41–50 of 104 posts
Also one of my domains is in microcontrollers and using specific hardware that needs bit-banging drivers written for, so it’s unlikely any LLM has enough data to write those things itself.
Dow/classified projects can still be pretty old school. Our company hasn’t really done much on the AI front yet although I’m pushing hard to change that.
I am deeply envious that you have dodged the slop trenches and get to walk into a somewhat cleaner solution. The rest of us have to clean up and maintain the slop and it's depressing as hell.
I would rather deal with Claude refusing to follow instructions than be forced to write software in a proprietary framework that's been effectively EoL'd by its vendor then use Citrix to deploy software to a Windows box after a month long round of manual testing. The former is slightly annoying whereas the latter is a dire threat to your professional mobility and dignity. Your mileage may vary.
I’ve learned for myself that I need to write code just to keep my brain in shape - same as going to the gym to be healthy. Even though agents are building all of my code now, I’m starting every morning with a LeetCode problem. There is no practical use, but it make me feel good and sharp for the rest of the day. For anyone coping with AI I suggest to give it a try, and stick to it for some time, just like with a gym.
Smart. I've been thinking about doing the same. I regret not doing this 10 years ago. Just ~20 minutes of leetcode practice for a decade. I could have landed so much better gigs. :-/
I don't touch LLMs for any purpose (when I can help it, they are frequently shoved in your face regardless); and up until recently was doing just fine. I was fired for this stance, not for performance reasons (officially stated that there was no concern with my output), only for political reasons (insubordination, refusing to use LLMs to do my work for me). I have been seeing fewer and fewer job ads that ask for/requ…
That said, their stance has been wavering, given the apparent inevitability that AI-washing of copyrighted works will be rubber stamped. As you say, damn near everyone has now embraced AI and infected their products with their output. The economic shock if this practice was found illegal would crater the stock market, so of course it will be made legal (at least for the big US models whose corps have been spending their lobbying dollars wisely).
Once the outcome becomes sufficiently clear, I expect the tide will turn, and I am not entirely sad about it. I would like to give them a spin for creating one-off tools, running security audits, tackling certain refactoring, analyze log files, and perform other adjacent tasks. But if I have my way, I will never delegate the core tasks of architecture, design, and development.
I can only say that because I am operating as an independent contractor, so I have a little agency to decide what I do.
Weirdness aside, I'm continuing to write code as I used to, despite the overall company _cultural_ push towards AI, given the lack of direct orders, and pray my output is good enough that the "powers that be" leave me alone.
I am also in the job search process, and am also still noticing plenty of listings that don't mention AI.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea, it is easier to use an LLM for search than using a conventional search engine. No one is going back to that if a non-malicious LLM is available at reasonable costs.
The real costs are externalised to society and the environment. I assume you weren’t including that in your “reasonable costs”.