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I quit. The clankers won

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Re: I quit. The clankers won

#111

Post by alfanick »

I quit. The clankers won.

I don't see any proof that software development is not dead. Software engineering is not, and it's much more than writing code, and it can be fun. But writing code is dead, there is no point of doing it if an LLM can output the same code 100x faster. Of course, architecture and operations stays in our hands (for now?).

Initially I was very sceptic, first versions of ChatGPT or Claude were rather bad. I kept holding to a thought that it cannot get good. Then I've spend a few months evaluating them, if you know how to code, there is no point of coding anymore, just instruct an LLM to do something, verify, merge, repeat. It's an editor of some sorts, an editor where you enter a thought and get code as an output. Changes the whole scene.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#112

Post by zozbot234 »

nicksergeant wrote: post #72
titzer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that the vast deskilling that's happening because of this means that most "software engineers" will become incapable of understanding, let alone fixing or even building new versions of the systems that they are utterly dependent on. There should be thousands or tens of thousands people worldwide that can build the operating systems, virtual machines, libraries, containers, and applications that AI is bui…

I feel I've upskilled in so many directions (not just "ability to prompt LLMs") since going all in on LLM coding. So many tools, techniques, systems, and new areas of research I'd never have had the time to fully learn in the past. I have a hard time believing any tenured developer is not actually learning things when using LLMs to build. They make interesting choices that are repeatable (new CLIs I didn't even know…

What do you mean by "LLM coding"? That's not a very meaningful term, it covers everything from 100% vibe coded projects, to using the LLM to gradually flesh out a careful initial design and then verifying that the implementation is done correctly at every step with meticulous human review and checking.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#113

Post by Waterluvian »

qsera wrote: post #94
Waterluvian wrote: post #44

Improving developer skills is not valuable to your company. They don't tell a customer how many person-hours of engineering talent improvement their contract is responsible for. They just want a solved problem. Some companies comprehend how short-sighted this is and invest in professional development in one way or another. They want better engineers so that their operations run better. It's an investment and arguably…

> I got to do my hobby as a career for the past 15 years, but that’s ending. Frankly I don't think so. The AI using LLMs is the perpetual motion mechanism scam of our time. But it is cloaked in unimaginable complexity, and thus it is the perfect scam. But even the most elaborately hidden power source in a perpetual motion machine cannot fool nature and should come to a complete stop as it runs out.

I love the perpetual motion machine / thermodynamics analogy.

It kind of feels like companies are being fooled into outsourcing/offshoring their jr. developer level work. Then the companies depend on it because operational inertia is powerful, and will pay as the price keeps going up to cover the perpetual motion lie. Then they look back and realize they're just paying Microsoft for 20 jr. developers but are getting zero benefit from in-house skill development.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#114

Post by efromvt »

cfiggers wrote: post #78
bitmasher9 wrote: post #8

Picking out my favorite idea out of many: we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Writing and publishing is a good one. I also recommend stimulating human conversations and long-form reading. More and more the bar is being lowered. Don’t fall to brain rot. Don’t quite quit. Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.

> we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Here's my advice: if there's someone around you who can teach you, learn from them. But if there isn't anyone around you who can teach you, find someone around you who can learn from you and mentor them. You'll actually grow more from the latter than from the former, if you can believe that. I think there's a broad blindness in industry to the benefits of men…

I haven't heard this benefit for mentors clearly articulated before (probably just missed it), but definitely felt it - I guess it's a deeper version of how writing/other communication forces clarity/organization of thoughts because mentorship conversations are so focused on extracting the why as well as the what.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#115

Post by tayo42 »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #48
ramon156 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confidently say that, yes, reading helps a lot. My mental model has shifted a bit that words are cheap (printing -> writing -> typing -> generating) and that we should accept there is something like high quality text. I haven't really been a reader, but I can definitely notice when a book/text is "hard". I'm currently reading the old testament, and I understand very little (even the oxford one that has a lot of…

For the first time in quite a while, I've started reading a challenging, non-computer book ("The New Testament in its World"). I'm trying to decide if my attention span has atrophied, or if I'm just more aware now of my ADD. Either way, I'm hopeful that my attention span for this kind of reading will grow with practice.

