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by stavros1 hours ago |
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upvoteby jurgenburgen1 hours ago|
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How can a bash one-liner be more expensive to build than a full-blown CLI tool with the maintenance burden that comes with it?
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upvoteby stavros1 hours ago|
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What expert would build a cli tool to avoid writing a bash one-liner?
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upvoteby dgellow1 hours ago|
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I cannot judge without more context. Depending on the one liner, the problem at hand, and overall situation that can be justified. A CLI is straightforward to create.

A bash oneliner can be a chain of 5+ programs, each buffering the stdin/out, what if the CLI is doing the same operation via streams instead? Just a random example but that can easily be worth it

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upvoteby stavros1 hours ago|
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Sure, then there's a point where the extra taste isn't worth its cost.

I just don't like the fictional straw man where an expert has somehow been brainwashed by AI into forgetting everything they ever knew.

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upvoteby leafarlua1 hours ago|
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Perhaps the ones that were experts before letting their brain rotten by AI.
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upvoteby adamtulinius1 hours ago|
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I'm sorry but "extensive documentation, scalable, high test coverage, perfect code style" seems to me to be the opposite of throwaway.

It sounds like the kind of thing people will think surely must be very important and in use, because why go through all those hoops instead of doing a quick hack?

But I guess we can just throw AI at the maintenance burden anyways..

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upvoteby stavros1 hours ago|
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I agree, so you should ask yourself "why would the expert do this?"

I decided to go for the charitable interpretation of "the alternatives are close enough in functionality that writing by hand is not worth it", instead of the uncharitable interpretation of "these examples are completely made up".

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upvoteby adamtulinius1 hours ago|
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Because the expert has forgotten. Skills that we don't use are forgotten, and there's nothing new in that. Except for the proverbial bicycle.
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upvoteby stavros1 hours ago|
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Ok, if you think the expert has forgotten that a problem can be solved by a bash one-liner and instead think they need a whole extensive CLI with documentation, our viewpoints are too far apart for fruitful discussion.
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upvoteby buran771 hours ago|
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The bash one-liner might be hyperbolic but with the advent of AI everything is artificially longer, stuffier, more complex and convoluted for no reason other than because the AI allows this increase in volume with little to no extra effort.

It used to be the proverbial one-liner with zero documentation because that was the best ratio of effort to results. Now the effort is on the AI and the results look more impressive. Today that will still impress a lot of people, bosses, colleagues. Very soon everyone will see through it and anything overly stuffy will have the opposite effect of looking low-effort.

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upvoteby stavros1 hours ago|
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Sure, I agree, but now longer/stuffier things cost half as much as shorter things. In most cases, that cost isn't worth it.
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upvoteby buran7744 minutes ago|
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The AI output probably does the job just as well, maybe cheaper. But I'm talking about appearances and the impression the work leaves. Eventually bosses and colleagues will stop seeing "output volume" as a signal of being productive. It won't look special anymore, it won't give anyone an edge. People who can use their brain to come up with solutions might be held in higher regard than "prompt experts".

Let's wait one generation. Right now the best results are from putting AI in the hands of capable experts. Will a person trained entirely with an AI crutch ever reach the same level? We'll see.

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upvoteby dingdongditchme1 hours ago|
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and here I am reading an interaction and thinking you two are saying exactly the same thing. Language be, what it is I guess: open to interpretation.
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