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Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

larsfaye.com

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Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#361

Post by markus_zhang »

I’m still resisting the AI flood. I use it but I do read code without its help. I also make sure I have the muscle memory of stuffs that will be tested in interviews — somehow big techs have forgotten that maybe they shouldn’t test people on coding problems.

So basically I’m still doing things manually for everything that preserves my edge for interviews and as a technical person. But I use AI to generate diagrams and documentation, as well as operation scripts that no one is supposed to memorize.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#362

Post by khriss »

ksd482 wrote: post #89
aledevv wrote: post #70

I strongly agree with the concept that cognitive friction is the engine of learning. First and foremost, it's an issue of "dependency": if you stop training the "muscle" of logic and reasoning, it gradually atrophies, just like unused physical muscles. You become dependent on external tools that replace a capability you once had yourself. A historical example that brought about a similar shift is this: when the produ…

> cognitive friction is the engine of learning. I agree 100% too. This is why in order to understand new codebase or to ramp up to new projects, I use AI to generate a textbook style reading material for me along with "verify yourself" types of exercises along the way. Then I print them on a paper and read it using a pencil/pen and take notes. Because of my math training, I am in the habit of slowing down to read tex…

> I use AI to generate a textbook style reading material for me along with "verify yourself" types of exercises along the way

This is fascinating. Any chance you have your workflow or prompts documented and would be willing to share them?

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#363

Post by eatsyourtacos »

TonyAlicea10 wrote: post #209

As a tech educator I 100% agree. LLMs are not going to become a "new compiler" where we don't have to worry about the code any more. There's a reason we trust deterministic systems. I've been worried about this a lot, I even created an agent skill called do-i-understand that's designed for novice devs (and experienced too, because atrophy) where the LLM asks you questions about the PR you're about to submit. I've fou…

It doesn't matter if the LLM is not deterministic.. the OUTPUT of typed code is deterministic in the sense that it can be seen to be type safe, compiled, and run appropriate unit tests on it.

If I use two LLM's to create some chunk of code and they both do it slightly differently but they both compile and pass appropriate tests.. it honestly doesn't matter if the LLM itself is not deterministic in exactly what it's going to output.

I would also argue- doesn't that make sense? You give two human coders the same task and they are also going to come up with slightly different results.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#364

Post by tygon »

I wonder if we will eventually see the same drop in general knowledge we saw with manual driving (in some parts of the world), cursive handwriting, clothing repair, etc. Of course, coding was never as prevalent as these practices in the general population, so it might be harder to measure, but I feel we will definitely see it taught less in schools, harder to find resources, etc. in the coming decades, becoming more of an underground hobby.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#365

Post by n4r9 »

hintymad wrote: post #275
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…

> The coding part of my career is over. LLMs are capable of doing everything I've ever been paid to write . Remember we used to spend enormous amount of time in school and in our spare time studying computer science? Algorithms, operating systems, compilers, and etc. All kinds of insights. All kinds of fun. All kinds of hard engineering. Yet, how much time do we really need to spend in our day-to-day work implementin…

> there has been little progress or few new fields in the past 10 years or so in business that ask for implementation of new algorithms

Transit routing is still moving fast in this area. We're still figuring out the best ways to return thousands-by-thousands transit time matrices with query-time truck dimensions and traffic updates. It can't be the only field!

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#366

Post by _doctor_love »

I am not personally worried on this front. It is a near-certainty that something catastrophic will happen in the not-too-distant future because of the issues Lars raises in the essay. Not until that moment occurs will there be a broader industry-wide reckoning. Most likely it will get expressed in breathless language like "you'll never believe the crazy gains we got from adding tests!" (or whatever).

I feel pretty good asserting that, as always, a few smart leaders will recognize early that quality and stability are the new game now that we have speed 'for free.' And then there will be incumbents whose eventual demise will merely be accelerated.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#367

Post by hintymad »

wry_discontent wrote: post #278
hintymad wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boris: "I don't prompt Claude anymore. I have loops prompting Claude and figuring what to do". Boris: "I haven’t written a line of code by hand in, I think, eight months now… Claude Code, 100% written by Claude Code". Boris: "There’s no manually written code anywhere at the company… All of the SQL is written by models. Everything is just built by the models... Claude instances communicate with each other (e.g., over…

They work on research problems you can define a clear solution criteria for. The kinds of business software I work on don't have those characteristics. If I needed something like a utils library, I think I could easily have Claude write the whole thing and not read the code.

What puzzles me is this: research means that we are exploring something that has not done before, yet using Claude to generate code means slicing and dicing what has been done many times before. So, I'm not sure how to make sense of both at the same time: Anthropic is pushing the boundary of AI, yet all the knowledge and engineering in form of code can be generated from the previous work?

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#368

Post by _doctor_love »

tygon wrote: post #364

I wonder if we will eventually see the same drop in general knowledge we saw with manual driving (in some parts of the world), cursive handwriting, clothing repair, etc. Of course, coding was never as prevalent as these practices in the general population, so it might be harder to measure, but I feel we will definitely see it taught less in schools, harder to find resources, etc. in the coming decades, becoming more…

It is guaranteed to happen. The key question is when is it a problem? We've lost lots of knowledge as a society but we're still going. Some skills decline in usefulness, others gain utility with the passage of time. Tale as old as time.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#369

Post by yieldcrv »

ben_w wrote: post #66
ryandvm wrote: post #48

100% We're already seeing this at the enterprise level. Companies have dictates from leadership that "if you're writing code manually, you're doing it wrong." Okay, that kind of works for a while. We are indeed producing a shit-ton of code, but the reality is that engineers are pumping out code faster than the humans can understand and (honestly) review it. That sounds great until you realize that "hey Claude, read t…

> 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…

staying within free tiers has led to some really great optimizations for me

took complex pub/sub event architectures down to the events postgres can do on its own, and a system architecture that works with that payload. am aware of the limits with this approach and stress potential on db

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