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I am happier writing code by hand

abhinavomprakash.com

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Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#281

Post by xantronix »

krupan wrote: post #128
zozbot234 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you lost control of the code and are running more and more frictionless on hopes and dreams Your control over the code is your prompt. Write more detailed prompts and the control comes back. (The best part is that you can also work with the AI to come up with better prompts, but unlike with slop-written code, the result is bite-sized and easily surveyable.)

You what code is? A very detailed specification that drives a deterministic machine. Maybe we don't need to keep giving LLMs more details, maybe we could skip the middle man there

The gravity well's pull toward a management track, or in the very least the desire to align one's sympathies with management, is simply irresistible to some people. Unfortunately I do not think Hacker News is the best venue to discuss solutions to this issue.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#282

Post by xantronix »

boredemployee wrote: post #140

every day there's a thread about this topic and the discussions always circle around the same arguments. I think we should be worrying about more urgent things, like a worker doing the job of three people with ai agents, the mental load that comes with that, how much of the disruption caused by ai will disproportionately benefit owners rather than employees, and so on.

We are, after all, in the holy temple of the adherents of the Great Disenfranchisement Machine.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#283

Post by dasil003 »

xigoi wrote: post #257
dasil003 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Architects and engineers are not construction workers. AI can build the thing but it needs to be told exactly what to build by someone who knows how software works. I’ve spent enough time working with cross-functional stakeholders to know that the vast majority of PM (whether of the product, program, or project variety), will not be capable of running AI towards any meaningful software development goal. At best they…

> can build the thing but it needs to be told exactly what to build by someone who knows how software works. How do you tell a computer exactly what you want it to do, without using code?

Basically you feed it a massive volume of application code. It turns out there is a lot of commonality and latent repetition that can be teased out by LLMs, so you can get quite far with that, though it will fall down when you get into more novel terrain.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#284

Post by tasuki »

woeirua wrote: post #5

This is no different then carpentry. Yes, all furniture can now be built by machines. Some people still choose to build it by hand. Does that make them less productive? Yes. Will they ever carve furniture by hand for a business? Probably not. Can they still enjoy the act of working with the wood? Yes. If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do…

> But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer.

If the local bakery can sell expensive artisanal brioches, surely the programmers can sell expensive artisanal ones and zeroes!

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#285

Post by agentultra »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #225
agentultra wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I’ve read quite a lot about that bloody and terrible part of history. The Ludddites were workers who lived in an era without any social or state protections for labourers. Capitalists were using child labour to operate the looms because it was cheaper than paying anyone a fair wage. If you didn’t like the conditions you could go work as an indentured servant for the state in the work houses. Luddites used organi…

In that case I really don't understand how you conclude there's any difference between being on the bottom or the top of the tool. The bare reality is the same: Skilled labourers will be replaced by automation. Woodworking tools (and looms) replaced skilled labourers with less-skilled replacements (such as children), and AI will absolutely replace skilled labourers with less-skilled replacements as well. I ask sincer…

I haven’t worked in a furniture factory but I have assembled car seats in a factory for Toyota.

The difference matters because the people who worked together to smash the looms created the myth of Ned Ludd to protect their identities from persecution. They used organized violence because they had no leverage otherwise to demand fair wages, safety guarantees, and other labour protections. What they were fighting for wasn’t the abolishment of automation and looms. It was for social reforms that would have given them labour protections.

It matters today because AI isn’t a profit line on any balance sheet right now but it is being used to justify mass layoffs and to reduce the leverage of knowledge workers in the marketplace. These tools steal your work without compensation and replace your job with capital so that rent seekers can seek rent.

It’s not a repeat of what happened in the Luddite protests but history is rhyming.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#286

Post by agentultra »

runarberg wrote: post #199
tux1968 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep trotting this argument out. But a band saw is not deterministic either, it can snap in the middle of a cut and destroy what you're working on. The point is, we only treat it like it's deterministic, because most of the time it's reliable enough that it just does what we want. AI technology will definitely get to the same level eventually. Clinging on to the fact that it isn't yet at that level today, is j…

So instead of determinism being a binary you consider it a binomial distribution with p extremely close but not strictly equal to 1. I think this is a distinction without a difference, we all know what we mean when way say deterministic here.

