I would actually really recommend people who are using coding agents full time to make AI brakes for your weekend projects. Think of it like a small break to take the time to reconnect to the code and keep your brain muscles intact, a bit like a professional cyclist going for a casual ride in the forest to experience what they don’t experience anymore in their professional life.
[−]giancarlostoro · 2026-08-30 Sun 14:30 UTC ·
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For me its quite the opposite. My employer is too afraid to commit to any of it. Meanwhile, I've built more stable software for myself and my personal computing needs of higher quality and in faster turnaround times.
I've also seen how insanely good at doing a total rewrite / modernization the models can be.
I specified „people using coding agents full time“
[−]giancarlostoro · 2026-08-30 Sun 15:22 UTC ·
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Fully aware, just tired of hearing about AI in extremes. Theres some of us who just want to use it in a useful way.
[−]mapontosevenths · 2026-08-30 Sun 15:28 UTC ·
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I see where you're coming from, but I can't help being reminded of my youth when teachers would admonish me "YoU wOn'T aLwaAYs haVe A CalCulator in yOuR poCKet!"
Now the entire world has a calculator in their pocket, and all that wrote memorization not only made me hate math as a child, it was a giant waste of time.
I suspect that one day we'll look back on advice like no-AI Fridays exactly as modern readers would react to "Punch-card only Tuesdays" in a modern enterprise.
More like: take some time without your phone. Something I assume everybody here would agree is a sane thing to do.
Not using a calculator as a kid for math is pretty important, because the goal is to develop intuition. Same for software, playing music, learning a language. You have to keep some level of friction to develop and keep your intuition
[−]alexslobodnik · 2026-08-30 Sun 15:41 UTC ·
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I get consistent, though tiny, value from having memorized the multiplication table up to 12.
> Now the entire world has a calculator in their pocket, and all that wrote memorization not only made me hate math as a child, it was a giant waste of time.
I dunno, I think this example kind of works in the opposite direction. If we're talking about memorising tables of logarithms or something, then yeah that was a complete waste of time. But a lot of the stuff kids would like to skip because calculators can do it is the absolute basics. IMO it is still important to have a solid grasp of arithmetic, useful to have enough trigonometry that you intuitively understand where it can be useful, and so on. (Much more so if you want to leave open the possibility of studying further mathematics.) And for people to whom these things don't come naturally, you really need to drill it a bit in order to develop the conceptual understanding.
I don't know exactly where this does and doesn't apply to programming/CS, though. I would like to think that a lot of the fundamentals will remain useful, but maybe that will only be true for a few specialised workers and self-motivated hobbyists.
[−]QuadmasterXLII · 2026-08-30 Sun 15:51 UTC ·
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How much rote memorization did it take to harm you? the addition of 1 digit numbers is kind of mandatory to function in everyday life, the multiplication table is at most (8*9)/2 36 facts.
hah. try go hiking for couple days in mountains. no cellular, no charging, flaky gps, vhf/uhf radio don't work and your only hope is that you are prepared enough to survive getting out of there .
I don't even about sailing 100+nm off shore.
people assume every point of earth is somewhy equivalent to their porch.
Not entirely sure what point you're trying to make, so maybe this is not relevant to it, but, in 2026, satellite emergency support makes it seem irresponsible to not take your iPhone if you value your life or have other people in your life who would miss you if you were gone.
As someone who has made a career by having unique insights into solutions for software problems, I can confidently says it's not the same as the calculator. AI is bad at gathering context from an in-person customer meeting, linking their experience to fundamental structural problem with the data model and formulating a solution. You know how you know to make that insight? You have to have read and internalized the code. The easiest way to do that is by having written it yourself by hand or direct instruction to the AI. This exact scenario has played out for me more times than I can count, and it's why I find so little value in using AI.
[−]VCFundedGenYer · 2026-08-30 Sun 16:09 UTC ·
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I've also seen how insanely good at doing a total rewrite / modernization the models can be.
Now the entire world has a calculator in their pocket, and all that wrote memorization not only made me hate math as a child, it was a giant waste of time.
I suspect that one day we'll look back on advice like no-AI Fridays exactly as modern readers would react to "Punch-card only Tuesdays" in a modern enterprise.
Not using a calculator as a kid for math is pretty important, because the goal is to develop intuition. Same for software, playing music, learning a language. You have to keep some level of friction to develop and keep your intuition
I dunno, I think this example kind of works in the opposite direction. If we're talking about memorising tables of logarithms or something, then yeah that was a complete waste of time. But a lot of the stuff kids would like to skip because calculators can do it is the absolute basics. IMO it is still important to have a solid grasp of arithmetic, useful to have enough trigonometry that you intuitively understand where it can be useful, and so on. (Much more so if you want to leave open the possibility of studying further mathematics.) And for people to whom these things don't come naturally, you really need to drill it a bit in order to develop the conceptual understanding.
I don't know exactly where this does and doesn't apply to programming/CS, though. I would like to think that a lot of the fundamentals will remain useful, but maybe that will only be true for a few specialised workers and self-motivated hobbyists.
I don't even about sailing 100+nm off shore.
people assume every point of earth is somewhy equivalent to their porch.