the problem with this article is that he is right of course, but only right now. There is no reason to believe that future AI platforms won't be able to review code themselves and manage some aspects of themselves with minimal human oversight, yes we likely will always need a few experts I'm reminded of this scene from the Matrix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD4nhYR-VRA where the older wise man discusses societie…
> There is no reason to believe that future AI platforms won't be able to review code themselves and manage some aspects of themselves with minimal human oversight
There are, IMHO, fewer reasons to believe they will be able to do that rather than not, though.
Even without writing code LLMs are a huge help, analyzing code, doing code reviews, documenting code, etc... Even without writing a line of "code" LLM hugely speed up development and take away the annoying/boring work.
Not sure why you are downvoted but I agree. Additionally, perhaps LLMs are just like another higher programming language as the author said, and they still need someone to steer them. I'm sure it was very difficult to program in machine code, but if now (or soon) anyone can just write software using a LLM without any sort of learning it changes everything. LLMs can plan and create something usable from simple instruc…
> they will only get better. I don't buy that's true. The "only" part, anyway. Look at how UX with software has evolved. This is gonna be an old man yells at clouds take, but before smartphones, there were hotkeys. And man, you could fly with those things. The computers running things weren't as fast as they are today, but you could mash in a a whole sequence thru muscle memory, and just wait for it to complete. Now,…
> they will only get better.
Then came the new Claude update, which many people say is worse. Even Anthropic says it got worse.[1] HN discussion back on April 15th: [2]
Some of this is a pricing issue. Turning "default reasoning effort" down from "high" to "medium" was a form of shrinkflation. Maybe this technology is hitting a price/performance wall.
Not sure why you are downvoted but I agree. Additionally, perhaps LLMs are just like another higher programming language as the author said, and they still need someone to steer them. I'm sure it was very difficult to program in machine code, but if now (or soon) anyone can just write software using a LLM without any sort of learning it changes everything. LLMs can plan and create something usable from simple instruc…
> I'm sure it was very difficult to program in machine code, but if now (or soon) anyone can just write software using a LLM without any sort of learning it changes everything. LLMs can plan and create something usable from simple instructions or ideas, and they will only get better. Did you read the section "Power to the People?" ? In it, the author dismantles your thesis with powerful, highly plausible arguments.
While I think the author is entirely right about 'natural language programming' in the current day, if LLMs (or some other AI architecture) continue to improve, it is easy to believe touching code could become unnecessary for even large projects. Consider that this is what software co. executives do all the time: outline a high level goal (software product) to their engineering director, who largely handles the details. We just don't yet know if LLMs will ever manage a level of intelligence and independence in open-ended tasks like this. And, to expand on that, I don't know that intelligence is necessarily the bottleneck for this goal. They can clearly tackle even large engineering tasks, but often complaints are that they miss on important architectural context or choose a suboptimal solution. Maybe with better training, context handling, documentation, these things will cease to be problems.
I have no stake in Fred Brooks. But No Silver Bullet seemed to be taken as gospel on this board. Sufficiently productivity-enhancing technology? Gimme a break man. Maybe you’ll get a 30% boost. Not a 10X boost. Until recently. dramatic pause And then AI happened.
Great! So all of this 10x boosting is visible in which economic indicator?
>> Within just this group the ratios between best and worst performances averaged about 10:1 on productivity measurements and an amazing 5:1 on program speed and space measurements!
> (although I’m personally skeptical of the “10x programmer” concept, the software industry overall does seem to accept it as true)
To be fair, this statement from Brooks doesn't entirely match with the "10x programmer" we talk about. My take on it is when someone says "10x programmer" today, they mean 10x more productive than the average, not 10x more productive than the worst. Brooks' statement is about the latter. If he'd looked at the difference between average and best, I would assume you'd get something more like a 2x or 4x programmer.
Let's actually not talk about LLMs. I honestly couldn't force myself to finish yet another blog post about how "we're not yet sure what impact LLMs will have on society" or whatever beleaguered point the author was attempting to make. "Some random person's take on LLMs" was maybe interesting in 2024. Today it is not even remotely interesting. There are a gazillion more interesting things happening today that ought to…
I'm confused. If you don't want to talk about LLMs then why didn't you just flag the post and move on? Submit something interesting, upvote and comment on interesting posts, instead of feeding the engagement on this thread.
It sounds like you actually do want to talk about how much you don't want other people to talk about LLMs.