that idea. One purpose of that process is to match the impedance between the problem, and human cognition. But that presumes problem solving inherently requires human cognition, which is false; that's just the tool that we have for problem solving. When the problem-solving method matches the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of the problem solvers, they do have a certain sensation of having an upper hand over the problem. Part of that comes from the chunking/division allowing the problem solvers to more easily talk about the problem; have conversations and narratives around it. The ability to spin coherent narratives feels like rigor.
My only real disappointment with Claude is its flakiness with scheduling tasks. I have several Slack related tasks that I’ve pretty much given up trying to automate - I’ve tried Cowork and Claude Code remote agents, only to find various bugs with working with plugins and connectors. I guess I’ll give this a try, but I don’t have high hopes.
If you don't get it working with Claude Code Routines, would love to connect and see if we can help! We're building an open core product that can spin up sandboxed coding and control them from Slack (and also web UI, TUI, and HTTP APIs + CLIs)
>We can get far without worrying about the last 5-10%. The solutions for the last 5-10% could be fossil fuels in the short-term, long-duration storage as it matures, or easily storeable e-biofuels.
So then they are wrong. The last 5-10 percent is the hardest part and it's the one consumers complain the most about! You can't run a factory on 90% power availability
The issue is that to achieve that you can't just build 90% solar plus 10% fossil fuels. You would need to build 100% solar + 100% fossil fuels for the 10% of the time solar doesn't work.
If you build batteries on the scale that the article suggests (and is probably going to happen in the real future) you can use batteries charged from fossil fuels.
It's a few percent dirtier (round trip losses) but in return you can use gas plants that are 50% more efficient to charge them rather than run peaker plants.
And of course that's ignoring wind which is nearly as cheap as solar and anti-correlated with it.
That's fair, batteries are somewhat useful for peaking even in a world powered 100% by fossil fuels so there's some infrastructure that can be shared. And even on a cloudy day solar output isn't 0%. But I'm skeptical the overlap here is significant enough to invalidate my basic point, though I admit it's a big simplification.
Reality is extremely complicated, so realistically the exact mix of solar + fossil fuels that makes sense is going to depend on a huge number of factors and vary from region to region depending on weather, fuel costs, construction costs, transmission costs, and probably a thousand other things I haven't thought of. The best thing to do is stay out of the way of both industries and let the market sort all of that complexity out.
I would speculate the result of that is going to be a lot more renewables than currently exist, mainly due to the drastic reduction in the cost of solar and batteries that has been occurring over the last few decades, but I don't think it'll be 100% or even 90% renewables either (expect perhaps in the extremely long term). Time will tell.
It helps that the cost of a simple cycle gas turbine power plant (before the recent data center demand spike) is around $600/kW, maybe a factor of 20 cheaper per kW than a nuclear power plant. So backing up the whole grid with such generators wouldn't be that expensive.
Yes, but if you need to have all that infrastructure anyway it no longer makes sense to compare the cost of solar+batteries with the cost of fossil fuels because you actually need to have both.
If you compare the total cost of solar with just the fuel cost of fossil fuels (ignoring its CapEx and non-fuel OpEx) that swings the equation a lot.
Infrastructure cost for 100% is the same as infrastructure cost for 10%? That's not true. The distribution network is the part that can't be scaled, but it can also be reused for either source, so it doesn't double in cost.
No, I'm saying infrastructure cost for 100% is the same as infrastructure cost for 100%. You can't build 10% as much fossil fuel infrastructure and expect it to carry 100% of the load when solar isn't working. And obviously I'm talking about generation here, not distribution.
That's not carbon neutral. You can use synthetic fuels to make it fully carbon neutral (way easier to store than the often-proposed H2) but that's really just another battery.
This article hits on an important point not easily discerned from the title:
Sometimes good software is good due to a long history of hard-earned wins.
AI can help you get to an implementation faster. But it cannot magically summon up a battle-hardened solution. That requires going through some battles.
Software developers should be worried about their jobs, not because these tools are capable of replacing them or reducing a company’s need for human developers, but rather because the _perception_ that they can/will replace developers is causing a major disruption in hiring practices.
I truly don’t know how this is going to play out. Will the software industry just be a total mess until agents can actually replace developers? Or will companies come to their senses and learn that they still need to hire humans - just humans that know how to use agents to augment their work?
Software development hiring is terrible right now, but hiring has been pretty slow in general. We gained 2 million jobs in 2024 and only 500,000 in 2025.
You may be right if AI truly can never replace devs. But history shows many examples of inadequate technologies getting hammered on by industry until they work due to distorted perceptions of economic gain. I’ve heard stories like this regarding mechanical looms, CNC, and cloud services. My understanding is those all work (decently) now not because they were obviously better, but because economic pressure pushed innovation to make them work, for better or worse.
> the _perception_ that they can/will replace developers is causing a major disruption in hiring practices.
Bingo.
And it’s causing the careers of a majority of juniors to experience fatal delays. Juniors need to leap into their careers and build up a good head of steam by demonstrating acquired experience, or they will wander off into other industries and fail to acquire said experience.
And when others who haven’t even gone through training yet see how juniors have an abysmally hard time finding a job, this will discourage them from even considering the industry before they ever begin to learn how to code.
