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The End of Programming

pauldix.com

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Re: The End of Programming

#71

Post by simonw »

mastermage wrote: post #67
simonw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, why do you ask?

I think he is saying this in reference to this: "If you can reduce a problem to a clearly verifiable end state, provide the necessary context [...]" Which for reference i am not an engineer but a Physicist is literally one of the things we make jokes about for engineers. Not that we are much better in that regard as a verfiable end state in Physics is like realy realy dificult to get so is the necessary context.

I don't mean to imply that was easy! I think it's hard, and a skill that needs active investment. It's one of the reasons I'm not afraid for my career.

Re: The End of Programming

#72

Post by sgt »

ohyes wrote: post #42
sgt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't this mean that a lot of developers in Silicon Valley will find themselves out of a job? If the competition (AI operators) can sit 8000 miles away and be paid peanuts.

The whole point is that we’re TikToking the software industry and no one will know what to tell the ai to get the software written in a way that works. It’s in principle the same as idiocracy where no one knows how to make burrito covers anymore because shit won’t grow

Maybe a super smart AI will take over the part of telling the smaller AI's what to do.

Humanity can then relax in floating chairs drinking soft drinks and consuming AI generated entertainment.

Re: The End of Programming

#73

Post by hannofcart »

HexDecOctBin wrote: post #15
k3nt0456 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess in most industries speed was always the primary concern. Things like architecture and principles were there only to prevent things slowing down to a crawl. A way to protect that speed

And who will fix the slop? Not Silicon Valley programs being paid $200K or whatever. We stand on the verge of a golden age of outsourcing in software which will make all previous phases of outsourcing look like trial runs.

I live in what's probably the outsourcing capital of the world (though I thankfully don't work in those body shops).

I don't think there's going to be a rush to outsource. In fact, I suspect that it's quite the opposite scenario going to play out.

Primarily because now that the cost to produce the boring/mundane stuff that is the stuff of outsourcing (internal tooling, dashboards, ERP, integrations, QA etc.), it will likely be much more cost effective to hire 3 devs in the US and give them hefty token budgets and have much easier coordination and communication loops than outsourcing to a Bangalore body shop that will try and bill you 15 engineers for the same work.

In fact, word on the street here is that there's a significant correction in the Bangalore realty market for the first time in history thanks to the IT salaries drying up. [1]

I suspect LLMs are going to have a global worldwide deflationary effect what with white collar salaries at risk. The only counter acting force might be the distortions caused by recent wars and tariff shenanigans of the US government.

But even having said all of that I am hopeful for the eventual benefits human beings can reap from the advent of LLMS. The only thing that keeps me up at night is my lack of faith in the aging gerontocracy (worldwode phenomenon) that all our futures are in the hands of that seems to be ill equipped to handle this period of what is most likely massive upheaval and uncertainty.

[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/real-estate/news/housing...

Re: The End of Programming

#74

Post by tyingq »

nasretdinov wrote: post #18

LLMs are scarily good at translation, whether between natural or between programming languages. Also very good at re-implementing the stuff that has been provably done before. And, arguably, 90-95% of writing code is exactly that.

I'm no expert, but it feels like this exact thing is how it ends up eating itself. For two reasons.

- Eventually the universe of "provably done before" is now mostly LLM genned code. So the training data quality starts a slow decline.

- That it's "good enough" now for 90+% of the work kills the pipeline for any new human software experts. So they never gain the experience and insight to be able to steer the AI to produce ok-ish code. Existing experts age out. This cycles with the bullet above over time. And at some point we're stalled, all code is now mediocre at best and while output is high, innovation/evolution is low. Or whatever innovation we have is coming from a very small circle without much natural competition.

Re: The End of Programming

#75

Post by rdedev »

simonw wrote: post #9

This is a strong article with a distracting headline. Challenge for commenters: can you discuss the content without getting caught up in the headline? My favorite paragraph: > The fact that AI wrote 1M LOC and then refined it over the course of the next couple of months to produce a reliable piece of software that is currently running on millions of developer machines is absolutely mind blowing. And you can say, “wel…

> Reducing problems to that state and designing that environment remains a skill, and one that I expect we will be paid handsomely for.

