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Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

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Re: Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

#61

Post by bbmatryoshka »

skydhash wrote: post #48
senko wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just five years ago, the only way to build a working project of moderate complexity was to learn the basic to intermediate concepts required to make an MVP. > Now, if you can steer an LLM reasonably well, you can quickly build an MVP that goes well beyond your own understanding of the implementation. Somewhat agree. Five years ago you could build an MVP without understanding how to open TCP sockets or how to parse…

That’s the power of abstraction when there’s a good API around something to hide the internal that doesn’t matter much at an higher level. You only need ‘open’ and ‘read’ instead of dealing with disk access and file system trasversal. But those abstraction are deterministic in nature, so there’s a very good guarantee of their behavior. Someone using LLM and not caring about the generated code is just asking for troub…

non deterministic abstraction are absolutely useful, outside of software sector they have been used since the start of civilization ("a worker" is a very very non deterministic abstraction, outside from the most basic tasks)

Re: Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

#62

Post by falcor84 »

skydhash wrote: post #48
senko wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just five years ago, the only way to build a working project of moderate complexity was to learn the basic to intermediate concepts required to make an MVP. > Now, if you can steer an LLM reasonably well, you can quickly build an MVP that goes well beyond your own understanding of the implementation. Somewhat agree. Five years ago you could build an MVP without understanding how to open TCP sockets or how to parse…

That’s the power of abstraction when there’s a good API around something to hide the internal that doesn’t matter much at an higher level. You only need ‘open’ and ‘read’ instead of dealing with disk access and file system trasversal. But those abstraction are deterministic in nature, so there’s a very good guarantee of their behavior. Someone using LLM and not caring about the generated code is just asking for troub…

> The code may work, but there’s no guarantee about its behavior (including error handling and edge cases).

But the painful reality is that we never had any such guarantees in industry code to begin with; despite decades of writing on software engineering best practices, software from the biggest companies is often bug ridden.

My experience might not be representative, but when I do my "old man yells at clouds" routine (which I do multiple times a day), it's a lot more often targeted at Microsoft and Google software than at "vibe coded slop".

Re: Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

#63

Post by js8 »

jappgar wrote: post #59
js8 wrote: post #58

I answered this to myself - stop worrying about LLMs. It's pretty simple: due to Curry-Howard isomorphism, programming languages are just notations for some type of formal logic. Now ask yourself a question, what language do you want to maintain the programs in? Do you think natural language is going to be easier and more maintainable than formal logic? The answer is no. So you need programmers, people who can read t…

No offense, but "natural language sucks" is the refuge of the illiterate logician. Complex language is clearly superior in nature. We're now finding out that that is true in computation as well.

I am not sure what your counterargument is. But in mathematics and computation, people have tried for at least 150 years to move away from natural language, and figure out stable foundations that can be externalized. I think there is a good reason for that - you save time correcting errors due to different interpretation.

Re: Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

#64

Post by latexr »

skydhash wrote: post #43
latexr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I said this in different ways before and got shoveled because of the way I said it Are you sure that was the problem? Because to me it seems like it’s the argument which doesn’t hold. You’re engaging in what is called a False Equivalence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence Those things are not the same. Crucially, the food you buy at the store or restaurant is heavily regulated, provenance established,…

> the food you buy at the store or restaurant is heavily regulated, provenance established, safety checks in place. When there’s a widespread issue, we have systems in place for recalls I live in a country where those things are not regulated and you have to be really careful to not buy something that would send you to the hospital.

And would you not agree that is a bad thing?

Re: Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

#65

Post by mrits »

jappgar wrote: post #59
js8 wrote: post #58

I answered this to myself - stop worrying about LLMs. It's pretty simple: due to Curry-Howard isomorphism, programming languages are just notations for some type of formal logic. Now ask yourself a question, what language do you want to maintain the programs in? Do you think natural language is going to be easier and more maintainable than formal logic? The answer is no. So you need programmers, people who can read t…

No offense, but "natural language sucks" is the refuge of the illiterate logician. Complex language is clearly superior in nature. We're now finding out that that is true in computation as well.

