Article URL: https://galjot.si/what-ai-developers-could-learn-from-charles-bukowski Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49083132 Points: 25 # Comments: 21

now I have become spoiled, I walked into here tonight expecting more luck but the night has been slow. and rightfully so— occurrence must precede action, the tank must refill. there are other things to do. like now I am going downstairs to see my wife and my 6 cats Charles is describing a writers block. Then he's being wise and self-conscious about it and instead of forcing himself to write more slop (or ill words in his world) he stands up, moves away from his computer notebook and goes downstairs to his wife and 6 cats. He knows this block is temporal and things will – presumably soon – be all right. Actually, he's sure of that. So why do we, developers supercharged with AI tools, have a sudden urge to spend more time building software than ever? Silicon valley, since its inception, has been obsessed with working crazy hours, or at least that's what successful folks in their autobiographies told us. Charles knew that more output does not equal quality output. Even before the AI, he was okay to throw away work that didn't cut the mustard 👇🏻 this is great, I just wrote two poems I didn't like. there is a trash can on this computer. I just moved the poems over and dropped them into the trash can. /…/ it's always better to reject yourself before the editors do. /…/ In a recent discussion between Jaron Lanier (that geeky dreadlocks scientist who also makes music) and Neil deGrasse Tyson (that geeky astrophysicist who wrote a book on that subject for normal people that I still didn't understand), Neil said that he has written around 50,000 lines of code – and spent awful lot of time doing so – which AI models today produce in seconds. Then he said: Preach on! But… how come we don't see this happening? Why aren't tech folks sipping tequilas on the beach?