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Learning to code is still worthwhile

stevekrouse.com

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Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#261

Post by palmotea »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #211
weatherlite wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just think of how often some "new and improved version" drops some important feature you used without providing a good replacement? We'll get more of that. If the codebase is unmaintainable, they'll just regenerate a new pile of garbage that will change stuff randomly and call it an improvement. Most production systems dont have such a high tolerance for embarrassing bugs. Startups can completely fail if they have…

Having worked at a company with thousands of microservices, I feel like most of it is just a bunch of boilerplate riddled with tons of ridiculous business logic, security and otherwise bugs. It seems like people were historically more concerned about Java inheritance and spreading everything around different files and directory hierarchies, while ignoring common sense business requirements completely. With each servi…

> Funnily enough AI is the one discovering all those glaring issues now, and everyone is overwhelmed with getting it fixed. You could allow AI to attempt fixing it, but even though all of it was human written it is still hard to review, and even locally spin up or test because no one any more knows the true business requirements as people have rotated etc, so it's a nightmare.

No. It's just screwed up priorities. Those "glaring issues" were always a problem for the people maintaining those apps. It's just that no one gave a shit about those people or cared to make their job easier or them more successful (see the challenge or prioritizing tech debt remediation), but those same people are some reason willing to whatever it takes to make the machines successful.

There's a lot of contempt for humanity in the business world. It probably stems for a contempt for labor and a fetishization of capital.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#262

Post by Toutouxc »

jonfw wrote: post #252
palmotea wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs are an abstraction just like machine code -> assembly -> C/JVM -> some lang -> LLMs? People keep trying to make that analogy, but it doesn't really work because LLMs aren't deterministic like compilers and assemblers.

It is not obvious to me that determinism is a requirement for an abstraction

IMO delegation isn't abstraction.

I work at a certain level, like Ruby code. That's what I write, debug and maintain. I don't really care about the internals of the interpreter or about the source code of Linux, because these layers are taken care of, they're reliable and they're being developed by competent people. I [think I] know what Ruby code should look like in order to remain [reasonably] fast, maintainable and reliable, and it's my job to build a product out of that kind of code. If I keep writing code like that, I know for sure that I'll be able to keep building the product, because the layers underneath are deterministic. It's like the certificate chain of trust, but with "surely these people are not idiots". And that's simply not the case with LLMs.

Not only can the LLM be a massive idiot, but also an unpredictable one. I can try to warn it, steer it, police it or review as much as you ask me to, but ultimately you're asking me to delegate my job and my responsibilities to an intermediate whose reasoning I don't understand, who has no loyalty, no sense of pride, no sense of ethics, can't be taught and can't be fired.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#263

Post by vidarh »

elzbardico wrote: post #250
cedws wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason LLMs seem powerful is that they can churn out the Nth variation of a CRUD app in minutes. But it’s hard to imagine they’ll ever independently develop a compiler for a truly novel programming language, for instance. They don’t have creativity. They are pattern generators.

I'd say that even if the task is "a compiler for an existing language" the empirical results are far from stellar, and indeed, border the terrain of comedy.

Claude has made my Ruby compiler pass 8k more rubyspecs tests over the last two weeks, and that includes solving crashing bugs in hours that I'd failed to fix for weeks in the past.

Compilers for existing languages is if anything one of the lower bars for LLMs, given existing implementations or test suites provides an oracle to test against.

It's not lack of ability that is stopping this, but that it's a space where very few people are experimenting and willing to burn enough tokens.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#264

Post by ozgrakkurt »

This “don’t need to learn code” vibe will bring a big quality and good pay wave programming. It was getting more obnoxious because of more and more mba guys getting into programming because there is money in it.

Hopefully this will act as an effective filter against money people so they can keep going into law or w/e else they believe there is money

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#265

Post by Rover222 »

dd8601fn wrote: post #60
Rover222 wrote: post #35

"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.

Sounds like you have no artistic sensibility

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#266

Post by Rover222 »

jplusequalt wrote: post #81
Rover222 wrote: post #35

"Code is a beautiful form of creative expression, as rich as literature or music" Um no, you've gone too far.

Roller Coaster Tycoon was programmed in fucking assembly. That's a work of artistry right there.

Calling it as rich as the best works of literature is peak programmer angst.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#267

Post by mangodrunk »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #210
Animats wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Not wrong. Probably. I'm reminded of an old friend from long ago. She was an early music major at Harvard, and graduated with a MFA. She was very good…

It's such a shame that our society doesn't value more, in economic terms, this type of skills.

Can you expand on why you think society should value it?

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#268

Post by mech998877 »

cedws wrote: post #242
_glass wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bit like in "Profession" by Isaac Asimov. We will still have the need for some people who will write code manually, fix the craft. We will need the "Feeble Minded" asylum that is actually a secret sanctuary for society's true creators. Because everyone else relies on generated code, they can only repeat what is already known. Only the people who learn the hard way through actual studying possess the creativit…

The reason LLMs seem powerful is that they can churn out the Nth variation of a CRUD app in minutes. But it’s hard to imagine they’ll ever independently develop a compiler for a truly novel programming language, for instance. They don’t have creativity. They are pattern generators.

Reminds me of 'I don't think a computer will ever beat a human at chess'.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#269

Post by wes-k »

elzbardico wrote: post #245

Sometimes I think that I must be a complete low IQ imbecile, because for me, even using Fable, code is still a pretty much hands-on affair. Not in the sense of actually writing lines of code (I still like to create things like structs, interfaces, traits, as a form of prompting, natural language for that kind of stuff is actually more verbose and way less precise). But I hate waste, I hate dead code, I hate byzantine…

There’s a huge difference between does it work vs is it elegant.

As a software engineer I have been strict on making sure my code is elegant.

Vibe coding has switched me to product (and project) manager. Why would I care about what the code looks like? Does it work!? Does it do what I want? Does the app have the right UI and UX? These are my concerns now. I rarely look at the output code.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#270

Post by budsniffer952 »

gyulai wrote: post #163

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…

More like, "old developers will continue to denounce the diminishing code quality, and long for the old days of programming".

Meanwhile more people will build and use software than ever before, and all of these "everything is going to hell" diatribes will be laughably overblown.

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