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It's not the end of programming

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Re: It's not the end of programming

#21

Post by vb-8448 »

sdevonoes wrote: post #12

If someone comes with a pretty decent idea and execution, it doesn’t really matter if code was written by human or llm, does it? Like if the next torvalds ships something great in the open, who cares how was it written.

> it doesn’t really matter if code was written by human or llm

In theory no, but for a successful execution you must have people that understand what's going on, otherwise the competitor that understands will eat you.

> who cares how was it written.

In the pre AI era a lot of sw was written by interns, juniors, some bigcon consultants, some offshore indian or east-european dudes, it didn't even matter before.

Re: It's not the end of programming

#22

Post by owebmaster »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #10

Every other time that programming has gotten easier we got more (often worse) code, though some folks who made their livings exploiting the inefficiencies had to adapt. This will be the same. This isn't the end of programming, it's the beginning of your broccoli haired nephews ability to program. It's also opening a whole new world of opportunity to those with real skill. A world filled with mountains of terrible cod…

> This isn't the end of programming, it's the beginning of your broccoli haired nephews ability to program

Which is funny because that was the case 25+ years ago. We (the nephews) would create websites using PHP. It was common for 15, 16 years old teenagers to know more about tech than the adults. That's not the case anymore. So this time it might be different.

Re: It's not the end of programming

#23

Post by monegator »

exitb wrote: post #17
mapontosevenths wrote: post #10

Every other time that programming has gotten easier we got more (often worse) code, though some folks who made their livings exploiting the inefficiencies had to adapt. This will be the same. This isn't the end of programming, it's the beginning of your broccoli haired nephews ability to program. It's also opening a whole new world of opportunity to those with real skill. A world filled with mountains of terrible cod…

What value does the broccoli haired nephew provide in that scenario?

endless job opportunities for millenials and older

Re: It's not the end of programming

#24

Post by hypfer »

I find it interesting just how different the responses to this new tech are.

I wonder if there is an inverse correlation between "usage of local models" and "despair", or if I am just making that up.

It would make sense, I suppose, given that local models still come with quite the upfront cost. So a lot of people are experiencing LLMs purely through the user-hostile cloud.

Re: It's not the end of programming

#25

Post by appseecker »

charcircuit wrote: post #4

>It's not the end of programming, in the same way as the invention of the printing press wasn't "the end of drawing by hand". The printing press let you scale copies of something already drawn. That is nothing like what AI is doing here which is making drawing easier. It's more like people now draw by hand using pens and pencils instead of scraping small rocks against bigger rocks. Technically you can still scrape ro…

Fair, but won't big tech collapse without the actual people force?

Re: It's not the end of programming

#27

Post by Madmallard »

The fact that we had "The End of Programming" then "No one wants artisanal code anymore" and now "It's not the end of programming"

Getting a really really artificial vibe about the content being pushed to this website :/

Making me feel less motivated to even come here to be honest

Re: It's not the end of programming

#28

Post by marginalia_nu »

fnoef wrote: post #18

People keep giving examples like printed press, or whatever, but honestly the printed press did kill writing/drawing by hand. When was the last time you bought a hand written book or a hand painted picture? Sure, they still exist, but they are priced and marketed towards a specific class of people, and not the mass. And with software it’s even harder as software was never targeted at the mass. Software was always a b…

Printing presses are not typewriters.

The printing press did displace the manual copying of manuscripts, which had insanely low bandwidth and generally kinda sucked for everyone involved. But for several hundred years after, until the industrial revolution and the mass production of mechanical typewriters, pretty much everything printed on a printing press was originally authored by hand. Even with typewriters handwriting lingered for quite a while, since they were very demanding in terms of skill, and all mistakes were permanent.

Arguably it's not until digital writing tools emerged handwriting was truly displaced. That made typing on a keyboard accessible enough that anyone with working hands can do it fairly easily.

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