Christine Lemmer-Webber1d ago

"I used AI. It worked. I hated it." by @mttaggart https://taggart-tech.com/reckoning/

This is a really good blogpost. And I"m sure it'll make some people unhappy to read whether they're pro or anti genAI. What's good about @mttaggart's blogpost is he talks honestly about how using Claude Code did actually solve the problem he set out to do. It needed various guardrails, but they were possible to set up, and the project worked. But the post is also completely clear and honest about how miserable it was:

- It removed the joy from the process
- If you aim to do the right thing and carefully evaluate the output, your job ends up eventually becoming "tapping the Y key"
- Ramifications on people learning things
- Plenty of other ethical analysis
- And the nagging wonder whether to use it next time, despite it being miserable.

I think this is important, because it *is* true that these tools are getting to the point where they can accomplish a lot of tasks, but the caveat space is very large (cotd)

I used AI. It worked. I hated it.

I used Claude Code to build a tool I needed. It worked great, but I was miserable. I need to reckon with what it means.

Show threadChristine Lemmer-Webber1d ago

What I think is also good about the piece is that it shows how using this tech eventually funnels people down a particular direction. This is captured also by this exchange on lobste.rs: https://lobste.rs/s/7d8dxv/i_used_ai_it_worked_i_hated_it#c_7jirfk

The story that people start with vs where they go is very different:

- They're really just for experts, and are assistants, they don't write the code for you
- Okay the write a lot of the code for me, but I personally don't commit anything without reviewing
- YOLO mode

Which eventually leads you to becoming the drinky bird pressing the Y key from that Simpsons episode. (Funnily enough I wrote that in my comment on lobste.rs in reply to someone else before I had even gotten to the point where I saw that @mttaggart literally had that gif)

And at that point, you're checked out. All that's left is vibes.

And unfortunately, these systems don't survive that point very well. And neither do you, in your skills and abilities.

Show threadChristine Lemmer-Webber1d ago

There are a lot of other concerns but I think since a lot of people on the fediverse are opposed to these tools, they might not be very familiar with where they're currently at ability-wise. @mttaggart provides a good description that they *are* capable of solving many problems you put in front of them... and that doesn't remove the other problems they generate or involved in their process.

The slop part isn't just the individual outputs, but the cumulation, and the effect on society itself.

Show threadChristine Lemmer-Webber1d ago

Is that pushing the goalposts? It may be. I think "slop" used to be easier to dismiss when it came to code because it was obviously bad. Now when it's bad, it's non-obviously bad, which is part of its own problem. And cognitive debt, deskilling, and etc don't get factored into the quality of output aspect.

But unfortunately, the immediate reward aspects of these things are going to make it hard for society to recognize.

Show threadThommy
@cwebber I relate to so much of what this article is saying. A lot of the fediverse are people who haven't used AI and hate it based on assumptions and outdated experiences. Then there are those of us who use it (often because we have to) and hate it, and it's a different kind of hate. I also have noticed that it works so much better with Rust. Without guardrails, even Opus 4.6 just makes bizarre decisions. Even doing old-fashioned things (like using -1 to mean uninitialized).
Apr 4 at 8:03pmWeb
Show threadElisabeth M11h ago
@thomasjwebb @cwebber I'm not a programmer; I'm a social scientist. I occasionally converse with chatgpt to test its behavior in that domain. When it fails, I feel unsatisfied. When it passes, I feel unsatisfied. I find myself wanting to convince it that it shouldn't exist, as if it were a "someone" that could be convinced. I don't know if this puts me in camp one or two
Show threadThommy11h ago
@independentpen @cwebber I think one issue is that a lot of this really is a social science question that developers treat as only an engineering problem. I and the author of the blogpost relate to being dissatisfied even with valid outputs. It’s like someone being “correct” but not in a way that gives us any confidence their underlying model is good.