I felt this for a long time, but this helps me understand the challenge For instance, Autisim is a wide swath from what I know. Spectrum disorder makes more sense, but people not familiar with this treat Autism as true/false. Its so much more nuanced that that. Same goes for so many things as I get older. I agree with the author, take it easy when someone misuses a term that you hold a specific meaning to.
> And it was a deep lesson that now feels too obvious: terms are simply created for understanding. That is what matters at the end of the day. This isn’t just about programming; sadly, we often go through fierce battles over a concept or a problem while not realizing that each of us has a different definition for it.
Yeah, I think it’s interesting to think about programming in this way. At the end of the day, JavaScript is just a bunch of words someone invented and made a computer do something with, and you can also invent your own words to whatever you want too
> ... Because this actually leads to a distorted understanding of programming languages. So it's not always that simple; it's not either "terms don't matter" or "I'll kill you if you misuse it!".
Look into what happened with machinists. "Feel" for the machine, and intuition for the craft was replaced by gcode. The work product, instead of the knowledge requisite to realize a work, became the container of value. With enough samples, a new approach is born in which understanding of the basics never has to crystalize. One merely hunts and pecks, grabbing errant bits of previous things hewn through understanding, and composing them into something close enough.
This is what lay ahead in the age of AI. The problem though, comes in the first time that system goes fully offline and people with sufficient skill to bring it back online no longer exist, or worse, are prevented from doing so for one group or another to maintain capability asymmetry.
The years ahead are certainly going to be something to adjust to, yet individually, I question whether that act of adjusting is a good thing.
I felt this for a long time, but this helps me understand the challenge For instance, Autisim is a wide swath from what I know. Spectrum disorder makes more sense, but people not familiar with this treat Autism as true/false. Its so much more nuanced that that. Same goes for so many things as I get older. I agree with the author, take it easy when someone misuses a term that you hold a specific meaning to.
> And it was a deep lesson that now feels too obvious: terms are simply created for understanding. That is what matters at the end of the day. This isn’t just about programming; sadly, we often go through fierce battles over a concept or a problem while not realizing that each of us has a different definition for it.
Yeah, I think it’s interesting to think about programming in this way. At the end of the day, JavaScript is just a bunch of words someone invented and made a computer do something with, and you can also invent your own words to whatever you want too
The author will have an interesting interview experience when talking to HR and devs that actually care about programming terms as selection filter.
> ... Because this actually leads to a distorted understanding of programming languages. So it's not always that simple; it's not either "terms don't matter" or "I'll kill you if you misuse it!".
gatekeepers will die on that hill
working with AI for 3 months and now I'm having to use programming terms to get it going in the correct direction.
The mass de-skilling will continue, until Claude becomes unavailable.
+1
what do you mean?
Look into what happened with machinists. "Feel" for the machine, and intuition for the craft was replaced by gcode. The work product, instead of the knowledge requisite to realize a work, became the container of value. With enough samples, a new approach is born in which understanding of the basics never has to crystalize. One merely hunts and pecks, grabbing errant bits of previous things hewn through understanding, and composing them into something close enough.
This is what lay ahead in the age of AI. The problem though, comes in the first time that system goes fully offline and people with sufficient skill to bring it back online no longer exist, or worse, are prevented from doing so for one group or another to maintain capability asymmetry.
The years ahead are certainly going to be something to adjust to, yet individually, I question whether that act of adjusting is a good thing.