There’s a theory of neural networks that states:

For every real valued function and every epsilon greater than zero, there’s a neural network (size unbounded) which approximates the function with precision epsilon.

It sounds impressive and, as I understand it, is the basis for the argument that algorithms based on NN’s such as LLM’s will be able to put perform humans at tasks such as programming.

But this theorem contains an ambiguous term that makes it less impressive when you remove it.

Which for me, makes such tools… interesting I guess for some applications but it’s not nearly as impressive as to remove the need for programmers or to replace their labour entirely with automation that we need to concern ourselves with writing markdown files and wasting tokens asking the algorithm to try again.

So this whole argument that, “you better learn to use them or be displaced in the labour market,” is a relying on a weak argument.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#287

Post by Ygg2 »

coldtea wrote: post #207

> Yes, coding is not software engineering It absolutely is. > Even if I generate a 1,000 line PR in 30 minutes I still need to understand and review it. Since I am responsible for the code I ship, this makes me the bottleneck. You don't ship it, the AI does. You're just the middleman, a middleman they can eventually remove altogether. > Now, I would be lying if I said I didn’t use LLMs to generate code. I still use C…

> It absolutely is.

It isn't. Coding is to software engineering, what calculation is to math. A necessary but insufficient condition.

> And then soon the boss demands more output, like the guys who left it all to Claude and even run 5x in parallel give.

You can get 100x output for 1/100x the price, if you replace the monthly Claude subscription with a Markov chain. Think of the efficiency gains.

Sure, it will be garbage, but think of the velocity.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#288

Post by zemvpferreira »

agentultra wrote: post #285
zemvpferreira wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case I really don't understand how you conclude there's any difference between being on the bottom or the top of the tool. The bare reality is the same: Skilled labourers will be replaced by automation. Woodworking tools (and looms) replaced skilled labourers with less-skilled replacements (such as children), and AI will absolutely replace skilled labourers with less-skilled replacements as well. I ask sincer…

I haven’t worked in a furniture factory but I have assembled car seats in a factory for Toyota. The difference matters because the people who worked together to smash the looms created the myth of Ned Ludd to protect their identities from persecution. They used organized violence because they had no leverage otherwise to demand fair wages, safety guarantees, and other labour protections. What they were fighting for w…

We agree, which makes me question your original point with the power tool somehow being different even more. Every automation gives more leverage to capital over labour. That's the history of technology. Downstream it makes this great life with indoor plumbing etc possible but automation in any form will always erode skilled labourers as a class. It's all essentially the same in that regard.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#289

Post by cookiengineer »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #225
agentultra wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I’ve read quite a lot about that bloody and terrible part of history. The Ludddites were workers who lived in an era without any social or state protections for labourers. Capitalists were using child labour to operate the looms because it was cheaper than paying anyone a fair wage. If you didn’t like the conditions you could go work as an indentured servant for the state in the work houses. Luddites used organi…

In that case I really don't understand how you conclude there's any difference between being on the bottom or the top of the tool. The bare reality is the same: Skilled labourers will be replaced by automation. Woodworking tools (and looms) replaced skilled labourers with less-skilled replacements (such as children), and AI will absolutely replace skilled labourers with less-skilled replacements as well. I ask sincer…

In CGP Grey's words: "For most jobs, humans need not apply."

[1] (2014) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#290

Post by cookiengineer »

agentultra wrote: post #285
zemvpferreira wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case I really don't understand how you conclude there's any difference between being on the bottom or the top of the tool. The bare reality is the same: Skilled labourers will be replaced by automation. Woodworking tools (and looms) replaced skilled labourers with less-skilled replacements (such as children), and AI will absolutely replace skilled labourers with less-skilled replacements as well. I ask sincer…

I haven’t worked in a furniture factory but I have assembled car seats in a factory for Toyota. The difference matters because the people who worked together to smash the looms created the myth of Ned Ludd to protect their identities from persecution. They used organized violence because they had no leverage otherwise to demand fair wages, safety guarantees, and other labour protections. What they were fighting for w…

I never knew about the Luddites movement. Do you have some links/books you would recommend to read if you wanna know more about the topic?

As you said, most things seem to be re-written by history, so it seems to be hard to find good sources on this. Thought I might ask.

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