Re:AI will change the world but not in the way you think
by SoftTalker on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @12:21PM
(#43483881)
Yep this exactly. If I ever feel that I'm solving a puzzle at work, I stop and ask for more information. Once my task is clear, I start working on it. Learned long ago that puzzle solving is almost always solving the wrong problem and wasting time.
Re:AI will change the world but not in the way you think
by skydhash on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @12:31PM
(#43484005)
Maybe that's where the disconnect comes from. For me understanding comes before doing. And coding for me is doing. There may be cases when I assumes that my understanding was complete and the feedback (errors during compiling and testing) told me I'm wrong, but that just triggers another round of research to seek understanding.
Puzzle solving is only for when information are not available (reverse engineering, closed systems,...) but there's a lot of information out there for the majority of tasks. I'm amazed when people spend hours trying to vibe code something, where they could spend just a few minutes reading about the system and comes up with a working solution (or find something that already works).
I've studied electronic engineering and then switched to software engineering as a career, and I can say the only time I've been exposed to math puzzles were in academic settings. The knowledge is nice and help with certain problem solving, but you can be pretty sure I will reach out to a textbook and a calculator before trying to brute-force one such puzzle.
The most important thing in my daily life is understand the given task, do it correctly, and report about what I've done.