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I'm OK being left behind, thanks

shkspr.mobi

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Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#21

Post by bluGill »

marnett wrote: post #2

> I didn't use Git when it first came out. Once it was stable and jobs began demanding it, I picked it up. What jobs aren’t requiring usage of these tools by now?

You should be able to pick up tools and learn on need. There are better version control systems than git - always have been, but git won despite being worse. (Git was massively better than what was popular before it won) if you can't learn git quick then you shouldn't program at all - there are much harder tools you will need to know and many are company or project specific

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#22

Post by A_Duck »

Crypto isn't bad because it failed to make early adopters rich — it did make them rich. It's bad because it has horrible externalities in scams, war crimes / sanctions evasion, organised crime — which most of those early adopters were well aware of.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#24

Post by nehal3m »

adriancooney wrote: post #12

There are real productivity gains by using these tools right now. Instead of doing 1x your normal work, you can do 5x while still maintaining quality. This is like an accountant sticking to pen and paper because calculators are big and clunky.

In your analogy that calculator would only produce a correct answer 80% of the time, and plausible looking but incorrect ones the other 20%.

If that were the case I’d hire pen guy.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#26

Post by simianwords »

Its interesting to see this author's historical takes about AI.

IMO it reads a little desperate and very much like the hype bros but from opposite side. Take a look at the articles if you don't believe.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/ai/

- I'm OK being left behind, thanks!

- Unstructured Data and the Joy of having Something Else think for you

- This time is different

- How close are we to a vision for 2010?

- AI is a NAND Maximiser

- Reputation Scores for GitHub Accounts

- Agentic AI is brilliant because I loath my family

- Stop crawling my HTML you dickheads - use the API!

- Removing "/Subtype /Watermark" images from a PDF using Linux

- LLMs are still surprisingly bad at some simple tasks

- Books will soon be obsolete in school

- Winners don't use ChatGPT

- Grinding down open source maintainers with AI

- Why do people have such dramatically different experiences using AI?

- Large Language Models and Pareidolia

- How to Dismantle Knowledge of an Atomic Bomb

- GitHub's Copilot lies about its own documentation. So why would I trust it with my code?

- LLMs are good for coding because your documentation is shit

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#27

Post by lich_king »

redm wrote: post #3

I agree with the sentiment of this article. Sadly, I'm still disagreeing while crypto kiddies are driving past me in lambo's. If its the future of money, yes we'll get there eventually, but like every technology shift, there's a lot of money to be made in the transition, not after. * * I sold all crypto a few years ago and I'm a happier person :D

Alternatively, there's money to be lost in the transition. The vast majority of "crypto investors" did not walk away from it any richer. Some folks have gotten lucky, but it's just that: their thesis about the future of money was evidently wrong, they just happened to get the timing right. Getting lucky for the wrong reasons is not a good investment strategy.

Meanwhile, the main category of people who have consistently gotten rich off the "crypto revolution" were various scammers and pump-and-dumpers who have since moved on to meme stocks, AI content farming, and so on.

But I wouldn't use crypto as a benchmark because AI has more substance. We can debate if it's going to change the world, but you can build some new types of businesses and services if you have near-perfect natural language comprehension on the cheap.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#28

Post by pjmlp »

Agree with the message, coding since 1986, I have learned to not suffer from FOMO and wait for the dust to settle.

Ironically one might even get projects to fix the mess left behind, as the magpies focus their attention into something else.

In the case of AI, the fallacy is thinking that even if ridding the wave, everyone is allowed to stay around, now that the team can deliver more with less people.

Maybe rushing out to the AI frontline won't bring in the interests that one is hoping for.

EDIT: To make the point even clearer, with SaaS and iPaaS products, serverless, managed clouds, many projects now require a team that is rather small, versus having to develop everything from scratch on-prem. AI based development reduces even further the team size.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#29

Post by bogzz »

It's a horrifying feeling facing the possibility that the career I spent so much time and money to get into is fading away. Sure, LLMs are not there yet, and they might not ever quite get there. But will companies start hiring again? If productivity has gone up, and it seems like it has, then no.

So, a decade of hanging by a thread, getting by and doubling down on CS, hoping that the job market sees an uptick? Or trying to switch careers?

I went to get a flat tire fixed yesterday and the whole time I was envious of the cheerful guy working on my car. A flat tire is a flat tire, no matter whether a recession is going on or whether LLMs are causing chaos in white collar work. If I had no debt and a little bit saved up I might just content myself with a humble moat like that.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#30

Post by [deleted] »

butILoveLife wrote: post #4

This would hit harder if Bitcoin didn't win and AI coding didn't completely change our jobs. Why not simply evaluate things instead of ignoring them until its too late? Sure, we don't have infinity time, but the fact that OP mentions these two things, means the pattern showed up enough.

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