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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

#521

Post by mewpmewp2 »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #503
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be an indication for passion, but not knowing them does not indicate lack of it. The thing is there are unfathomable amount of such things to learn, and if somebody doesn't stumble upon them or won't spend time with them it doesn't indicate lack of it.

I'm sorry but bitwise operators are the most fundamental aspect of how computing works. If you don't understand these things it does indicate a lack of passion, at least in regards to programming and computation. Bitwise operators are not a particularly complex topic and extend from the basics of how logic is implement in a computer system. Personally I think ever one interested in programming should have, at least o…

Guess I have a lack of passion then, despite building countless of full stack side projects and what-not even before I knew these could make me money at my teenage years. I started out with PHP using txt files as storage in my teens so none of what you said would be relevant to what I've experienced, and that was I would say almost 20 years ago. And in my high school years I took part of coding competitions where I scored high nationally without knowing any of bitwise or otherwise things, despite deeply enjoying those things.

This weird elitism drives me mad, but maybe truly I haven't done enough to prove my worthiness in this arena. Maybe PHP or JavaScript is not true programming.

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

#522

Post by rachofsunshine »

Aeolun wrote: post #469
rachofsunshine wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Just" is doing a lot of work in that question.

Your framing is someone making the immediate assumption that any failure derives from barriers beyond their control. And I agree, that's just as incorrect as assuming that any failure is due to barriers beyond their control. (It's also really demotivating.) But I think your framing is overly judgmental, because in fact most people who struggle at something have tried many times not to, they just haven't succeeded.

When speaking of other people, you often do not have good context on what they have or haven't tried. They have enormous context that you don't, often context that would be difficult or possible for you to understand from the outside even if you did have it. And to confidently judge that they just don't care without that context, without any awareness of what they have or haven't done, assumes way too much.

For me, doing advanced mathematics is easier than not feeling self-conscious when I talk to a grocery store clerk. Founding a company is easier than reliably keeping the clutter off of my desk. Walking many miles is easier than doing a push-up. I could explain to you why these things make sense within my particular context, but it would take many, many pages of trying to tell you who I am to do that. If you were to judge that I don't care about not being socially awkward, or that I don't care about having a clean room, you would be wrong - those things are just harder for me than they are for for the average person, and I choose (implicitly or explicitly) to put my efforts elsewhere.

I don't think that recognizing that is accepting mediocrity. I believe in excellence a great deal! But I think that if you want to seek excellence, you have to do it in ways that recognize what you are. Most of the time, you have to work with what you are and figure out ways to make that work. Once in a great while, something about what you are is so fundamentally at odds with what you want that you have to, at tremendous effort, change yourself. But the latter isn't something you can do every day or in every way.

"I've tried, so it's forever impossible" isn't the position I'm arguing for. The position I'm arguing for is: "I've tried, and it was very difficult, maybe more difficult for me than it is for you. I'm a human being whose resources and motivation (and judgment!) are finite, so I had to make a choice between working on this very hard thing and working on something else or taking some time to recuperate, and this time I decided some other option was better."

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

#523

Post by rachofsunshine »

tway_GdBRwW wrote: post #463
rachofsunshine wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 obs…

Yeah, this is one of the best arguments against timed interview problems, and I do think it's a good one. You could justifiably argue for a lot of other structures, but those structures do come with their own trade-offs (like time investment for a take-home, or "game-ability" for a behavioral interview, etc).

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

#524

Post by htrp »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #336
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…

> whether the decline in IT worker quality I think it entirely has to do with a generation of software people getting into the field (understandably) because it makes them a lot of money, rather than because they're passionate about software. These, by-and-large, are mediocre technical people and they tend to hire other mediocre technical people. When I look around at many of the newer startups that are popping up th…

> I think it entirely has to do with a generation of software people getting into the field (understandably) because it makes them a lot of money, rather than because they're passionate about software. These, by-and-large, are mediocre technical people and they tend to hire other mediocre technical people.

It also goes back to if you're passionate about the technology, you'll be willing to spend a weekend learning something new vs just doing the bare minimum to check off this week's sprint goals.

