I just don’t understand how people are getting negative value out of AI or even only 20% productivity boost. I can only conclude that people don’t know how to use agents.
Mostly brownfield systems in Java, Elixir and TS. I use OpenSpec in explore mode and point the agent to all the different repositories (when not working in a monorepo) to identify changes. Once done, i switch to propose mode and spend at least 15 minutes there iterating over the plan until I'm satisfied with the TDD approach (agents need tests to verify their work). Then apply and review. This also auto generates docs etc.
I mean, it doesn’t really matter if it caused by people failing to use the agents well or not. You cannot assume everybody to use the technology the best way possible
It's weird, right? The US is just hands down strange in some regards to little procedural things that are important but also easy to implement, and yet for whatever reason don't do and make a big deal over it when it's a complete non-affaire in other countries.
Like voter ID. It's not some partisan issue. None of the political parties are fighting Elections Canada over it and its been around my whole life. Its just not a thing(tm). You go to vote, show your ID and and voilà, done. And yet somehow, this is a "big deal" down south?
It is a big deal in the US because the US has never had strong identity document requirements for nearly anything until relatively recently, and has been adopting such requirements piecemeal often without doing anything to help people obtain strong identity documents.
There are around 2-3 million adult citizens here without any government issued photo ID, and around 30 more million have government issued photo ID that is expired or does not have their correct name or address.
As more things have started to require current government issued photo ID the requirements to get such ID have been tightened. You typically need a certified copy of your birth certificate, but getting a certified copy of a birth certificate typically requires having a current government issued photo ID.
There are alternate ways to prove identity that rely on other documents and/or getting people with ID to swear that they know you and know you were born here and are who you say you are which can be used to get the certified birth certificate.
Those other documents are often hard to track down, for example some states accept school records as supporting evidence but often those records are not centralized, so you have to go the school district for them. All in all it can take significant time and money to gather all the documents needed, which is a serious problem for many of those without ID.
In the specific case of voting there are around 20 million voting-age citizens without current government issued photo ID and who would have trouble getting such ID.
If we decide we need to switch to checking government issued photo ID at the polls, as opposed to the current system where checks are done when you first register and accept secondary means of proof, the right way to do it is to first make it so those millions of citizens who would have serious trouble getting such an ID are able to actually get ID without hardship.
Only after that is done, so the switch will not disenfranchise tens of millions, start requiring such ID at the polls. Voter fraud under the current system in the US is negligible, so there is no need to rush this.
The current push by one party to try to rush it is because a majority of the people who would be disenfranchised are people who tend to favor the other party. That's why it is controversial.
I went to university in the US and all exams were proctored. I'm pretty sure that's the case for the majority of universities, this is the first I've heard of non proctored exam
Come really, really far south (to Australia) and you’ll find we don’t require voter ID.
Frankly it’s easy to dunk on the U.S. for a lot of things and it’s very short term gratifying to do so but don’t let yourself fall in to the trap of assuming your ‘little procedural important thing’ is universally accepted and it’s just those silly Americans who don’t get it.
Ivy league schools , imho, tend to operate differently--more hands-off approach. The assumption is if you're smart and determined enough to get in, that you will not cheat. The filtering to get in is intense, so this presumably filters out less honest people.
The only possible reason for a school like Princeton that is drowning in cash to not proctor exams is to allow students to cheat.
Also: admissions at all these schools are heavily biased toward wealthy legacy hires, regardless of talent, and the "most determined" are the most likely to cheat.
All my customers are in US and Canada, so switching to EU will automatically add latency to everything. That's a deal breaker for me, so I end up hosting on DO TOR cloud. At least it's not hosted in US but it is by a US company.
I think clean architecture matters a lot, even more so than before. I get that you can just rewrite stuff, but that comes with inherent risk, even in the age of agents.
Supporting production applications with low MTTR to me is what matters a lot. If you are relying entirely on your agent to identify and fix a production defect, I'd argue you are out at sea in a very scary place (comprehension debt and all that). It is in these cases where architecture and organization matters, so you can trace the calls and see what's broken. I get that largely the code is a black box as less and less people review the details, but you do have to review the architecture and design still, and that's not going away. To me, things like SRP, SOLID, DRY and ever-more important.
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