If you you haven't read a book in a while, I noticed it's like a thing you need to practice.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#116

Post by marknutter »

> I’m not protective over the word “art”. Generative AI is art. It’s irredeemably shit art; end of conversation. A child’s crayon doodle is also lacking refined artistry but we hang it on our fridge because a human made it and that matters.

More pretentious gatekeeping from luddites who like to yell at clouds. This is someone who would love a piece of artwork created using ai tools right up until someone told them it was created using ai tools.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#117

Post by catlifeonmars »

Waterluvian wrote: post #44

Improving developer skills is not valuable to your company. They don't tell a customer how many person-hours of engineering talent improvement their contract is responsible for. They just want a solved problem. Some companies comprehend how short-sighted this is and invest in professional development in one way or another. They want better engineers so that their operations run better. It's an investment and arguably…

Maybe I’m just getting extremely lucky, but I don’t use AI to code at work and I’m still keeping up with my peers who are all Clauded up. I do a lot of green field network appliance design and implementation and have not felt really felt the pressure in that space.

I do use Claude code at home maybe a couple hours a week, mostly for code base exploration. Still haven’t figured out how to fully vibe code: the generated code just annoys me and the agents are too chatty. (Insert old man shaking fist at cloud).

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#118

Post by colechristensen »

qsera wrote: post #94
Waterluvian wrote: post #44

Improving developer skills is not valuable to your company. They don't tell a customer how many person-hours of engineering talent improvement their contract is responsible for. They just want a solved problem. Some companies comprehend how short-sighted this is and invest in professional development in one way or another. They want better engineers so that their operations run better. It's an investment and arguably…

> I got to do my hobby as a career for the past 15 years, but that’s ending. Frankly I don't think so. The AI using LLMs is the perpetual motion mechanism scam of our time. But it is cloaked in unimaginable complexity, and thus it is the perfect scam. But even the most elaborately hidden power source in a perpetual motion machine cannot fool nature and should come to a complete stop as it runs out.

This is silly. I can build products in a weekend that would take me a year by myself. I am still necessary 1% of the time for debug, design, and direction and those of not at all a shallow skill. I have some graduate algebra texts on the way my math friend is guiding me through because I have found a publishable result and need to shore up my background before writing the paper...

It's not perpetual motion, it's very real capability, you just have to be able to learn how to use it.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#119

Post by bendmorris »

sdevonoes wrote: post #64

Can’t we just sabotage AI? We have the means for sure (speed light communication across the globe). Like, at least for once in the history of software engineering we should get together like other professionals do. Sadly our high salaries and perks won’t make the task easy for many - spend tons of tokens on useless stuff at work (so your boss knows it’s not worth it) - be very picky about AI generated PRs: add tons o…

I think you should be very picky about generated PRs not as an act of sabotage but because very obviously generated ones tend to balloon complexity of the code in ways that makes it difficult for both humans and agents, and because superficial plausibility is really good at masking problems. It's a rational thing to do.

Eventually you are faced with company culture that sees review as a bottleneck stopping you from going 100x faster rather than a process of quality assurance and knowledge sharing, and I worry we'll just be mandated to stop doing them.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#120

Post by zozbot234 »

alfanick wrote: post #111

I quit. The clankers won. I don't see any proof that software development is not dead. Software engineering is not, and it's much more than writing code, and it can be fun. But writing code is dead, there is no point of doing it if an LLM can output the same code 100x faster. Of course, architecture and operations stays in our hands (for now?). Initially I was very sceptic, first versions of ChatGPT or Claude were ra…

LLM's don't really output the same code quality as a human, even on the smallest scale. It's not even close. Maybe you can guide them to refactor their slop up to human-written quality, but then you're still coding. You're just doing it by asking the computer to write something, instead of physically typing the whole thing out with a keyboard.
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