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Learning to code is still worthwhile

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Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#131

Post by datadrivenangel »

skydhash wrote: post #124
gpm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you're replying to, but I'd agree with them, and think house painting would be basically identical to building a bridge. The difference this comparison is capturing in my opinion is that of thinking up something new, compared to arranging things in a well known/already defined configuration. We know how to build bridges, we just have to do it (maybe including some calculations and site surveys, yes, bu…

Creating a program is more like the interior designer choosing paints or the engineer designing a bridge in some CAD software. The actual painting/building has been automated for ages and they are the compiler/computer combo. People who are new to the scene may find "browsing catalog"/"configuring models" tedious, but that's how you develop the intuition of what works and what not. After a while, you can shortcut mos…

And then endless tweaks for CSS when the home owner decides they don't like the color of their molding...

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#132

Post by skydhash »

jtagrgh wrote: post #111
exfalso wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways to do it correctly. You just end up spending a lot of time conceptualizing and refining abstractions. To me the issue is more that conceptualizing requires a certain state of mind. Before llms it was 10% hard thinking 90% implementing. Implementation was actually sort of a reward, it felt so good just being in the zone and fleshing out ideas. Post llms I find myself walking up and down quite a lot, onl…

I'm a junior and I probably spend a similar amount of time thinking vs reviewing. I rarely write code unless it's about I find the instantaneous thinking easier now. I can have several ideas in mind, and have a concrete implementation made for each, making it easier to compare alternatives. Although, since each problem is alone easier to think about, I do end up handling a greater number of problems. But I expect tha…

> I can have several ideas in mind, and have a concrete implementation made for each, making it easier to compare alternatives.

I would ask what exactly are you comparing. I don't think I've ever wrote 2 versions of code to compare between each.

I've written exploratory code. A few lines to quickly inspect the behavior of module/function because it's undocumented. If something needs tuning, I surface the parameter in the interface, hook it to an harness to plot and manually tune.

I've also written alternative implementation of some feature, that later was abandoned.

But I've never written multiple versions of the same feature at the same time. I either model it (algorithm) or sketch it (interfaces or some other flow). It's way easier to interate with those than some demo/prototype code. The latter is when we settled on a solution and wants to fine tune it.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#133

Post by yowlingcat »

taybin wrote: post #120

> Code is a beautiful form of creative expression, as rich as literature or music I think this is overstating it and makes me wonder how familiar the author is with literature and music. Most programming is closer to plumbing. We come in, gripe about the guy who did the prior job, and solve a puzzle with some unique constraints. The reason LLMs are good at coding is because with coding we want boring, banal code.

I kinda like the music comparison because it's so rich with sociological analogues. You have the gear snobs who can't stop buying more premium gear but never sit down and write anything. The kids who pick up a copy of Garageband and put together hits with their natural talent, sense of taste and and interesting story to tell. Soundtrack and videogame composers who have hybrid instincts of session musicians and architects. Avant garde musicians who you're never fully sure of whether they're playing a joke you're in on (or on you) and that's kinda the point. Music critics who have never played or written music a day in their life and yet end up becoming arbiters (or more accurately, delegates) of taste. Fandom stans and ringleaders who absorb it as an identity and run extraordinarily well organized cults with an iron fist.

You can probably find correlates here with coding and AI any which way you look. Coding is so rich that you can use it to do artistic, creative pursuits because it really is an interactive and world building medium if you want it to be. And it can also be a practical, reliable machine that helps you get useful business objectives done. And anywhere in between!

Perhaps the author is indexing on the former because there's an intrinsic value to that, and intrinsic values seem to be quite drowned out by the noise of extrinsic values in this media supercycle.

But I don't think it'll be that way forever. Whenever things get too noisy, people have a way of seeking peace and quiet.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#134

Post by h4kunamata »

A few years from now after the AI hype has cooled down (it has already started), where will be two types of people:

1. The ones who use AI for everything and therefore, are unable to think on their own, unable to make decisions on their own, and everything in between.

