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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

#541

Post by execveat »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #460
execveat wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but now ask it to write a program that uses this API and then let it debug problems which arise from the swagger spec (or the backend) having bugs. I don't think LLMs have any way of recognizing and dealing with bad input data. That is I don't think they can recognize when something that is supposed to work in a particular way doesn't and fixing it is completely out of your reach, but you still need to get thin…

Have you tried it? If you copy the errors back into the chat I could imagine it working quite well. Certainly you can give it contradictory instructions and it makes a decent effort at following them.

Yes, I'm subscribed to poe.com and am playing with all public models. They all suck at debugging issues with no known answers (I'm talking about typical problems every software developer, DevOps or infosec person solves every day).

You need a real ability to reason and preserve context beyond inherent context window somehow (we humans do it by keeping notes, writing emails, and filing JIRA tickets). So while this doesn't require full AGI and some form of AI might be able to do it this century, it won't be LLMs.

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

#542

Post by robjan »

silvestrov wrote: post #520
mdorazio wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have two common misconceptions here. 1) Wages have very little to do with value/productivity in a free market. They are almost entirely determined by supply and demand. Value simply places a ceiling on compensation. Thus, if far more people can perform a "programming" job because of GPT-X, unless the demand for those jobs rises significantly the net result will be wage reduction. 2) There's this weird thi…

> competent business analyst with the danger of invoking the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, I'd say that competent business analyst are even more difficult to get hold of than a competent programmer. I've had so few managers that were competent at managing people and projects.

Business Analysts aren't usually (project) managers

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

#543

Post by ilaksh »

anon7725 wrote: post #122
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…

> 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…

You can do that prompt / play with it / feedback thing right now with my GPT+Stable-Diffusion powered website. https://aidev.codes

I am in the process of adding VMs which the AI will be able to write software and fix compilation and other problems automatically.

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

#544

Post by aws_ls »

nico wrote: post #531

When I was a little kid I asked my dad, an engineer, to teach me computer programming. He refused saying that when I grew up programmers would be unnecessary because “anyone would be able to program”, essentially the interfaces would be so easy/advanced that there wouldn’t be a need for programmers. As a kid I never really understood his point. When I finally understood, I dismissed it as extreme. Now I’m realizing m…

Just curious, so do you know how to program or not?

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

#545

Post by spunker540 »

bjornsing wrote: post #379
noodles_nomore wrote: post #54

An average programmer's main job is to track down and fix bugs that shouldn't exist inside software that shouldn't exist build on frameworks that shouldn't exist for companies that shouldn't exist solving problems that shouldn't exist in industry niches that shouldn't exist. I'm 100% convinced that, if someone comes along and creates something that actually obsoletes 95% of programming jobs, everyone would very quick…

I’m leaning in this direction too. I saw someone on Twitter phrase it quite well: “You can believe that most jobs are bullshit [jobs]. And you can believe that GPT-4 will completely disrupt the job market. But you can’t believe both.”

Won’t it find traction in bullshit jobs pretty easily?

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

#546

Post by roundandround »

matwood wrote: post #79
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…

SQL was also meant to give a wider range of people access to data. The “business analyst” comes to mind. And, I think SQL was successful. What it didn’t do was reduce the need for programmers, because the new SQL users always wanted more data to answer more complex questions.

I don't actually agree. SQL did replace the need for programmers, especially for complex questions. We sabotaged its interfaces to existing GUIs for mundane questions and made CRUD a limitless profession.

The funny/sad part about computer science is that people don't want to understand the costs of customization and sales/management/marketing forever want it as a differentiator.

SQL could have eliminated us from the flow of many niches as easily as the spreadsheet did from business operations. I think why it didn't has more to do with market timing.

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

#547

Post by Aperocky »

asah wrote: post #465

First off, there's a lot of people shooting off their mouths - ignore anyone who hasn't used ChatGPT extensively: it takes some training to learn to use it. Several senior developer friends have been using ChatGPT quite a bit and it seems to work well in lots of places: - isolated algorithms and fiddly bits - it writes complex SQL statements in seconds, for example. LLMs should makes quick work of fussy config files.…

> Professional developers will recognize that we're talking 50-90% of the LABOR-HOURS

More like 20-30% at max. And it's not including debugging the output of chatGPT, which I've found that it has been making subtle mistakes - which will probably take away all of the time gained.

Writing code isn't the biggest time sink, figuring out what to write is.

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

#548

Post by karaterobot »

chrsw wrote: post #500

The title this post makes it seem like John Carmarck is concerned about AI making CS jobs obsolete. But that's not at all what this is. This is someone else asking Carmack about his thoughts on this topic.

Right, and his response is, while not quite the exact opposite of the title, tangential to it at best. He says that programming has only ever been a tool to create software for humans, so just studying programming as an abstract concept detached from product skills is not advised. He does not say CS jobs will be obsolete in the future — if I can read into it a little, he's implying that the completely theoretical CS approach has never been the right path anyway, and AI will make that more obvious.

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

#549

Post by htag »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #532
asah wrote: post #465

First off, there's a lot of people shooting off their mouths - ignore anyone who hasn't used ChatGPT extensively: it takes some training to learn to use it. Several senior developer friends have been using ChatGPT quite a bit and it seems to work well in lots of places: - isolated algorithms and fiddly bits - it writes complex SQL statements in seconds, for example. LLMs should makes quick work of fussy config files.…

I’m sure my org isn’t unique, but we are constantly at max capacity and we have no money to hire new people. We have projects in the queue that will keep us occupied for years. I don’t think even a 50-90% speed up will lead to lay offs. We will just finally be able to get more shit done.

The backlog grows at a faster pace than the company completes work. The backlog is never meant to be completed. Your job security is not based on having a long well groomed backlog.

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

#550

Post by ghaff »

thuuuomas wrote: post #455
josephg wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that’s true?

Human managers (who are good at their jobs) bring a little Bedside Manner, a modicum of compassion to Human Resource Allocation that will soon be seen as a luxury compared to low-cost, fully-automated Human Resource Monitoring & Reinforcement Systems

Good managers shield their reports from a lot of the crap that is inevitable at scale in a large organization. A large company can't just have individuals and small self-managed teams go off and do whatever they feel like. And, yes, if you just cut out all the intermediate layers, the VP with 150 direct reports will simply have to resort to automation based on simplistic metrics. "You didn't produce enough lines of code last week. If that happens again, you will be placed on a performance plan and then terminated if the situation doesn't improve in 2 months."
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