This is true, but also "temporal hacks" can make or break "cutting edge" workflows. I don't re-architect my claude instructions every release. But some releases justify examining your existing instructions and making sure they still fit the current model. And it has made a noticeable difference.
I'm tired as fuck of anti-ai zealots pretending like every human is a fucking paragon at programming. I've literally never seen Claude Code produce as bad of code as generated by humans. Literally never. Yet the anti-ai zealots pretend like humans never introduce a bug into a system. Only LLMs produce slop or take shortcuts or ignore tests or do incredibly dumb fucking shit. It's fucking ridiculous. As if The Daily WTF didn't exist before LLMs. The reality is the "average" programmer is far below the skill floor of Claude Code or other frontier models. Those models will write test and explore more edge cases than the "average" developer ever will. But all these zealots pretend like they have only ever worked with the top 1% of the top 1% who never make mistakes or introduce bugs. Ultimately they are full of shit. You're lucky as fuck if your developers can even tell you what common design patterns are. The bar is that low and the HN crowd likes to pretend every developer is Linus Torvalds and not a clueless moron desperately coordinating API layers.
I’d probably word it differently but I agree with much of the sentiment here. I’m also reminded of the stat where 93% of drivers rated themselves as above average.
No. It's largely the environment that the parents create. Which is why the equity vs equality arguments are bullshit. If I can afford to hire the best tutors for my children and sign them up for summer classes as well, is it really "equal" when they dominate the tests and edge out other kids from opportunities? No. It's because of my financial situation and the opportunities we're able to afford and willing to sign them up for which the majority of Americans cannot. But because everyone takes the same test we can pretend it's "equal".
> "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."
No one in my friend group got any SAT tutoring yet the worst person was still 95 percentile. The tutoring argument is overblown. Testing is one of the great equalizers. Us nobody suburban kids had just as much of a chance as the rich prep school kids. Despite the fancy tutors we still outscored them.
The equity vs equality argument only ever seems to be brought up by people clueless about both. They seem to think "equality" is fair. As in, anyone who can pass this arbitrary test is qualified and that is fair and just. Despite the fact that these tests have been deliberately designed for generations to be both subjective and exclusionary. But there is one test that everyone needs to pass so it's "fair" to these people.
I own the house I live in because of the school district it put us in. It allowed my children to literally walk a couple blocks to their elementary school. I can afford to and do send my children to all the extra-curricular learning opportunities I can. And they have latched onto it and started asking for more things in the areas they are interested in. I can send my children to all the fucking dance or music lessons they can handle. I buy them literally every book that they ask for. My children are in the top 5% of every fucking metric, but it has nothing to do with "equality". It has to do with the opportunities we've been able to afford them. Opportunities that the vast majority of Americans cannot or will not follow up on. But people like you are willing to judge those kids as less deserving because they don't pass some arbitrary fucking test that I have been preparing my kids for their entire lives. But that's "equal" and "fair". Unlike "equity" where we take other things into consideration.
The least prolific very successfull author in the world was perhaps Juan Rulfo. He only wrote 300 pages in his whole life and lived to be 68. It is really hard to explain how was he able to produce such master works.
> “…hard to explain how was he able to produce such master works.”
I’ve heard that to be a good writer one should also be a good reader. Maybe they’re a good reader and had one great story in their mind. Having produced it, they were satisfied?
I just read a bio of the author Jack London. He suffered terrible poverty and dismal employment prospects as a youth. Writing was an escape. He produced a lot of mediocre work in order to get paid.
> I’ve heard that to be a good writer one should also be a good reader.
Yes, but you need to learn to linger over the text. To read it slowly in order to analyze how all the different parts fit together, to critically examine the overall structure, to consider how you would have or could rewrite it, to drill down into even the choice of words and how synonyms could have changed meaning and interpretation, to re-read it over and over across the years to see how your own life experiences change how you read the exact same content.
IMO not many people are either built for that, or are willing to expend that effort. Even I stumble - a lot.
Yeah 50/50 feels more accurate. The great success is equally dependant on both things. Actually probably more on luck since I know plenty of lazy but lucky successful people, but no hard working unlucky successful people.
Based on my experience it's more about being able to recognize an opportunity when it shows up and being good enough at your craft to take it. But no one can tell you what that chance will look like. Maybe it's a smart question to the right person during a hackathon, or maybe it's being really into graph theory and applying to a small newcomer company called Google.
For a concrete example: in his book "On writing" Stephen King details his life up until the point he hit it big with "Carrie". You could say he was lucky for the book to sell as good as it did, but that would require ignoring that he had been writing (and getting rejected!) non-stop for roughly 20 years.
As an ex-Navy Seal, and JAG officer who retired for the slow life of owning a hardware store in a sleepy small town, only to accidentally uncover a international multi-million dollar conspiracy with help from the voluptuous town sheriff twenty years my junior... this math all adds up nicely.
