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Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

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Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#271

Post by TriNetra »

carlmr wrote: post #29

Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017. His prediction was based on the trends he was seeing at the time. But it wasn't even AI. Instead he made this prediction because he saw the rise of no-code tools replacing software developers because managers could finally cut out the pesky "translators", i.e. software developers. I said it then and I will say it n…

As it stands, GPT seems to make expert devs even more powerful. But yes, it can't replace them for now.

The best thing I find as a developer that it unblocks the resistance we have in starting up with something new. For instance, I just built my first Chrome extension [0] to make video players more accessible on webpages with keyboard shortcuts.

I had built a desktop app on similar lines long ago, but could never push myself to built an extension. Last night I gave my requirements to GPT and it guided me through the whole process – from creating manifests and js files needed, to the JS code (granted that I'd to fix/extend the code) and even how to install/enable the extension.

Within few hours I have my working extension without needing to go and read any extension docs.

0: https://github.com/varunkho/RamaPlayer/tree/master/Chrome

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#272

Post by carlmr »

qsort wrote: post #250
anon7725 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since they hire software developers to make the specification more rigid, and the managers don't seem to be getting better at this over time, why would you believe this skill set is going to go away? Are we sure that an AI could not engage in enough back and forth conversation to firm up the spec? You’re kind of assuming that systems will be generated from a one-shot prompt, but it seems more likely that an interac…

> Are we sure that an AI could not engage in enough back and forth conversation to firm up the spec? This is the doomsday argument. What would I do if there's a nuclear apocalypse before lunch? I guess I'll die like everyone else. An AI sufficiently advanced to do that is also sufficiently advanced to run the entire business in the first place, and also argue cases in court, do my taxes, run for president and so on.…

>You either believe that transformers models are "it", or you haven't actually removed the problem of specifying requirements formally. Which, you know, is actually much harder to do in English than it is to do in C++

This is actually something that makes me happy about the new AI revolution. When my professor said that I thought he was an idiot, because no-code tools always make it harder to specify what you want when you have specific wants the developer didn't think about.

We give kids books with pictures because pictures are easier, but when we want to teach about more complex topics we usually use language, formulas, and maybe a few illustrations.

I still think no-code was always doomed due to the fact that any attempt at it lacked the interface to describe anything you want, like language does.

AI is finally putting an end to this notion that no-code should be clicky high-maintenance GUIs. Instead it's doing what Google did for search. Instead of searching by rigid categories we can use language to interact with the internet.

Now the language interaction is getting better. We haven't regressed to McDonald's menus for coding.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#273

Post by surgical_fire »

sidlls wrote: post #264
hnfong wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not, it can only give out known answers to known problems based on language statistics. Are you sure you actually tried, or is this an a priori argument?

That's literally what the language model is. It might correctly generate a solution to a "novel" question/problem that is sufficiently close to one with an existing, known answer. But then again it might not. And in software development, it's going to take someone who is knowledgeable to tell the difference. I think software engineering is going to look very different in a few years, and likely be a smaller field wit…

The dude you replied to you gave out the sort of bad take I come here for.

If anyone thinks genuinely that ChatGPT can meaningfully replace a software developer should be starting a tech business right now. You can replace basically your largest cost (staff wages, especially for expensive pesky software developers) with a $20 account that will work overtime, will never get tired, and whose performance will never fluctuate.

No excuses for not getting insanely rich. Of course it's not happening, because it's bullshit.

I am genuinely impressed and even excited with ChatGPT. It's an amazing tool, that would have been massively helpful when I needed a good NLP in the past. It will certainly be massively useful in the future. Hell, it's being a great assistant right now.

But it's not General AI, and I do facepalm at people LARPing as if it were.

