Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

larsfaye.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 574 posts

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#121

Post by [deleted] »

gustavus wrote: post #99
lanstin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the 1890s and 1930s were famous for their population wide critical thinking, of course. Good heavens, what do they teach in the schools these days.

I mean you may be trying to make a point but the counterpoint is Einstein, Bohrs, Planck, Shannon, Turing, Von Nuemann, Feynman, Bohr and most of the other big names all came out during that time. In contrast since then we've had almost not noteable physicists or Computer Scientists that I'm aware, we've got a couple, Hawking and Knuth. But apart from that I don't know if there is a single scientist I could point out…

[deleted]

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#122

Post by oasisaimlessly »

johsole wrote: post #51
gdulli wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good point. People don't pull out their calculator in the grocery store to do analysis of unit costs or whatever, it's too much of a hassle for that small kind of analysis. But calculators have robbed us of the need to be good at doing that math in our heads. So the math doesn't get done.

Many grocery stores will already give you a per oz or per unit price so you can compare pricing for different brands that have different sizes. It's a very handy feature.

And it's so often wrong that you better be doing sanity checks if you use it for anything.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#123

Post by larsfaye »

xyzelement wrote: post #64

// The need for ongoing friction in long-term skill formation. The subtitle of the story tells it all. There are some people who seek out friction. Think about an athlete or a hardcore nerd. The best engineers are ones who were fascinated with computers and learning as kids and persued it at every opportunity. Found their own friction in other words. For those kinds of people, friction-seeking is the constant and wha…

Curiosity is really key, and I find that LLMs diminish curiosity in people that might otherwise have it because the allure of the answer is often a lot stronger than the allure of the friction. I guess that's just the distilling of the industry over time, but that could certainly lead to a shortage of expertise.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#124

Post by tayo42 »

nevertoolate wrote: post #106
tayo42 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ai can work through all of those questions in number 2 and design around it. I was just doing that yesterday designing a game demo lol

Are you an AI?

Your right to push back on that...

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#125

Post by kodoman »

I think we now entering this state where code is cheap but good well made programs will be rarer then ever, a lot of crap can be made and a lot of programs made without ever thinking the problem through properly will occur.

It might be like how an archeologist since the invention of plastic can date the period of the soil as post plastic, if one could cut open the software stack of the coming systems that will be built in the near future one would could data that code as post agentic LLM as programs are going to be mostly bloated ad-hoc, poorly thought-out and patched in a way that does not concern it's self with the correctness of the algorithms or data structures chosen.

I am not Anti-AI but I think it's going to be interesting and I am surprised at how bad a program ends up when one tries to "vibe code", though often ends up working, though in isolation and when used with discipline (that the tools themselves psychologically make it harder to do) can produce some very good code and being able to use loops to solve difficult problems or problems that simply would have require banging ones head against the problem many times is very profitable.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#126

Post by finaard »

enraged_camel wrote: post #95
ben_w wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds great until you realize that "hey Claude, read this Jira ticket and implement the feature in this code base" isn't really worth $200K/year. Nor even €50k/year. Two things are true: 1) The coding part of my career is over. LLMs are capable of doing everything I've ever been paid to *write*. 2) My actual job also included non-coding work: Does this attempted solution even work at all? Is this solving the…

FWIW: The highest paid devs I know excel at 2, and aren't even that good at 1.

I guess that somewhat describes me - and guess what, that also transfers to "should we even throw AI at that specific problem, or are there other solutions?". Early curiousity in figuring out the limits of LLMs now is turning into revenue by customers with problems that didn't exist a few years ago at all - which currently is quite an exciting field to work in as a lot of things just don't have pre-established solutions yet.

It's a similar level of excitement as when we started doing devops stuff before devops even was a thing (which has been one of our main things for a very long time now).

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#127

Post by chasd00 »

fedpost wrote: post #96

Something I noticed trying to learn rust through models, they're inherently tuned to just finish everything with even the slightest provocation so it's very hard to use them to actually learn anything, they kinda just want to do everything themselves.

just add to your prompt or to an agents.md "don't write any code, just present me the solution so i can learn from it". that should do it.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#128

Post by dan_ggggg »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #49

I'm seeing it happen in real time. I've seen several folks claim they "vibe-coded" something and upon review it's some seriously low quality garbage. Unfortunately it's just "functional enough" where it's encouraging the one who talked to the robot to continue thinking they can code for some reason. It is important to ensure that any LLM code is named and shamed.

> It is important to ensure that any LLM code is named and shamed.

You need to take it further.

We need to shame and mock the people (read: delusional imbeciles) who think this is acceptable if we want it to stop.

AI users need to fear for their careers and reputations if we want to get software development back on the right track.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#129

Post by Terr_ »

oasisaimlessly wrote: post #122
johsole wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many grocery stores will already give you a per oz or per unit price so you can compare pricing for different brands that have different sizes. It's a very handy feature.

And it's so often wrong that you better be doing sanity checks if you use it for anything.

Is it often flat-out wrong where you live?

My most-common frustration with it is when products I want to compare don't have the same quantity-denominator. (Either a different unit, or sometimes a different dimension like weight versus volume.)

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#130

Post by larsfaye »

not_the_fda wrote: post #105

Writing code was never the job. It was a small part of the job that can now be delegated to AI. Eliciting the right requirements and user needs. Creating a sound architecture and design. Validating final product meets the requirements. Ensuring there is good test coverage. You know `Engineering`. Mechanical and Electrical engineers didn't go away because of CAD.

Literally all those skills are the result of decades of friction, challenge, and deep domain knowledge...all of which are circumvented when LLMs are utilized early in the process.

CAD is also useless to Mechanical and Electrical engineers who didn't learn fundamental the skills that it streamlines.

Post reply on HN