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AI Is Making Developers Dumb

eli.cx

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Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#151

Post by gdubs »

I live on a farm and there are a lot of things that machines can do faster and cheaper. And for a lot of tasks, it makes more sense from a time / money tradeoff.

But I still like to do certain things by hand. Both because it's more enjoyable that way, and because it's good to stay in shape.

Coding is similar to me. 80% of coding is pretty brain dead — boilerplate, repetitive. Then there's that 20% that really matters. Either because it requires real creativity, or intentionality.

Look for the 80/20 rule and find those spots where you can keep yourself sharp.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#152

Post by gopher_space »

simonw wrote: post #92
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…

Leaky abstractions is a really appropriate term for LLM-assisted coding. The original "law of leaky abstractions" talked about how the challenge with abstractions is that when they break you now have to develop a mental model of what they were hiding from you in order to fix the problem. (Absolutely classic Joel Spolsky essay from 22 years ago which still feels relevant today: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/1…

> Having LLMs write code for you has a similar effect: the moment you run into problems, you're going to have to make sure you deeply understand exactly what they have done.

I'm finding that, If I don't have solid mastery of at least one aspect of generated code, I won't know that I have problems until they touch a domain I understand.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#153

Post by haydenlingle »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #137
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…

LLMs don't create an abstraction. They generate code. If you are thinking about LLMs as a layer of abstraction, you are going to have all kinds of problems.

This is a disingenuous critique of what was said.

The point is LLMs may allow developers to write code for problems they may not fully understand at the current level or under the hood.

In a similar way using a high level web framework may allow a developer to work on a problem they don’t fully understand at the current level or under the hood.

There will always be new tools to “make developers faster” usually at a trade off of the developer understanding less of what specifically they’re instructing the computer to do.

Sometimes it’s valuable to dig and better understand, but sometimes not. And always responding to new developer tooling (whether LLMs or Web Frameworks or anything else) by saying they make developers dumber, can be naive.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#154

Post by brewmarche »

tarkin2 wrote: post #118
mindcrime wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really the question though. The question is, would we be better off if we didn't have "[the] means of external marks"? I'm sure somebody out there would argue that the answer is yes, but personally I have my doubts.

I think the question is that were Plato's fears unfounded. I don't think the question is "is writing bad", although it is framed as that to justify a carefree adoption of LLMs in daily life.

It’s all about how you use written content, even before AI you could just copy-paste code from StackOverflow without any understanding. But you could also use it as an opportunity to do your own research, make your own experiences and create your own memory (which sticks a lot better). And it’s not just about coding, you can’t really grasp a subject by just reading a text book and not doing exercises or further reading.

Plato’s (or rather the Egyptian king’s - IIRC) fears were not unfounded, since a lot of people do not operate this way (sadly I see this with some peers), however overall the effect could still be positive.

Writing distributes knowledge to a lot of people, without it you have to rely on a kind of personal relationship to learn from someone more knowledgeable (which can be better for the individual mentee though). So maybe it increases chances of learning (breadth of audience) at the cost of the depth of understanding?

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#155

Post by fullstackwife »

tokinonagare wrote: post #120
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…

I'm giving a programming class and students uses LLMs all the time. I see it as a big problem because: - it puts focus on syntax instead of the big picture. Instead of finding articles or posts on Stack explaining things beyond how to write them. AI give them the "how" so they don't think of the "why" - students almost don't ask questions anymore. Why would they when an AI give them code? - AI output contains notions…

Job market will verify those students, but the outcome may be potentially disheartening for you, because those guys may actually succeed one way or another. Think punched cards: they are gone along with the mindset of "need to implement it correctly on first try".

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#156

Post by rileymichael »

chamomeal wrote: post #144
rileymichael wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except they are not good at it. the unit tests you'll have written will be filled with (slow) mocks with tautological assertions, create no reusable test fixtures, etc.

Sounds just like human-written test suites lol

of course — that’s what they’re trained on after all. most treat tests as a burden / afterthought, propagating the same issues from codebase to codebase, never improving. i wouldn’t consider those good either.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#157

Post by luckylion »

maratc wrote: post #75

A personal anecdote from my previous place: A junior developer was tasked with writing a script that would produce a list of branches that haven't been touched for a while. I've got the review request. The big chunk of it was written in awk -- even though many awk scripts are one-liners, they don't have to be -- and that chunk was kinda impressive, making some clever use of associative arrays, auto-vivification, and…

One of the advantages of working with people who are not native english-speakers is that, if their english suddenly becomes perfect and they can write concise technical explanations in tasks, you know it's some LLM.

Then if you ask for some detail on a call, it's all uhm, ehm, ehhh, "I will send example later".

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#158

Post by qayxc »

IshKebab wrote: post #56

"Calculators are making people dumb" "Spell checkers are making people dumb" "Wikipedia is making people dumb" Nothing to see here.

> "Calculators are making people dumb"

Wrong quote - "calculators are making people bad at doing maths" was the fear. Truns out, they didn't, but didn't help either [1]

> "Spell checkers are making people dumb"

Well, at this point I assume you use "dumb" as a general stand-in for "worse at the skill in question". here, however, research shows that indeed, spell checkers and auto-correct seem to have a negative influence on learning proper spelling and grammar [2]. The main takeaway here seems to be the fact that handwriting in particular is a major contributor in learning and practicing written language skills. [2]

> "Wikipedia is making people dumb"

Honestly, haven't heard that one before. Did you just make that up? Apart from people like Plato, thousands of years ago, owning and using books, encyclopaedias, and dictionaries has generally been viewed as a sign of a cultured and knowledgeable individual in many cultures... I don't see how an online source is any different in that regard.

The decline of problem solving and analytical skills, short attention spans, lack of foundational knowledge and subsequent loss of valuable training material for our beloved stochastical parrots, though, might prove to become a problem in future.

There's a qualitative difference between relying on spell checkers while still knowing the words and slowly losing the ability to formulate, express, and solve problems in an analytical fashion. Worst case we're moving towards E.M. Forster's dystopian "The Machine Stops"-scenario.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/42802150?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362696154_The_Effec...

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#159

Post by __loam »

sanswork wrote: post #147
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs don't create an abstraction. They generate code. If you are thinking about LLMs as a layer of abstraction, you are going to have all kinds of problems.

My C compiler has been generating assembly code for me for 30 years. And people were saying the same thing even earlier about how compilers and HLLs made developers dumb because they couldn't code in asm.

C compilers are deterministic. You don't have to inspect the assembly they produce to know that it did the right thing.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#160

Post by yapyap »

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…

Sounds like you’re coping cause you have some type of investment in LLM “coding”, whether that is financial or emotional.

I won’t waste my time too much reacting to this nonsensical comment but I’ll just give this example, LLMs can hallucinate, where they generate code that’s not real, LLMs don’t work off straight rules, they’re influenced by a seed. Normal abstraction layers aren’t.

I dearly hope you’re arguing in bad faith, otherwise you are really deluded with either programming terms or reality.

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