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Devin: AI Software Engineer

cognition-labs.com

141–150 of 604 posts

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#141
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if we can redistribute the AI-generated surplus, this will still be a net-win for us all. We can't.

Like, due to lack of political willpower? Or do you see some fundamental limitation of, say, an automation tax?

>if we can redistribute the AI-generated surplus, this will still be a net-win for us all.

which historical technological development that hugely improved productivity do you feel has led to an improved universal social safety net / public investment in whatever country you're from?

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got a good point here. I've wondered about this at times. Like, what if we can't find a way to advance these agents much beyond where Devin is now? What if they can't consume a code base and make meaningfully high quality additions to them reliably, so they're essentially stuck as novice/intermediate developers? This seems nice(ish) for someone like me with a senior title and experience (~15 years), but totall…

While it certainly make you, the individual, less productive because you've been replaced by a machine, it still makes society more productive. If replaced, you essentially were the misallocated capital: capital paying your salary was inefficient compared to that same salary paying a more productive AI. This means you will either have to find a way to become more efficient to compete against AI for developer jobs, or…

Or you will become a negative to society and not find another job. Perhaps be forced into negative elements like crime or hacking for a payday.

Many never recover and age makes a difference.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. We continually hear anxiety about technology leading to mass unemployment and it keeps not happening. Instead, workers tend to have higher productivity, which drives higher wages. Technological advancements transformed agriculture from being…

It's absolutely a win for society (in the longer term), but in the meantime a lot of people's lives were upended, devasted, and even ended due to the upheavel. Maybe we can avoid that this time, but I doubt it. You can't tell someone who's children are starving that it's all worth it.

[flagged]

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. We continually hear anxiety about technology leading to mass unemployment and it keeps not happening. Instead, workers tend to have higher productivity, which drives higher wages. Technological advancements transformed agriculture from being…

this of course conflats two entirely different things. 1) technology development has tended to hugely improve society-wide productivity and be a general (though not unmitigated) good. 2) technology development has been absolutely shit for many individuals as their careers disappear. people should be way more worried about good national governance and safety nets to deal with the terrible consequences of 2 while we re…

Too many people using the safety nets will cause them to collapse.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#145
post #73

As a developer but also product person, I keep trying to use AI to code for me. I keep failing, because of context length, because of shit output from the model, because of lack of any kind of architecture etc etc etc. I'm probably dumb as hell, because I just can't get it to do anything remotely useful, more than helping me with leetcode. Just yesterday I tried to feed it a simple HTML page to extract a selector, I…

I build a pretty popular LLM tool. I think learning when/how to use them is as big a mental hurdle as it was learning to google well or whether something is googlable or not. In the realm of coding here are a few things its really good at: - Translating code, generating cross language clients. I'll feed it a golang single file API backend and tell it to generate the typescript client for that. You can add hints like…

Just to answer to the turbo aspect, I've seen a big downgrade in quality when comparing 4 to 4-turbo, and even the new preview which is explicitly supposed to follow my instructions better. So I'm running a first pass through 4 and then combinging it with 4-turbo to take advantage of the larger context window and then running 4 on it again to get a better quality output.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#146

There is no way this is going to make it so that "engineers can focus on more interesting problems and engineering teams can strive for more ambitious goals." Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. I guess this is the future. We've coded ourselves out of a job. People are smiling an…

Something I kind of tell myself is that if AI effectively becomes a drop-in replacement for software engineers (or is at least 95% as good as the median one) it's going to suck because I lost my job and we've killed one of the few good careers that exist out there, but on the other hand, look at the big picture. I'm not even sure the "software" industry will exist. I mean, think about it. Rationally speaking, if peop…

Also, something else to consider, I kind of consider the automation of writing code not all that different from the automation of architectural and engineering drawings. No doubt some engineers were distraught when computers took the fun out of drawing, and professional draftsmen were devastated, but otherwise engineering is still viable enough as a career for parents to pressure their kids into studying it.

Perhaps a more realistic prediction of the future is that we start to identify a little more as designers, concerned more with the design of software and how it functions, rather than engineering concerns like making code performant and efficient.

I felt that software engineering as a career had a short shelf-life around 2020, but I wasn't too worried about it, as I figured I'd probably just transition to design as a career, I kind of think graphic design is cooler anyway. I began to have doubts about this plan once DALL-E caused an existential panic among illustrators, but otherwise I think it still has legs.

Those who adapt will probably do so by essentially becoming UI/UX designers who happen to also know how to code well, and probably know some other more general design skills just to round things out a little more.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#147

Humans seek work that provides satisfaction and meaning in their life. For every technological advancement, artisans are the first to be made obsolete. Sure we have landfills full of unworn textiles, the market says its good, but overall, we keep destroying what allows humans to seek meaning. Our governments and society have made it clear, if you don't produce value, you don't deserve dignity. We have outsourced art…

Buying handcrafted artisan stuff is a luxury few can afford. I come from a poor family and I was always grateful for mass produced mediocre stuff that we could actually afford.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I build a pretty popular LLM tool. I think learning when/how to use them is as big a mental hurdle as it was learning to google well or whether something is googlable or not. In the realm of coding here are a few things its really good at: - Translating code, generating cross language clients. I'll feed it a golang single file API backend and tell it to generate the typescript client for that. You can add hints like…

Just to answer to the turbo aspect, I've seen a big downgrade in quality when comparing 4 to 4-turbo, and even the new preview which is explicitly supposed to follow my instructions better. So I'm running a first pass through 4 and then combinging it with 4-turbo to take advantage of the larger context window and then running 4 on it again to get a better quality output.

You really need to try Opus. Try a provider that works across models (one in my bio).

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#149
post #73

As a developer but also product person, I keep trying to use AI to code for me. I keep failing, because of context length, because of shit output from the model, because of lack of any kind of architecture etc etc etc. I'm probably dumb as hell, because I just can't get it to do anything remotely useful, more than helping me with leetcode. Just yesterday I tried to feed it a simple HTML page to extract a selector, I…

I build a pretty popular LLM tool. I think learning when/how to use them is as big a mental hurdle as it was learning to google well or whether something is googlable or not. In the realm of coding here are a few things its really good at: - Translating code, generating cross language clients. I'll feed it a golang single file API backend and tell it to generate the typescript client for that. You can add hints like…

> Translating code, generating cross language clients

Can any convert a native iPhone app to an Android one?

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#150

There is no way this is going to make it so that "engineers can focus on more interesting problems and engineering teams can strive for more ambitious goals." Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. I guess this is the future. We've coded ourselves out of a job. People are smiling an…

If AI gets good enough to wholesale replace developers, that is amazing news for the world. It's basically AGI. Productivity and GDP growth would skyrocket, tax receipts will explode, gov debts will be paid off, etc.
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