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I'm OK being left behind, thanks

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Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#61

Post by braebo »

nehal3m wrote: post #24
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.

More like “Producing 80% of the correct answer” and the remaining 20% with some nudging and tweaking. Still extremely valuable.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#62

Post by samiv »

bogzz wrote: post #29

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 try…

I cannot but agree. It's a massive skill leveling where software development is transforming from high skilled coding to low skilled prompting.

For an old dog like myself it feels an unjust rug pull.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#63

Post by nemomarx »

stiiv wrote: post #33

> If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours. Broadly speaking, I think this is a wise assessment. There are opportunities for productivity gains right now, but it I don't think it's a knockout for anyone using the tech, and I think that onboarding might be challenging for some people in the tech's current state. It is safe to…

It also seems like skills with particular tech (prompt engineering, harnesses, mixture of experts set ups) doesn't always necessarily pay off when there's a sea change. Hard to predict what you'll want in a few years anyway, right?

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#65

Post by nehal3m »

lapcat wrote: post #55
heytakeiteasy wrote: post #14

Feels like a false equivalency. It's just my experience, but I've completely ignored crypto and the metaverse, and I don't get the sense I'm missing out on much. In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working implementation, which has been legitimately transformative in my software dev life. Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose…

> Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose That's the point of the blog post. If you can't even say right now whether it's for the better, then there's no reason to rush in.

And conversely if it is, then there is no point to getting in early since the whole point is to externalize knowledge and experience

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#66

Post by bonoboTP »

That's a reasonable strategy. I don't think spreading FOMO is good. But pragmatically, I enjoy working with the latest crop of AI models regarding all sorts of computer tasks, including coding but many other sysadmin stuff and knowledge organization.

I didn't pick them up until last November and I don't think I missed out on much. Earlier models needed tricks and scaffolding that are no longer needed. All those prompting techniques are pretty obsolete. In these 3-4 months I got up to speed very well, I don't think 2 years of additional experience with dumber AI would have given me much.

For now, I see value in figuring out how to work with the current AI. But next year even this experience may be useless. It's like, by the time you figure out the workarounds, the new model doesn't need those workarounds.

Just as in image generation maybe a year ago you needed five loras and controlnet and negative prompts etc to not have weird hands, today you just no longer get weird hands with the best models.

Long term the only skill we will need is to communicate our wants and requirements succinctly and to provide enough informational context. But over time we have to ask why this role will remain robust. Where do these requirements come from, do they simply form in our heads? Or are they deduced from other information, such that the AI can also deduce it from there?

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#67

Post by 0xblinq »

Comparing these tools to the crypto or NFTs hype is so out of touch with reality.

This is more on the scale of the invention of the press, the telegraph, or the internet itself.

"I'm ok being left behind, I will join this Internet thing when it really becomes useful"...

Ok... you do you. Hope you don't get there too late.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#68

Post by stiiv »

eqmvii wrote: post #34

A lot of people feel this way. But IMO the most fruitful thing for an engineering org to do RIGHT NOW is learn the tools well enough to see where they can be best applied. Claude Code and its ilk can turn "maybe one day" internal projects into live features after a single hour of work. You really, honestly, and truly are missing out if you're not looking for valuable things like that!

> Claude Code and its ilk can turn "maybe one day" internal projects into live features after a single hour of work. You really, honestly, and truly are missing out if you're not looking for valuable things like that!

You're right, it's possible. But you might be both overestimating the ease of onboarding and underestimating the variety of tasks and constraints devs are responsible for.

I've seen Claude knock out trivial stuff with a sufficiently good spec. But I've also seen it utterly choke on a bad spec or a hard task. I think these outcomes are pretty broadly established. So is the expectation that the tech will get better. Waiting isn't unwise.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#69

Post by linsomniac »

>I didn't use Git when it first came out.

This really hinges on what you mean by "didn't use git".

If you were using bzr or svn, that's one thing.

If you were saving multiple copies of files ("foo.old.didntwork" and the like), then I'd submit that you're making the point for the AI supporters. I consulted with a couple developers at the local university as recently as a couple years ago who were still doing the copy files method and were struggling, when git was right there ready to help.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#70

Post by WindyMiller »

keiferski wrote: post #56

I actually think the opposite approach might be the most optimal one, at least from a monetary perspective. That is, be on the cutting-edge of something, but be willing to bail out at the moment its future starts seeming questionable. Or even more specifically, maximize your foothold in it while minimizing your downside. Bitcoin is a good example: if you bought it 15 years ago and held it, you're probably quite wealt…

But you can't be on the cutting-edge of everything, and there are opportunity costs.
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