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Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

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Re: Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

#41
The feeling comes and goes.

I'm a hands-on learner. Peers show me their agentic workflows. I'll nod and ask questions and tell them it's cool. But inside I'm spinning out fearing my future will look like these workflows. However, then time passes and that workflow or prototype amounts to nothing but spent credits and time. Then I relax.

I'm still part of the problem. I use these tools as a "better google" and require reference links to all of it's assertions.

I keep finding myself considering going into nursing or some other in-demand, well-paying job and wonder if I wait long enough the shift will be subsidized somehow.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

#43
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faster != more productive.

That's a pedantic word game. The industry at-large doesn't track lines of code as a measure of velocity. So, yes, faster does mean more productive, since that's what any sane programmer means when they say "I built it faster". They don't mean that they literally slapped the keyboard faster than someone else.

And yet "slapping the keyboard faster" is all that AI does. It doesn't design architecture. It doesn't think. It doesn't reason. All it does is search for and copy-paste code from elsewhere on the internet. If you're lucky it might even be code that works and does what you want it to.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

#44
post #16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 10x Centaur doesn't exist. They're just ten times as fast at creating tech debt.

I wouldn't consider myself an SWE, just an amateur programmer, so this is an honest question: In your opinion, is there such a case where the usage of AI in software engineering has either sped up the dev time or improved product reliability (or even both)?

There's things it can do, so long as you use it as your complement, i.e. all the stuff you know is important you just go "ugh" when faced with. For me, that means unit tests. I can write them, I know why I should write them, I have professional experience with them, I can judge which unit tests are useful and which are make-work and which have missed the point entirely, but I'd rather not be the one to actually write them.

LLMs can write them for me, and I can happily look through them to make sure what the LLM made was neither brittle, nor testing unimportant things while missing the important stuff.

They can also help with code review, but only to a limited degree; a second pair of eyes to avoid lazy people going "LGTM", or the other way around time-wasting feedback from bike-shedders, but as with unit tests, right now you still need to be the kind of person who is happy to double-check its work — if you're the kind who was previously a little too quick to accept pull requests with a "LGTM", you may well be too willing to listen to irrelevant bike-shedding from the LLM or not realise it is missing the point of the code or the ticket.

But if you use it to replace the stuff you're already good at, and not help with the stuff you're weak at, it'll probably slow you down while also making the code worse.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

#45
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pedantic word game. The industry at-large doesn't track lines of code as a measure of velocity. So, yes, faster does mean more productive, since that's what any sane programmer means when they say "I built it faster". They don't mean that they literally slapped the keyboard faster than someone else.

And yet "slapping the keyboard faster" is all that AI does. It doesn't design architecture. It doesn't think. It doesn't reason. All it does is search for and copy-paste code from elsewhere on the internet. If you're lucky it might even be code that works and does what you want it to.

This is mostly false.

> It doesn't design architecture.

It can do that. Won't say it's amazing, but it can do it.

> It doesn't think. It doesn't reason.

Can you define these in ways that aren't tautologically limited to humans? I have yet to encounter anyone who has managed this while making such an objection to any form of AI.

> All it does is search for and copy-paste code from elsewhere on the internet.

They provably don't work like that. Both because local models exist, can be run offline, still spit out code to solve problems; and because some world records have been set by them, for some CS-related maths problems the best known method was invented by an AI which used an LLM as a component.

https://the-decoder.com/openais-ai-beats-every-human-at-atco...

https://deepmind.google/blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-co...

Re: Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

#46

I'm feeling the same. I'm 21, basically just started my career. Nothing felt better than writing code, and feeling proud of what I had built. Now I am being forced at work to use AI/LLMs because "it's faster" and I feel like my whole life, the career I fought for, has been sucked away. Idk, might switch to driving trains, if they don't automate that too...

You may laugh/cry with the contents of: https://thedailywtf.com

As with the sibling comment, I advise you to be skeptical of causation: lots of corporations have weird office politics and you'll need to rule that out before you can tell if it's AI or just your boss.

> Idk, might switch to driving trains, if they don't automate that too...

I'm surprised they've not already been entirely automated away. A few lines were created fully automated and seem to have managed fine ever since. Much easier than self-driving cars.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you earning 10x too? You are just cheaper to your employer… and you seem proud of that. But naive

What if one’s entire existence doesn’t revolve around the role they play in capitalist systems? Comments like this make it blindingly apparent that this is just a VC’s web forum.

My existence has as substrate: shelter, food and healthcare. Money provides these via jobs. Once that’s covered, sure, pleasure comes.

I don’t like it, but that’s how im playing the game of life

Re: Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

#48
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Millions of programmers out there, and you're saying there's not even a 1% chance that a single one of them is moving 10x faster Would that mean that every other claim to be moving 10x faster is an exaggeration? It evidently is, as these claims of massively increased productivity are purely anecdotal. If the claims were ‘5% productive across the board’, it would be huge, but 1000%? That is a ludicrous tall story th…

My point still stands, the author is confidently stating something that's clearly just wrong. The alternative is that everyone is creating tech debt 10x as fast (while being completely oblivious to it.) It's pretty obvious that's not what's happening. To pretend otherwise would suggest that every software developer everywhere is completely unaware of what tech debt is AND that they don't care at all. Again: it's obvi…

Can you find one? Can you hire them? It is basically a "snipe-hunt".

Re: Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, but it also made us slaves of LLMs, let's be real, we will not do anything else than query AIs soon enough.

Take this vague, emotive, thought-terminating language to your journal or a pub rant or something. What does this even mean? Only one entity in this interaction has free will and it’s not the LLM. “Humanity reliant on another technology” is hardly news. You’re probably just getting a taste of your own medicine. Most people here have spent their careers at least ATTEMPTING to disrupt industries/areas of society in a w…

Thanks for stopping by to leave 4 separate, scathing, contempt-filled comments.

So I guess it is safe to assume that you would not be interested in a "a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?"

Yes, that is a rhetorical question.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need a support group for developers alienated by LLMs?

#50
post #45
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet "slapping the keyboard faster" is all that AI does. It doesn't design architecture. It doesn't think. It doesn't reason. All it does is search for and copy-paste code from elsewhere on the internet. If you're lucky it might even be code that works and does what you want it to.

This is mostly false. > It doesn't design architecture. It can do that. Won't say it's amazing, but it can do it. > It doesn't think. It doesn't reason. Can you define these in ways that aren't tautologically limited to humans? I have yet to encounter anyone who has managed this while making such an objection to any form of AI. > All it does is search for and copy-paste code from elsewhere on the internet. They prova…

> Can you define these in ways that aren't tautologically limited to humans?

No, because that’s the point. It’s not intelligent because intelligence is a human characteristic.

> Both because local models exist, can be run offline

It’s not that they search interactively, it’s that the whole internet has been sucked into the training set.

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