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We mourn our craft

nolanlawson.com

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671–680 of 918 posts

Re: We mourn our craft

#671

Post by shash »

noisy_boy wrote: post #650

> Someday years from now we will look back on the era when we were the last generation to code by hand. We’ll laugh and explain to our grandkids how silly it was that we typed out JavaScript syntax with our fingers. But secretly we’ll miss it. Why will I miss it? I will be coding my small scripts and tools and hobby projects by hand because there is no deadline attached to them. Hell, I will also tag them as "bespoke…

Either that or the “bespoke hand-crafted artisanal free-range code” will be the only thing still maintainable because vibe coders made such a mess

Re: We mourn our craft

#672

Post by kstrauser »

yread wrote: post #657
Nextgrid wrote: post #137

LLMs are only a threat if you see your job as a code monkey. In that case you're likely already obsoleted by outsourced staff who can do your job much cheaper. If you see your job as a "thinking about what code to write (or not)" monkey, then you're safe. I expect most seniors and above to be in this position, and LLMs are absolutely not replacing you here - they can augment you in certain situations. The perks of a…

Nevermind coding where is the llm for legal stuff? Why are all these programmers working on automating their job away instead of those bloodsucking lawyers who charge hundreds of eur per h.

It’s happening as fast for them. I literally sit next to our general counsel all day at the office. We work together continually. I show him things happening in engineering, and each time he shows me the analogous things happening in legal.

This affects everyone.

Re: We mourn our craft

#673

Post by shash »

iepathos wrote: post #640

If AI is good enough that juniors wielding it outproduce seniors, then the juniors are just... overhead. The company would cut them out and let AI report to a handful of senior architects who actually understand what's being built. You don't pay humans to be a slow proxy for a better tool. If the tools get good enough to not need senior oversight, they're good enough to not need junior intermediaries either. The "jun…

Or it collapses when the seniors have to retire anyway. Who instructs the LLM when there’s nobody who understands the business?

I’m sure the plan is to create a paperclip maximizing company which is fully AI. And the sea turned salty because nobody remembered how to turn it off.

Re: We mourn our craft

#674

Post by orangecat »

layer8 wrote: post #666
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what everyone is talking about. LLMs are based on relatively simple math, inference is much easier to learn and customize than say Android APIs. Once you do you can apply familiar programming style logic to messy concepts like language and images. Give you model a JSON schema like "warp_factor": Integer if you don't want chatter, that's way better than Star Trek computer could do. Or have it write you…

You can’t reason about inference (or training) of LLMs on the semantic level. You can’t predict the output of an LLM for a specific input other than by running it. If you want the output to be different in a specific way, you can’t reason with precision that a particular modification of the input, or of the weights, will achieve the desired change (and only that change) in the output. Instead, it’s like a slot machin…

That’s like saying that the human brain is based on simple physical field equations, and therefore its behavior is easy to understand.

Right, which is the point: LLMs are much more like human coworkers than compilers in terms of how you interact with them. Nobody would say that there's no point to working with other people because you can't predict their behavior exactly.

Re: We mourn our craft

#675

Post by ndiddy »

yread wrote: post #657
Nextgrid wrote: post #137

LLMs are only a threat if you see your job as a code monkey. In that case you're likely already obsoleted by outsourced staff who can do your job much cheaper. If you see your job as a "thinking about what code to write (or not)" monkey, then you're safe. I expect most seniors and above to be in this position, and LLMs are absolutely not replacing you here - they can augment you in certain situations. The perks of a…

Nevermind coding where is the llm for legal stuff? Why are all these programmers working on automating their job away instead of those bloodsucking lawyers who charge hundreds of eur per h.

They are, you probably just aren't hearing about it. There's been loads of cases over the past few years where lawyers use AI to automate their legal research, then get admonished by the judge because their court filings contain fake quotes or reference court cases that don't even exist. A few examples: https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/09/chatgpt-la... https://natlawreview.com/article/judge-issues-public-admonit... https://websitedc.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/Mezu_v._Mezu_US...