This seems to be what AI these days seems almost super humanly good at. See coding or math I guess.

But it does beg the question, why would a programmer using AI as a tool be worse than a programmer building the harness and environment and asking AI to go hogwild? The latter is definitely faster but if it's the former, atleast I will have an understanding how the system works. Weather that is valuable is an open question as far as I am concerned

Re: The End of Programming

#76

Post by kodoman »

cafebabbe wrote: post #3

I don't know if this is the end of programming, but i can clearly observe the gradual end of expertise in my company - people slowly forgetting architecture, principles, and how stuff works in general, in favor of code delivery speed. And without expertise you end up asking stupid things to a token producer machine, however godlike it can be. It's hard not to extrapolate...

I really do think that people who rely on AI to make architectural dissensions will simply have a bad time later down the road when it turns out that the AI made a stupid decision.

I have noticed myself a 3 months or so ago sometimes asking AI questions for things that I knew the answer to (but had to think about) and my solution would have been better. Once I realized it I realized how despite always telling my self to think about the result I was still allowing myself to hand over some of my thinking to the AI.

What I have started doing is still doing lots of things without AI and trying to not lose those skills because I think they are still needed but AI can lull you into handing over your prefrontal cortex, which is scary.

Re: The End of Programming

#77

Post by psychoslave »

k3nt0456 wrote: post #10
cafebabbe wrote: post #3

I don't know if this is the end of programming, but i can clearly observe the gradual end of expertise in my company - people slowly forgetting architecture, principles, and how stuff works in general, in favor of code delivery speed. And without expertise you end up asking stupid things to a token producer machine, however godlike it can be. It's hard not to extrapolate...

I guess in most industries speed was always the primary concern. Things like architecture and principles were there only to prevent things slowing down to a crawl. A way to protect that speed

Which speed in which industry? Speed of having the idea, speed of creating a early mockup, speed of creating the prototype, speed of proof, speed of creating the process to replicate at scale, speed of mass production, speed of maintenance and evolution tasks, speed of support, speed of dismantlement, speed of keeping track of all the damn conflicting priorities between all speeds?

In building/construction industry, certainly one might expect delivery speed to matter, and humanity have literally millennia of experience in the domain, and yet it’s notoriously known to go through the roof all the time.

Re: The End of Programming

#78

Post by kodoman »

dogcomplex wrote: post #60
cafebabbe wrote: post #3

I don't know if this is the end of programming, but i can clearly observe the gradual end of expertise in my company - people slowly forgetting architecture, principles, and how stuff works in general, in favor of code delivery speed. And without expertise you end up asking stupid things to a token producer machine, however godlike it can be. It's hard not to extrapolate...

If you care about architecture and principles, the AI is excellent in architecting around that goal too and/or helping you articulate your own intuitions. You just need to be willing to sacrifice code delivery speed. It's far from an either/or.

I have found different, often even when doing something like coming up with a database schema, the solution it chooses is not the best and and can be even terrible sometimes. It could be I suck at prompting.

Re: The End of Programming

#79

Post by xboxnolifes »

ohyes wrote: post #42
sgt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't this mean that a lot of developers in Silicon Valley will find themselves out of a job? If the competition (AI operators) can sit 8000 miles away and be paid peanuts.

The whole point is that we’re TikToking the software industry and no one will know what to tell the ai to get the software written in a way that works. It’s in principle the same as idiocracy where no one knows how to make burrito covers anymore because shit won’t grow

Maybe we need to start cryofreezing some of our best engineers as a precaution. Or even just a bunch of average ones.

Re: The End of Programming

#80

Post by qprofyeh »

Skeptical whether author has financial gain from echoing and underwriting this already prominent statement, spread by BigAI. Not that I disagree with what’s written, I do see irreversible changes in our industry, but there’s the flip side that he doesn’t seem interested to write about. Makes the whole article read like a sponsored Anthropic ad.
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