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We mourn our craft

nolanlawson.com

761–770 of 918 posts

Re: We mourn our craft

#761

"They can write code better than you or I can" They can not. They can make some average code. On Friday one suggested an NSI installer script that would never bundle some needed files in the actual installer. I can only imagine that a lot of people have made the same mistake (used CopyFiles instead of File ) and posted that mistake on the internet. The true disaster of that being that then testing out that installer…

You left out the key line “and you don’t believe me, wait six months”. These models are getting better all the time. The term “vibe coding” was only coined a year ago, around the same time as the release of Claude Code.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t think it’s good yet, because it’s brand new tech and it keeps improving.

Re: We mourn our craft

#762

> If you would like to grieve, I invite you to grieve with me. I’m not against AI in itself, but the current implementation (read market) can eat my shiny metal … I got kids to feed and bills to pay. Yes AI was all about post scarcity. Hiring in our industry is already feeling the brunt of AI, where is the UBI? Where is our soft landing? I’m too old to learn XYZ skill if I get laid off, it will be life changing, and…

> I’m too old to learn XYZ skill if I get laid off, it will be life changing, and for what?

If you're not already retirement aged, how is age stopping you from learning a new skill? This sounds like learned ageism.

Re: We mourn our craft

#763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those little black boxes of AI can be significantly demystified by, for example, watching a bunch of videos ( https://karpathy.ai/zero-to-hero.html ) and spending at least 40 hours of hard cognitive effort learning about it yourself. That's like saying you can understand humans by watching some physics or biology videos.

No it’s not Nobody has built a human so we don’t know how they work We know exactly how LLM technology works

We know why they work, but not how. SotA models are an empirical goldmine, we are learning a lot about how information and intelligence organize themselves under various constraints. This is why there are new papers published every single day which further explore the capabilities and inner-workings of these models.

Re: We mourn our craft

#764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I plugged "admitting a large number of uses" into OneLook Thesaurus ( https://www.onelook.com/thesaurus/?s=admitting%20a%20large%2... ), and it returned: > Best match is versatile which usually means: Capable of many different uses with "multi-purpose", "adaptable", "flexible" and "multi-use" as the runner-up candidates. --- Like you, I had no idea that tools like OneLook Thesaurus existed (despite how easy it would…

So you weren't actually using the thesaurus as a reverse dictionary here. The thesaurus contains definitions, and the reverse dictionary was the search tool built into their website. It would work just as well against a dictionary as a thesaurus. Importantly to the point being discussed, what you did does not work at all against an actual physical thesaurus book.

If the thesaurus had an entry for "very useful" (as WordHippo does), then yes, it would work against an actual physical thesaurus book. This whole cluster of words is coded into Wiktionary incorrectly – for example, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/utility#Synonyms is a subsection of "Adjective" despite listing synonyms for a sense of the noun:

> (state of being useful): usefulness, value, advantages, benefit, return, merits, virtue, note

where "note" is a synonym of distinction, not utility, and Thesaurus:utility has fewer entries than this. Versatility should be listed in Thesaurus:utility as a related concept.

Re: We mourn our craft

#765
post #119
post #95

Like other tech disrupted crafts before this, think furniture making or farming, that's how it goes. From hand-made craft, to mass production factories (last couple of decades) to fully automated production. The craft was dying long before LLMs. Started in dotcom, ZIRP added some beatings, then LLMs are finishing the job. This is fine, because like in furniture making, the true craftsmen will be even more valuable (o…

Where do people find this optimism? I reckon when the software jobs fall everything else will follow shortly too. That's just the first target because it's what we know and the manual stuff is a little harder for now. The "good news" is everyone might be in the same boat so the system will have to adapt,

Software, and most STEM based jobs, have a lot of determinism and verifiability + some way to reduce the cost of failure so brute force iteration can cover up the remaining. There is often "a correct answer". They've also yet to be truly disrupted until now which makes them particularly vulnerable than any other job.

Most jobs don't have the same level of verification and/or repeatability. Some factors include:

* Physical constraints: Even the jobs that have productive output if they are physical it will take a long time for AI and more importantly energy density to catch up. Robots have a while to go as well - in the end human hands and your metabolism/energy density will be worth more than your brain/intelligence.

* Cost of failure/can't repeat: For things like building the cost of failure is high (e.g. disposal, cleanup, more resources, etc) -> even 70% of a "building bench" benchmark would be completely inadequate without low cost to repeat. Many jobs are also already largely automated but scaled (e.g. mining, manufacturing, etc) - they've already gone through the wave.

