"Wait 6 months" has been the call for 3-4 years now. You can't eulogize a profession that hasn't been killed, that's just mean.
Humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future. We can't even reliably predict the weather a week from now.
We mourn our craft
391–400 of 918 posts
Re: We mourn our craft
#392To the people who are against AI programming, honest question: why do you not program in assembly? Can you really say "you" "programmed" anything at all if a compiler wrote your binaries? This is a 100% honest question. Because whatever your justification to this is, it can probably be used for AI programmers using temperature 0.0 as well, just one abstraction level higher. I'm 100% honestly looking forward to findin…
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Re: We mourn our craft
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forgive me if "just dig your way out of the hole" doesn't sound appealing.
You're free to use whatever tools you like.
> You're free to use whatever tools you like.
this is important, i feel like a lot of people are falling in to the "stop liking what i don't like" way of thinking. Further, there's a million different ways to apply an AI helper in software development. You can adjust your workflow in whatever way works best for you. ..or leave it as is.
Re: We mourn our craft
#394This perspective was mine 6 months ago. And god damn, I do miss the feeling of crafting something truly beautiful in code sometimes. But then, as I've been pushed into this new world we're living in, I've come to realize a couple things: Nothing I've ever built has lasted more than a few years. Either the company went under, or I left and someone else showed up and rewrote it to suit their ideals. Most of us are doin…
> Nothing I've ever built has lasted more than a few years. maybe this say something more about your career decisions than anything else?
Maybe? I wasn't just speaking of myself however.
Re: We mourn our craft
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think 5 years is necessary. I think after two years of this agentic orchestration if you rarely touch code yourself skill will degrade to the point they won't be able to write anything non-trivial without assistance.
How much do you think Linus Torvalds has coded over the last decade? Why is he still able to do his job?
Re: We mourn our craft
#396> wait six months. I mourn having to repeatedly hear this never-quite-true promise that an amazing future of perfect code from agentic whatevers will come to fruition, and it's still just six months away. "Oh yes, we know we said it was coming six, twelve, and eighteen months ago, but this time we pinky swear it's just six months away!" I remember when I first got access to the internet. It was revolutionary. I wante…
> an amazing future of perfect code from agentic whatevers will come to fruition... Nobody credible is promising you a perfect future. But, a better future, yes! If you do not see it, then know this. You have your head firmly planted in the sand and are intentionally refusing to see what is coming. You may not like it. You may not want it. But it is coming and you will either have to adapt or become irrelevant. Does…
> But it is coming and you will either have to adapt or become irrelevant.
I heard it will be here in six months. I guess I don't have much time to adapt! :)
Re: We mourn our craft
#397This perspective was mine 6 months ago. And god damn, I do miss the feeling of crafting something truly beautiful in code sometimes. But then, as I've been pushed into this new world we're living in, I've come to realize a couple things: Nothing I've ever built has lasted more than a few years. Either the company went under, or I left and someone else showed up and rewrote it to suit their ideals. Most of us are doin…
Interesting, I still have code I wrote 20 years ago being used in production.
Theres always exceptions. Congrats!
Re: We mourn our craft
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars being poured into the smartest minds in the world to push this thing forward I'm not so confident that it'll only be code monkeys for too long
Until they can magically increase context length to such a size that can conveniently fit the whole codebase, we're safe. It seems like the billions so far mostly go to talk of LLMs replacing every office worker, rather than any action to that effect. LLMs still have major (and dangerous) limitations that make this unlikely.
Models do not need to hold the whole code base in memory, and neither do you. You both search for what you need. Models can already memorize more than you !
Re: We mourn our craft
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you consider drudgery the in-depth thinking that's required to actually go and write that algorithm, think out all the data ownership relationships, name the variables, think the edge cases for the tests? For me, the act of sitting down and writing the code is what actually leads to true understanding of the logic, in a similar way to how the only way to understand a mathematical proof is to go trough it. Sure,…
> Would you consider drudgery the in-depth thinking that's required to actually go and write that algorithm, think out all the data ownership relationships, name the variables, think the edge cases for the tests? For 99% of the functions I've written in my life? Absolutely drudgery. They're barely algorithms. Just bog-standard data transformation. This is what I love having AI replace. For the other 1% that actually…
I do agree with this, and in fact I do often use LLMs for for these tasks! I guess my message is more intended towards vibe-only coders (and, I guess, the non-technical higher ups drooling at the idea of never having to hire another developer).
Re: We mourn our craft
#400> wait six months. I mourn having to repeatedly hear this never-quite-true promise that an amazing future of perfect code from agentic whatevers will come to fruition, and it's still just six months away. "Oh yes, we know we said it was coming six, twelve, and eighteen months ago, but this time we pinky swear it's just six months away!" I remember when I first got access to the internet. It was revolutionary. I wante…
>It's utility was never "six months away," 6 months ago is when my coding became 100% done by AI. The utility already has been there for a while. >I didn't have to be compelled to use it—I was eager to use it of my own volition as often as possible. The difference is that you were a kid then with an open mind and now your world view has fixed into a certain way the world works and how things should be done.
> your world view has fixed into a certain way the world works
Yeah, it's weird. I'm fixated on not having bugs in my code. :)