What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

(askmike.org)

47 points by askmike6 days ago

2 comments

simonw32 minutes ago
I'm not completely convinced by this comparison between blind chess and prompting LLMs.In blind chess you get deterministic information about the state of the board: each mental update to your board model can be precise, and you have the full state at every point in time.LLMs are notoriously non-deterministic, and even at temperature zero you still can't predict exactly where the weights will take you next.I suppose you can get closer to deterministic if you adopt a prompting style where you almost dictate every line of code, but at that point the coding agent is more of a typing assistant.The productivity benefits of coding agents unlock themselves when you figure out how to turn short prompts - "add tests that exercise the registration form and check the happy path and all failure states" - into larger changes.If you're completely blind to the results of those you're going to end up with a system you don't 100% understand very quickly. In blind chess terms you'll no longer know the positions of every piece on the board.
- vunderba9 minutes ago
 IMHO the thrust of the article feels a bit forced, but LLM = Blindfold chess is not what the author is saying:> Thus in many ways programming with AI is the opposite of blindfold chess: you don't have to pay attention every turn, you don't have to remember what the important pieces are, the details of the tactical relationships (such as code interfaces and APIs).
 - relativeadv6 minutes ago
 That sentence was awkward. Maybe even a typo? The following sentences to the one you just quoted ignores that and proceeds to argue FOR blindfolded chess being like programming with LLMs.The article itself takes several paragraphs to get to the argument it wants to make and then ends having only argued for a few more sentences. No real evidence is provided either.
 - vunderba2 minutes ago
 Well no, it argues that the SKILLS in blindfold chess are similar to a "vide coder" - not that Blindfold chess = programming with LLMS.And then earlier in the article defines said skills as having a sense of high-level relationships (chunking, positioning, etc) over the board rather than a photographic memory of the board.As I said, the whole article feels very fluffy anyway.
- NameError23 minutes ago
 I agree with your take, particularly because of this line in the article:| the skills that define a strong blindfold chess player are the same as those of a programmer who can thrive behind a Claude Code terminal whilst not reading nor writing any code.If you're actually not reviewing the outputs, you're just getting a fuzzy description of the state of the chessboard.But I (and everyone I work with) use Claude Code in a workflow where I -do- review the outputs, or at least I make an honest effort to try. Rather than blindfolded, I think bullet (1-minute) chess is a fairly good analogy for this: you have all the info you need to keep your mental model up to date with reality, but the pace of change is too fast to do a good job unless you have a lot of preexisting chess expertise.
dumbfounder12 minutes ago
Meh. Chess exists to entertain the players. Coding exists to solve problems. I see way too often the programmers think it’s all about the coder and the code. Solve the problem. Don’t write code at all to do that if you can (AI generated or otherwise).