A Confucian-style fable of an engineer too proud to use coding agents
charles_irl · x · 2026-10-24
charlesirl posts a Confucius-style fable: an old engineer hand-types code in vim and traces execution in a debugger, straining for tiny results. When told an agent could ship 100 PRs a day effortlessly, he laughs: "where there is artificial intelligence, there are artificial dealings; where there are artificial dealings, there is artificial progress. When artificial progress lodges in the goals, the Way will not carry the team... I would be ashamed to use it." A pointed AI-circle satire on effort, quality and pride in the agent era.
More from AGI Musings
- Hinton's Gödel lecture: AI is a tiger cub we must ensure never wants to kill us — mmbronstein · 2026-10-24
- Ethan Mollick: growing internal-external model gap may push labs into finance and biotech — emollick · 2026-10-24
- Nintendo's Miyamoto says AI won't make human creativity obsolete: 'a role will always remain for us' — PAstynome · 2026-10-24
- AI-written code share points to full coding autonomy by spring 2028, argues TheZvi — TheZvi · 2026-10-24
- DAOs 2.0: smart contracts plus AI judgment may return, but agents buying their own compute raises safety concerns — pzakin · 2026-10-24
- Anil Seth's 109-page BBS special on conscious AI free to download today only — anilkseth · 2026-10-24