The copilot delusion • Hacker News Board

Re: The copilot delusion

#131

Post by SirSavary » Fri, May 23, 2025, 2:46 AM UTC

bangertho wrote: post #120

sgarland wrote: post #79

> The real horror isn’t that AI will take our jobs—it’s that it will let people in who never wanted the job to begin with. I fully agree. This already happened with the explosion of DevOps bullshit, where people with no understanding of Linux got jobs by memorizing abstractions. “Stop gatekeeping,” they say. “Stop blowing up prod, and read docs” I fire back.

This already happened with Linux where people with no understanding of electrical engineering got jobs memorizing abstractions. I look forward to a data driven system future where a few functions transform the machines electromagnetic geometry to solve a task based upon the most efficient energy model for solving a task as we continue to compress from the model all the non-essential syntax sugar of modern software. h…

Could you elaborate?

Re: The copilot delusion

#132

Post by sgarland » Fri, May 23, 2025, 2:48 AM UTC

bangertho wrote: post #120

sgarland wrote: post #79

> The real horror isn’t that AI will take our jobs—it’s that it will let people in who never wanted the job to begin with. I fully agree. This already happened with the explosion of DevOps bullshit, where people with no understanding of Linux got jobs by memorizing abstractions. “Stop gatekeeping,” they say. “Stop blowing up prod, and read docs” I fire back.

This already happened with Linux where people with no understanding of electrical engineering got jobs memorizing abstractions. I look forward to a data driven system future where a few functions transform the machines electromagnetic geometry to solve a task based upon the most efficient energy model for solving a task as we continue to compress from the model all the non-essential syntax sugar of modern software. h…

Fun fact, I was a Nuclear Electronics Technician, and have a decent understanding – though admittedly not to the level of an EE – of how computers work at a very low level. I also worked for a chip fab for a couple of years, and literally made silicon wafers. I also rewrote the US Navy’s microprocessor training course for Nuke ETs, updating it from the Motorola 68000 to the Intel 386.

I make no claims that I fully understand anything, but I do have a decent understanding of how a CPU works from the level of doped silicon and up. Crucially, I read every doc I could find at every one of those jobs. You can learn enough to do the job, or you can learn more. That is a choice that everyone makes.

More generally, I’ve been playing with Linux and computers in general for over 20 years, and when I finally got a job in tech about five years ago, I was stunned at how little people knew about how computers work. I don’t expect (nor do I think it’s helpful) anyone to know how a bus arbitration cycle works, but I assumed that things like IOPS and throughput would be generally understood.

Re: The copilot delusion

#133

Post by webprofusion » Fri, May 23, 2025, 2:51 AM UTC

It's right, AI does require giving up control and letting things be done differently, depends how much you really use it.

It's the same when you get a junior dev to work on things, it's just not how you would do it yourself and frequently wrong or naive. Sometime is brilliant and better than you would have done yourself.

That doesn't mean don't have junior devs, but having one doesn't mean you don't have to do corrective stuff and refinements to their work.

Most of us aren't changing the world with our code, we're contributing an incredibly small niche part of how it works. People (normal people, lol) only care what your system does for them, not how it works or how great the code is.

Re: The copilot delusion

#134

Post by whattheheckheck » Fri, May 23, 2025, 2:56 AM UTC

ivape wrote: post #56

padolsey wrote: post #36

> if you want to sculpt the kind of software that gets embedded in pacemakers and missile guidance systems and M1 tanks—you better throw that bot out the airlock and learn. But the bulk of us aren't doing that... We're making CRUD apps for endless incoming streams of near identical user needs, just with slightly different integrations, schemas, and lipstick. Let's be honest. For most software there is nothing new und…

It’s funny because I made a few funny clips (to my taste) on Google Whisk and figured, hey why not, let’s make a TikTok. Did you know that all of TikTok is full of millions of ai generated stuff or other people just copying each others stuff? I really thought there was something to this “original creation” stuff. We are all so simply reproducible. No one’s making anything special, anywhere, for the most part. If we a…

There's literally genocide and war going on, solve that

Re: The copilot delusion

#135

Post by nozzlegear » Fri, May 23, 2025, 2:59 AM UTC

boxed wrote: post #58

throwaway314155 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind your rebuttal of the article, but to suggest that this particular article is AI generated is foolish. The style the author presents is vivid, uses powerful imagery and metaphor and finally, at times, is genuinely funny. More qualitatively, the author incorporates a unique identity that persists throughout the entirety of a long form essay. All of that is still difficult to get an LLM to do. This isn't AI…

Maybe he meant it was long. Some people seem to think that long walls of text is how you spot AI slop.

