AI Is Making Developers Dumb
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Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb
#2"Some people might not enjoy writing their own code. If that’s the case, as harsh as it may seem, I would say that they’re trying to work in a field that isn’t for them."
I've tolerated writing my own code for decades. Sometimes I'm pleased with it. Mostly it's the abstraction standing between me and my idea. I like to build things, the faster the better. As I have the ideas, I like to see them implemented as efficiently and cleanly as possible, to my specifications.
I've embraced working with LLMs. I don't know that it's made me lazier. If anything, it inspires me to start when I feel in a rut. I'll inevitably let the LLM do its thing, and then them being what they are, I will take over and finish the job my way. I seem to be producing more product than I ever have.
I've worked with people and am friends with a few of these types; they think their code and methodologies are sacrosanct. That if the AI moves in there is no place for them. I got into the game for creativity, it's why I'm still here, and I see no reason to select myself for removal from the field. The tools, the syntax, its all just a means to an end.
Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb
#3LLMs also take away the motivation from students to properly concentrate and deeply understand a technical problem (including but not limited to coding problems); instead, they copy, paste and move on without understanding. The electronic calculator analogy might be appropriate: it's a tool appropriate once you have learned how to do the calculations by hand.
In an experiment (six months long, twice repeated, so a one-year study), we gave business students ChatGPT and a data science task to solve that they did not have the background for (develop a sentiment analysis classifier for German-language recommendations of medical practices). With their electronic "AI" helper, they could find a solution, but the scary thing is they did not acquire any knowledge on the way, as exist interviews clearly demonstrated.
As a friend commented, "these language models should never have been made available to the general public", only to researchers.
Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb
#4LLMs also take away the motivation from students to properly concentrate and deeply understand a technical problem (including but not limited to coding problems); instead, they copy, paste and move on without understanding. The electronic calculator analogy might be appropriate: it's a tool appropriate once you have learned how to do the calculations by hand. In an experiment (six months long, twice repeated, so a on…
What do you think is the big difference between these tools and calculators?
Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb
#5I've had a similar experience. I built out a feature using an LLM and then found the library it must have been "taking" the code from, so what I ended up was a much worse mangled version of what already existed, had I taken the time to properly research. I've now fully gone back to just getting it to prototype functions for me in-editor based off comments, and I do the rest. Setting up AI pipelines with rule files and stuff takes all the fun away and feels like extremely daunting work I can't bring myself to do. I would much rather just code than act as a PM for a junior that will mess up constantly.
When the LLM heinously gets it wrong 2, 3, 4 times in a row, I feel a genuine rage bubbling that I wouldn't get otherwise. It's exhausting. I expect within the next year or two this will get a lot easier and the UX better, but I'm not seeing how. Maybe I lack vision.
Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb
#6LLMs also take away the motivation from students to properly concentrate and deeply understand a technical problem (including but not limited to coding problems); instead, they copy, paste and move on without understanding. The electronic calculator analogy might be appropriate: it's a tool appropriate once you have learned how to do the calculations by hand. In an experiment (six months long, twice repeated, so a on…
What do you think is the big difference between these tools and calculators?
Calculators do not accept ambiguous instructions and they work 100% of the time.
Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb
#7Here is a disturbing look at what the absolute knobs at Y Combinator (and elsewhere) are preaching/pushing, with commentary from Primeagen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riyh_CIshTs
Watch the whole thing, it's hilarious. Eventually these venture capitalists are forced to acknowledge that LLM-dependent developers do not develop an understanding and hit a ceiling. They call it "good enough".
The use of LLMs for constructive activities (writing, coding, etc.) rapidly produces a profound dependence. Try turning it off for a day or two, you're hobbled, incapacitated. Competition in the workplace forces us down this road to being utterly dependent. Human intellect atrophies through disuse. More discussion of this effect, empirical observations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQNyYx2fZXw
To understand the reality of LLM code generators in practice, Primeagen and Casey Muratori carefully review the output of a state-of-the-art LLM code generator. They provide a task well-represented in the LLM's training data, so development should be easy. The task is presented as a cumulative series of modifications to a codebase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW6PhVdq9R8
This is the reality of what's happening: iterative development converging on subtly or grossly incorrect, overcomplicated, unmaintainable code, with the LLM increasingly unable to make progress. And the human, where does he end up?
Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb
#8That's probably the mechanism by which AI will take over many jobs:
1. Skilled people do a good job, AI does a not-so-good job.
2. AI users get dumbed down so they can't do any better. Mediocrity normalized.
3. Replace the AI users with AI.
Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb
#9"Some people might not enjoy writing their own code. If that’s the case, as harsh as it may seem, I would say that they’re trying to work in a field that isn’t for them." I've tolerated writing my own code for decades. Sometimes I'm pleased with it. Mostly it's the abstraction standing between me and my idea. I like to build things, the faster the better. As I have the ideas, I like to see them implemented as efficie…
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Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb
#10Tried several times for C++, almost always got nonsense results. Maybe they only work for weakly typed language.