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At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

nytimes.com

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Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#581

Post by Neil44 »

agarren wrote: post #351

> [Harper Reed] cautioned against being overly precious about the value of deeply understanding one’s code, which is no longer necessary to ensure that it works. That just strikes me as an odd thing to say. I’m convinced that this is the dividing line between today’s software engineers and tomorrow’s AI engineers (in whatever form that takes - prompt, vibe, etc.) Reed’s statement feels very much like a justification…

The ultimate irony being that they actually do measure all kinds of things against datum points as the cars move down the line as the earlier you junk a faulty build the less it's cost you.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#582

Post by jongjong »

The trend towards increasingly low-quality, mass-produced code started long before AI but AI has greatly accelerated the trend and taken it to levels not previously possible. Short-term, this is destroying software dev jobs, long-term, it's going to create a lot of software dev jobs when people have to maintain or rewrite the mess (unless AGI can fill the gap). It will create a lot of jobs in cyber-security also because complex code, rushed out hastily, with less context awareness, opens the door to more potential vulnerabilities.

It's interesting how the trend which took over manufacturing is now also taking over software development. This trends towards low-quality, mass-production is taking over everything.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#583

Post by tome »

bdangubic wrote: post #342
OptionOfT wrote: post #171

To me it feels like part of the hype train, like crypto & VR. I recently had the (dis)pleasure of fixing a bug in a codebase that was vibe coded. It ends up being a collection of disorganized business problems converted into code, without any kind of structure. Refinements are implemented as super-narrow patches, resulting in complex and unorganized code, whereas a human developer might take a step back to try and ex…

It ends up being a collection of disorganized business problems converted into code, without any kind of structure. this matches the description of every codebase (except one) I came across in my 30-year career

I call this the Peter Principle of Programming:

"Code increases in complication to the first level where it is too complicated to understand. It then hovers around this level of complexity as developers fear to touch it, pecking away here and there to add needed features."

http://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/peter-principle/

Seems like I'm not the first one to notice this either:

https://nigeltao.github.io/blog/2021/json-with-commas-commen...

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#584

Post by talles »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #496
talles wrote: post #72

It amazes me how immature our field can be. Anyone that worked for big corporations and in humongous codebases know how 'generating new code' is a small part of the job. AI blew up and suddenly I'm seeing seasoned people talking about KLOC like in the 90s.

We don't have meaningful metrics that are objective. KLOC is bad but at least it means something concrete, issues closed or PRs submitted is essentially meaningless. This is a software engineering problem not an AI problem.

KLOC is as objective as your other examples and as meaningless as well IMO.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#585

Post by red_admiral »

agarren wrote: post #351

> [Harper Reed] cautioned against being overly precious about the value of deeply understanding one’s code, which is no longer necessary to ensure that it works. That just strikes me as an odd thing to say. I’m convinced that this is the dividing line between today’s software engineers and tomorrow’s AI engineers (in whatever form that takes - prompt, vibe, etc.) Reed’s statement feels very much like a justification…

> It would be crazy if in an auto factory people were measuring to make sure every angle is correct

They are.

Mechanical engineers measure more angles and measurements than a consultant might guess - its a standard part of quality control, although machines often do the measuring with the occasional human sampling as a back-up. You'd be suprised just how much effort goes into getting things correct such as _packs of kitkats_ or _cans of coke_.

If getting your angles wrong risks human lives, the threat of prosecution usually makes the angles turn out right, but if all else fails, recalls can happen because the gas pedal can get stuck in the driver-side floor carpet.

Assembly-line engineering has your favour that (A) CNC machines don't randomly hallucinate; they can fail or go out of tolerance, but usually in predictable ways and (B) you can measure a lot of things on an assembly line with lasers as the parts roll through.

It was thankfully a crazy one-off that someone didn't check that _the plugs were put back into the door_, but that could be a sign of bad engineering culture.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#586

Post by RossBencina »

ModernMech wrote: post #298
OptionOfT wrote: post #171

To me it feels like part of the hype train, like crypto & VR. I recently had the (dis)pleasure of fixing a bug in a codebase that was vibe coded. It ends up being a collection of disorganized business problems converted into code, without any kind of structure. Refinements are implemented as super-narrow patches, resulting in complex and unorganized code, whereas a human developer might take a step back to try and ex…

> English (or all spoken human language) is not precise enough to articulate what you want your code to do Exactly. And this is why I feel like we are going to go full circle on this. We've seen this cycle in our industry a couple times now: "Formal languages are hard, wouldn't it be great if we could just talk in English and the computer would understand what we mean?" -> "Natural languages are ambiguous and not pre…

> Are future developers destined to be equivalent to lawyers, who have to essentially debate the meaning of a program before it's compiled, just to resolve the ambiguities?

Future developers? You sound like you've never programmed in C++.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#588

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

lolinder wrote: post #360
agarren wrote: post #351

> [Harper Reed] cautioned against being overly precious about the value of deeply understanding one’s code, which is no longer necessary to ensure that it works. That just strikes me as an odd thing to say. I’m convinced that this is the dividing line between today’s software engineers and tomorrow’s AI engineers (in whatever form that takes - prompt, vibe, etc.) Reed’s statement feels very much like a justification…

Also, you know who did measure every angle to make sure it was correct? The engineers who put together the initial design. They sure as hell took their time getting every detail of the design right before it ever made it to the assembly line. Who's filling that role in this brave new world?

This is an underrated comment. Who's job is it to do the thinking? I suppose it's still the software engineer, which means the job comes down to "code prompt engineer" and "test prompt engineer".

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#589

Post by red_admiral »

RossBencina wrote: post #574
agarren wrote: post #351

> [Harper Reed] cautioned against being overly precious about the value of deeply understanding one’s code, which is no longer necessary to ensure that it works. That just strikes me as an odd thing to say. I’m convinced that this is the dividing line between today’s software engineers and tomorrow’s AI engineers (in whatever form that takes - prompt, vibe, etc.) Reed’s statement feels very much like a justification…

The whole auto factory thing sounds completely misinformed to me. Just because a machine made it does not mean the output isn't checked in a multitude of ways. Any manufacturing process is subject to quality controls. Machines are maintained. Machine parts are swapped out long before they lead to out-of-tolerance work. Process outputs are statistically characterised, measured and monitored. Measurement equipment is r…

On the auto factory side, the Toyota stuck gas pedal comes to mind, even if it can happen only under worst-case circumstances. But that's the (1 - 0.[lots of nines]) case.

On the software side, the THERAC story is absolutely terrifying - you replace a physical interlock with a software-based one that _can't possibly go wrong_ and you get a killing machine that would probably count as unethical for executions of convicted terrorists.

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