For some reason, this approach makes me think of the difference between “wizardry” and “sorcery” in some fantasy magic systems. The magic of “wizards” is fundamentally based on a deep study and understanding of arcane things, perhaps assisted by some (necessary or helpful) tools of great power. “Sorcerers” summon supernatural beings and are able to control them, cajole them, and protect themselves and others against them (with more or less success)... but the actual desired magical effect is performed by those beings.
Computing has historically been a field of wizardry. It's... interesting (?) to see so many people pushing so hard in the direction of sorcery, and in fact applying that sorcery to other fields, in which they themselves aren't quite able to validate whether the spell worked or not.
That’s fair! I think what struck me, though, is that what we’re seeing is large numbers of “wizards” jump ship to and actively promote “sorcery” instead, in this sense. That is, it’s interesting to me to see Dan Abramov, whose blog primarily consists of painstaking explanations of React internals based on the deep knowledge he developed over years as the most visible member of the core team, switch over to “do a breakthrough.”
I try to address this in the post explicitly in a few places.
Primarily I thought of this as a sort of "epistemic performance art project", maybe similar to playing Elden Ring blindfolded having never played it before, or speedrunning a game by opening a box a thousand times and overflowing some counter. It's funny and absurd to do knowledge work without the knowledge.
I think it's also a stress test of meta skills. Like, how much can we do without knowing? What kind of processes can we set up around these demons that would constrain them into our requirements? How can we know when things are going wrong? In some sense, this isn't too different from engineering management.
Naturally, I'm also interested in how much of my role in this could've been automated away. Can there be a skill for that? Then "do a breakthrough" is an irrelevant implementation detail of that skill.
Note that "do a breakthrough" actually produced the worst results over the runs. The best results were from more directed runs like searching for first obstacle towards the next milestone.
The wizards don’t become sourcerers themselves - they become enthusiastic users of someone else’s sourcery. Their years of learning don’t protect them from mistaking access to power for mastery of it.
gbjcantab · · focus · HN ↗
Computing has historically been a field of wizardry. It's... interesting (?) to see so many people pushing so hard in the direction of sorcery, and in fact applying that sorcery to other fields, in which they themselves aren't quite able to validate whether the spell worked or not.
Xirdus · · focus · HN ↗
thesuitonym · · focus · HN ↗
Xirdus · · focus · HN ↗
gbjcantab · · focus · HN ↗
danabramov · · focus · HN ↗
Primarily I thought of this as a sort of "epistemic performance art project", maybe similar to playing Elden Ring blindfolded having never played it before, or speedrunning a game by opening a box a thousand times and overflowing some counter. It's funny and absurd to do knowledge work without the knowledge.
I think it's also a stress test of meta skills. Like, how much can we do without knowing? What kind of processes can we set up around these demons that would constrain them into our requirements? How can we know when things are going wrong? In some sense, this isn't too different from engineering management.
Naturally, I'm also interested in how much of my role in this could've been automated away. Can there be a skill for that? Then "do a breakthrough" is an irrelevant implementation detail of that skill.
Note that "do a breakthrough" actually produced the worst results over the runs. The best results were from more directed runs like searching for first obstacle towards the next milestone.
iamflimflam1 · · focus · HN ↗
The wizards don’t become sourcerers themselves - they become enthusiastic users of someone else’s sourcery. Their years of learning don’t protect them from mistaking access to power for mastery of it.