And god forbid you use an emdash these days.

Re: The copilot delusion

#136

Post by charles_f » Fri, May 23, 2025, 3:10 AM UTC

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #19

As a preface, I think lots of people will not like this take. A lot of people are going to have to come to the realization that has already been mentioned before but many find it hard to grasp. Your boss, stakeholders, and especially non-technical people literally give 0 fucks about "quality code" as long as it does what they want it to do. They do not care about tests insofar as if it works it works. Many have no cl…

As long as I am going to be the one being called at night when there's a crash, I'll be the one to dictate what's "good enough". Throw away guardrails if you want to, I like sleeping.

Re: The copilot delusion

#137

Post by delfinom » Fri, May 23, 2025, 3:18 AM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #125

yencabulator wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, > 88% of the Excel spreadsheets have errors https://www.cassotis.com/insights/88-of-the-excel-spreadshee... How many companies mismanaged their finances because they had an enthusiastic spreadsheet user in charge? From that article, we know a country did.

It's a kind of macabre progress that national policy missteps have advanced to "ChatGPT, generate a table of tariffs for the US to impose on other places." https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-tariffs-chatgpt-205520...

Idiocracy was a pretty good take on the future of civilization

Re: The copilot delusion

#138

Post by binary132 » Fri, May 23, 2025, 3:22 AM UTC

sgarland wrote: post #132

bangertho wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already happened with Linux where people with no understanding of electrical engineering got jobs memorizing abstractions. I look forward to a data driven system future where a few functions transform the machines electromagnetic geometry to solve a task based upon the most efficient energy model for solving a task as we continue to compress from the model all the non-essential syntax sugar of modern software. h…

Fun fact, I was a Nuclear Electronics Technician, and have a decent understanding – though admittedly not to the level of an EE – of how computers work at a very low level. I also worked for a chip fab for a couple of years, and literally made silicon wafers. I also rewrote the US Navy’s microprocessor training course for Nuke ETs, updating it from the Motorola 68000 to the Intel 386. I make no claims that I fully un…

It’s actually kinda terrifying the more you find out how incompetent most of the people writing most of the software most of the world runs on are

Re: The copilot delusion

#139

Post by abletonlive » Fri, May 23, 2025, 3:25 AM UTC

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #112

abletonlive wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more likely A) all of this money being funneled into tech to build out trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure, a month over month increasing user base buying subscriptions for these llm services, every company buying seats for LLM because of the value that it provides - these people are wrong B) yappers on hackernews that claim they derive no productivity boost out of llms while showing absolutely nothin…

Just like the trillions poured into blockchain have revolutionized the internet. All the jaw dropping ICOs, million dollar NFTs, and cryptocurrency price surges. Surely that proves its value in our daily lives.

If you think blockchain is a comparable analogy, on the same timeline, you are orders of magnitude off

Actually by the numbers AI is already bigger than bitcoin in both adoption and market value, so I'm not sure if you are making the point that you think you're making.

Re: The copilot delusion

#140

Post by nyarlathotep_ » Fri, May 23, 2025, 3:29 AM UTC

sgarland wrote: post #132

bangertho wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already happened with Linux where people with no understanding of electrical engineering got jobs memorizing abstractions. I look forward to a data driven system future where a few functions transform the machines electromagnetic geometry to solve a task based upon the most efficient energy model for solving a task as we continue to compress from the model all the non-essential syntax sugar of modern software. h…

Fun fact, I was a Nuclear Electronics Technician, and have a decent understanding – though admittedly not to the level of an EE – of how computers work at a very low level. I also worked for a chip fab for a couple of years, and literally made silicon wafers. I also rewrote the US Navy’s microprocessor training course for Nuke ETs, updating it from the Motorola 68000 to the Intel 386. I make no claims that I fully un…

> More generally, I’ve been playing with Linux and computers in general for over 20 years, and when I finally got a job in tech about five years ago, I was stunned at how little people knew about how computers work. I don’t expect (nor do I think it’s helpful) anyone to know how a bus arbitration cycle works, but I assumed that things like IOPS and throughput would be generally understood.

My expertise is only in sleeping until 11am on weekends, but I too started in "tech" after being a lifelong hobbyist and have been continually shocked at how concepts like "pass by reference" are alien to a seemingly large portion of the people that I've worked with.

People often fail to know things that are basically "table stakes" in the domains they ostensibly work in, to say nothing of even being aware of something like L1 cache or how code they write could interact with it.