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It is unfathomable to me that spending 5 hours of hard mental work is deemed ‘unthinkable’ and ‘unproductive time’

I might be of the old “hammock driven development” school, but I wonder if people have any idea of what productivity and creativity consists of, how it works and how to promote a state of flow and deep work. Hint: it’s not about context switching between 15 different agents per minute.

I keep wondering if I am defending my experience in this field against the deep hubris of 19 year olds that are still figuring it all out (programming but also system design and how to tackle hard problems efficiently)

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Yep. For a lot of problems, I can build a prototypes with a few lines of bash, or spend the time to create a proper gui and have error handling. The first is not difficult’ no need for AI. And if I’m going to invest in the second, the “slow is fast” approach is often best
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This is why I love working on open source (not as a part of a job) so much. No one is going to be upset with me that I took a week instead of a few hours to implement something. No one is going to pressure me to use an LLM to work faster.

On one hand I'm really afraid that in a few years, developers won't actually know how to develop software anymore, and the LLMs won't actually get good enough to make up the gap.

On the other hand, if that does come to pass, my still-sharp skills will be in even higher demand than they were pre-LLMs.

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Absolutely not unthinkable! We're paid for exactly that in research, for example.

It's terrifying to hear that 5 hours of focused thinking is considered crazy. I can understand a budget battle if it's 5 months, but 5 hours?! Everyone, in every profession (or none), would be better off mentally if they "wasted" 5 hours thinking about something every now and then!

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If 5 hours of thinking time to solve a problem is unthinkable to some people does that mean they have some form of Attention Deficit Disorder, be it a natural thing or introduced by an over-dependence on LLMs? Like stopping for an hour to think through a problem is unfathomable and instead they would rather hit small dopamine spikes every few minutes from talking to a chatbot?
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I think you're onto something. And we're on a fast path to normalizing, even encouraging, this kind of behavior, so I'm very worried.
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I completely agree with you, but being "better off mentally" is really not valued very highly today.

Fast, visible progress and delivery is the melody.

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Sometimes you gotta do things that others don’t value highly. A long career needs you to act with good judgment. Even - sometimes - when the optics are bad.
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If you were in need of legal services in a high-stakes case, or if you needed brain surgery, would you want "fast visible progress" or "I need to think this through"?

I'd say both relevant professions are highly regarded.

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Why do you think that brain surgeons "think this through"? They just get on with the job, one brain after another. Same with legal services.
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And "getting on with the job" in those professions involves stopping and thinking.
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> 5 minutes... what about 5 hours, or 5 days? Imagine spending 5 hours with a pen and paper sketching solutions.

yeah, that's the dream. I do it whenever I get the opportunity to

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Are you only alive to be productive?
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From an employer's perspective, yes.
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All I read about if productivity, but where are all the products? I keep reading about a lot of work, and I still see little to show for it. Why is the vast majority of software still utter shit (and getting worse)?

I think our entire field would benefit from us taking the time to think a bit more. I have no opposition to LLM usage either.

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