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

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

#761

Post by blackqueeriroh »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #232
spicyusername wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Well your anecdote is clearly at odds with absolutely all of the macro economic data.

Actually, it’s not. The job market changed about a year or so before ChatGPT

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

#762

Post by blackqueeriroh »

esafak wrote: post #743
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they continue to get better, but they are not at human level (and jr devs are humans too) yet, and I doubt the next level "AGI" that people like Demis Hassabis are projecting to still be 10 years away will be human level either.

Which human? LLMs are better than the average developer. In fact I estimate the SOTA models are well over the 90% percentile.

You both are cracking me up.

Yes, LLMs are better than the average developer at writing code.

But writing code is, like, 30% of what developers do.

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

#763

Post by alganet »

blackqueeriroh wrote: post #747
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. Somewhere along the lines of "everybody can code," we threw out the values and aesthetics that attracted people in the first place. What began as a rejection of externally imposed values devolved into a mouthpiece of the current powers and principalities. This is evidenced by the new set of hacker values being almost purely performative when compared against the old…

> we need to create a culture that values craftmanship and dignifies work done by developers. Developers waste a lot of time writing a bunch of boilerplate code that they hate writing and that doesn’t make them happy and has nothing to do with craftmanship. We also just spent 60 years in a culture that dignified work done by developers to the extreme, and honestly that produced some of the most narcissistic minds the…

I think this boilerplate thing got lost in translation some time ago.

We dislike _the presence_ of boilerplate, not the time spent writing it. If another thing writes it for you, it implies that _now boilerplate exists_, and it sucks.

It makes me unhappy when it exists. It makes me unhappy if it appears in seconds.

That said, there is some potential for using AI to reduce boilerplate and help create more meaningful software. However, that is definitely not the way things are shaping out to be.

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

#764

Post by blackqueeriroh »

vrighter wrote: post #327
CuriouslyC wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right about where it is today with better integrations? One year is the difference between Sonnet 3.5 and Opus 4.5. We're not hitting diminishing returns yet (mostly because of exponential capex scaling, but still). We're already committed to ~3 years of the current trajectory, which means we can expect similar performance boosts year over year. The key to keep in mind is that LLMs are a giant bag of capabilities, an…

better integrations won't do anything to fix the fact that these tools are, by their mathematical nature, unreliable and always will be

so are people

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

#765

Post by isquaredr »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #198
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…

> 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 jun…

The difference is the LLM is predictable and repeatable. Whereas a junior dev could go AWOL, leave unexpectedly for a new job, or be generally difficult to work with, LLMs fit my schedule, show constant progress and are generally less anxiety inducing than pouring hundreds of thousands into a worker who may not pan out. This sentiment may be showing my lack of expertise in team building but at worst shows that LLMs represent a legitimate alternative to building a large team to achieve a vision.

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

#767

Post by eithed »

esafak wrote: post #744
eithed wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is an issue of worker you're hiring. I've worked with senior engineers who a) did nothing (as - really not write any thing within the sprint, nor do any other work) b) worked on things they wanted to work on c) did ONLY things that they were assigned in the sprint (= if there were 10 tickets in the sprint and they were assigned 1 of these tickets then they would finish that ticket and not pick up anything el…

> But this is an issue of worker you're hiring. You're (unwittingly?) making an argument for using an LLM: you know what you're going to get. It does not take six months to evaluate one; six minutes suffice.

The argument I'm trying to make is that hiring a real person or using LLMs has upsides and downsides. People have their own agendas, can leave, can affect your business in many ways, unrelated to code etc, but also can learn, can be creative and address problems that you've not even surfaced. LLM will not and will not be capable of that.

With LLMs you know what you're going to get to a certain value. Will it not listen to you? No. Will it not follow your instructions? Maybe. Will it produce unmaintainable garbage? Most certainly. Does that matter for nondevs? Sometimes

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

#768

Post by frgturpwd »

The argument assumes a naïve pre-hermeneutic subject who could maintain a pure unmediated "self" if only they avoided LLMs. The author is nostalgic for a world that never really existed. Photography ruined painting, digital ruined film, typewriters ruined writing, audiobooks ruined literacy etc etc! This is the same lament lodged by every craft-class when industrialization hits their domain. Programmers aren't special. AI is not a fascist project simply due to the fact that different actors are bound to weaponize it differently, so this take is.. kinda tired and full of blindspots. I could have used my prejudice in figuring that out as soon as it implied that abstinence is superior, but I wanted to give it a fair shot. It ending with self-helpesque advice is just so funny.

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

#769

Post by ponector »

aurareturn wrote: post #742
schiem wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually asked for quantitative evidence.

Yea I read that wrong. Quantitative should be easy. OpenAI's ARR is $20b in 2025. Up nearly 6x over last year. If it isn't useful, people wouldn't pay for it.

Isn't it mostly from corporate clients who pay based on FOMO and force everyone to use it to justify spending?

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

#770

Post by Hoasi »

> Not that their craft would die out, but it would be mutilated

This is spot on, exactly how it felt for illustrators/designers.

With disruptive technologies, the correct response is to use the tools in unintended ways. And thus reappropriate them.

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