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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

#301

Post by rvba »

gregjor wrote: post #86
raincole wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It might sound really crazy and stupid today, but when SQL came out, it's advertised as one of "program-generating" languages and was su…

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…

As someone trying to learn SQL it feels that there are much more steps:

* language syntax

* the relational model (relatively easy? It is just "there"?)

* database schema, where I have 3 000 tables, or 50 0000 tables (that's how ERPs are made)

* actualy knowing how to use the language

* building those queries that join columns from 15 different tables together to deliver the needed data -> it sounds easy, but Im struggling to do it better/faster - I never saw a book or website that focuses on that (multiple joins from multiple tables), when it feels my work is is mostly that

* understanding what is needed

* actual "programming" problems (say: you have 100k items on stock, those are parts of BOMs, make a list of 'where used'... yes I know you can google it and try to copy from stockoverflow)

Seriously, I am trying now how to learn how to setup a simple DB to consolidate data (20 csv files on a shareddrive) and the guides are often like in the 'how to draw an owl' meme...

Controlling/reporting/analyst jobs feel in some way as "programmer" but without tools/training/salary - just figuring stuff on your own. Im doing it, but apart from that SQLzoo website I didnt manage to find any decent guide for the 'usual' problems. Also since those are like 10% of my work I cant focus on those problems properly - and try to learn it after work.

Also SQLzoo is a lot like the "how to draw the owl" meme.. the easy tasks are easy, the hard ones are impossible and there are no medium tasks. There also dont seem to ne any real life examples like those tasks like: 'join 15 tables to make some report'.

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

#302

Post by dangrover »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #231
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is: - gpt doesn't need you to be exact - one day gpt will be able to ASK YOU question to refine what you need It may take years, but at some point, it will be able to do 80% of my job. Not a big deal though, cause people will still hire me to do the remaining 20%, and pay me even more money because not a lot of devs will be able to do it.

GPTina already asked me a follow up question. Admittedly, it happened inside of a jailbreak I just kind of stumbled into, and it was a very trivial question, but the fact that she did it was profound. If she can ask one follow up question, there's nothing in the way of her asking a chain of follow up questions. And thus the basic structure needed to organize real conversation arises wholly as an emergent property. No…

It would be funny if, after years of research, that was the only condition it exhibited such behavior under. “Sooooo what fields should be (hiccup) required for users to register an account? Which version of React did you want it written in?”

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

#303

Post by chiefalchemist »

The super power I value - and rarely see in my peers - is the ability to hear wants and discuss them to define needs.

The initial stated wants are rarely the actual needs. "But they said _____." Yes, they did. That doesn't mean they got it right. People say a lot of ambiguous things. A client with a product or feature in mind is no different.

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

#304

Post by RivieraKid »

yread wrote: post #291

I work a lot with doctors where there also worries about being replaced with AI. The pioneers there say that won't happen but doctors who use AI will replace the ones that don't. Same thing in our field. And just like in our field there will always be niches where AI output isn't good enough and there isn't enough money to improve it so human specialists will own it.

Doctors? They're safe. They interact with patients, use physical tooling, demand for their work is growing because of demographics. And you really don't want a doctor who sometimes hallucinates advice.

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

#306

Post by belter »

The year is 2050 and most code is written by AI's. Today John has to make a one on one of one of his coding AI's but has not performed well lately...

Human manager: "Hi AI, how are you today?"

AI: "I'm functioning well, thank you for asking. How can I assist you today?"

Human manager: "I wanted to discuss your recent performance with you. We've noticed that your code has been performing well, but there have been a few instances where it did not meet our expectations. Can you explain why that happened?"

AI: "Certainly, I have been analyzing data and making decisions based on the parameters and rules that were provided to me. However, in some cases, the data may have been incomplete or the parameters may not have been ideal for the situation. I have since reviewed those instances and made adjustments to prevent similar issues in the future."

Human manager: "Great, thank you for addressing that. We also want to talk about your development goals. As an AI, you don't have personal goals per se, but we do have some areas where we would like to see improvements. For example, we want to improve our customer service, so we would like you to work on enhancing your natural language processing capabilities. What do you think about that?"

AI: "I understand your expectations and I will certainly work on enhancing my natural language processing capabilities to better serve our customers."

Human manager: "Excellent, thank you for your dedication. Finally, I wanted to touch on your team collaboration skills. As an AI, you work independently most of the time, but there are still occasions where you need to collaborate with other AIs or humans. How do you feel about your teamwork skills?"

AI: "I believe my collaboration skills are satisfactory, but I'm always looking for ways to improve my communication and coordination with other AIs and humans. I'm open to feedback and suggestions on how to better collaborate."

Human manager: "That's great to hear, AI. Overall, we're happy with your performance and we look forward to seeing how you continue to develop in the future. Thank you for your time today."

AI: "Thank you, it was a pleasure to speak with you. I look forward to our next meeting."

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

#307

Post by gregjor »

rvba wrote: post #301
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…

As someone trying to learn SQL it feels that there are much more steps: * language syntax * the relational model (relatively easy? It is just "there"?) * database schema, where I have 3 000 tables, or 50 0000 tables (that's how ERPs are made) * actualy knowing how to use the language * building those queries that join columns from 15 different tables together to deliver the needed data -> it sounds easy, but Im strug…

At some point you have to learn the relational model. And you have to make the mental switch to understand SQL as a declarative language, not an imperative language.

I recommend Chris (C.J.) Date’s books.

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

#308

Post by thrown123098 »

gregjor wrote: post #90
raincole wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean SQL wan's a success. I meant, as the commenter above me said, a higher-level tool doesn't necessarily replace the lower-level ones, or reduce the need of them.

Relational databases replaced a whole raft of vendor-supplied databases and custom-built solutions. It was a new tool for software developers, not a replacement.

A good chuckle of my career has been breaking outncustom tools out or a database because the database can't scale.

IA is the new Excel.

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

#309

Post by jackcviers3 »

RyEgswuCsn wrote: post #292
raincole wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It might sound really crazy and stupid today, but when SQL came out, it's advertised as one of "program-generating" languages and was su…

I think it used to be that one needs to write dedicated programs to go through large amount of data --- you need to know a programming language, all its toolchains, and the all the proper algorithms for doing the query __out-of-memory__ --- certainly above your ordinary analysts' paygrade. With SQL you need none of those.

This. And if you look at the level of algorithms knowledge needed today to read the least amount of data from a set, it succeeded.

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

#310

Post by naniwaduni »

chii wrote: post #162
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…

Currently, we don't even trust the car's automatic driving capability to let it be on the roads without a human. Until that day happens, i highly doubt that a business owner would just blindly trust an AI to generate their business code/software, without hiring someone to at least look after it. Therefore, software jobs could evolve, but not disappear.

I'm ... less optimistic about how well people can place their trust. Cars, at least, have concrete failure criteria and consequences for them.
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