AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon • Hacker News Board

Re: AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

#11

Post by quonn » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

dynamodispatch wrote: post #9

skywhopper wrote: post #6

This is silly. We already have automatic code generation tools. We have for decades. They are called compilers, interpreters, standard libraries. These do not reduce the need for programmers. No AI can decide _what_ to build nor can they solve pragmatic tradeoffs between competing goals that real programmers have to deal with all the time. Some human has to be making the decisions about what the computer is going to…

> No AI can decide _what_ to build Honestly, programmers don't decide either. We build what we are told to build. > Could it be made better? Of course! Most of it is terrible. There's an infinite amount of work to be done. Of course, if our objective it to achieve perfection, then there will always be more things to do because we can never achieve perfection. But most of the time "good enough" is good enough. But I a…

Not everyone is told what to build. I‘m generally not. There is some direction and sometimes I implement specific features that were requested. Even then there is a huge gap between the need to have the feature and the nitty gritty details - and I‘m not even talking about implementation details.

Re: AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

#12

Post by hoopladler » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

diego_moita wrote: post #3

Funny how, in computing, every new idea is almost always a reiteration of an old one. One of the arguments for John Backus to create Fortran was to allow non-programmers (of Assembly language) to program. In some sense he succeeded, it allowed a lot of scientists unwilling to understand registers, stack and heaps to program computers. Then Grace Hopper did the same with Cobol for business people. In the end they didn…

Turing reportedly believed that programming would require “a great number of mathematicians of ability”.

I think if you want to find a trend in computing, it's the same as the progression in other industries. Tooling replaces raw ability, technique replaces skill, and jobs requiring skills are slowly replaced by jobs that don't require skills.

Consider Go, for instance. There's no doubt that the opinionated, overly-controlling compiler, absolute minimalism, and conventional structure of the language is designed so that a mediocre programmer can produce passable code. A good programmer doesn't really need gofmt, or a compiler that tells them off for not properly commenting their code. Good programmers don't tend to abuse generics or lambdas or all the other things Go doesn't have.

So what it does, compared to C++, or even Java, is allows you to employ less experienced, less skilled programmers, and equally, to expect them to actually be productive, and not to produce morasses of unreadable gibberish.

Don't get me wrong - I like Go. But if C was the only language in town, there's no doubt you'd need more programmers, they'd have to be better trained, and their job security and compensation would be better.

Re: AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

#13

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

akditer wrote: post #7

AI won't make coders unemployed. It will simply create a new type of job, like tensor flow programmers. This is same as C++ programmers who some way generate assembly code by using a tool called compiler.

The first iteration, maybe not. But the end goal for a general AI is to have it close over - i.e. have an AI capable of programming itself. At this point you enter the realm of recursive self-improvement, with no humans necessary in the loop.

Re: AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

#14

Post by jjeaff » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

klibertp wrote: post #4

junkscience2017 wrote: post #2

No, but combine cloud APIs, AI, and market consolidation and you will indeed see a reduction in the demand for code. I write much less code than I did ten years ago. I spend more time integrating others' code now than I do writing my own. In ten years most industrial coders will probably be down to a hundred or so lines of new production code a year...it will be the DATA arcitects who are calling the architecture sho…

I don't believe this to be true. We've seen quite a few technologies, which promised to "let anyone code", without any real success, whereas to "let AI code" is even harder than letting your boss. At the very least, I expect we'd need another 2 or 3 major, paradigm-shifting, breakthroughs to get computers sophisticated enough to program themselves, which is still 50-60 years away. I mean, that's my gut feeling; we'll…

I think that we can do a lot more with a lot less programmer hours today. React native is a good example. We have just finished rebuilding our app with maybe one third the time and cost of our two native apps.

This is of course offset by the overall huge growth in demand for all kinds of software. But if that demand curve ever flattens out, then I think we could definitely see a reduction in the need for programmers.

Re: AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

#15

Post by EliRivers » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

dynamodispatch wrote: post #9

skywhopper wrote: post #6

This is silly. We already have automatic code generation tools. We have for decades. They are called compilers, interpreters, standard libraries. These do not reduce the need for programmers. No AI can decide _what_ to build nor can they solve pragmatic tradeoffs between competing goals that real programmers have to deal with all the time. Some human has to be making the decisions about what the computer is going to…

> No AI can decide _what_ to build Honestly, programmers don't decide either. We build what we are told to build. > Could it be made better? Of course! Most of it is terrible. There's an infinite amount of work to be done. Of course, if our objective it to achieve perfection, then there will always be more things to do because we can never achieve perfection. But most of the time "good enough" is good enough. But I a…

Honestly, programmers don't decide either. We build what we are told to build.

