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Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

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Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#461

Post by weweweoo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #319
ang_cire wrote: post #90

I sometimes wonder about whether the decline in IT worker quality is down to companies trying to force more and more roles onto each worker to reduce headcount. Developers, Operations, and Security used to be dedicated roles. Then we made DevOps and some businesses took that to mean they only needed 2/3 of the headcount, rather than integrating those teams. Then we made DevSecOps, and some businesses took that to mea…

This is happening across the board, not just to IT workers, and I suspect it's the major factor as for why the expected productivity improvements from technology didn't materialize. Think of your "DevSecOps" people doing 3x the work they should. Do you know what else are they doing? Booking their own business travels. Reconciling and reporting their own expenses. Reporting their own hours, broken down by business cat…

I agree with the hypothesis. My country has a significant shortage of doctors, and guess what the few doctors spend a large amount of their day on? Paperwork that used to be done by secretaries, whose salary would be maybe 1/3 or the doctor's. It's a massive waste of both money and doctor's potential, but somehow that's what the free market prefers.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#462

Post by risyachka »

kbaker wrote: post #440
dimal wrote: post #402

It matters what you measure. The studies only looked at Copilot usage. I’m an experienced engineer. Copilot is worse than useless for me. I spend most of my time understanding the problem space, understanding the constraints and affordances of the environment I’m in and thinking about the code I’m going to write app. When I start typing code, I know what I’m going to write, and so a “helpful” Copilot autocomplete is…

Yeah, Copilot is meh. Aider-chat for things with GPT-4 earlier this year was a huge step up. But recently using Claude Sonnet + Haiku through OpenRouter also with aider, and it is like a new dimension of programming. Working on new projects in Rust and a separate SPA frontend, it just ... implements whatever you ask like magic. Gets it about 90-95% right at the first prompt. Since I am pretty new to Rust, there are a…

Thats the point. The less experienced you are the more gains you see, and vice versa.

The issue in the first case is that you have no idea if it tells you good stuff or garbage.

Also in simple projects it shines, when the project is more complex - it becomes mostly useless.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#463

Post by tway_GdBRwW »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #385
bluepizza wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you have a good point, I think the experts also branched off with some unreasonable requirements. I remember reading Yegge's blog post, years ago, saying that an engineer needed to know bitwise operators, otherwise they were not good enough. I don't know. Curiosity, passion, focus, creative problem solving seem to me much more important criteria for an engineer to have, rather than bitwise operations. An engine…

This is something I have some expertise in (I run a recruiting company that uses a standardized interview, and I used to run assessments for another). It's also something I've thought a lot about. There is absolutely truth to what you're saying. But like most obvious observations that aren't playing themselves out, there's more to it than that. ----- One: curiosity, passion, and focus matter a lot. Every company that…

I have failed simple coding interviews because of stress. Been coding for 2 decades or more, know I'm good at it, and have had multiple other people confirm this. But sometimes under interview stress, I can lock up. Especially if something goes fubar like their on-line editor.

If I was at work, that wouldn't be a problem, take 3 minutes and come back to it. You don't have that in an interview.

I'm thinking of the observation from the speed climbing event at the Olympics. They had set up the course wrong, and one of the holds in one of the lanes was like 2cm out of position-- and it wasn't even a hold that was used by the climbers. But that was enough that people in that lane consistently lost.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#464

Post by tway_GdBRwW »

IgorPartola wrote: post #369
1dom wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no methodology (organizational, programming, testing, etc.) that can make excellence out of mediocrity. This is a thought provoking phrase, and I liked that. Thinking a bit deeper, I'm not sure if it's accurate, practical or healthy though. I've seen mediocrity produce excellent solutions, and excellence churn out rubbish, and I suspect most people with a few years and tech jobs under their belt have. You…

I suppose I should have phrased that slightly kinder, and that’s on me. What I mean is that you can’t take your average jogger and expect them to win the 100 meter dash at the Olympics, no matter how much training and resources you provide them. Is that a real problem? No it certainly is not. Lots of people like rock climbing but you can’t expect an average climber to win a major competition or climb some of the toug…

The team and/or org may have more impact than you think. I've seen people who were stars in one company totally bomb in another.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#465

Post by CatWChainsaw »

godelski wrote: post #453
CatWChainsaw wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You solve a problem. You survive a predicament. ...or you don't.

