Episode 301: My Existential Crisis, AI Fluency & the Death of Conferences?
Summary
In ADSP episode 301, hosts Connor and Bryce discuss the existential crisis surrounding AI’s impact on software engineering. They critique the C++ committee as an outdated social club and debate the future of technical conferences. Connor shares insights from a "auto-research" workshop, proposing a new educational model focused on AI fluency and system theory over manual coding.
Topics discussed
Intro: AI optimism vs. C++ evolution speed
The Illusion of Necessity: C++ committees as social clubs
Archaic C++ standards process and pandemic failures
Value of in-person conferences in the AI era
Auto-auto research and existential crisis on community
Shift to Agentic conferences and AI fluency
Auto Research Academy: Teaching CUDA via agents
Learning theory vs. coding: The new educational model
AI Fluency gap and the cost of experimentation
Massive token spend and learning from scale
Diagnosis: Optimism bias and value of systems knowledge
Future of conferences, commoditization, and AGI
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