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The fundamentals still matter

jordangoodman.bearblog.dev

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Re: The fundamentals still matter

#11

Post by js8 »

So, Karl Marx predicted that the capitalism will eat itself because capitalists will value creating money itself (and money-making enterprises, such as asset bubbles) more than the actual production of goods. This was later elaborated by many people, but since I am not an expert in this, I'll just mention Hyman Minsky and Thomas Piketty.

The OP is essentially a (white collar) labor version of this. What is evidently valued is an appearance of expertise, rather than expertise itself. Just like the capitalists who want to make money, and skipping production of actual goods in order to accomplish that, "professionals" are going to skip actual learning in order to appear knowledgeable.

For 200 years, people have hoped that the "free market" will sort out the problem that Marx saw. It didn't happen - we still get financial bubbles that cause trouble for many people. So, I suspect it's a mistake to assume the learning problem will fix itself either. I suspect people (society at large) will have to consciously value the hard work of learning for this to be fixed.

Re: The fundamentals still matter

#12

Post by throwawayoldie »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #9
throwawayoldie wrote: post #5

> Maybe another industry of cleaning up vibe coded messes will be a thing? I have seriously considered hanging out my shingle to do this freelance, I don't think the time is quite ripe yet but maybe in a few months.

Wherever there is pain impeding capital, there is opportunity. And there is always a set of current pain points. There can only be no pain in a fully-autonomous organization with autonomous investors and customers too. It seems like the future is converging on there will 5 Matrix savant architects who make $1B/y who keep things operating while everyone else lives in a shanty or a pod.

...right, I see where you're going with this, then we eat those five savants and everyone else is happy.

Re: The fundamentals still matter

#13

Post by throwawayoldie »

pbohun wrote: post #10
throwawayoldie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SQL is basically already natural language This was actually the whole point of SQL in the first place: to be a query language close enough to natural language that non-specialists could easily learn to use it.

This was also the point of COBOL. I think one thing we've learned is non-specialists don't like thinking/problem solving, and there's no meeting them halfway on that. Asking some people to think is asking too much.

I think that's a little too cynical of a view: in years past, I did in fact teach non-specialists to use SQL (against a read-only replica, I'm not crazy) so I didn't have to run all their ad hoc queries for them, and many of them took well to it once they overcame their initial hesitance. The framing that made it click for them was "it's like Excel, but with words."

Re: The fundamentals still matter

#14

Post by throwawayoldie »

merksoftworks wrote: post #8
throwawayoldie wrote: post #5

> Maybe another industry of cleaning up vibe coded messes will be a thing? I have seriously considered hanging out my shingle to do this freelance, I don't think the time is quite ripe yet but maybe in a few months.

My experience has been more like this: - Write small library as contract work. - Client vibe codes with it. Code doesn't work. - End up doing good faith assurance work to fix the vibe coded bug in the client code, the issue was not in my small library. People are programming out on a limb - and blame goes to the library maintainer if the user lacks the fundamental skills to do troubleshooting.

Yeah my plan was to come in _after_ the vibe coders have done their damage, fix their mess for a somewhat extortionate amount of money, then tell them not to do it again.

Re: The fundamentals still matter

#17

Post by sarthaksoni »

I’m guilty of this. I’m trying to be more mindful when using LLM-generated code. It’s mostly a personal issue: I tend to procrastinate and hope the code “just works.”

We need to stay vigilant,otherwise we will pay the cost by fixing LLM bugs later.

Re: The fundamentals still matter

#18

Post by burnt-resistor »

throwawayoldie wrote: post #12
burnt-resistor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wherever there is pain impeding capital, there is opportunity. And there is always a set of current pain points. There can only be no pain in a fully-autonomous organization with autonomous investors and customers too. It seems like the future is converging on there will 5 Matrix savant architects who make $1B/y who keep things operating while everyone else lives in a shanty or a pod.

...right, I see where you're going with this, then we eat those five savants and everyone else is happy.

Nawh, we'll be the Eloi and they'll become the Morlocks. They'll probably eat us.

Re: The fundamentals still matter

#19

Post by a96 »

throwawayoldie wrote: post #14
merksoftworks wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has been more like this: - Write small library as contract work. - Client vibe codes with it. Code doesn't work. - End up doing good faith assurance work to fix the vibe coded bug in the client code, the issue was not in my small library. People are programming out on a limb - and blame goes to the library maintainer if the user lacks the fundamental skills to do troubleshooting.

Yeah my plan was to come in _after_ the vibe coders have done their damage, fix their mess for a somewhat extortionate amount of money, then tell them not to do it again.

Sounds like a nice niche for some Instant Consulting.

Re: The fundamentals still matter

#20

Post by Ferrus91 »

pbohun wrote: post #10
throwawayoldie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SQL is basically already natural language This was actually the whole point of SQL in the first place: to be a query language close enough to natural language that non-specialists could easily learn to use it.

This was also the point of COBOL. I think one thing we've learned is non-specialists don't like thinking/problem solving, and there's no meeting them halfway on that. Asking some people to think is asking too much.

Bingo. And it is on this rock that non-technical people vibe coding is going to sink.
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