431–440 of 612 posts
I use LLMs at work. I'm expected to and paid to show up and do that, so I do it. But I refuse to leave understanding the codebase to machines. I did that the other day as an exception and fortunately my reviewer picked up on things which weren't exactly broken - just redundant and inelegant - e.g. two variables which easily could have been one, passed between several methods. We have an automatic reviewer as well and…
I can't see how the tinkerers of the world who make unremarkable software expect to be pat on the back for making not very useful things. It's almost selfish in a way - just because you enjoy the process of creation doesn't mean that you should be rewarded for it. Unfortunately, nobody cares. If you do, great, but that's just you.
Basket weavers don't expect their baskets to be valuable to the world in a major way, so why should a tinkerer who spent 150 hours on a git branch switcher get to feel the opposite?
If I were an artist, I wouldn't really care that a machine took over the role of drawing lines on paper, and as a programmer, I don't care that the machines are taking the role of writing code. The thing that actually matters is understanding the problem domain, and thinking about and visualizing the program I am trying to make, so I am happy to be doing less drudge work so I can focus on what really matters. I've be…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apps usually have tons of boilerplate, so pure LoC may be similar. But in density, no contest. I recently dug up an old objc app of mine and was shocked how few lines it took to send a REST request, parse and process it. Nowadays it is split into multiple files, usecases, repositories, protocols to accomplish the same. All in the name of testability or architectural “correctness”. Write that in a game and you’re fire…
There's a different bar for maintenance though. Many games exist in a single point in time, they ship and are done, whereas the goal with SaaS is to support the code forever.
Art for art's sake, did not work for me. I was planning to earn some money from my second Steam game. Than AI happened. I did not gave up on because competition is now higher. I gave up because programming was fun for me, been at for 20 years. But right i always know in part of my brain 'this 1000 lines of code could have been just a prompt'. Joy is not there for me anymore. I hope to get it back someday.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very skilled assembly programmers still can beat compilers, but nearly no assembly is written by humans anymore.
I'm too young to have known the assembly wizard world, but how is the job market for people of that skill-set and expertise? My assumption was that being closer to hardware tends to be more resistant to AI hype since they work in environments where just vibe coding some slop carries much higher risk than vibe coding a webpage or mobile app does.
You're facing strict requirements for fundamentals in 3 independent axis. If there's recommendation to anyone looking to "write code" today, its to specialize in a field where software (or firmware) is applied to a hard engineering domain. This has been common advice since 2010 [1], long before LLMs:
"People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
You're creating illusory boundaries to protect your ego. AI is not a supernatural category. It's just another thing. It can serve as inspiration the way anything else can. You are not the arbiter of value in art, as much as you try to claim authority. You're just rationalizing your arbitrary beliefs.
(My own work is amateur and probably shit; this is not about my creative ego)
You guys do like to read things that are not there so you can argue against them.
I don’t know any artist who has done any self-reflection about their work who thinks generative AI can do much for them at all.
At best it is tools like deep learning in upscaling and noise reduction, selection masking, separations etc. (I don’t mind AI selection tools; quite liked old style AI upscaling but I have moved away from it; I now think work should be produced with its reproduction limits in mind)
Nobody who has put in the creative ideation and self-reflection work and still wants to improve is going to tell you great things about generative AI. Because they know it is empty calories.
Think of the classic Venn diagram, the intersection of: 1. Things I enjoy doing. 2. Things I am good at doing. 3. Things people value me doing. The problem with AI is that it potentially changes all three of those bubbles. 1. Sure, AI is powerful, but maybe I don't enjoy coding that way. 2. I'm really good at C++, but I'm not very good at prompting (at least no better than anyone else). 3. No one hires me anymore bec…
> No one hires me anymore because AI can do my job cheaper. As someone who thinks AI is an incredible tool, I think your job is safe. Are there incompetent companies that are replacing people with AI? Yup... But also, I'm pretty sure most people don't want to work at companies with such poor management anyway? So in a way, I think AI is prefiltering incompetent management for us. On you other two points: I kinda feel…
Well, I think the issue is that most people, even software developers, don't have the luxury of choosing. Everyone needs to put food on the table, and often times that involves working for companies one dislikes or even hates. The problem is now those companies are turning to AI.
This is the Eros vs Thanatos debacle. Those who are driven by Eros want to enjoy the duration of a process: to have a delicious meal, make love, plant and care for that tree, build that house, and live. The adepts of Thanatos want things done right now: to get satiated, have an orgasm, shade away that damn Sun, cover their sorry asses from elements, and die.
Think of the classic Venn diagram, the intersection of: 1. Things I enjoy doing. 2. Things I am good at doing. 3. Things people value me doing. The problem with AI is that it potentially changes all three of those bubbles. 1. Sure, AI is powerful, but maybe I don't enjoy coding that way. 2. I'm really good at C++, but I'm not very good at prompting (at least no better than anyone else). 3. No one hires me anymore bec…
1. I've always been enjoyed delivering solutions more than the actual process of programming, and AI just helps me deliver more of that faster. And for the actual process of programming, I found a way of working with AI that makes it enjoyable. I've built my own AI agent coordinator and harness which works the way I want it to. I enjoy working with AI in that harness.
2. It is completely false that you cannot prompt the AI any better than anybody else. The likes of Terrence Tao can prompt ChatGPT to solve Millennium Prize problems in math. But I'm not a professional mathematician, so I cannot do that. Generally speaking, the more deep technical knowledge you have, the stronger prompts you can write because an amateur doesn't even know what to potentially improve. Actual real world productivity with AI is still strongly correlated with deep technical knowledge and experience, and I expect it to stay that way. This has nothing to do with AI capabilities, which I expect will keep gettinf better. This has to do with the fundamental definition of a problem requires expertise to handle it.
3. Jevons paradox suggests that the fact that building software has become cheap now may only increase demand, not decrease it. Sure, traditional software engineering jobs may not look the same. But AI has made it possible to build so many kinds of software that I would have never considered before. Like, for example, I built my own email client, which works exactly the way I want it to. Imagine every company starts building their own operating system, email client, and CRM. I can easily see that happening, and I can actually see it as a net positive as well as a fun thing to watch. And only an increase in job opportunities.