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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

#111

Post by not_the_fda »

If you have been getting by as a developer by searching stack overflow, then yes, gpt will replace you.

That's all these AI tools are, better stack overflow searches. They have no ability to know what is correct or what is wrong, it lacks judgement, which is one of the most important skills to have as a software engineer.

Engineering is about solving problems, these tools can't solve problems, they can regurgitate solutions to problems they have been trained on, often times confidently incorrectly, which is much worse than saying "I don't know".

They can't extract requirements from the client to find out what they really want.

They completely fail at moderately hard problems, or novel problems.

I think these tools may be worse for the industry because people will have less opportunity to learn problem solving skills since the AI will handle to easy stuff, and when the hard stuff come along, people won't have the skills to solve them.

For those with the good problem solving skills, AI isn't a threat. There will always be work for solving hard problems, making judgements, and trade offs, actual thinking.

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

#112

Post by lasagna_coder »

cudgy wrote: post #110
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…

Most developers trust and use libraries that they do not understand or bother perusing, so most will likely accept the ai generated code for the most part without much inspection too.

You're missing the point.

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

#113

Post by IshKebab »

not_the_fda wrote: post #111

If you have been getting by as a developer by searching stack overflow, then yes, gpt will replace you. That's all these AI tools are, better stack overflow searches. They have no ability to know what is correct or what is wrong, it lacks judgement, which is one of the most important skills to have as a software engineer. Engineering is about solving problems, these tools can't solve problems, they can regurgitate so…

> That's all these AI tools are, better stack overflow searches. They have no ability to know what is correct or what is wrong, it lacks judgement, which is one of the most important skills to have as a software engineer.

I keep seeing this idea, but have you actually used it? It clearly has the ability to problem solve. It's not just copying and pasting solutions.

Ok granted it's not especially good at it yet and the bullshitting problem is a real issue, but how long do you think that will remain unsolved?

I think where it will continue to struggle is niche domains that aren't on the internet a lot, e.g. hardware design. But if you're writing CRUD apps all day you should be worried!

Or at least brace for your job description to change from "Software Developer" to "Prompt Developer and AI Output Verification".

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

#114

Post by crop_rotation »

RivieraKid wrote: post #90

I'm definitely very worried mainly because I still have several years until even "lean" financial independence. Thinking about switching to a better paid job and / or starting a side-project that would be able to generate semi-passive income. I'm surprised the majority of devs don't see this as a threat. Check out r/cscareerquestions or r/programming, the general mood is people ridiculing the prospects of AI having i…

Other than "ridiculing the prospects of AI having impact on jobs / wages", what option do most programmers have. Most people do not have an option of a job change, or to cope with the new reality of the end of the high compensation age (soon, doesn't have to be in 2023). Accepting that the AI will soon(not exactly right now) restructure the industry doesn't help. Hence most people like to pretend it will just make some small impact and focus on living their life.

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

#115

Post by crop_rotation »

querez wrote: post #50

As an AI researcher: don't forget that we're at the peak of the hype-trend: a lot of what LLMs can do looks extremely impressive, but most of it falls apart on more detailed inspection. Unless you ask about mundane things, they will tend to get a lot of tiny (and not so tiny) details wrong. At the very best, these systems will allow us to automate some boiler plate things, but they're not good enough to do complicate…

There is no comparison with bitcoin here. Bitcoin is still struggling to find a single legitimate use case, while GPT4 is already proving so useful to so many people (including me).

> What you're seeing now is as good as it gets (in terms of big breakthroughs, there will still be lots of small and medium ones).

Unless you have a strong source for this, I find it hard to believe. Also, GPT3 didn't have many big breakthroughs over GPT2, other than massive parameter size.

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

#116

Post by John23832 »

ilaksh wrote: post #82
John23832 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure but it did make calculators and computers obsolete. My mom was a computer in a bank. That was the name of her job.

Does your mom lament the fact that she is no longer a computer? Has she been jobless since?

Society evolves just at the available jobs do, due to technology.

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

#117

Post by John23832 »

crop_rotation wrote: post #95
John23832 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shoul…

There is a large gulf between “LLM’s making my skills less valuable” (which I don’t even think is the case) and being jobless, not able to make a living.

The OP is not going to be jobless anytime soon if they have the skills that they say they do. Hell. Someone with less knowledge who just leans on a LLM isn’t as capable. HUMAN experience is valuable.

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

#118

Post by cudgy »

creshal wrote: post #99
cudgy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No code/low code may increase demand for the software frameworks that empower the domain experts, but this does not mean it increases the demand for professional software developers.

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

#119

Post by tome »

IshKebab wrote: post #113
not_the_fda wrote: post #111

If you have been getting by as a developer by searching stack overflow, then yes, gpt will replace you. That's all these AI tools are, better stack overflow searches. They have no ability to know what is correct or what is wrong, it lacks judgement, which is one of the most important skills to have as a software engineer. Engineering is about solving problems, these tools can't solve problems, they can regurgitate so…

> That's all these AI tools are, better stack overflow searches. They have no ability to know what is correct or what is wrong, it lacks judgement, which is one of the most important skills to have as a software engineer. I keep seeing this idea, but have you actually used it? It clearly has the ability to problem solve. It's not just copying and pasting solutions. Ok granted it's not especially good at it yet and th…

> Ok granted it's not especially good at it yet and the bullshitting problem is a real issue, but how long do you think that will remain unsolved?

I'm curious why some people seem to think it's going to be solved imminently. The last 1% is always the hardest (by far)!

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

#120

Post by crop_rotation »

John23832 wrote: post #117
crop_rotation wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shoul…

There is a large gulf between “LLM’s making my skills less valuable” (which I don’t even think is the case) and being jobless, not able to make a living. The OP is not going to be jobless anytime soon if they have the skills that they say they do. Hell. Someone with less knowledge who just leans on a LLM isn’t as capable. HUMAN experience is valuable.

The OP may not become jobless, but would lose motivation to learn more (same as a recent post on HN about a designer demotivated due to their work now centred around midjourney).

As an analogy, people in robot (I use the term in a loose way for machines) assisted warehouse find the work far worse than one without robots, because the job becomes soulless and centred around the robots, making it much less fulfilling.

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