Thread

1. tombert · 1790479646 · focus · HN ↗

   At the risk of being a bit of a douchebag, it seems like nearly every tech opinion piece I read now boils down to "things used to be hard but they aren't anymore because LLMs can understand things faster than we can, so can ignore/change fundamentals!"

   I didn't really find the argument convincing the first time and I don't really find it convincing now.

   That said, with regards to macros, I actually do agree that the fear against them is broadly overblown. I have seen scary terrible horrifying macro soup in Clojure, but that has generally been outlier cases. Something like core.async abuses the hell out of macros, and despite that I think it very often increases readability and understanding of the language.

   1. smitty1e · 1790479975 · focus · HN ↗

      As long as GPS stays bullet proof, Navies are in good shape.

      It's going to be a hard come-to-Beevis moment if the magic signal goes away and people have to remember celestial navigation.

      Not sure you can even find a sextant on most vessels.

      So too these AI services.

      1. QuesnayJr · 1790480533 · focus · HN ↗

         The Navy was phasing out celestial navigation, but after some public outrage from retired naval officers they brought it back.

         1. manyatoms · 1790480763 · focus · HN ↗

            Does this mean using the star-tracking devices like what satellites have, or like a human paper/pen thing?

            1. obviouslynotme · 1790482815 · focus · HN ↗

               It should mean both. They need to learn how to do it by hand and then learn how to lean on a navigation system. If only GPS fails, then the celestial navigation program fallback runs without a hitch. If shit hits the fan, then they can break out the manual and remember how to do it by hand.
         2. smitty1e · 1790490175 · focus · HN ↗

            I mean, it is taught. In school. And, maybe, there is some residual skill out there in the fleet.

            Doing a fix, like playing music well at all, takes copious practice.

      2. fragmede · 1790482838 · focus · HN ↗

         GPS service is obviously going to go down whenever World War III goes hot, so the Navy is definitely training sailors on the alternatives.
   2. nvme0n1p1 · 1790482293 · focus · HN ↗

      And even if LLMs do our thinking for us, it's still not a reason to fork the programming language you're using, unless you expect me to believe an LLM can understand `foo |> bar` but it can't understand `bar(foo(x))`. If you're not looking at the code, it doesn't matter how pretty the code is anymore.
   3. rgoulter · 1790488305 · focus · HN ↗

      > it seems like nearly every tech opinion piece I read now boils down to "things used to be hard but they aren't anymore because LLMs can understand things faster than we can, so can ignore/change fundamentals!"

      Sure, LLM coding agents being capable doesn't mean we can ignore fundamentals.

      But LLM coding agents surely adjust the cost/benefit considerations for all kinds of programming efforts.

      Arranging your code in such a way that it's so complicated you need an LLM to understand it is surely silly.

      Using an LLM to write a macro because you weren't going to learn how to write macros and deal with all the subtle cases? I think that's arguable.

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