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A Research Preview of Codex

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Re: A Research Preview of Codex

#391

Post by eru »

ajkjk wrote: post #91
alvis wrote: post #35

I used to work for a bank and the legal team used to ping us to make tiny changes to the app for compliance related issues. Now they can fix themselves. I think they’d be very proud and happy

Hopefully nobody lets legal touch anything without the ability to run the code to test it, plus code reviews. So probably not.

I'm not sure what you are on about?

You can make arbitrary teams, like legal, make PRs. You would still have the proper owners of the project agree whether they take the PRs. Either by human review and/or by any other review process they set up.

Re: A Research Preview of Codex

#393

Post by ZephyrBlu »

eru wrote: post #386
DanielVZ wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand I’m pretry sure you will need senior engineers not only for designing but debugging. You don’t want to hit a wall when your Agentic coder hits a bug that it just won’t fix.

Why do you expect AIs to learn programming, but not debugging?

1) Debugging is much harder than writing code that works

2) AIs are demonstrably much, much worse at debugging code than writing fresh code

Ex: "Oh, I see the problem! Let me fix that" -> proceeds to create a new bug while not fixing the old one

Re: A Research Preview of Codex

#394

Post by eru »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #393
eru wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you expect AIs to learn programming, but not debugging?

1) Debugging is much harder than writing code that works 2) AIs are demonstrably much, much worse at debugging code than writing fresh code Ex: "Oh, I see the problem! Let me fix that" -> proceeds to create a new bug while not fixing the old one

Debugging is harder for humans, too.

Re: A Research Preview of Codex

#395

Post by TeMPOraL »

Buttons840 wrote: post #329
jackphilson wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. everyone will eventually have the job title of "problem solver"

Don't forget the very important role of managing the problem solvers--if you just let the problem solvers run amuck all sorts of problems might be solved.

Yeah, if places like RAND or Xerox PARC or the OG Skunkworks, or even Manhattan Project and Apollo Program taught us, is that you cannot let engineers and domain experts run the show, because if you do, they start doing some world-upending shit like putting GUIs on the Moon, or building nukes, or supersonic jets, or inventing new materials that violate the natural order of things, or they generally just rock the boat too much, continuously disrupting the corporate and political pecking order.

Nah, you have to put them in hamster wheels so they keep generating steady value for the shareholders, and put those in open plan offices so they get too mentally exhausted and distracted to try and change things. Throw in free cheese during good economy to keep them happy, but that's strictly optional.

Re: A Research Preview of Codex

#396

Post by taf2 »

sam0x17 wrote: post #171
criddell wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you aren't hiring junior engineers to do these kinds of things, where do you think the senior engineers you need in the future will come from? My kid recently graduated from a very good school with a degree in computer science and what she's told me about the job market is scary. It seems that, relatively speaking, there's a lot of postings for senior engineers and very little for new grads. My employer has hired…

Hiring of juniors is basically dead these days and it has been like this for about 10 years and I hate it. I remember when I was a junior in 2014 there were actually startups who would hire cohorts of juniors (like 10 at a time, fresh out of CS degree sort of folks with almost no applied coding experience) and then train them up to senior for a few years, and then a small number will stay and the rest will go elsewhe…

We have had a lot of success hiring right out of college over the last 10 years

Re: A Research Preview of Codex

#397

Post by swat535 »

dakiol wrote: post #230
obsolete_wagie wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need someone thats technical to look at the agent output, senior engineers will be around. Junior engineers are certainly being replaced

Thanks, Sherlock. Now, tell me, when senior engineers start to retire, who will replace them? Ah, yeah, I can hear you say "LLMs!". And LLMs will rewrite themselves so we won't need seniors anymore writing code. And LLMs will write all the code companies need. So obvious, of course. We won't need a single senior because we won't have them, because they are not hired these days anymore. Perfect plan.

Let's say AI writes perfect, bug free code. Then what?

Suppose we grant the most optimistic scenario: AI generates flawless, production-ready code. No bugs, no regressions, no tech debt. Code is no longer written, it’s summoned.

Cool. But.. now what?

Who writes the requirements? Product managers typing prompts into a text box? CEOs dragging Figma elements and calling it shipped?

How does that scale? Who maintains the systems those prompts create? Other LLMs? And who maintains them? More AI?

It turtles all the way down, a recursive stack of AI maintaining AI, until we’re effectively simulating full stack human engineers in digital form.

At some point, aren't we just reinventing ourselves.. in Python?

Re: A Research Preview of Codex

#398

Post by elif »

genewitch wrote: post #376
sam0x17 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring of juniors is basically dead these days and it has been like this for about 10 years and I hate it. I remember when I was a junior in 2014 there were actually startups who would hire cohorts of juniors (like 10 at a time, fresh out of CS degree sort of folks with almost no applied coding experience) and then train them up to senior for a few years, and then a small number will stay and the rest will go elsewhe…

Hmm, I thought Matz had a story like this but AI tells me it's probably apocryphal. Ruby developer applies for ruby job where they want more years of experience than existed since he wrote ruby. Oh well, I know that it happens, saw it in 2010 with "cloud" when it was basically still just EC2,S3,RDS, and whatever the not-haproxy-but-haproxy load balancer was called, ELB. Job poatings asking for half a decade or more o…

I recall that story as well. I think it might have been in a ruby weekly email if you sub to that.

Re: A Research Preview of Codex

#399

Post by jdietrich »

oytis wrote: post #227
dgb23 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently read an article about the US having a relatively weak occupational training. To contrast, CH and GER are known to have very robust and regulated apprenticeship programs. Meaning you start working at a much earlier age (16) and go to vocational school at the same time for about 4 years. This path is then supported with all kinds of educational stepping stones later down the line. There are many software dev…

I know about this system, but I am not convinced it can work in such a dynamic field as software. When tools change all the time, you need strong fundamentals to stay afloat - which is what universities provide. Vocational training focusing on immediate fit for the market is great for companies that want to extract maximal immediate value from labour for minimal cost, but longer term is not good for engineers themsel…

A formal apprenticeship still includes academic training - either one or two days a week at college, or longer blocks spread throughout the year. I can't speak for software engineers, but the mechanical engineers I know that have finished a German apprenticeship have a very rigorous theoretical background.

Re: A Research Preview of Codex

#400

Post by whimsicalism »

dgb23 wrote: post #222
sam0x17 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring of juniors is basically dead these days and it has been like this for about 10 years and I hate it. I remember when I was a junior in 2014 there were actually startups who would hire cohorts of juniors (like 10 at a time, fresh out of CS degree sort of folks with almost no applied coding experience) and then train them up to senior for a few years, and then a small number will stay and the rest will go elsewhe…

I recently read an article about the US having a relatively weak occupational training. To contrast, CH and GER are known to have very robust and regulated apprenticeship programs. Meaning you start working at a much earlier age (16) and go to vocational school at the same time for about 4 years. This path is then supported with all kinds of educational stepping stones later down the line. There are many software dev…

do most people know country codes to the degree that they know CH is Switzerland? as feedback, i found this added an unnecessary extra layer of opacity to this comment
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