from the OGs to the AI hackers
I read this excellent LinkedIn post recently
Which is funny because it's not every day that someone reads a LinkedIn post stimulating enough to urge him to write. Especially not someone that struggles with writing natural language (cause: diagnosed ADHD) like I do.
But it appears that an unexpected consequence of AI tools going mainstream is that the quality of work being put out by people across the internet, is as I see it, vastly improved, with language AI models taking care of minutae and implementation details, such as grammar and syntax. The same is beginning to be true for core. The singularity appears ever nearer.
Anyway, back to the post, here's some highlights from it:
Write code. Read code. Debug code. Repeat until your brain starts to predict what will break before it breaks.
Spend the saved time reading logs and profiling.
If you always ask the tool first, your intuition never forms.
If you always ask your own brain first, then the tool, your intuition gets sharper every week.
AI can write your code. Only you can build the taste and judgment to ship something worth running.
Tools should speed up your feedback loop, not replace your judgment.
Use LLMs to check your reasoning, not to think for you.
Some nugs of wisdom here that I've found to be true from my experience. This has always been a knowledge-oriented field geared towards automating or the prospect of automating information flow where continual learning and upskilling have always been the norm not the exception.
The tools may be different now but it's not about the knowledge or tools at the end of the day, it's about your ability to think critically, all else is expendable (no really). augmented intelligence over artificial intelligence, if you may.
AI is a force multiplier, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on how you wield it. If you don't know where to go and/or how to drive, what do you think would happen if you hop into the driver's seat and punch it?
CLI coding agents changed my life. CLI coding agents are like crack cocaine for ADHD devs because of the way we work. CLI coding agents will change the world. "Robots in the software realm", they're here.