Re: We mourn our craft

#676

Post by cat_plus_plus »

layer8 wrote: post #666
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what everyone is talking about. LLMs are based on relatively simple math, inference is much easier to learn and customize than say Android APIs. Once you do you can apply familiar programming style logic to messy concepts like language and images. Give you model a JSON schema like "warp_factor": Integer if you don't want chatter, that's way better than Star Trek computer could do. Or have it write you…

You can’t reason about inference (or training) of LLMs on the semantic level. You can’t predict the output of an LLM for a specific input other than by running it. If you want the output to be different in a specific way, you can’t reason with precision that a particular modification of the input, or of the weights, will achieve the desired change (and only that change) in the output. Instead, it’s like a slot machin…

What are you inputs and outputs? If inputs are zip files and outputs is uncompressed text, don't use an LLM. If inputs are English strings and outputs are localized strings, LLMs are way more accurate than any procedural code you might attempt for the purpose. Plus changing the style of outputs by modifying inputs/weights is also easier, you just need to provide a few thousand samples rather than think of every case. Super relevant for human coding, how many hobbyists or small businesses have teams of linguists on staff?

Re: We mourn our craft

#677

Post by paganel »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #654
paganel wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which are those open ones? And how are they going to get their billions of dollars worth of investment back? Even Google Maps used to be virtually free until it wasn’t, at a fraction of the investment cost.

For starters: Qwen, GLM, Kimi, Llama. How they run their business is none of my business. I can download the weights right now and use them as I see fit under the open source license terms. Google Maps was never a self contained binary you could download. But even now it remains free to use.

I’m only familiar with Llama, but as far as I understood it’s in no way at the same level as Claude or Gemini, so in fact you’d still be a lot less productive compared to those using those products directly.

That’s the thing, us as programmers are supposed to be creators/makers, not mere consumers/users, but I do agree that that has been changing as of late.

Re: We mourn our craft

#678

Post by shash »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #300
XenophileJKO wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet.. my car was surrounded by 5 self-driving cars with no people in them on the way to work on Thursday.

And your ability to go your own way is only temporary and due to inertia. Today, for a while, you can still buy a vehicle that requires a driver and doesn't look and perform exactly like every other waymo. But that's only because self driving cars are still new and incomplete. It's still the transition period. I already can't buy the car I want with a manual transmission. There are still a few cars that I could get w…

I think the decline of manual transmission is different from self-driving. Manuals, you could argue are a technological progression that doesn’t change the fundamental economics or sociology of driving. But self-driving has issues far beyond the technology. Like liability, like ownership of vehicles, availability, traffic rules,…

I’m not even sure if, outside of highly mapped environments it even makes sense.

Re: We mourn our craft

#679

Post by layer8 »

orangecat wrote: post #674
layer8 wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t reason about inference (or training) of LLMs on the semantic level. You can’t predict the output of an LLM for a specific input other than by running it. If you want the output to be different in a specific way, you can’t reason with precision that a particular modification of the input, or of the weights, will achieve the desired change (and only that change) in the output. Instead, it’s like a slot machin…

That’s like saying that the human brain is based on simple physical field equations, and therefore its behavior is easy to understand. Right, which is the point: LLMs are much more like human coworkers than compilers in terms of how you interact with them. Nobody would say that there's no point to working with other people because you can't predict their behavior exactly.

This thread is about what software developers like. It’s common knowledge that many programmers like working with computers because that’s different in specific ways from working with people. So saying that LLMs are just like people doesn’t help here.

Re: We mourn our craft

#680

Post by RunSet »

sosomoxie wrote: post #10

I started programming over 40 years ago because it felt like computers were magic. They feel more magic today than ever before. We're literally living in the 1980s fantasy where you could talk to your computer and it had a personality. I can't believe it's actually happening, and I've never had more fun computing. I can't empathize with the complaint that we've "lost something" at all. We're on the precipice of somet…

> I started programming over 40 years ago because it felt like computers were magic. They feel more magic today than ever before. We're literally living in the 1980s fantasy where you could talk to your computer and it had a personality. I can't believe it's actually happening, and I've never had more fun computing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect

I also can't believe it's actually happening. ;)

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