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The Last Programmers?

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Re: The Last Programmers?

#21

Post by marginalia_nu »

MaxLeiter wrote: post #5
davydm wrote: post #3

FTA: "But with billions of dollars pouring into generative AI every year, we will see instant voice-to-code capabilities + bug-free quality in 2-5 years." HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA omg, thanks for the laugh - "bug-free quality in 2-5 years" pfffffft I'm not holding my breath - rather, I think that by then, the hype will have finally lost some steam as companies crash and burn with their shitty, "almost work…

Think about how much progress has been made in the last 2-5 years. I can understand skepticism but not the HA HA HAs

Ha-has are perhaps tonally inappropriate, but when you look at the facts it seems unlikely. What we've seen in the last few years is fairly unlikely to continue forever. That's rarely how trends go. If anything if we actually look at the trend lines the improvements between model generations are becoming smaller, and the models are getting larger and more expensive to train.

A perhaps bigger concern is how flimsy the industry itself is. When investors start asking where their returns are at, it's not going to be pretty. The likes of OpenAI and Anthropic are deep in the red, absolutely hemorrhaging money, and they're especially exposed since a big part of their income is from API-deals with VC-funded startups that in turn also have scarlet balance sheets.

Unless we have another miraculous breakthrough that makes these models drastically cheaper to train and operate, or we see massive increases in adoption from people willing to accept significantly higher subscription fees, I just don't see how this is going to end the way the AI optimists think it will.

We're likely looking at something similar to the dot com bubble. It's not that the technology isn't viable or that it's not going to make big waves eventually, it's just that the world needs to catch up to it. Everything people were dreaming of during the dot com bubble did eventually come true, just 15 years later when the logistics had caught up, smartphones had been invented, and the web wasn't just for nerds anymore.

Re: The Last Programmers?

#22

Post by oytis »

sarchertech wrote: post #6

The author works for a company that builds an “AI ad maker”. And they link to it in the first paragraph.

Not necessarily a reason to dismiss them. If they believe in the bright AI future, it's only natural to work for an AI company.

Re: The Last Programmers?

#23

Post by sindriava »

pferde wrote: post #13

We're doomed, when even supposed experts, working on these "AI" tools can't help but anthropomorphize those tools. "when edge cases emerge that the AI didn't anticipate" The only "anticipation" that is happening within those tools is on token level, the tools have no idea (and are fundamentally unable to even have an idea) what the code is even supposed to do in the real world.

[flagged]

Re: The Last Programmers?

#24

Post by noodletheworld »

sarchertech wrote: post #6

The author works for a company that builds an “AI ad maker”. And they link to it in the first paragraph.

It would be fresh, just now and then to see a passionate AI bro who isn’t selling AI.

You know, I get it, earn those clicks. Spun that hype. Pump that valuation.

Now, go watch people on YouTube like Armin Ronacher (just search, you’ll find him), actually streaming their entire coding practice.

This is what expert LLM usage actually looks like.

People with six terminal running Claude are a lovely bedtime story, but please, if you’re doing it, do me a favour and do some live streams of your awesomeness.

I’d really love to see it.

…but so far, the live coding sessions showing people doing this “everyday 50x engineer” practice don’t seem to exist, and that makes me a bit skeptical.

Re: The Last Programmers?

#25

Post by rckt »

Simply BS. I recently struggled making the Stripe docs AI agent to give me a working answer, it wasn't event about the code, but about searching through the documentation.

And who's gonna build the new stuff and not just spit out interpretations based on the already working examples? Man, the AI promoters are something.

Re: The Last Programmers?

#27

Post by jennyholzer »

quantiq wrote: post #9

> The only bottleneck is mdoel (sic) speed and quality. But with billions of dollars pouring into generative AI every year, we will see instant voice-to-code capabilities + bug-free quality in 2-5 years. Anytime I think the AI bubble can't go any higher I'm reminded of the fact there are people who genuinely believe this. These are the people boardrooms are listening to despite the evidence for actual developer produ…

What are these people going to do when the bubble pops?

What happens when the money goes away and they realize they've been duped into joining a cult?

Re: The Last Programmers?

#29

Post by zelphirkalt »

However true or false the vision described in the article may be, the crux of the matter is, that the dev described in the article depends on a third party to even be able to do their job. That third party can change or disappear quickly, or ramp up the costs to a level that will be unacceptable to pay for.

To me it looks like a rather bleak outlook on the future, if we all are supposed to work like that.

Re: The Last Programmers?

#30

Post by komali2 »

varjag wrote: post #8

I liked the author's chocolate analogy although not in the way they intended. Yes it's a known reproducible tech and yes Hershey dominates there. Hershey is also the worst crap you can buy for the money.

I thought the same thing. That was the aha moment for me that explained the past few months of confusing back and forth about whether AI code is any good.

Apparently, hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of people like Hershey's chocolate (I believe there's a difference in the American version and the Asian/European version, all are bad but the American is beyond sickly sweet and awful). Fine. I will try not to judge, but my god is Hershey's chocolate just awful. I wish I could share a proper dark with every one of those people and tell them to let it melt rather than chew it, to see how amazing chocolate can be (I make it by hand from Pingtung beans that I roast and shell myself, but you can get excellent "bean to bar" chocolate in every major city these days). I wish I could share a cup of proper cappucino from beans roasted that day with everyone that gets a daily Starbucks. I wish I could share a glass of Taihu with everyone that ends the day slamming a couple Buds or Coor's.

But, I guess because it's cheap, or easy, or just because it's what they're used to and now they actually like it, people choose what to me is so terrible as to be almost inedible.

I guess I'm like a spoiled aristocrat or something, scoffing at the peasants for their simple pleasures, but I used to be a broke student, and when my classmates were dropping 5$ a meal on the garbage dining hall burgers, I was making simple one pot paella-like dishes with like 1$ of ingredients, because that tasted better and was healthier, so, I don't know.

Anyway, vibecoded apps probably are bad, but they're bad in the way a Hershey's bar is bad: bad enough to build a global empire powerful enough to rival a Pharaoh, so powerful that it convinces billions that their product is actually good.

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