181–190 of 326 posts
I think that, even among those who have had the ability to code since before LLMs, the skill of coding has been in atrophy, and will continue to be so over the next 10 or 20 years. Learning to code, over the same period of time, will not be worthwhile. At the end of that process, cracks in the system will start to show: Namely, we will have nothing but LLM-generated code to train future LLMs on, and codebases for pro…
> 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 think that, even among those who have had the ability to code since before LLMs, the skill of coding has been in atrophy, and will continue to be so over the next 10 or 20 years. Learning to code, over the same period of time, will not be worthwhile. At the end of that process, cracks in the system will start to show: Namely, we will have nothing but LLM-generated code to train future LLMs on, and codebases for pro…
Part of the industry always seek humans able to code with deep understanding. AI is fast but always lacks depth, works better if you are able to pilot it with your knowledge. If that changes, learning code becomes useless. If you learn code with limited depth (nextjs bros), this is already useless.
Name them. In my 16 years in the business I've never come across any; I've always worked under leaders who did not care about code quality in the slightest and just looked at outcomes, and when outcomes stopped happening as a result of poor code quality were always unable to connect those dots (or wilfully looked the other way).
I think embedded software for highly-regulated medical devices or whatever is just not enough to take in all the "AI-refugees" who are now seeking meaningful work that has been taken away from them. The pessimistic side of me expects that it's probably not true in the first place that these industries work any different than what I'm used to. And even the optimistic side of me has to admit that the laws of supply and demand imply that, in those few niches where it still matters, there are enough people out there desperate to do that kind of work right now, that it will be done for free and won't present a real earning opportunity.
"Code is a beautiful form of creative expression, as rich as literature or music" Um no, you've gone too far.
I'm no Mozart, but I find it really fucking weird when we act like woodworking is artful and creating software isn't.
Does anyone here know any mathematicians who can’t do long division or basic algebra? Probably not, because they *don’t exist because learning basic math is necessary to learn higher level math*. Whether or not we have calculators to do basic math is irrelevant if you want to become a mathematician. I’d argue that “whether or not the average dev will be writing any code by hand in 5 years” is irrelevant to whether or…
I take the opposite view but to the same conclusion. I've heard the joke "the more advanced you get the worse you get at math" from a lot of mathematicians. I'd bet most mathematicians can't do a long division problem without having to think pretty hard about it, because they've long since moved past that skill. All that said, people still learn and do manual math at all levels in order to advance the field even thou…
Take for instance most CRUD apps. They're all doing basically the same stuff just with variations on interface/schema. And that's a huge chunk of all professional software development. We're already at the point where you can describe said schema/interface and get a pretty good implementation of it, and things will likely continue to only get better. I think the job-apocalypse is unlikely, but I also think it's unlikely that 'manual coding' will be anywhere near as significant a part of the economy in the future as it is today.
> 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 can vouch for that statement. I have written poetry. And often searching for a right word or expression is often akin to searching for an elegant abstraction or architecture when programming.
I was enjoying writing a poem in just the same way I was enjoying writing a program.
I think that, even among those who have had the ability to code since before LLMs, the skill of coding has been in atrophy, and will continue to be so over the next 10 or 20 years. Learning to code, over the same period of time, will not be worthwhile. At the end of that process, cracks in the system will start to show: Namely, we will have nothing but LLM-generated code to train future LLMs on, and codebases for pro…
> ...and [1] codebases for production code will be so low in quality that they will be unintelligible to humans, and [2] LLMs, too, will have trouble maintaining them. [3] At that point, coding will become a valuable skill again. You are a very optimistic person. IMHO, claims #1 & #2 will happen, but #3 won't. People, especially business leaders, will just adjust their expectations downwards (or be forced to do so).…
That slopfest ended with a new executive dogma of "hire only the best programmers" as so many of those projects were humiliating disasters which had to be junked. I do not think that was coincidental.
Executive fashions can remain remarkably consistent and irrational for years as they try to make reality conform to their expectations before doing a complete 180.
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…
I just don't see that, not least of all because natural language is inherently ambiguous, whereas all the other rungs in your latter ("machine code -> assembly -> C/JVM -> some lang") are completely unambiguous by design. Consider "I saw the man with the binoculars". Does that mean "I used binoculars to look at the man", or "The man I looked at was holding binoculars"? This is the kind of inherent ambiguity that Lojban was invented to mitigate. Maybe some day we'll write "natural" language prompts in Lojban that can be unambiguously translated by an LLM, but that sounds a lot like just using a "some lang".
- Steve Jobs
I think that, even among those who have had the ability to code since before LLMs, the skill of coding has been in atrophy, and will continue to be so over the next 10 or 20 years. Learning to code, over the same period of time, will not be worthwhile. At the end of that process, cracks in the system will start to show: Namely, we will have nothing but LLM-generated code to train future LLMs on, and codebases for pro…
Learning to code is a must. You need to know what is possible or easy to know how much you can ask.
What will be less important is to keep your sword sharp.
I notice that if code less for some time I do more one-off errors, copy/paste mistakes etc. With llm keeping the coding skill warm is less important but I cannot imagine doing my work - even with Fable if I didn't know how to do it without him