If only. If the people doing that telling could elucidate clearly enough what it was that they wanted built, they'd be programmers (or, to be fair, requirements gurus - I have worked in a company that had someone really, really good with requirements; it was the only place I've ever worked in which the customer never reported a single bug).

Re: AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

#16

Post by ericmcer » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 7:30 PM UTC

dynamodispatch wrote: post #9

skywhopper wrote: post #6

This is silly. We already have automatic code generation tools. We have for decades. They are called compilers, interpreters, standard libraries. These do not reduce the need for programmers. No AI can decide _what_ to build nor can they solve pragmatic tradeoffs between competing goals that real programmers have to deal with all the time. Some human has to be making the decisions about what the computer is going to…

> No AI can decide _what_ to build Honestly, programmers don't decide either. We build what we are told to build. > Could it be made better? Of course! Most of it is terrible. There's an infinite amount of work to be done. Of course, if our objective it to achieve perfection, then there will always be more things to do because we can never achieve perfection. But most of the time "good enough" is good enough. But I a…

Judging by how impacted CS programs are at colleges, and how hard working the interns I have been seeing come through my company lately, wages may be stalling sooner than you think.

Like many other skilled occupations in this country the future is probably going to be very highly paid elite workers and masses of low paid people who are just "good". Kind of inevitable in a capitalist society where human labor is losing its value.

Re: AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

#17

Post by anonacct37 » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

hoopladler wrote: post #12

diego_moita wrote: post #3

Funny how, in computing, every new idea is almost always a reiteration of an old one. One of the arguments for John Backus to create Fortran was to allow non-programmers (of Assembly language) to program. In some sense he succeeded, it allowed a lot of scientists unwilling to understand registers, stack and heaps to program computers. Then Grace Hopper did the same with Cobol for business people. In the end they didn…

Turing reportedly believed that programming would require “a great number of mathematicians of ability”. I think if you want to find a trend in computing, it's the same as the progression in other industries. Tooling replaces raw ability, technique replaces skill, and jobs requiring skills are slowly replaced by jobs that don't require skills. Consider Go, for instance. There's no doubt that the opinionated, overly-c…

> designed so that a mediocre programmer can produce passable code

That's a little unfair, if accurate. Even the best of us are mediocre programmers when fixing a bug in the middle of the night or diving into a new code base.

You might as well say (and some do) that Haskell is for mediocre programmers because good programmers don't make type mistakes.

> a compiler that tells them off for not properly commenting their code

Are you still talking about go and if so would you mind sending a link because as someone who has written it professionally since pre-go1.0 and contributed multiple changes to the go repo I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about.

Re: AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

#18

Post by solipsism » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

hoopladler wrote: post #12

diego_moita wrote: post #3

Funny how, in computing, every new idea is almost always a reiteration of an old one. One of the arguments for John Backus to create Fortran was to allow non-programmers (of Assembly language) to program. In some sense he succeeded, it allowed a lot of scientists unwilling to understand registers, stack and heaps to program computers. Then Grace Hopper did the same with Cobol for business people. In the end they didn…

Turing reportedly believed that programming would require “a great number of mathematicians of ability”. I think if you want to find a trend in computing, it's the same as the progression in other industries. Tooling replaces raw ability, technique replaces skill, and jobs requiring skills are slowly replaced by jobs that don't require skills. Consider Go, for instance. There's no doubt that the opinionated, overly-c…

Go has lambdas. Go's lack of generics isn't in order to cater to mediocre programmers. Go doesn't force you to comment.

Are you thinking about the right language?

Re: AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

#19

Post by hinkley » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 8:13 PM UTC

diego_moita wrote: post #3

Funny how, in computing, every new idea is almost always a reiteration of an old one. One of the arguments for John Backus to create Fortran was to allow non-programmers (of Assembly language) to program. In some sense he succeeded, it allowed a lot of scientists unwilling to understand registers, stack and heaps to program computers. Then Grace Hopper did the same with Cobol for business people. In the end they didn…

Bertrand Meyer suggested you could split most code into decisions and actions and that makes the code more maintainable. My own experiences seem to support this.

Machine learning only (partly) addresses one of those categories. There’s still plenty of work to do even if AI decision making is less buggy than human code.

Re: AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

#20

Post by hoopladler » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 8:31 PM UTC

solipsism wrote: post #18

hoopladler wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turing reportedly believed that programming would require “a great number of mathematicians of ability”. I think if you want to find a trend in computing, it's the same as the progression in other industries. Tooling replaces raw ability, technique replaces skill, and jobs requiring skills are slowly replaced by jobs that don't require skills. Consider Go, for instance. There's no doubt that the opinionated, overly-c…

Go has lambdas. Go's lack of generics isn't in order to cater to mediocre programmers. Go doesn't force you to comment. Are you thinking about the right language?

No, I'm just confused. I used lambda when I meant ternary operator.