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We might all be AI engineers now

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Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#261

Post by prescriptivist »

_dwt wrote: post #227
prescriptivist wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that people who don't want to use these tools or clean old ways are incurious. But I think these developers should face the fact that those skills and those ways they are reticent to give up are more or less obviated at this point. Not in the future, but now. It's just that the adoption of these tools isn't evenly distributed yet. I think there's a place for thoughtful dialogue around what this means fo…

Well, no, not with that attitude there won’t! I am not trying to insinuate that there is a conspiracy, or that posts like yours are part of it, but there has been a huge wave of posts and comments since February which narrow the Overton window to the distance between “it’s here and it’s great” and “I’m sad but it’s inevitable”. Humanity has possessed nuclear weapons for 80 years and has used them exactly twice in ang…

> We can in fact just NOT do things!

I agree with you on that. Not just on AI but a lot of things that suck about this world, and in particular the United States. But capital is too powerful. And these tools are legitimately transformative for business. And business pays our bills and, more importantly, provides the healthcare insurance for our families. The wheel is a real fucking drag isn't it?

I don't see anything short of a larger revolution against capital stopping or even stemming this. For that to really happen we would need a lot more people and interests than just those of software practitioners. Which may come yet when trucking jobs collapse and customer service jobs disappear. I don't know. I do know that I'm taking part in something that will potentially (likely?) seed the end of my career as I know it but it's just one of many contradictions that I live with. In the meantime the tools are impressive and I'm just figuring out how to live with them and do good work with them and as you can probably tell, I'm pretty convinced that's the best we can make of the situation right now.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#262

Post by mgraczyk »

20k wrote: post #254
mgraczyk wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it will take you years to read all the information you can get funneled through an LLM in a day

Except you have no idea if what the LLM is telling you is true I do a lot of astrophysics. Universally LLMs are wrong about nearly every astrophysics questions I've asked them - even the basic ones, in every model I've ever tested. Its terrifying that people take these at face value For research at a PhD level, they have absolutely no idea what's going on. They just make up plausible sounding rubbish

Somehow we went from writing software apps and reading API docs to research level astrophysics

Sure it's not there yet. Give it a few months

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#263

Post by prescriptivist »

archagon wrote: post #258
prescriptivist wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there no longer any need to think about new software paradigms, build new frameworks, study computer science, because the regurgitated statistical version of programming is entirely good enough? All I'm saying is you're gonna have to figure out how to do this with an agent. It's not that I don't see value in the craft; it's just that value is less important. As far as the new paradigms, the new frameworks, new s…

“When you're in Hollywood and you're a comedian, everybody wants you to do things besides comedy. They say, ‘OK, you're a stand-up comedian — can you act? Can you write? Write us a script?’ It's as though if I were a cook and I worked my ass off to become a good cook, they said, ‘All right, you're a cook — can you farm?’” —Mitch Hedberg Agentic programming isn’t engineering: it’s a weird form of management where your…

Congrats on that.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#264

Post by andoando »

insin wrote: post #240
andoando wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same there is a few things I never learned and don't care to learn and ultimately it has no greater value to learn. Like do I really get anything out of learning another framework or how some particular library does something?

If you're going to deploy what you make with them to production without accidentally blowing your feet off, 100%, be they RegExp or useEffect(), if you can't even tell which way the gun is pointing how are you supposed to know which way the LLM has oriented it? Picking useEffect() as my second example because it took down CloudFlare, and if you see one with a tell-tale LLM comment attached to it in a PR from your cow…

For things Im working on seriously for my work, for sure, I spend time understanding them, and LLMs help with that. I suppose, also having experience Im already prone to asking questions about things I have a suspicion can go wrong

But there is also a ton of times something isnt at all important to me and I dont want to waste 3 hours on

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#265

Post by simonw »

20k wrote: post #251
simonw wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's faster. If the WinAPI docs are solid you can do things like copy and paste pages of them into Claude and ask a question, rather then manually scan through them looking for the answer yourself. Apple's developer documentation is mostly awful - try finding out how to use the sips or sandbox-exec CLI tools for example. LLMs have unlocked those for me.

But you have to check the answer against the documentation anyway though, to validate that its actually correct! Unless you're just taking the LLM answers at face value?

