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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

#91

Post by cudgy »

mikewarot wrote: post #29
soco wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how can the future architect get there, if going through the junior stages is suddenly not an option anymore. Because those all-understanding software architects don't just pop into existence.

There are new accountants being minted all the time, spreadsheets didn't stop that. Artists didn't stop because the camera made it possible to do what otherwise took hours with a canvas and oils. The nature of programming may change, but it's still about using computers to solve problems. --- Putting on the old guy hat --- You kids didn't learn programming from magazine articles typing in your favorite little game in…

> You kids didn't learn programming from magazine articles typing in your favorite little game into a computer that went away when you powered it off. You didn't have to toggle in a boot loader before you could use the computer. You didn't dream of one day having a modem and being able to call BBSs, then dream of your own phone line that you didn't have to share. Yet, ya'll turned out ok, despite all those changes.

This was at the beginning of the software revolution. Growth of the industry was huge and fast. Entrants into the field were virtually guaranteed a decent career with little competition and almost no automation.

Those days are over. We are dealing with a relatively mature industry now with a new ai tool that is limited by hardware processing power instead of more biological beings. Low level / beginning programming skills will no longer be needed and experienced programmers will evolve into roles that will drive the ai tools at a high level to create solutions, occasionally debug tricky issues that the ai created, and implement code that the ai is unable to generate properly. The last task is the one that will determine the remaining role of the human developer.

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

#92

Post by ilaksh »

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.…

I don't think employment is a good option at this point. It's more about producing something valuable (or just popular) by leveraging the AI tools.

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

#93

Post by exar0815 »

Well, sure. That's because most Software "Engineers" are one-trick-ponys. Many already getting uncomfortable when they have to switch language paradigms. Hyper-Specialized in one set of abilities completely documented and human-defined without any interaction with non-deterministic systems.

That's why I always tend to laugh at the self-awarded "Engineer". Most of you aren't. Not by a long shot. Engineers in the classical sense need to think in much more dimensions. Try developing modern electronics. Analog and digital electronics, high speed and high frequency electronics, embedded develpment while debugging both software and hardware in tandem. The odd EMC problem backfiring into your software. Adding mechanical engineering and thermal management, notwithstanding supply chain management.

Nothing I have seen from an AI comes even close. Hell, haven't even seen an AI autorouter that's worth a second look. And that's already working in a constrained solvespace.

TLDR: If you're not a one-trick-code-vomiter, you'll be fine.

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

#94

Post by nprateem »

ilaksh wrote: post #87
nprateem wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to create an AWS IAM policy restricted to assumed roles. I didn't know you can't use assumed roles in principalArn conditions blocks but must refer to the IAM role instead. Gpt4 happily wasted an hour by shuffling the conditions around etc instead of telling me this. Sometimes it's policies were even malformed, and in all cases they didn't work.

Did you try giving GPT4 the relevant documentation akong with your query?

Without wanting to sound arsey, why should I have to? If I'd had the relevant docs to hand I wouldn't have needed it.

This is the problem IMO. The model needs to somehow learn that out of its entire training set, the single sentence in the AWS docs saying not to use the assumed role ARN takes precedence over any patterns it may have learnt elsewhere in this specific situation.

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

#95

Post by crop_rotation »

John23832 wrote: post #66
crop_rotation wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The OP spoke about personal development, not wage and market value. I would advise everyone to "work to live" not "live to work". > If you are an expert in some area and suddenly everyone else catches up almost, it will surely impact your wages. Find something that compels you and don't be a wage slave. That used to be what programmers did.

Being entertained compels a lot of people. You can't make a living doing it. Programmers had the luxury to talk of passion projects because you could find something you liked and still made good money (Again talking of the average programmer, quoting one extreme side would be neither here nor there). People don't work in warehouses because if compels them.

If all the things that compel you don't make money, you should introspect instead of thinking about the glory days of what programmers did.

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

#96

Post by jstx1 »

cvhashim04 wrote: post #8

We’ll all be prompt engineers just tweaking code the bot spits out to meet requirements.

There's something about "prompt engineer" that I really dislike. It's not like right now we're "google and stackoverflow engineers". Titles should be about the same in the future, who cares what tool you use to get your job done.

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

#98

Post by crop_rotation »

astronads wrote: post #79
crop_rotation wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What makes medical profession immune? I see this area as ripe for AI disruption. Analyzing symptoms and providing suggested medicine, tailoring dosage based on your individual vitals, analyzing data/imagery to diagnose you with diseases, all kinds of automation and speed ups for processing patient data, etc.

The same thing that has prevented self driving cars from taking the roads, i.e. that errors can be fatal. That and doctors are better unionised and won't easily let a machine practice medicine. There are all kinds of laws which necessitate the presence of a licensed medical professional in various steps of treatment. Software has neither of these cushions.

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

#99

Post by creshal »

cudgy wrote: post #91
mikewarot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are new accountants being minted all the time, spreadsheets didn't stop that. Artists didn't stop because the camera made it possible to do what otherwise took hours with a canvas and oils. The nature of programming may change, but it's still about using computers to solve problems. --- Putting on the old guy hat --- You kids didn't learn programming from magazine articles typing in your favorite little game in…

> You kids didn't learn programming from magazine articles typing in your favorite little game into a computer that went away when you powered it off. You didn't have to toggle in a boot loader before you could use the computer. You didn't dream of one day having a modem and being able to call BBSs, then dream of your own phone line that you didn't have to share. Yet, ya'll turned out ok, despite all those changes. T…

We've already seen much of this development pre-AI with the rise of no code / low code platforms. Even if you manage to put this particular genie back into the bottle, there's no escaping the increasing automation of programming.

And so far it only increased the demand for software, because for anyone outside software development, cheaper software just means you can leverage your budget to get better faster.

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

#100

Post by soco »

cudgy wrote: post #91
mikewarot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are new accountants being minted all the time, spreadsheets didn't stop that. Artists didn't stop because the camera made it possible to do what otherwise took hours with a canvas and oils. The nature of programming may change, but it's still about using computers to solve problems. --- Putting on the old guy hat --- You kids didn't learn programming from magazine articles typing in your favorite little game in…

> You kids didn't learn programming from magazine articles typing in your favorite little game into a computer that went away when you powered it off. You didn't have to toggle in a boot loader before you could use the computer. You didn't dream of one day having a modem and being able to call BBSs, then dream of your own phone line that you didn't have to share. Yet, ya'll turned out ok, despite all those changes. T…

I'm not sure how the current (or last year's) trend of "don't go to useless college just take this bootcamp" will fare in face of the AI revolution. because I have the impression those bootcamps only teach the technology du jour, none of which teaching those high-level solutions you are hinting about. So yes I also think there will be a need for computer people, just much less "programmers".
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