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

#525

Post by brandall10 »

throwup238 wrote: post #452
brandall10 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot isn't particular useful. At best it comes up with small snippets that may or may not be correct, and rarely can I get larger chunks of code that would be working out of the gate. But Claude Sonnet 3.5 w/ Cursor or Continue.dev is a dramatic improvement. When you have discrete control over the context (ie. being able to select 6-7 files to inject), and with the superior ability of Claude, it is an absolute gam…

> I wouldn't expect nearly the same boost coming at less than senior exp. though, as you have to be quite detailed at what you actually want, and often take the initial solution - which is usually working code - and refine it a half dozen times into something that you feel is ideal and well factored. Agreed. I feel like coding with AI is distilling the process back to the CS fundamentals of data structures and algori…

The one thing I'm a little concerned about is my ability as an engineer.

I don't know if I'm losing or improving my skillset. This exercise of development has become almost entirely one of design and architecture, and reading more than writing code.

Maybe this doesn't matter if this is the way software is developed moving forward, and I'm certainly not complaining in working on a 2 person startup

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

#526

Post by keybored »

throwaway314155 wrote: post #292
layer8 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’ve misunderstood the GP. They are saying AI is useful to seniors for tasks that would otherwise be tedious, but doing those tedious tasks by hand would be formative for juniors, and it is detrimental to their growth when they do them using AI.

Ah yeah you're right. In my defense, that sentence reads ambiguously without a couple of re-reads. There's a (not actually) implied double negative in there, or something, which threw me off. Thanks for pointing it out with words instead of downvotes.

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

#527

Post by throwaway314155 »

keybored wrote: post #526
throwaway314155 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yeah you're right. In my defense, that sentence reads ambiguously without a couple of re-reads. There's a (not actually) implied double negative in there, or something, which threw me off. Thanks for pointing it out with words instead of downvotes.

[flagged]

[flagged]

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

#528

Post by michaelteter »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #352
michaelteter wrote: post #350

ChatGPT and to a lesser degree Copilot have been very valuable to me this year. Copilot often saves me a lot of typing on a 1-3 line scope, occasionally surprising me with exactly what I was about to write on a 5-10 line scope. It’s really good during rearrangement and early refactoring (as you are building a new thing and changing your mind as you go about code organization). ChatGPT, or “Jimmy” - as I like to call…

It saved you 2-3 months over a 5 months period? Unless one is an absolutely terrible developer working on incredibly simple problems, this is simply impossible.

I've been doing a lot of new things lately and using some tech I hadn't used before (or lately... and much has changed).

Being able to ask for an example of something in that domain, and get a useful answer, is much, much faster than hunting down the current documentation (which may be thin or non-existent).

Also being able to say, "I do X in this language. What is the idiomatic way of doing it in Y language?"

My pretty broad knowledge can be directed, with careful wording, at ChatGPT, and ChatGPT is the relative domain expert who can get me quite close to a correct solution very quickly.

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

#529

Post by 1dom »

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…

All fair points. (Although I'm not a fan of the climbing analogy, the joy of programming is that you can practice anything you want without risk of real harm, and I think that's what makes unicorn-like programmers: they've repeatedly done the equivalent of free solo El Capitan practice in their spare time and lived to to tell the tail.)

I think it's help to consider excellence in the context of principals and practice. Everyone should be aiming for excellent principals for their domain and environment. But the practice that implements the principals needs to be specific to the capabilities.

E.g. I think in principal, any company with any tech should have backups, and ideally the ability to rebuild after a disaster. If you have a team of unicorn engineers ("company A"), the principals might be put into practice by meticulously tight and efficient SDLC and accompanying pipelines, tooling and other scripts and automations. If you have only one very competent engineer ("company B"), but a huge bunch of traditional ops people, that principal might have to be put into practice with a more manual, basic process (Bob from accounting once a week makes a copy of the important spreadsheets on a CD and stores it in a fireproof safe at home.)

Both businesses can deliver excellent and reliable service for their customers because they implement excellent principals in a way that their employees can deal with.

Swap company A and company B's practice, and even though it's for the same excellent principal, everything falls apart. I think we're in agreement here.

It's an uncomfortable truth that - on average - 50% of environments are company B. There's a problem that 90% of companies want their practices to look like company A. Nobody wants to feel mediocre.

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