For most code stuff you don't check the answer against the documentation - you write the code and run it and see if it works.

That's always a better signal than anything that official documentation might tell you.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#266

Post by therealdrag0 »

hansmayer wrote: post #45
yanis_t wrote: post #35

They will never admit it, but many are scared of losing their jobs. This threat, while not yet realized, is very real from a strictly economic perspective. AI or not, any tool that improves productivity can lead to workforce reduction. Consider this oversimplified example: You own a bakery. You have 10 people making 1,000 loaves of bread per month. Now, you have new semi-automatic ovens that allow you to make the sam…

> Consider this oversimplified example: You own a bakery. You have 10 people making 1,000 loaves of bread per month. Now, you have new semi-automatic ovens that allow you to make the same amount of bread with only 5 people. That is actually the case with a lot of bakeries these days. But the one major difference being,the baker can rely with almost 100% reliability that the form, shape and ingredients used will be ex…

Eh accuracy and reliability is a different topic hashed out many times on HN. This thread is about productivity. I’m a staff engineer and I don’t know a single person not using AI. My senior engineers are estimating 40% gains in productivity.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#267

Post by [deleted] »

andai wrote: post #175
_doctor_love wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always comes down to economics and then the person and their attitude towards themselves. Some things are worth learning deeply, in other cases the easy / fast solution is what the situation calls for. I've thought recently that some kinds of 'learning' with AI are not really that different from using Cliffs Notes back in the day. Sometimes getting the Cliffs Notes summary was the way to get a paper done OR a way…

So I've actually been putting more effort into deliberate practice since I started using AI in programming. I've been a fan of Zed Shaw's method for years, of typing out interesting programs by hand. But I've been appreciating it even more now, as a way to stave off the feeling of my brain melting :) The gross feeling I have if I go for too long without doing cardio, is a similar feeling to when I go for too long wit…

[deleted]

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#268

Post by cdetrio »

20k wrote: post #254
mgraczyk wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it will take you years to read all the information you can get funneled through an LLM in a day

Except you have no idea if what the LLM is telling you is true I do a lot of astrophysics. Universally LLMs are wrong about nearly every astrophysics questions I've asked them - even the basic ones, in every model I've ever tested. Its terrifying that people take these at face value For research at a PhD level, they have absolutely no idea what's going on. They just make up plausible sounding rubbish

Astrophysicist David Kipping had a podcast episode a month ago reporting that LLMs are working shockingly well for him, as well as for the faculty at the IAS.[1]

It's curious how different people come to very different conclusions about the usefulness of LLMs.

https://youtu.be/PctlBxRh0p4

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#269

Post by thunky »

archagon wrote: post #247
prescriptivist wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that people who don't want to use these tools or clean old ways are incurious. But I think these developers should face the fact that those skills and those ways they are reticent to give up are more or less obviated at this point. Not in the future, but now. It's just that the adoption of these tools isn't evenly distributed yet. I think there's a place for thoughtful dialogue around what this means fo…

A new technology comes out — admittedly one that’s extraordinarily capable at some things — and suddenly conventional software engineering is “more or less obviated at this point”? I’m sorry, but that’s really fucking dumb. Do you think LLMs are actually intelligent? Do you think their capabilities exceed the quality of their training corpus? Is there no longer any need to think about new software paradigms, build ne…

> I swear, some people in this field see no value in their programming work

And others see too much value in their work.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#270

Post by 20k »

mgraczyk wrote: post #262
20k wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you have no idea if what the LLM is telling you is true I do a lot of astrophysics. Universally LLMs are wrong about nearly every astrophysics questions I've asked them - even the basic ones, in every model I've ever tested. Its terrifying that people take these at face value For research at a PhD level, they have absolutely no idea what's going on. They just make up plausible sounding rubbish

Somehow we went from writing software apps and reading API docs to research level astrophysics Sure it's not there yet. Give it a few months

It doesn't even work for basic astrophysics

I asked chatgpt the other day:

"Where did elements heavier than iron come from?"

The answer it gave was totally wrong. Its not a hard question. I asked it this question again today, and some of it was right (!). This is such a low bar for basic questions

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