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AI Is Making Developers Dumb

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Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#211

Post by sanswork »

elicksaur wrote: post #172
sanswork wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And C compilers have bugs too earlier ones a lot more though thankfully we are now several decades into their development.

Very whataboutism. Do you understanding why the person is making this argument? Or is everything just postmodern deconstructionism? Everything has some imperfection, so LLMs are just fine... Completely missing the totally valid criticisms people have of the systems.

You're trying too hard to argue here.

Every 5 years or so of my career something new has come out to make coding easier and every time a stack of people like yourself come out to argue it's making devs dumb or worse.

LLMs still generate terrible output a lot of the time but they are improving. Early compilers generated terrible ASM a lot of the time to the point that it was common to use inline assembly in your code or rewrite parts later. Tools can improve, the point is that neither make the dev worse they just add to productivity.

Writing code isn't my job it's a task I do to make the systems I design functional.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#212

Post by sanswork »

Veserv wrote: post #207
elicksaur wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very whataboutism. Do you understanding why the person is making this argument? Or is everything just postmodern deconstructionism? Everything has some imperfection, so LLMs are just fine... Completely missing the totally valid criticisms people have of the systems.

I like to call that “unary thinking”. Nothing is “perfect”, therefore everything is “imperfect”, so everything is the “same”. One category for everything, unary.

I'm not arguing LLMs currently generate great code. My argument is that it doesn't matter to the assertion that they make devs dumb.

Tools being bad currently doesn't matter just like compilers being bad in the past doesn't matter.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#213

Post by layer8 »

tpmoney wrote: post #176
layer8 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the same because you can’t ask Wikipedia to do your homework or programming task without even reading the result.

You can't ask an AI to do that either. I mean, you physically can, but it would be the same thing as copying and pasting a wikipedia article verbatim into your essay.

What I mean is, people do actually do this with LLMs, but most assignments do not map 1:1 to a Wikipedia article you can copy (certainly programming tasks don't). Or to put it differently, it's relatively trivial to formulate assignments for which a blind Wikipedia copy & paste wouldn't be applicable; in contrast to the LLM case.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#214

Post by layer8 »

falcor84 wrote: post #208
layer8 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that writing unit tests isn’t high stakes is a dubious statement. The very purpose of unit tests is to make sure that programming errors are caught that may very well be high stakes.

However high the stakes are, a bug in test code is not as much of an issue as a bug in the production code.

It is as much of an issue if it prevents a bug in production code from being detected before it occurs in production. Which is the very purpose of unit tests.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#215

Post by sanswork »

lurking_swe wrote: post #192
sanswork wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

except we can guarantee (with tests) that the generated instructions from the compiler are bug free 99% of the time. Pretty big difference there.

The tool currently being bad doesn't matter to the argument of whether or not they make devs dumb.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#216

Post by yhoots »

Guthur wrote: post #13

I'm in full agreement with this, and it's part of the reason I'm considering leaving the software engineering field for good. I've been programming for over 25 years, and the joy I get from it is the artistry of it, I see beauty in systems constructed in the abstract realm. But LLM based development remove much of that. I haven't used nor desire to use LLM for this, but I don't want to compete with people that do bec…

Most code is unoriginal boilerplate that serves a business need. LLMs are very good at generating output that is 60-90% of the way there.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#217

Post by cadamsdotcom »

AI makes developers smarter when used in smart ways. How amazing to have code generated for you, freeing you to consider the next task (ie. “sit there waiting for the next task to come to mind”) .. oh, by the way, if you don’t understand the code, highlight it and ask for an explanation. Repeat ad infinitum until you understand what you’re reading.

The dumb developers are those resisting this amazing tool and trend.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#218

Post by Tainnor »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #45
tyre wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like to build things, the faster the better. what's the largest (traffic, revenue) product you've built? quantity >>>> quality of code is a great trade-off for hacking things together but doesn't lend itself to maintainable systems, in my experience. Have you seen it work to the long term?

Sure, but the vast majority of the time in greenfield applications situations, it's entirely unclear if what is being built is useful, even when people think otherwise. So the question of "maintainable" or not is frequently not the right consideration.

> in greenfield applications situations

which isn't most of the software industry

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#219

Post by lurking_swe »

sanswork wrote: post #215
lurking_swe wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except we can guarantee (with tests) that the generated instructions from the compiler are bug free 99% of the time. Pretty big difference there.

The tool currently being bad doesn't matter to the argument of whether or not they make devs dumb.

if i can one day have a similar level of confidence in LLM output, as i do in a compiler, then i will also call it an abstraction. until then…i wait. :)

But i agree, it’s unrelated to devs being dumb.

Re: AI Is Making Developers Dumb

#220

Post by Guthur »

yhoots wrote: post #216
Guthur wrote: post #13

I'm in full agreement with this, and it's part of the reason I'm considering leaving the software engineering field for good. I've been programming for over 25 years, and the joy I get from it is the artistry of it, I see beauty in systems constructed in the abstract realm. But LLM based development remove much of that. I haven't used nor desire to use LLM for this, but I don't want to compete with people that do bec…

Most code is unoriginal boilerplate that serves a business need. LLMs are very good at generating output that is 60-90% of the way there.

And I wish all the best with doubling down on that by generating boiler plate at scale rather than removing it
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