Looking for a job will be fun because their skills now depend on AI dependency rather than skill.

2. The ones who use AI as tool and therefore, are still able to do things on their own, make decisions on their own.

Looking for a job will be just another Tuesday in the office, and were are already seeing companies hiring them back to replace AI.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#135

Post by woodpanel »

irjustin wrote: post #122
StilesCrisis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The babysitting work would still be impossible if you didn't actually know how to code.

For now, I can imagine a not too distant future where this is largely untrue. LLMs are an abstraction just like machine code -> assembly -> C/JVM -> some lang -> LLMs? At some point you stopped needing to understand the layer down because the layer you were on became so good. Yes there are always corner cases, but for the vast majority of developers/engineers out there, staying at your layer was enough to make a care…

There is a always going to be the gap of what you can do with LLMs if you know how to code vs if you don’t

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#136

Post by sankaku »

avaer wrote: post #12

Those are not compelling arguments. If the best we've got for convincing people to learn to code is that it's like math notation (the most hated part of math for the uninitiated), or pretty like a violin (useless for a new grad), then coding is in serious trouble. IMO a better argument is it helps you "think like a computer". But if you wanted to learn that there are many video games I'd recommend mastering instead o…

What games do you have in mind?

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#137

Post by politician »

Well this is ridiculous. Literature or music?!

No, learning to code is still worthwhile because the AI cannot do useful abstraction well at all. If you don't know how to code, then you'll fail to build useful tools and useful reusable components that can (a) further accelerate your development speed, and (b) reduce token spend.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#138

Post by prettyblocks »

taybin wrote: post #120

> Code is a beautiful form of creative expression, as rich as literature or music I think this is overstating it and makes me wonder how familiar the author is with literature and music. Most programming is closer to plumbing. We come in, gripe about the guy who did the prior job, and solve a puzzle with some unique constraints. The reason LLMs are good at coding is because with coding we want boring, banal code.

Yes, if you're just going down a list of jira tickets and implementing product features, but for many folks it's also an art medium.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#139

Post by bitwize »

tibbar wrote: post #130
skydhash wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs are an abstraction just like machine code -> assembly -> C/JVM -> some lang -> LLMs The what is the semantic mapping between and LLMs? I know the semantic mapping between maching code and assembly (some light weight syntax manipulation and macros). I know the one between assembly and C (the C abstract machine, which is mostly about the stack and whatever call/ret instructions pair). I know the one between C an…

The non-determinism is one of the relevant features of this layer of abstraction! And one can learn to validate that the translation is being done properly. Some of the tools you have include writing extremely detailed specs, generating visualizations of the internals of the tool, or (perhaps) reading the code, though that becomes less feasible with volume. Basically it turns out that code is full of incidental detai…

LLMs will still blithely ignore the specs and steering documents, apologize profusely for doing so after the fact, and tell you "I'll do better next time" which they might do once or twice. But after the context is cleared or a new session opened, the Dixie Flatline gets reset and it doesn't remember it screwed up, or that you told it not to.

This happened to a coworker of mine. Generally the response from one-shotted devs is a shrug of the shoulders and "wellp, them's the breaks! As long as it looks sensible from 10,000 feet up it's still a huge productivity win." But the devil, as they say, is in the details.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#140

Post by mellosouls »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #77
ekidd wrote: post #65

As a professional programmer entering the final third of an enjoyable career, I would now place "learning to code" in the same category as "making a living as a poet." As in, it's truly enjoyable art and some people appreciate it, but you'd better plan for a day job. Senior people who already know how to code are doing OKish for now, from the data I've seen, but the job is increasingly babysitting models like they we…

The babysitting work would still be impossible if you didn't actually know how to code.

Consider the difference between capabilities when gpt3 was released and now - the "increasingly babysitting" is exactly right.

Knowing how to code (and more generally software engineering and other roles in software teams) is definitely still extremely useful, but is rapidly becoming less vital as a human-provided skill as models and harnesses greedily hoover up the knowledge margin.

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