411–420 of 808 posts
Sure, it can be overdone. But at the same time, it shouldn't be undersold.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You were proven right three minutes after you posted this. Something happened, I'm not sure what and how. Hacking became reduced to "hacktivism", and technology stopped being the object of interest in those spaces.
> and technology stopped being the object of interest in those spaces. That happened because technology stopped being fun. When we were kids, seeing Penny communicating with Brain through her watch was neat and cool! Then when it happened in real life, it turned out that it was just a platform to inject you with more advertisements. The "something" that happened was ads. They poisoned all the fun and interest out of…
Here on "hacker news" we get articles like this, meanwhile my brother is having a blast vibe-coding all sorts of stuff. He's building stuff faster than I ever dreamed of when I was a professional developer, and he barely knows Python.
In 2017 I was having great fun building smart contracts, constantly amazed that I was deploying working code to a peer-to-peer network, and I got nothing but vitriol here if I mentioned it.
I expect this to keep happening with any new tech that has the misfortune to get significant hype.
Not that there's anything wrong with crafting, but for those of us who just care about building things, LLM's are an absolute asset.
It's nuanced, can be abused, but can be beneficial when used responsibly in certain ways. It's a tool. It's a powerful tool, so treat it like a powerful tool: learn about it enough to safely use it in a way to improve your life and those around you.
Avoiding it completely whilst confidently berating it without experience is a position formed from fear, rather than knowledge or experience. I'm genuinely very surprised this article has so many points here.
In the end? no one cares. I get just as much done (maybe more), while doing less work. Maybe some of my skills will atrophy, but I'll strengthen others.
I'm still auditing everything for quality as I would my own code before pushing it. At the end of the day, it usually makes fewer typos than I would. It certainly searches the codebase better than I do.
All this hype on both ends will fade away, and the people using the tools they have to get things done will remain.
> 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Likely progressive, but definitely not luddite [0]. Anti-capitalist for sure. I struggle with this discourse deeply. With many posters like OP, I align almost completely - unions are good, large megacorps are bad, death to facists etc. It's when we get to the AI issue that I do a bit of a double take. Right now, AI is almost completely in the hands of a few large corp entities, yes. But once upon a time, so was the i…
How are unions any better than mega corps? My brother is part of a union and the leaders make millions. He's pigenholed at the same low pay rate and can't ever get a raise, until everyone in the same role also gets a raise (which will never happen). It traps people, because many union jobs can't or won't innovate, and when they look elsewhere, are underskilled (and stuck). You mention 'deepseek'. Are you joking? It's…
Deepseek is open source, which is why I mention it. It was made by the Chinese government but it shows a way to create these models at vastly reduced cost and was done with transparent methodology so we can learn from it. I am not saying "the future is Deepseek", I am saying "there are lessons to be learned from Deepseek".
I actually agree with you on the corporate bootstrap argument - I think we ought to be careful, because if they ever figure out how to control the output they will turn off outputs that help develop local models (gotta protect that moat!), but for now I use them myself to study and learn about building locally and I think everyone else ought to get on this train as well. For now, the robust academic discourse is a very very good thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not? I was surprised how hard many here fell for the NFT thing, too.
Please, not the old "AI is the new crypto" trope. Various people have been wrong on various predictions in the past, and it seems to me that any implied strong overlap is anecdotal at best and wishful (why?) thinking at worst. The only really embarrassing behavior is never updating your priors when your predictions are wrong. Also, if you're always right about all your prognoses, you should probably also not be in th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now apply that thinking to computers. Or levers. I've seen the argument that computers let us prop up and even scale governmental systems that would have long since collapsed under their own weight if they’d remained manual more than once. I'm not sure I buy it, but computation undoubtedly shapes society. The author does seem quite keen on computers, but they've been "getting rid of the free-willed human in the loop"…
Tools are not value neutral in any way. In my third world country, motorbikes, scooters, etc have exploded in popularity and use in the past decade. Many people riding these things have made the roads much more dangerous for all, but particularly for them. They keep dying by the hundreds per month, not only just due to the fact that they choose to ride them at all, but how they ride them: on busy high speed highways,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we need to create a culture that values craftmanship and dignifies work done by developers. Mostly I agree with you. But there's a large group of people who are way too contemptuous of craftsmen using AI. We need to push back against this arrogant attitude. Just as we shouldn't be contemptuous of a woodworking craftsman using a table saw.
That's because there's nothing "craftsman" about using AI to do stuff for you. Someone who uses AI to write their programs isn't the equivalent of a carpenter using a table saw, they are the equivalent of a carpenter who subcontracts the piece out to someone else. And we wouldn't show respect to the latter person either.