Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I don't care how well your "AI" works

fokus.cool

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 808 posts

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#191

Post by SkyeCA »

embedding-shape wrote: post #42
kalaksi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> programmers should be some of the most worry-free individuals on this planet, the job is easy, well-paid, not a lot of health drawbacks... I don't know what kind of work you do but this depends a lot on what kind of projects you work on

Across ~10 jobs or so, mostly as a employee of 5-100 person companies, sometimes as a consultant, sometimes as a freelancer, but always with a comfy paycheck compared to any other career, and never as taxing (mental and physical) as the physical labor I did before I was a programmer, and that some of my peers are still doing. Of course, there is always exceptions, like programmers who need to hike to volcanos to setu…

Comfortable and easy, but satisfying? I don't think so. I've had jobs that were objectively worse that I enjoyed more and that were better for my mental health.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#193

Post by lxgr »

> I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles.

Anything worth reading beyond this transparent and hopefully unsuccessful appeal to tribalism?

Hackers have always tried out new technologies to see how they work – or break – so why would LLMs be any different?

> the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. A fate that designers, writers, translators, tailors or book-binders lived through before us

What is it with this perceived right to fulfilling, but also highly paid, employment in software engineering?

Nobody is stopping anyone from doing things by hand that machines can do at 10 times the quality and 100 times the speed.

Some people will even pay for it, but not many. Much will be relegated to unpaid pastime activities, and the associated craftspeople will move on to other activities to pay the bills (unless we achieve post-scarcity first). That's just human progress in a nutshell.

If the underlying problem is that many societies define a person's worth via their employability, that seems like a problem best fixed by restructuring said societies, not by artificially blocking technological progress. "progressive hackers"...

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#194

Post by cjbgkagh »

spicyusername wrote: post #115
thunky wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly is being de-valuated for a profession You're probably fine as a more senior dev...for now. But if I was a junior I'd be very worried about the longevity I can expect as a dev. It's already easier for many/most cases to assign work to a LLM vs handholding a human through it. Plus as an industry we've been exploiting our employer's lack of information to extract large salaries to produce largely poor qua…

> assign work to an LLM This is just not happening anywhere around me. I don't know why it keeps getting repeated in every one of these discussions. Every software engineer I know is using LLM tools, but every team around me is still hiring new developers. Zero firing is happening in any circle near me due to LLMs. LLMs can not do unsupervised work, period. They do not replace developers. They replace Stack Overflow…

Around 80% of my work is easy while the remaining 20% is very hard. At this stage the hard stuff is far outside the capability of LLM but the easy stuff is very much within its capabilities. I used to hire contractors to help with that 80% work but now I use LLMs instead. It’s far cheaper, better quality, and zero hassle. That’s 3 junior / mid level jobs that are gone now. Since the hard stuff is combinatorial complexity I think by the time LLM is good enough to do that then it’s probably good enough to do just about everything and we’ll be living in an entirely different world.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#195

Post by mountainriver »

ojr wrote: post #183

I always thought years of experience in a language was a silly job requirement. LLMs allow me to write Rust code as a total Rust beginner and allows me to create a valuable SaaS while most experienced Rust developer never built anything that made $1 outside of their work. I wouldn't say devaluation, my programming experience definitely helps with debugging. LLMs eliminate boilerplate, not engineering judgement and pr…

I really love LLMs for Rust. Before them I was an intermediate Rust dev, and only used it in specific circumstances where the extra coding overhead paid off.

Now I write just about everything in Rust because why not? If I can vibe code Rust about as fast as Python, why would I ever use Python outside of ML?

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#196

Post by overflow897 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #100
roxolotl wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to quote the same quote but with the opposite sentiment. If you look at the history of work, at least in the states, it’s a history of almost continual devaluation and automation. I’ve been assuming that my generation, entering the profession in the 2010s, will be the last where it’s a pathway to an upper middle class life. Just like the factory workers before us automation will come for those who do most…

But in the end, we didn't end up with less factories that do more, we ended up with more factories that does more. Why wouldn't the same happen here? Instead of these programmers jamming out boilerplate 24/7, why are they unable to improve their skill further and move with the rest of the industry, if that's needed? Just like other professions adopt to how society is shaped, why should programming be an exception to…

And how is the quality of life for those factory workers? It's almost like the craft of making physical things has been devalued even if we're making more physical things than ever.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#197

Post by [deleted] »

hacb wrote: post #128
embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

It's absolutely not easy to find a new job in France, and more generally in Europe

[deleted]

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#198

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

thunky wrote: post #110
embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

> What exactly is being de-valuated for a profession You're probably fine as a more senior dev...for now. But if I was a junior I'd be very worried about the longevity I can expect as a dev. It's already easier for many/most cases to assign work to a LLM vs handholding a human through it. Plus as an industry we've been exploiting our employer's lack of information to extract large salaries to produce largely poor qua…

> But if I was a junior I'd be very worried about the longevity I can expect as a dev. It's already easier for many/most cases to assign work to a LLM vs handholding a human through it.

This sounds kind of logical, but really isn't.

In reality you can ASSIGN a task to a junior dev and expect them to eventually complete it, and learn from the experience as well. Sure there'll likely be some interaction between the junior dev and mentor, and this is part of the learning process - something DESIREABLE since it leads to the developer getting better.

In contrast, you really cant "assign" something to an LLM. You can of course try to, and give it some "vibe coding" assignment like "build me a backend component to read the data from the database", but the LLM/agent isn't an autonomous entity that can take ownership of the assignment and be expected to do whatever it takes (e.g. coming back to you and asking for help) to get it done. With todays "AI" technology it's the AI that needs all the handholding, and the person using the AI is the one who has effectively taken the assignment, not the LLM.

Also, given the inability of LLMs to learn on the job, using an LLM as a tool to help get things done is going to be a groundhog day experience of having to micro-manage the process in the same way over and over again each time you use it... time that would have been better invested in helping a junior dev get up to speed and in the future be an independent developer that tasks can indeed be assigned to.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#199

Post by phkahler »

Mashimo wrote: post #44
embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

> What exactly is being de-valuated for a profession that seems to be continuously growing A lot of newly skilled job applicants can't find anything in the job market right now.

>> A lot of newly skilled job applicants can't find anything in the job market right now.

That is not unique to programming or tech generally. The overall US job market is kind of shit right now.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#200

Post by zwnow »

TrackerFF wrote: post #188

I get that some people want to be intellectually "pure". Artisans crafting high-quality software, made with love, and all that stuff. But one emerging reality for everyone should be that businesses are swallowing the AI-hype raw. You really need a competent and understanding boss to not be labeled a luddite, because let's be real - LLMs have made everyone more "productive" on paper. Non-coders are churning out small…

> You really need a competent and understanding boss to not be labeled a luddite, because let's be real - LLMs have made everyone more "productive" on paper.

I am actually less productive when using LLMs because now I have to read another entities code and be able to judge wether this fits my current business problem or not. If it doesn't, yay refactoring prompts instead of tackling the actual problem. Also I can write code for free, LLMs coding assistants aren't free. I can fit business problems amd edge cases into my brain given some time, a LLM is unaware about edge cases, legal requirements, decoupled dependencies, potential refactors or the occasional call of boss asking for something to be sneaked into the code right now. If my job forced me to use these tools, congrats, I'll update my address to some hut in a forrest eating cold canned ravioli for the rest of my life because I for sure dont wanna work in a world where I am forced to use dystopian big tech machines I cant look into.

Post reply on HN