Or the engineer could be working for a certain company in South Korea and get a bonus multiple times their annual salary because of their union contracts tied to profitability.
This is a naive view. Companies will literally pay you as little as they can get away with. If they think they can hire someone “equivalent” according to HR for less money they will often do so. Actual contribution means nothing unless you’re willing to walk away. I’ve literally seen an intern with less than one year of experience when hired into a company where a senior architect who has been at the same firm for 16 years made over $40k less than them. The former intern was great. I had no real complaints. And he was more ambitious than the senior architect. But he stayed with the company two more years before jumping ship for another significant pay raise while the senior architect is still there making about the same amount as he did five years ago. It doesn’t matter how much value the senior architect delivers if he doesn’t demand his increase in pay.
> Companies will literally pay you as little as they can get away with.
Everyone pays as little for everything as they can get away with.
Companies aren't doing anything unusual or evil. This is literally just how a market works.
A lot of people forget that the job market is a market. Or they wish it wasn't a market and they could block out competition for themselves so companies had to pay them more (at the expense of those excluded)
This might be fair if the rules of the market were static, but companies are actively using their power and influence to affect the market rules so they can get away with paying workers less and less - that's not to mention collusion and corruption.
Just because this has been normalized doesn't mean it's not evil. If a healthcare company introduces processes that deny people life-saving interventions just to funnel more money to their shareholders, that company and its leadership are thoroughly evil.
I'd also like to add that I often pay more for things than I could get away with. I try to prefer locally owned businesses when possible, and if they have fair prices and give me good advice I often pay a bit extra (essentially a "tip" for the business) to support them.
> but companies are actively using their power and influence to affect the market rules so they can get away with paying workers less and less - that's not to mention collusion and corruption.
What do you mean? Labor is a market. Companies can’t force anyone to work for them. If the pay gets too low, people leave for other companies or jobs.
Just like all markets, the labor market isn't an immutable natural structure. It is actively shaped by the laws and regulations of the market's respective physical location. There are too many specific examples to count, but a few of the most obvious ones are IMO: Child labor, minimum wage, max. working hours and/or overtime, worker safety & health, ...
> Companies can’t force anyone to work for them. If the pay gets too low, people leave for other companies or jobs.
In an ideal world, sure! But in the real world, there are many sources of friction that - when added together - keep people tied to a job, even if they feel the pay is too low.
Markets are social constructs, not something given in nature. As such, there are rules enforced by laws to how the markets operate. Powerful money interests can shape those rules by influencing politicians to pass laws in their favor.
> Everyone pays as little for everything as they can get away with.
Bullshit cop out. I regularly spend more than the “average” on technology because I’ve been burned by the bottom of the barrel too many times. Maybe you cheap out on all of your purchases, but it says nothing about “everyone”. The fact that you claim “everyone” has as few moral qualms as you is telling. But not in a way that reflects everyone. Just short sighted selfish assholes.
> Companies aren't doing anything unusual or evil.
You literally just described an evil behavior. It's obviously not evil when you're shopping for gadgets, but if you think that's morally comparable to the livelihoods of human beings, I'm sorry to inform you that you're a psychopath.
> This is literally just how a market works. A lot of people forget that the job market is a market.
You say that like you think it's a law of physics. Markets don't exist in nature. Markets are a conscious, deliberate creation by humans.
> Or they wish it wasn't a market
Correct! We've unambiguously determined that applying market logic to people's livelihoods is inhumane and immoral. There shouldn't be a market for being allowed to live. It should just be guaranteed to everybody.
I think some of the early push back on asking better more relevant questions was right. But it morphed fairly quickly into gate keeping power user hell hole. I did learn early how to ask better questions. Often to the point I could get an answer without someone else feeding it to me. I appreciate that from StackOverflow. I wish I could just send some of my colleagues who ask bad questions or ask for help in a bad way through the StackOverflow ringer. The number of times my "peers" would respond with a flat "didn't work" with no additional details is driving me crazy. What didn't work? Did it fail differently than before? Were there any error messages? Did you check the logs? What else have you tried? I have to play 20 questions to even start being able help them and all of that work somehow falls on my shoulders.
Knowing how to ask for help is an important skill. Honestly, I admit what SO was demanding was the really the foundation of debugging and I am sure that many people are now better developers because SO having taught them how to approach a problem and how to ask for help.
That said, while the core objective may have been sound, that approach and delivery of the SO "way" was often socially wanting.
I bought a house shortly before unexpectedly relocating to SoCal. It didn't make any sense to sell, so we rented it out while we were there. The renters never seemed like a problem. Payments kept coming in as expected. They moved out and we took the place back over and found out they had converted one of the bedrooms to an indoor pet bathroom. Literally let their dogs shit and piss all over the floor. I always got annoyed trying to find a rental that would accept pets because our children have always done far more "wear and tear" on the house than our pets have. But after that mess we were left with it makes a lot more sense.
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