But when no-one is hiring such that even students reconsider their career choice, this “failure to launch” will cause a massive developer shortage in the next 5-15 years, to the point where I believe entire governments will have this as a policy pain point.
After all, when companies are loathe to actually conduct any kind of on-the-job training, and demand 2-5 years of experience in an whole IT department’s worth of skills for “entry level” jobs, an entire generation of potential applicants with a fraction of that (or none at all) will cause the industry to have figurative kittens.
I mean, it will be the industry’s own footgun that has hurt them so badly. I would posit it may even become a leggun. The schadenfreude will be copious and well-deserved. But it’s going to produce massive amounts of economic pain.
> Juniors need to leap into their careers and build up a good head of steam by demonstrating acquired experience,
Junior devs at least have the option of building a portfolio of usefully software on their own machine at home, while eating ramens.
They can build websites for mom'n'pop stores. They can participate into open source projects. Etc, etc...
I dread the people who won't get jobs into other fields because managers have been told by corporate that "we don't need people, chatgpt can do everything".
> Junior devs at least have the option of building a portfolio of usefully software on their own machine at home, while eating ramens.
Bold of you to assume today’s young adults can live without a steady paycheque that doesn’t suck up 40-80hrs of their time a week. I mean, how else will that roof end up over their heads?
And most parents have been brainwashed to believe that any child not living on their own once they become adults are failures, and still need to be kicked out of the house such that they are forced to learn self-sufficiency.
AFAICT, most parents of adult offspring have zero clue about how bad things actually are out there, with most still telling their children to go from business to business with printed-off Résumés. Outside of blue-collar jobs, I haven’t seen this work for a good twenty years, now.
I'm probably picturing "junior" as "people still in college preparing to get their first job".
My point is that a luxury of the software engineering craft is that you can practice "at pro level" very cheaply.
Even as a teenager, learning and using vscode/python/react/etc... on your own is a possibility.
Learning Salesforce and SAP and the internal support tool of BigCo is not.
That being said, I completely agree that we're going to put a generation of "wannabee white collar" in a dire situation. Cynically, this might be an overdue correction from the years of "college degree for everyone", and maybe (just maybe) some people will actually thrive in the "hard-to-llm-ize" profession if they can retrain.
(If the market laws apply, someone will build "turn advertisement-copy writers into electricians", and it would not necessarily be for the worst ? I know, easy to tell for me, who got the opposite deal by being a software engineer on demand at the right time at the beginning of my career.)
For many, even cutting their budget isn’t enough to pursue what you’re describing. Modern careers in software are very hard to reach for people who can’t afford to wait for a real paycheck, and it drives away a massive group of potential talent.
You're not wrong, but the need to please the user is still paramount, otherwise they'll just do something else. This is why TikTok is eating everyone's lunch.
I don't agree with this and to answer the question you originally asked me, I do think users are consuming things they don't actually enjoy. The goal isn't to please the user, the goal is to not bore the user. If you talk to people I'm sure you'll find a lot of the music they listened to isn't "enjoyed" so much as it is inoffensive background noise.
It's not surprising that some people are mindless consumers, but it's not useful to assume the majority is, especially of paying customers, and competition exists.
You're assuming it's not useful because it doesn't bode well for your argument. What makes you think assuming the majority aren't mindless consumers is useful?
The hypocrisy lies in the fact that the philosophy of Ayn Rand - that an elite few held up society and the rest were pretty much just parasites - has been used at great length to justify the gutting of social programs.
Please read my comment in good faith.
There is no contradiction with Rand’s philosophy here.
According to her framework, the state stole from her throughout her life. Using public assistance is merely retrieving a small piece of that stolen money.
I agree that it was in her philosophical framework to accept social security - apologies if my comment seemed in bad faith due to that not being clearer. The irony does not lie with her, but rather those that use her philosophy to eliminate the safety net that she herself ended up using.
Sure, she could have used the money she had put into social security to invest, and maybe would have come out better off. But for those of us who see how public services can enrich an entire society, there is irony to how this all played out.
"The irony is with those who believe that thievery is wrong. She obviously didn't believe what she wrote because her actions reveal she believed in stealing your stolen property back from a thief, which is itself thievery."
"The irony is with those who believe that thievery is wrong. She obviously didn't believe what she wrote because her actions reveal she was OK accepting when the thieve gave her your property to make up for the theft she suffered earlier"
FTFY.
She didn't steal from the thieve, she became complicit with the thieve stealing other people's work to get their money back (gracefully handed by the thieve).
She believed that even wealthy kids that just live off their trust funds were parasites too. It was about consuming vs producing, not elite vs non-elite.
I think of the foundational model like CPUs. They're the core of powerful, general-purpose computers, and will likely remain popular and common for most computing solutions. But we also have GPUs, microcontrollers, FPGAs, etc. that don't just act as the core of a wide variety of solutions, but are also paired alongside CPUs for specific use cases that need specialization.
Foundational models are not great for many specific tasks. Assuming that one architecture will eventually work for everything is like saying that x86/amd64/ARM will be all we ever need for processors.
You’re right - but that world is not the end of the story. The intentionality matters. Human creations matter because they connect us. I don’t know how long it will take, but people will build judgement as to what makes for good use of these tools to make meaningful things and expand our creative horizons in deeply human ways. Mind you, there will always be shallow slop. It’ll just take time for creators to learn how to use these tools to make something that isn’t slop.