So you're basically eliminating a bunch of jobs and are now starting a pity party on here that YOU are burned out?
As someone unemployed for a year, I feel so sorry for you. I hope you accept my tears for your burnout.
Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
111–120 of 205 posts
Re: Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
#112> 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative. > A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference i…
I don't think so. Junior engineers will learn much much faster than the past (think about how much more effective GPT4 is as a learning tool than the "rubber ducky method" or manpages or even stackoverflow). And a part of their role will morph into prompting GPT4 (much like this senior engineer has started doing). If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not ca…
You think GPT4 is more effective than learning how to read a manual? Or some of the best SO answers?
Re: Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a bunch of examples myself. Here's a good recent one (prompts are linked about half way down the post): https://simonwillison.net/2023/Aug/6/annotated-presentations... A few more: - "Write a Python script with no extra dependencies which can take a list of URLs and use a HEAD request to find the size of each one and then add those all up" https://simonwillison.net/2023/Aug/3/weird-world-of-llms/#us... - "Show…
I dunno what you do for a job but if that is your hard problems or even medium problems then I think you lucked out big time.
I never said these problems were hard.
But... they're things that require research. Do you know how to loop through all of your Apple Notes using AppleScript off the top of your head?
That research isn't free: it takes time.
As someone who hasn't done much work with AppleScript before, I would guess it would take me about half an hour to figure out how to do this. But there's a risk that it might take longer.
So the sensible thing is probably not to take on that project at all! I don't care enough about solving it to invest the research time.
But the time taken to chuck a prompt through GPT-4 and then test the results to see if it works is less than a minute.
I wrote more about how this is encouraging me to be more ambitious with my projects here: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/27/ai-enhanced-developmen...
Re: Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People have been talking about the threat of automation since the very beginning of the industrial revolution. And the prediction that only the ownership class would benefit from technological improvements is at least as old as Marx.
And it's proven to be unequivocally true hasn't it? Just take a look at the accumulation of wealth since 1970.
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Re: Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
#115I'm a software engineer and I don't find much value in ChatGPT. It provides a bit of help when writing very specific and short pieces of code for languages I know but don't use often. I'd be curious to have actual data on how other SWEs use it.
The type of question I used to type into google, now I ask ChatGPT. For a language I know well it tends to bring a 5 minute task down to 2 minutes. For a language I don't know well it takes a 30 minute task down to 2 minutes (One weird day the site for a framework was down and I couldn't read the docs, but ChatGPT was there with the right answer).
Yeah, and while it's true it can't really solve something you have to think about specific to your problem domain, I find it really good for common implementations. If I'm making a music app and I'm implementing shuffle, I just type
function fisherYates(arr: IPlaylistItem[]) { tab and it's done.
Similarly, I just type
class SortedSet:
// api has to have add, rank, cardinality, itemsinrange(make this a fluent api with min max fns returning self each time, and a get to resolve it, and items() to start it)
// use redis
Similarly I cba when learning an ORM to find out how specifically it does something by scouring it's docs, I just type SQL or natural language there or the beginnings of it atleast, and let copilot fill out the orm api for me. After which I can just hover over the functions it chained/nested together and the docs pop up and I verify that it did it right, and read any caveats they mention. I pretty much learnt how to use prisma just by seeing what copilot produced.
Re: Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a bunch of examples myself. Here's a good recent one (prompts are linked about half way down the post): https://simonwillison.net/2023/Aug/6/annotated-presentations... A few more: - "Write a Python script with no extra dependencies which can take a list of URLs and use a HEAD request to find the size of each one and then add those all up" https://simonwillison.net/2023/Aug/3/weird-world-of-llms/#us... - "Show…
sorry but these examples are not impressive at all and by no means a representative of any serious programmer's workload. Programmers are paid not to bang out code, but rather to figure out the mess and crap of the existing codebase and how to selectively add one-two lines to change system's behavior and keep stability of the system.
Part of the trick of making the most of LLMs is figuring out what kind of things to apply them to.
I wouldn't expect much from them for figuring out gnarly changes in huge existing codebases (at least not yet).
But they've been actively encouraging me to write smaller, tighter tools - the good old Unix philosophy - for which they are extremely well suited.
Re: Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dunno what you do for a job but if that is your hard problems or even medium problems then I think you lucked out big time.
I never said these problems were hard. But... they're things that require research. Do you know how to loop through all of your Apple Notes using AppleScript off the top of your head? That research isn't free: it takes time. As someone who hasn't done much work with AppleScript before, I would guess it would take me about half an hour to figure out how to do this. But there's a risk that it might take longer. So the…
100% agree with this. I used ChatGPT earlier today to give me networkx code for computing the connected components of a graph and visualizing the graph. This isn't hard to do, but I don't use networkx all that often and I forget the exact API. I could go to read documentation and piece together an example myself, or I could ask ChatGPT for an example, which tends to be much faster than doing the former.
Re: Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am being told this by a white-collar worker who went to college themselves, and is just bloviating. Exactly. When I talk to plumbers, electricians, etc. many of them express the desire to leave because the hours and environments are hellish. Meanwhile some full of themselves tech bro is babbling on about how everyone (not them of course) should go into the trades. Or they pull some vague anecdote out of their ass…
My read is that the people who do well in trades are smart, hard-working and ambitious. That combination of traits tends to do well no matter where they are applied. While there is plenty of money to be made in the trades, one thing that gets ignored is, as you said, the working conditions. Further, those working conditions compound over the years and absolutely wreck bodies.
>wreck bodies.
I think how hard the trades can be on your body is under appreciated
Re: Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Or, for every junior that isn't hired by a business that can't expand its portfolio to exploit greater productivity or can’t figure out how to effectively use LLMs across the experience spectrum, two will be hired in shops that can do those things And everybody also gets a pony! Win-win-win situation! Previous "software dev productivity increases" happened as computing saturation itself increased from a hanful of m…
> Previous "software dev productivity increases" happened as computing saturation itself increased from a handful of mainframes to one in every office, then at every desk, then a few in every home, and later one in every hand. Now it's at 100% or close. previous 'computing saturation is at 100% or close' pronouncements go back to 01953 https://geekhistory.com/content/urban-legend-i-think-there-w... this human body we…
Are you by any chance a paperclip factory? /s
Re: Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
#120Waiting for your direct to Amazon book about how AI will kill software OP. Always entertaining.
ChatGPT will likely be added to the list of dead things that were supposed to "kill" the software developer. I've noticed this pervasive attitude among, what I can only term as, people who actually enjoy LinkedIn. If you understand what I'm saying you can probably already picture the annoying over the top buzzword written below-the-fold post that feels like its only designed to steal braincells. ChatGPT might be able to kill the CRUD developer like WYSIWIG killed HTML programmers. There will be plenty of jobs no one wants ChatGPT to touch. Finance, medicine, and military are some I can imagine without much thinking. "No Code" is on its, what, 4th iteration and still hasn't killed programming. We are more likely to lose our jobs to overseas outsourcing than a stupid rock we tricked into thinking.
I am actually annoyed reading this Ask HN. The level of smugness reminds me of wantrepreneur bros. Woe is me I'm burned out from being so productive. Gag. I'm an actual professional developer. ChatGPT does not provide oodles of value to me. A lot of our juniors and mids use it and I often find problems with the way they copy-and-paste garbage. Admittedly, the copy-and-paste is better. However, to me it reduces to the same StackOverflow problem. Maybe if they were better "prompt engineers" (lol) they might get better output. Or they could take the 30 hours needed to figure out prompts to just simply do better at writing code.