Extraneous and ambiguous is superior? Or are you talking about hypothetical new spoken languages?

Re: Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

#66

Post by johnnyanmac »

jappgar wrote: post #59
js8 wrote: post #58

I answered this to myself - stop worrying about LLMs. It's pretty simple: due to Curry-Howard isomorphism, programming languages are just notations for some type of formal logic. Now ask yourself a question, what language do you want to maintain the programs in? Do you think natural language is going to be easier and more maintainable than formal logic? The answer is no. So you need programmers, people who can read t…

No offense, but "natural language sucks" is the refuge of the illiterate logician. Complex language is clearly superior in nature. We're now finding out that that is true in computation as well.

We are in fact finding out precisely why natural language sucks in real time, as we have all kinds of catastrophic errors with people who think this is finally the time for complex language to prevail over pesky nerd language. The only difference is that more people seem to prescribe to the "you're holding it wrong" handwave when said catastrophes are pointed out.

Re: Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

#67

Post by aposm »

senko wrote: post #40
japhyr wrote: post #5

I'm the author of Python Crash Course, and I got this exact same email this week. I was thinking of writing a public response as well, because any attempt to sincerely answer these questions takes something along the lines of a full post. It's also worth a public response because many people who are getting into programming for the first time right now are asking variations of these same questions. > Do I think that…

> Just five years ago, the only way to build a working project of moderate complexity was to learn the basic to intermediate concepts required to make an MVP. > Now, if you can steer an LLM reasonably well, you can quickly build an MVP that goes well beyond your own understanding of the implementation. Somewhat agree. Five years ago you could build an MVP without understanding how to open TCP sockets or how to parse…

There's a pretty significant difference there, even in some of the examples you picked to make your point. TCP and HTTP are well defined standards that, for all their flaws, were designed and conceived to be useful abstractions that you didn't need to understand deeply in order to use. The things that LLMs allow novices to skip nowadays aren't designed with that in mind, and generally aren't something you can just skip over without getting yourself into hot water later. If you mess up Stripe or Auth0 setup because you don't understand the implications of the boilerplate the LLM spit out, you can very easily get your whole app compromised or end up on the hook for a lot of fraudulent credit card charges, etc. I see the point you're making and I don't entirely disagree, but I think current iterations of LLM coding tools still make it far too easy for beginners (or even fairly experienced engineers) to convince themselves that a detail falls into the former category of abstractions they can safely skip understanding, when they're very much the latter.

Re: Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

#68

Post by skydhash »

bbmatryoshka wrote: post #61
skydhash wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the power of abstraction when there’s a good API around something to hide the internal that doesn’t matter much at an higher level. You only need ‘open’ and ‘read’ instead of dealing with disk access and file system trasversal. But those abstraction are deterministic in nature, so there’s a very good guarantee of their behavior. Someone using LLM and not caring about the generated code is just asking for troub…

non deterministic abstraction are absolutely useful, outside of software sector they have been used since the start of civilization ("a worker" is a very very non deterministic abstraction, outside from the most basic tasks)

I’m sure that in every case where there such non deterministic abstraction, it’s been always statistically or with a lot of hand waving. So with a heavy dose of expected errors.

Pro LLM users don’t want to talk about the error margins of whatever practice or product they’re putting out.

Re: Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

#69

Post by johnnyanmac »

unified101 wrote: post #21
lolakutty wrote: post #16

Sorry, programming is still fun. LLMs can't change that.

I'm curious - how do you explain the fact that as you look all around you, lesser number of devs are having fun?

It has less to do with the devs having fun at their job and more to do with if they'll even wake up to go to their job tomorrow. Layoffs are never fun.

Re: Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs

#70

Post by risyachka »

>> Yes, new jobs were created, but often not for those people who lost their jobs

This is the most obvious thing so many people who claim "new jobs were created" miss.

Yeah sure, new jobs will be created. But not for 90% of those who lost them (and most likely not for the one who claims this). You either won't have time, or energy or else to learn it and compete etc. Sure a small % of people will transition, a massive amount will not.

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