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AI Is Making Developers Dumb

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Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#101

Post by bakugo »

dfabulich wrote: post #67

We've seen this happen over and over again, when a new leaky layer of abstraction is developed that makes it easier to develop working code without understanding the lower layer. It's almost always a leaky abstraction, because sometimes you do need to know how the lower layer really works. Every time this happens, developers who have invested a lot of time and emotional energy in understanding the lower level claim t…

Those aren't the same thing at all, and you already mentioned why in your comment: leakiness. The higher up you go on the abstraction chain, the leakier the abstractions become, and the less viable it is to produce quality software without understanding the layer(s) below.

You can generally trust that transistors won't randomly malfunction and give you wrong results. You can generally trust that your compiler won't generate the wrong assembly, or that your interpreter won't interpret your code incorrectly. You can generally trust that your language's automatic memory management won't corrupt memory. It might be useful to understand how those layers work anyway, but it's usually not a hard requirement.

But once you reach a certain level of abstraction (usually 1 level above programming language), you'll start running into more and more issues resulting from abstraction leaks that require understanding the layer below to properly fix. Probably the most blatant example of this nowadays are "React developers" who don't know JS/CSS/HTML and WILL constantly be running into issues that they can't properly solve as a result, and are forced to either give up or write the most deranged workarounds imaginable that consist of hundreds of lines of unintelligible spaghetti.

AI is the highest level of abstraction so far, and as a result, it's also the leakiest abstraction so far. You CANNOT write proper functional and maintainable code using an LLM without having at least a decent understanding of what it's outputting, unless you're writing baby's first todo app or something.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#102

Post by simonw »

stephantul wrote: post #69
SirMaster wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that I struggle with for AI programming. I actually like writing the code myself. Like how someone might enjoy knitting or model building or painting or some other "tedious" activity. Using AI to generate my code just takes all the fun out of it for me.

This so much. I love coding. I might be the person that still paints stuff by hand long after image generation has made actual paintings superfluous, but it is what it is.

One analogy that works for me is to consider mural painting. Artists who create huge building-size murals are responsible for the design of the painting itself, but usually work with a team of artist to get up on the ladders and help apply the image to the building.

The way I use LLMs feels like that to me: I'm designing the software to quite a fine level, then having the LLMs help out with some of the typing of the code: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/#t...

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#103

Post by simonw »

jll29 wrote: post #3

LLMs 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…

> As a friend commented, "these language models should never have been made available to the general public", only to researchers.

That feels to me like a dystopian timeline that we've only very narrowly avoided.

It wouldn't just have been researchers: it would have been researchers and the wealthy.

I'm so relieved that most human beings with access to an internet-connected device have the ability to try this stuff and work to understand what it can and cannot do themselves.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#105

Post by GoblinSlayer »

TrackerFF wrote: post #76

Wonder if we'll have this discussion in 20 years. Or will traditional programmers be some niche "artisanal" group of workers, akin to what bootmakers and bespoke tailors are today.

I'm pretty sure I saw the word "programming" being used as a synonym for webdev.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#106

Post by lucideer »

popularrecluse wrote: post #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 efficie…

There's two sides to this:

> "as harsh as it may seem, I would say that they’re trying to work in a field that isn’t for them."

I find this statement problematic for a different reason: we live in a world where minimum wages (if they exist) are lower than living wages & mean wages are significantly lower the point at which well-being indices plateau. In that context calling people out for working in a field that "isn't for them" is inutile - if you can get by in the field then leaving it simply isn't logical.

THAT SAID, I do find the above comment incongruent with reality. If you're in a field that's "not for you" for economic reasons that's cool but making out that it is in fact for you, despite "tolerating" writing code, is a little different.

> I got into the game for creativity

Are you confusing creativity with productivity?

If you're productive that's great; economic imperative, etc. I'm not knocking that as a positive basis. But nothing you describe in your comment would fall under the umbrella of what I consider "creativity".

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#107

Post by tarkin2 »

jtwaleson wrote: post #87
tarkin2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And our memory has declined. He was right

For sure. But through writing we've been able to learn more, and through AI we'll produce more.

With a diminished ability to store, recall and thus manipulate information, our learning is arguably more shallow.

With AI trained on increasingly generic input used by the casual, then the quality of our production will increase in quantity but decrease in quality.

I am not arguing to abandon the written word or LLMs.

But the disadvantages--which will be overlooked by the young and those happy to have a time-saving tool, namely the majority--will do harm, harm most will overlook favouring the output and ignoring the atrophying user.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#108

Post by righthand »

I told my colleagues that if they’re just going to send me LLM code I cannot review it and assume they already double checked the work themselves. This gives them instant approval and if they want to spend time submitting follow up PRs because they’re not double checking their code and not understanding then they can do that. I honestly did this for two reasons:

1. The problem domain is a marketing site (low risk)

2. I got tired of fixing bad LLM code

I have noticed the people who do this are caught up in the politics at work and not really interested in writing code.

I have no desire to be a code janitor.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#109

Post by jas39 »

Etheryte wrote: post #74
jas39 wrote: post #36

Frankly, i don't think this is true at all. If anything I notice, for me, that I take better and more informed decisions, in many aspects of life. Think this criticism comes from a position of someone having invested alot of time in something AI can do quite well.

For me, the main question in this context would be whether the decisions are better informed or they just feel better informed. I regularly get LLMs to lie to me in my areas of expertise, but there I have the benefit that I can usually sniff out the lie. In topics I'm not that familiar with, I can't tell whether the LLM is confidently correct or confidently incorrect.

Well, AI does make errors, and never says "I don't know". That is also true of Wikipedia though. I've seen much improvement in accuracy from 3.5 to 4.5. Hallucinations can often be hashed out by a dialogue.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#110

Post by simonw »

remexre wrote: post #39
thierrydamiba wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is the big difference between these tools and calculators?

Imagine a calculator that computes definite integrals, but gives non-sensical results on non-smooth functions for whatever reason (i.e., not an error, but an incorrect but otherwise well-formed answer). If there were a large number of people who didn't quite understand what it meant for a function to be continuous, let alone smooth, who were using such a calculator, I think you'd see similar issues to the ones that a…

I think we don't see these problems with calculators because we have figured out how to teach people how to use them.

We are still very early in the process of figuring out how to teach people to use LLMs.

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