General AI will in day exist, and knowledge jobs will most likely be a thing of the past at that point. How far in the future it is is anyone's guess (my prediction is in between 12 and 235 years in the future). We're just not there yet.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#274

Post by WithinReason »

acatnamedjoe wrote: post #99
MarkusWandel wrote: post #67

The computers are coming for jobs ever up the white collar scale. When I started working there were (barely) still secretaries who typed and filed things for their bosses, and quite a few geeks had jobs that involved assembly language programming. AI will take jobs. Super frustratingly, it'll probably make call centers even more useless (has anyone ever gotten anything useful out of one of those ("Hi, I'm ____. Can I…

I see the plumber/electrician thing a lot. But talking to my friends who do these jobs it always seems like it would be even more vulnerable to AI than programming. Experienced electricians get paid decent wages because they have had lots of training and then have seen loads of different problems. So they intuitively know things like 'This is a 1960s house so if there's a problem with the lighting the first thing I s…

AI can only automate things for which a training database exists

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#275

Post by lr4444lr »

411111111111111 wrote: post #160
gregjor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My career predates relational/SQL databases so I can confirm what you wrote. When Oracle came out the buzz was that a whole bunch of programmers would go away because managers and executives could write queries in a “natural” English-like language. That never happened. SQL is hard to master, but it’s the easy part of understanding the relational model and any particular schema. Instead Oracle and the other RDBMSs tha…

Mine doesn't predate it but it's very confusing for me to read this opinion. From my point of view, it totally did happen? Can you imagine how many programmers the company would've needed to get all the data a business analyst casually queries per day? What you're looking at is the quantity of people actually employed in the industry, not how many SQL made obsolete. The industry just grew so much that it didn't becom…

Or they just did less. Productivity gains make people expect more, not just make what they expect now easier.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#276

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #9
jackblemming wrote: post #2

If programmers can be replaced by AI, so can every other white collar job and humanity will look very different than what it is now. And I’ve been using ChatGPT and copilot and it’s a nice tool but nowhere near a replacement for knowing how to program.

This person is asking about career prospects 10-15 years out though. I'm sorry, but the landscape in then might be as alien to someone asking today, as todays would have been to someone asking 15 years ago (2008). What John said is correct, but personally I think he's underplaying how much people could be affected. Those "product skills" take years of grinding to really sharpen, and in 15 years only a few people migh…

>What John said is correct, but personally I think he's underplaying how much people could be affected.

Agreed, what John said was a bit of a platitude. I understand the spirit of what he said but he could have phrased it better.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#277

Post by arkj »

carlmr wrote: post #29

Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017. His prediction was based on the trends he was seeing at the time. But it wasn't even AI. Instead he made this prediction because he saw the rise of no-code tools replacing software developers because managers could finally cut out the pesky "translators", i.e. software developers. I said it then and I will say it n…

>> Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017.

Doomsday prophecies are not limited to religious cults, you see them all around. It’s safe to say, from experience, AI is not going to outdated programmers but it’s going to make the mythical 10x engineer a common reality.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#278

Post by quonn »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #83

People will always want things cheaper and faster (value) - looking at AI as "chat" or textbox or AI autocomplete is wrong imo - companies will come that utilise AI to deliver things faster and cheaper - you quote $10k and 1 month, we will do it in $1k 1 week - first to go is low value difficult to automate work which is already offshored and commoditised (basic webdev, graphic design) - later the middle tier of work…

The leetcoders will get replaced first. There will be a need for designers of complex systems and possibly also algorithms for some time.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#279

Post by dmpk2k »

chii wrote: post #266
drclau wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI won't take plumber or electrician jobs away in the foreseeable future. I see this argument way too often. How many electricians and plumbers does the world really need? And if the market becomes over saturated, how much will those jobs pay? How often will you actually have a job to do?

> And if the market becomes over saturated, how much will those jobs pay? AI makes everything else so cheap, that by just working for a small bit of time, you can afford all the necessities?

That's been the promise of increasing productivity for many decades, and yet...

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#280

Post by visarga »

gregjor wrote: post #205
411111111111111 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine doesn't predate it but it's very confusing for me to read this opinion. From my point of view, it totally did happen? Can you imagine how many programmers the company would've needed to get all the data a business analyst casually queries per day? What you're looking at is the quantity of people actually employed in the industry, not how many SQL made obsolete. The industry just grew so much that it didn't becom…

A few things happened. Relational databases enabled more new development, larger databases, interoperability, all of which needed programmers. With more flexibility in the database companies could collect, store, and use more data. And that data had to get into the DBMS somehow: more code. Setting up and managing databases required DBAs, a role often filled by programmers in smaller companies, and still filled by pro…

AI impact will be the same - simplify here and there, but expand the scope and total amount of work because we will be doing so many more things.
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