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Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

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Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#51

Post by culopatin »

It just clicked to me that I can use this to speed up how much data I understand and intake. Instead of googling and stumbling through poorly written tutorials, or good ones that are just hard to understand, I can use gpt to get me to the answer faster.

Personal development should be about what you like to do. I like solving problems and building the solution myself, for which I need to learn new things, which is also enjoyable.

There were always other c++ devs out there, why did you choose to do it anyway?

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#52

Post by John23832 »

baq wrote: post #43
John23832 wrote: post #27

These GPT programs literally don't know what the code does (or the meaning of their output in general). They are Large Language Models. They just know (roughly) how to make responses in a particular language that make sense (english, C++, wingdings). They do not understand the "sense that is made" however. This requires subject matter experts, like yourself, to use and implement. These LLM are tools. They are not sen…

you're right, those things aren't sentient. but, they sure aren't markov chains, either. dismissing them as bags of numbers without agency is extremely shortsighted.

Strawman. I didn't dismiss anything as a bag of numbers. I described the scope of understanding of these models and what it would still require for these outputs to be usable in the real world.

However, as far as agency, these language models have none.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#54

Post by gundamdoubleO »

CalRobert wrote: post #13
andy_ppp wrote: post #10

AlphaZero ended human interest in Chess too didn't it.

If I were being paid to win chess matches I would certainly worry.

Why? Chess is more popular now than it has ever been and more people care about the human storylines and drama behind the players than the actual quality of their play, for better or for worse.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#55

Post by magicalhippo »

My day job involves working on a B2B CRUD-ish application, which is a market leader in a certain niche.

Almost all of the difficult problems I face when developing software is not from the code writing part.

It's things like deciphering what the customer needs, it's picking a good architecture for a new module or selecting an appropriate algorithm depending on various trade-offs, and figuring out how to integrate new features into existing in-production code with minimal disruptions.

While there certainly are exceptions, and if you're in a C++ shop chances are you're one of them, I'm pretty sure my job is quite typical in that sense.

As such, I feel my job disproportionately involves writing code. Some is superfluous, due to tool limitations. Some is not, it encodes intent and restrictions, but might still be trivial to write.

So I've long been wanting to write less code, to focus more on the difficult parts.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#56

Post by cabinguy »

michlim wrote: post #41
lasagna_coder wrote: post #19

Faster code writing still requires people who know what the code should do, what it should look like, etc, like you if it's true what you say you're capable of. It sounds like you sharpened the right skills: how the code should work, and didn't waste time, ie. practicing being faster with a keyboard. Now you're more a developer, and less a typist, that's all. We still use engineers to design bridges, despite much of…

I agree with this take. Moreover, it takes a seasoned software architect to verify that the code generated is correct, clean, and idiomatic. Someone still needs to shepherd the machine.

…today.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#57

Post by crop_rotation »

John23832 wrote: post #27

These GPT programs literally don't know what the code does (or the meaning of their output in general). They are Large Language Models. They just know (roughly) how to make responses in a particular language that make sense (english, C++, wingdings). They do not understand the "sense that is made" however. This requires subject matter experts, like yourself, to use and implement. These LLM are tools. They are not sen…

Whether the model "knows" something or not is irrelevant. It makes expert skills much less valuable. A big boon for individual productivity if you are not an expert in some field. What worries experts like the OP is their skills become much much less important. If you are an expert in some area and suddenly everyone else catches up almost, it will surely impact your wages.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#58

Post by crop_rotation »

Donald wrote: post #45
crop_rotation wrote: post #34

I have had similar reaction as you. It makes a lot of skills obsolete. I myself have been pondering the implications on the wider society. And I have found it to be great for almost all the problems I threw at it. To those saying it will enable them to solve more problems, yes that is correct. It will give everyone "wings", but once everyone has wings the industry will be so different in terms of wage and employment.…

What careers are you thinking of?

Government jobs for instance (if you live in a country where that is an option). Medical profession would also be immune for some time but med school is too hard of a switch in terms of time.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#59

Post by John23832 »

jon889 wrote: post #48
John23832 wrote: post #27

These GPT programs literally don't know what the code does (or the meaning of their output in general). They are Large Language Models. They just know (roughly) how to make responses in a particular language that make sense (english, C++, wingdings). They do not understand the "sense that is made" however. This requires subject matter experts, like yourself, to use and implement. These LLM are tools. They are not sen…

They don't have to be sentient. It doesn't need to be better at creating software than humans. It needs to be cheap and good enough. Most apps and websites are pretty similar, eg, blogs, storefronts. We have whitelabel apps and websites already, they're about to become a lot more customisable by a lot more people. It's the same as IKEA, it's not as good quality as a handcrafted table from the 1800s. But it works well…

The OP was describing their work on network code, not whitelabel websites. The work of making whitelabel websites was already hollowed out by firms in cheap markets (India, SE Asia).

A calculator didn't make mathematicians obsolete. It aided in the creation of more complex mathematicians.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#60

Post by scotty79 »

crop_rotation wrote: post #36
nprateem wrote: post #6

I wouldn't worry. It's code output is 50% garbage. I'm not in fear of my job. All the hypsters assuming this will destroy lawyers, accountants, doctors etc clearly don't understand correctness isn't something they can just tag on to a prediction machine.

Can you show me sample prompts where GPT4 gives garbage? I am yet to find one.

Ask it to show you an example of how to use nom parser in Rust and try to compile and run the example.

Try a few times and ask for more complex example.

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