* Human need for its own sake: Other jobs cater not just for productive output, but for some human need where it hasn't been made more efficient ever (e.g. care jobs). There are jobs that a human is more effective in the medium term because the receiver needs it from a human.

No -> this just affects white collar STEM based roles. Thinking we are in it together is just another form of "cope" sadly. There's a rational reason why others have optimism while we SWE's are now full of anxiety and dread.

For the people who it doesn't affect given their current place in many societies (nurses, builders, etc etc) there will be little sympathy.

Re: We mourn our craft

#766
> We’ll miss the feeling of holding code in our hands

I agree, I started feeling this a few months ago, where I was only writing the architecture and abstractions and letting AI fill in the gaps. It seems in the next few months it could probably do more than that. But is it so bad, I agree that I can't really mold an entire pot by my hand any more. But, if you ask AI to do it, it will create a pot with cracks in it and it would be your job to either plaster it of fill gold in those cracks.

I feel coding is going to be similar to kintsugi after this is all over

Re: We mourn our craft

#767

> If you would like to grieve, I invite you to grieve with me. I’m not against AI in itself, but the current implementation (read market) can eat my shiny metal … I got kids to feed and bills to pay. Yes AI was all about post scarcity. Hiring in our industry is already feeling the brunt of AI, where is the UBI? Where is our soft landing? I’m too old to learn XYZ skill if I get laid off, it will be life changing, and…

> I’m too old to learn XYZ skill if I get laid off, it will be life changing, and for what? If you're not already retirement aged, how is age stopping you from learning a new skill? This sounds like learned ageism.

It was said in the context of having bills to pay. Meaning that he is in deep and needs a high-priced developer salary to make ends meet.

Virtually all other careers that offer similar compensation have an old boys club gatekeeping the profession, requiring you submit many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars before they will consider letting you in. That might pencil out as a reasonable investment when you are 14, but once you are mid-career you'll never get back what you put into it.

Learning XYZ skill is something you can do at any age, and doing so will even get you an average paying job with ease. Learning the XYZ skill in the way that keeps the old boys happy is not a realistic option for someone who considers themselves old.

Re: We mourn our craft

#768
post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're definitely in a golden age of computing. Certainly not. Computers are still magic, but much of that magic is now controlled and being restricted by someone other than you. Today most people's only computer is a cell phone, which is heavily locked down and designed for media consumption and to collect and give away every scrap of their personal/private data. Most people's desktop computers aren't much better.…

Models you can run on your own (expensive) computer are just a year behind the SOTA. Linux exists. Why are you so pessimistic?

Typical HN comment. They’re so in the weeds of edge case 1% concerns they can’t see the golden age around them.

Most people living through golden ages might not know it. Many workers in Industrial Revolution saw a decline in relative wages. Many in the Roman Empire were enslaved or impoverished. That doesn’t mean history doesn’t see these as golden ages, where golden age is defined loosely as a broad period of enhanced prosperity and productivity for a group of people.

For all its downsides, pointed out amply above, the golden age of computing started 100 years ago and hasn’t ceased yet.

Re: We mourn our craft

#769

The craft is still there just like painting is still an alternative to a photograph. It's just not going to be valued by society anymore, and far fewer will learn how to do it. Natural language is the new programming language. For now, understanding the craft is still an edge in making better prompts, but already I can see that telling Antigravity "now look for ways to make this more efficient" works almost as well a…

Did society actually value those skills before? Maybe companies or individuals did, but giving coded instructions to computers was seen by most as wizardry at best and geeky at worst. Unfortunately, I feel society values tackling and home run hitting, superficial beauty, and wealth, far more than technical skills.

Re: We mourn our craft

#770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like coding, I really do. But like you, I like building things more than I like the way I build them. I do not find myself miss writing code by hand as much. I do find it that the developers that focused on "build the right things" mourn less than those who focused on "build things right". But I do worry. The main question is this - will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build" and have…

For me, photography is the metaphor - https://raskie.com/post/we-have-ai-at-home - We've had the technology to produce a perfect 2D likeness of a subject for close to two centuries now, and people are still painting. Video didn't kill the radio star either. In fact the radio star has become more popular than ever in this, the era of the podcast.

Art, photography, acting, music - none of them are good career choices. You'll either be one of the fortunate few, or you'll struggle to make a living. Sucks but that's how it is.
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