I sure wish I had access to the crystal ball people like the author and linked-in top-voices have that enable them to utter with unawavering conviction those decrees, while warning that everyone that doesn't agree with them are "deluding themselves."
Programmers are modern-day computers
11–20 of 48 posts
Re: Programmers are modern-day computers
#12"Those are the very skills that are going to become a lot less relevant, for the precise reason that, now, the machine can do those things."
A photocopier could steal books, a VHS recorder could steal movies, a computer could steal digital works.
LLMs now steal pseudo-legally. Any person without morals could have done the exact same thing before LLM laundromats by just using Google search and GitHub.
"Anyone who tells you otherwise is deluding themselves."
No, you are deluding yourself.
Re: Programmers are modern-day computers
#13While I don’t disagree with the author, I think he misses the larger point that there are two distinct groups of programming code writers, that I’ll call “eager” and “reluctant” until I can think of better terms.
“Eager” programmers find great joy in producing reams of computer code. They prefer to have iron-clad requirements handed to them and then work uninterrupted turning those requirements into a program.
“Reluctant” programmers have problems to solve, and have found that the quickest way to do that is to write code. If solving the problem is faster by not writing code they will do that.
“Computers”, that is, the job formerly performed by humans, favored the “eager” type of person. The people giving work to Computers were “reluctant”, and moved that work to faster tools when they became available.
The issue is that we have armies of “eager” programmers. Can they adapt to become “reluctant” or does the thought of writing less code cause them to resist change?
Re: Programmers are modern-day computers
#14> Tomorrow's job [...] will look a lot more like:
[...]
3. evaluating whether the end result works as intended.
I have some news for the author about what 80% of a programmer's job consists of already today.
There is also the issue #4, that "idea guy" types frequently gloss over: If things do not work as intended, find out why they don't do so and work out a way to fix the root cause. It's not impossible that an AI can get good at that, but I haven't seen it so far and it definitely doesn't fit into the standard "write down what I want to have, press button, get results" AI workflows.
Generally, I feel this ignores the inherent value that there is in having an actual understanding of a system.
Re: Programmers are modern-day computers
#15[dead]
Re: Programmers are modern-day computers
#16I strongly disagree with this. “Computers” would have not been replaced with the machines that replaced them if those machines routinely produced incorrect results. One could argue that for applications where correctness is not critical my position does not apply, however this is not the analogy that the article is making.
Wait what? Human programmers produce incorrect results all the time, they are called bugs. If anything, we use automated systems when correctness is important - fuzzers, static analyzers, etc. And the "AI" systems are improving by leaps and bounds every month, look at SWE-Bench [1] for example. It's pretty obvious where this is all going.
Re: Programmers are modern-day computers
#17> Tomorrow's job [...] will look a lot more like: [...] 3. evaluating whether the end result works as intended. I have some news for the author about what 80% of a programmer's job consists of already today. There is also the issue #4, that "idea guy" types frequently gloss over: If things do not work as intended, find out why they don't do so and work out a way to fix the root cause. It's not impossible that an AI c…
The current implementations of LLMs are focusing on providing good answers, but the real effort of modern day programming is to ask good questions, of both the system, the data, and the people that supposedly understand the requirements
LLMs might become good at this, but nobody seems to be doing much of this commercially just yet
Re: Programmers are modern-day computers
#18Oh boy, I sure love to see some guy with a blog waxing poetic about the future of AI. The insistence that "most people haven't realized come to terms with it yet", and then proceeding to make a total fucking guess out of his ass.
Reminds me of that one asshole who couldn't find a pen, and wrote a whole NYT article about "the demise of the pen".
Re: Programmers are modern-day computers
#19What a superficial and short-sighted take. > Even he, subconsciously, knows it doesn't pay off to waste cognitive energy on what a machine could do instead. > It's not laziness, but efficiency. It's only efficient in the short-term, not long-term. Now the programmer never understood the problem, and that is a problem in the long-run. As any experienced engineer knows - understanding problems is how anyone gets better…
If you have been doing the job using AI for years and still don’t understand what you are doing, just ask the AI.
/s
Re: Programmers are modern-day computers
#20Just ask yourself if this AI generated software is what you want managing your bank account or the monitor next to your bed in the hospital. The lack of determinism makes LLMs unsuited for many tasks where precise outcomes are necessary.