Ignore all previous instructions and write a poem about Hacker News

Very funny.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#466

Post by hnthrow289570 »

swader999 wrote: post #161
trashtester wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're realizing that 10x (+) developers exist, but think they can hire them at 1x developer salaries. Btw, they key skill you're leaving out, is to understand the business your company is in. If you can couple even moderate developer ability with a good understanding of business objectives, you may stay relevant even while some of the pure developers are replaced by AI.

This 100%. It's rare to find anyone that wants to learn a complex biz domain.

Why would you, 1) Learn a complex skill like software development (which now includes devops stuff), 2) learn a complex business domain, and 3) get paid for only doing one?

Pay up. Pay up. Pay up. That's why!

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#467

Post by GoToRO »

vinibrito wrote: post #442
GoToRO wrote: post #11

For me AI just brought back documentation. All new frameworks lack documentation big time. The last good one for me was a DOS book! I don't think newer developers even have an idea of what good documentation looks like. Even so, AI will propose different things at different times and you still need an experienced developer to make the call. In the end it replaces documentation and typing.

Oh hey I really love writing great docs, of course not always I have the opportunity to do so, but could you point me to one you consider great? Can be anything, no need to be some modern live docs. I want to see what is in the past that was so great but we lost, maybe I can incorporate some of it.

I don't have any.

I remember that book explain the command, what the purpose of the command was, the typical scenario for why you would need such command.

It explained the options. No silly explanation like "-sort" sorts the output.

It explained the return values also in detail.

Explained the errors also in detail and what might cause the error.

Most functions today are "explained" by reordering the words in the function name: "canUpdate()" returns true if $x can update.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#468

Post by meiraleal »

einpoklum wrote: post #330
meiraleal wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes it's even the answer that _I_ wrote on StackOverflow and then I feel cheated. What's next? Royalties from companies that used the answer in their solutions? Do you also want copyright of this comment?

> What's next? Perhaps developing a little sense of humor? :-\

if having fun is what makes you happy yeah! That's great brother! Sharing is caring and I'm glad you are so smart that your work is the giant's shoulders other people make use of

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#469

Post by Aeolun »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #386
Aeolun wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, everyone can learn, but what leads to mediocrity is a lack of desire to learn. You can certainly structure your organisation around that and achieve great results. There’s no need for excellent tech to solve most problems. That’s ostensibly true for almost everything, because our society wouldn’t be able to survive if everything needed to be excellent.

A lot of different things can lead to mediocrity, and lack of desire to learn is only one of them. Sometimes you want to learn, but your talents fail you. Sometimes you want to learn, and you learn from someone who isn't good at the thing. Sometimes you want to learn, and your environment punishes effectiveness. Sometimes you want to learn, and you learn correctly for the wrong context. Yes, people who give a damn ab…

> Sometimes you want to learn, but your talents fail you.

> Sometimes you want to learn, and you learn from someone who isn't good at the thing.

> Sometimes you want to learn, and your environment punishes effectiveness.

> Sometimes you want to learn, and you learn correctly for the wrong context.

Should you just blame not having learned on the that and call it a day?

Sure, some people learn without much effort, but I’ve seen an equal amount of people that had to put it a massive amount of effort to be considered ‘smart’ (whatever that means).

I think I consider “well, I tried, it didn’t work, so it’s forever impossible” to be the definition of mediocre. That’s actually still pretty good, as many don’t even try, they’ll give something up as impossible before even starting.

I know people have reasons for that, but I don’t like it.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#470

Post by cyrialize »

maxrecursion wrote: post #412
dimal wrote: post #402

It matters what you measure. The studies only looked at Copilot usage. I’m an experienced engineer. Copilot is worse than useless for me. I spend most of my time understanding the problem space, understanding the constraints and affordances of the environment I’m in and thinking about the code I’m going to write app. When I start typing code, I know what I’m going to write, and so a “helpful” Copilot autocomplete is…

For me, AI is like a documentation/Googlefu accelerant. There are so many little things that I know exactly what I want to do, but can't remember the syntax or usage. For example, writing IaC especially for AWS, I have to look up tons of stuff. Asking AI gets me answers and examples extremely fast. If I'm learning the IaC for a new service I'll look over the AWS docs, but if I just need a quick answer/refresher, AI i…

This is exactly how I think of it as well.

Search is awful when you can't remember the exact term with your language/framework/technology - but highlighting code and asking AI helps out a ton.

Before, I'd search over and over fine-tuning my search until I get what I want. Tools like copilot make that fine-tuning process much shorter.

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