[echelon]

> the juniors who start today don't have that, they overrely on agentic coding and do not know what they don't know

Y'all need to stop worrying about the kids.

They're smarter than us and will run circles around us.

They're going to look at us like dinosaurs and they're going to solve problems of scale and scope 10x or more than what we ever did.

Hate to "old man yells at cloud" this, but so many people are falling into the trap because of personal biases.

While the fear that "smartphones might make kids less computer literate" is true, that's because PCs are not as necessary as they once were. The kids that turn into engineers are fine and are every bit as capable.

[rimliu]

Was not a IQ decline observed for the first time recently? Also, no one gets smarter by outsourcing thinking.

[echelon]

> Also, no one gets smarter by outsourcing thinking.

Thinking is happening at a higher level. Humans are adepts at abstraction, and they are always capable of looking under the hood when needed.

We've never had so much societal capability as now. And that's only going to accelerate. Smart people will use these tools effectively. Don't be so bearish on human ingenuity.

Think of these tools as bullshit / busy work removers. You can focus on what matters and get more done than ever before. Deeper work, more connective work. It also opens fields of research up in an interdisciplinary fashion. People might explore outside of their limited domain now that they have help.

[rimliu]

abstraction needs to be built on something. If there is little in your brain, there is little you can do with it.

[echelon]

I think everyone's just citing platitudes at this point.

The earth will move on. Smart people will continue to exist. I'll bet on the smart people.

[abalashov]

They're not platitudes. To paraphrase my software mentor, now elderly, on LLMs:

It's an impressive force multiplier, but there has to be some force to multiply.

[esailija]

Not really.

For example preliterate people have absolutely insane memory. In comparison my memory sucks. Having to use notes, look things up etc sucks. Literacy is a tradeoff but at least it can be argued to be worth it.

Then there is smartphones. This is not the same. The tradeoffs compared to pre smartphones cannot be argued to be worth it imo and I was 20 years old when they were introduced. They make society and lives worse. It's not just about not being able to use PC but your attention and social skills sucking.

Then there is AI which is even worse than smartphones. The tradeoffs are so unthinkably bad I can't really even describe it.

[satyrnein]

This is a curious choice of fields for you, if the last technology you think was a net positive was literacy!

[abalashov]

Well, it was. But we still have to pay the bills.

[abalashov]

You've got to be kidding me. I'd have never managed to become an engineering professional if smartphones were around when I was a horny teenager. There's simply no way.

The proof is in the fact that the savvy Atherton dwellers work hard to keep their kids away from the crack they themselves have foisted upon the world, or at least to delay or forestall the encounter.