291–300 of 613 posts
It's also ironic how the "every programmer I know has basically gone insane over the last couple of years" sentence applies to author of the article as well. The ego, luddism, and fear of change is real.
This is 80% ego talking and 20% fear of change. The comment about hobby vs. work is correct, and it’s the crux of this. OP is attempting to console themselves. “I shouldn’t have to change to avoid ‘falling behind.’ I like how I’m doing it. I’m good at what I do.” The fact of the matter is the LLMs can be used to produce effective work faster than you. Yes. You are falling behind. And yes, it will reduce your value in…
I think this cuts close to the heart of it. "That knowledge has no value" isn't an easy pill to swallow for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is that your value as a developer has gone down. You're not going to get paid for coding, and the market is getting flooded with people who can use LLMs to effect. I can only speak for myself, but everything got a lot easier with Claude and I can build at a scale and speed I've never been able to before. But "easy" doesn't go with "high pay". (I've had two successful coding shops collapse over the decades because someone released a tool that made our work easy and available to everyone.)
But also from a human standpoint. It's like saying "weaving tapestries has no value" and "making art has no value", which is also true in dollars. Pure capitalists don't get this one, and rightfully so. But for folks like me, there's definitely a sting to it. And I'm also not convinced that it's entirely true, considering indirect effects (that don't enter into the capitalist equation).
Personally, I haven't intended to make money by coding for years, and, God-willing, I'll never have to again. Never really cared about pats on the head. I just get to code for the joy of it, making software that I can then use after the fun part is done.
So my choice is this: I can easily use LLMs to write code, but I won't because it's boring. And I'm lucky, being out of the game, to not need to care about getting paid for it or what other people think about it.
(There is actually a case where I'd happily use LLMs to build products, assuming it was a technically valid approach to the problem: where I care about the mission and feel the work benefits the world. Less fun than coding by hand, certainly, but if the goal is good, gotta support the goal. But for me, places like that are a tiny, tiny slice of the market. And they don't tend to be exactly rolling in cash.)
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"That is almost to say that the only part of the meal that matters is the cooking. But the cooking is only a tiny part. I take joy in describing the food I want and bringing that vision to life."
Or like going to the gym but using a forklift to lift the weights. Yes, barbells are traveling up and down, but is that the point of going to the gym?
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You're going to probably be downvoted because the truth is hard and the collective human ego is self-reinforcing, but I think you are correct. 'Quality' is a function of filling in the gaps of the new tools, not eschewing them entirely.
A point is coming very soon where coding agents are not tools but are just your replacement. If you prompt a coding agent to make you something then go have lunch, you didn't make anything, it did.
"What is it, would you say, you actually do here?"
:)
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I don't know. Maybe it's the people doing software dev that are yet to reckon with it to a degree -- or have found themselves on opposite sides of denial. I think industry is quite clear that AI is helpful to their bottom line. At the end, that's all that matters to them. That SWEs cannot, say, unionize to prevent this shift in labor-elimination or articulate any other coherent way of countering the industry's desire…
> I think industry is quite clear that AI is helpful to their bottom line. No, I think the industry is hopeful that AI is helpful to their bottom line. I don't really think there is very strong evidence that the ROI is good. The problem is that the industry is riddled with FOMO and FUD: everyone thinks everyone else is using it so they must. And this FUD and FOMO is being imposed upon them from above: there is a mand…
Practically speaking, what's the difference? :-/
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I just see it as tool. Used to be you had to calculate things by hand on paper. Then we got calculators, then spreadsheets. Complaining that by hand was better seems line nonsense. I'm old enough to have taken typing lessons in high school on typewriters with real ink and needed to use white-out to fix things and if there are too many mistakes having to start over from scratch. I don't want to go back. Construction w…
If we strip away all the layers of onion, we are not left with a Platonic ideal onion, we're left with nothing. Removing every chore, task, craft, friction from life does not leave an ideal perfect life, it leaves nothing. Some people are feeling closer to that nothing than others. A human who liked caring for horses, feeding them, brushing them, comforting them during thunderstorms, blanketing them in cold weather,…
Problem is without LLMs I’m making a contact lead form with some basic stuff and calling it good. With them, I’m making the whole SaaS. I just made the best DM experience last night. I never would have before. Feels and looks just like iMessage, because the users are coming from that, and it’s just for a small biz. It’s been planned for a while because the messages involve so much file sharing, it was time to build a…
> file sharing > LLMs It’s probably worth doing a very thorough audit of how you’re handling user-uploaded files, it’s full of non-obvious footguns.
So why would I take your advice on this topic?
I bet there are 1000 other things you don’t know about file uploads.
The LLM does know, and if I think it looks weird I can research it manually.
It’s called: Being of normal functioning intelligence
And caring about the product and the work (and the money!)
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> I think industry is quite clear that AI is helpful to their bottom line. No, I think the industry is hopeful that AI is helpful to their bottom line. I don't really think there is very strong evidence that the ROI is good. The problem is that the industry is riddled with FOMO and FUD: everyone thinks everyone else is using it so they must. And this FUD and FOMO is being imposed upon them from above: there is a mand…
> No, I think the industry is hopeful that AI is helpful to their bottom line. Practically speaking, what's the difference? :-/
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You're selling an app, but don't want to share any details, or even name it? Call me suspicious.
I said I'm hoping to complete it this month and I already shared some details. Should I post my market and keyword research too, here on this site for software developers and entrepreneurs?
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You're projecting, and there are plenty of people in crafts who are using AI output as an input to their own works who are having a blast. AI images make amazing collages/photobash inputs, and AI music is useful to sample or use as inspiration for parts you're stuck on. These people just keep quiet about their use because of the witch hunts being persecuted by people who are afraid of change. AI use in creative field…
> You're projecting, No, I'm actually not. I'm an active creative portrait photographer and I take part in photographic communities with people much, much better than me, I am surrounded by dozens of gigging and working musicians, songwriters and composers in my friend group (and play a couple of instruments myself); I know painters and illustrators of great ability (though I am not that kind of artist). I listen to…
So, your answer to "people are doing a thing" is to just say "no they're not! NANANANA can't hear you!"
Musicians have claimed to take inspiration from things like water dripping from a leaky faucet and machine sounds, so your claim that AI outputs can't inspire artists is farcical.
You're obviously biased beyond the point of being able to share in a nuanced discourse, the next few years are gonna be SO rough for you, sorry to say. Buckle up.