Bricklaying, how hard can it be

[Mr. Dazzle]

You mean the pony is right?

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

Well as I've been doing the job I do for 37 years I know how to do the stuff I know very well, but at 58 it's a bugger learning anything new, mostly due to my lack of interest.

[ZRX61]

I've supervised loads of young people trainees, I don't think I've ever come across this fabled "can't teach me anything" attitude so many people love to complain about. IMO it's mostly a reflection on the experienced person's poor attitude.

I have. In aviation & autobody/autopaint

[Rockburner]

Well as I've been doing the job I do for 37 years I know how to do the stuff I know very well, but at 58 it's a bugger learning anything new, mostly due to my lack of interest.

I've realised that I'm becoming like that. Been doing web-dev for 25 years now, and the rate of change within the market place is accelerating, and I am simply not interested in trying things like "vibe coding" * . There's a lot of discussion going on about devs forgetting how to write their own code after using the AI assistants.

I'm currently far more interested in learning how to rebuild a J.A.P. engine.....





* Vide coding: letting the new "AI" ** code-assistants "write" your code for you multiple times until it gets it acceptably close to what you'd actually write if you weren't being lazy.


** AI: non-intelligent, highly complex pattern matching systems that regurgitate un-validated conglomerations of search results that superficially match up with previous answers similar to the question you asked.

[cheb]

AI: Predictive text.

[Cousin Jack]

** AI: non-intelligent, highly complex pattern matching systems that regurgitate un-validated conglomerations of search results that superficially match up with previous answers similar to the question you asked.

Exactly!

Went to a recent conference on AI in education. Using a 'closed' system trained on a small amount of controlled data it can be excellent, eg for producing a lesson plan, trained on just the specifics of that subject for that lesson.

Cloud based AI stuff like ChatGPT are a nightmare. Pushed hard enough they will hallucinate and invent stuff, but even without that they are always biased, and you will never know how much and in what direction.

[KungFooBob]

I can't 'code', I'm self taught asp.net and VB.net, I eventually get what I need after lots of googling.

I've been using CoPilot a bit, maybe 6 months ago it would just group together examples from spiceworks posts, just stuff c&p from forums.

Most recently it's actually providing me code that actually works in my project with me giving it variable names and stuff. I'm quite impressed. It's gonna make all you proper code monkeys redundant!

[Rockburner]

I can't 'code', I'm self taught asp.net and VB.net, I eventually get what I need after lots of googling.

I've been using CoPilot a bit, maybe 6 months ago it would just group together examples from spiceworks posts, just stuff c&p from forums.

Most recently it's actually providing me code that actually works in my project with me giving it variable names and stuff. I'm quite impressed. It's gonna make all you proper code monkeys redundant!

It depends on how you look at it. It can reduce the drudgery of writing endless boilerplate, but it can't reliably innovate new code ideas, it's just regurgitating what its been fed, if it's fed the wrong things, that's what it'll output. Given that the MS LLMs haver been fed on the contents of Stack Overflow, there'll be a lot of crap in there.

[KungFooBob]

Oh, I meant Stack Overflow, not Spiceworks!

[Mr. Dazzle]

OIP.jpg (26.51 KiB) Viewed 798 times

[Sunny]

LLM + RAG FTW.
Also Copilot Agents are well fucking handy.

Can't lay bricks though, which is annoying as I want an extension building.

[weeksy]

[Horse]

The mixer had a constant supply of just the right amount and right consistency material AND didn't cover the place in plaster dust.

Doing up this place, we bought a caravan for a plasterer. Or at least made a generous contribution.

Intent was one ceiling. He ended doing them all, hall landing stairs, one bedroom and inside a bay.

I mixed the muck.

At the start, he said I'd probably get one right. He was right. I could get it close, but not quite what he needed.

[Ssray]

Decided to brick up a window in my garage , so on to Youtube and watched various videos
of ' How to lay bricks' . It looked so easy watching these guys manoeuvre the trowel and place
the mortar perfectly along the brick line. I do model engineering , surely i can lay a few bricks.
So 60 bricks , sand , cement and off i go .
I would show you the pictures but i am too embarrassed, it took me hours , mess everywhere and
it looks terrible.
I new brick laying was a skill so not really shocked but i have much more admiration for the people
who do this for a living

Our first house had a alleyway beside it and a window looking over it, the outlaws are builders and over 20 years later they still mention it and laugh

[Yorick]

A few months ago the owner of the animal sanctuary where Pen works said she wanted some thing built for the food and stuff for each of the 7 boarding kennels.
I'd never laid a brick before, but me and Penny took it slowly and built these beauties. Then fitted lids to keep them dry. 6 months later all is still well

Was there tonight and they love them .
.

20250601_185618.jpg (1.57 MiB) Viewed 651 times

20250601_185634.jpg (1.56 MiB) Viewed 651 times

20250601_190640.jpg (866.69 KiB) Viewed 651 times

[Taipan]

My mate does heritage stuff, worked on projects with/for people like Dan Cruickshank etc. Often when you're repairing old stuff you have to throw away everything you know about plumb work etc and work out how to be perfectly wonky! They also spend an extraordinary amount of time mixing mortar and laying trial sections and waiting to see the dried colour and finish.

[Dickyboy]

Took me ages but I built a small 2.5m x 5m garage at my old place, still seems to be standing and no complaints from the buyers either, but yeah I wouldn't recommend it & kudos to the people who can do it properly.
For the know it all recently qualified we used the term "supergrads" in a lab I worked at & it wasn't because they were very good...