11–20 of 226 posts
CPU instructions, caches, memory access, etc. are debated, tested, hardened, and documented to a degree that's orders of magnitude greater than the LLM-generated code we're deploying these days. Those fundamental computing abstractions aren't nearly as leaky or nearly as in need of refactoring tomorrow.
But people are expected to understand the part of the system they are responsible for at the level of abstraction they are being paid to operate. This new arrangement would be perfectly fine if they aren't responsible when/if it breaks.
I am no CS major, nor do I fully understand the inner workings of a computer beyond "we tricked a rock into thinking by shocking it."
I'd love to better understand it, and I hope that through my journey of working with computers, i'll better learn about these underlying concepts registers, bus's, memory, assembly etc
Practically however, I write scripts that solve real world problems, be that from automating the coffee machine, to managing infrastructure at scale.
I'm not waiting to pick up a book on x86 assembly first before I write some python however. (I wish it were that easy.)
To the greybeards that do have a grasp of these concepts though? It's your responsibility to share that wealth of knowledge. It's a bitter ask, I know.
I'll hold up my end of the bargain by doing the same when I get to your position and everywhere in between.
Perhaps a dose of pragmatism is needed here? I am no CS major, nor do I fully understand the inner workings of a computer beyond "we tricked a rock into thinking by shocking it." I'd love to better understand it, and I hope that through my journey of working with computers, i'll better learn about these underlying concepts registers, bus's, memory, assembly etc Practically however, I write scripts that solve real wor…
One can continue to perfect and exercise their craft the old school way, and that’s totally fine, but don’t count on that to put food on the table. Some genius probably can, but I certainly am not one.
Adam Jacob
It’s not slop. It’s not forgetting first principles. It’s a shift in how the craft work, and it’s already happened.
Bruce Perens
Do not underestimate the degree to which mostly-competent programmers are unaware of what goes on inside the compiler and the hardware.
So nothing new under the sun, often the practices come first, then only can some theory emerge, from which point it can be leverage on to go further than present practice and so on. Sometime practice and theory are more entengled in how they are created on the go, obviously.
Strange article. The problem isn’t that everyone doesn’t know how everything works, it’s that AI coding could mean there is no one who knows how a system works.
Including the AI, which generated it once and forgot. This is going to be a big problem. How do people using Claude-like code generation systems do this? What artifacts other than the generated code are left behind for reuse when modifications are needed? Comments in the code? The entire history of the inputs and outputs to the LLM? Is there any record of the design?
Strange article. The problem isn’t that everyone doesn’t know how everything works, it’s that AI coding could mean there is no one who knows how a system works.
Including the AI, which generated it once and forgot. This is going to be a big problem. How do people using Claude-like code generation systems do this? What artifacts other than the generated code are left behind for reuse when modifications are needed? Comments in the code? The entire history of the inputs and outputs to the LLM? Is there any record of the design?
I have prompting in AGENTS.md that instructs the agent to update the relevant parts of the project documentation for a given change. The project has a spec, and as features get added or reworked the spec gets updated. If you commit after each session then the git history of the spec captures how the design evolves. I do read the spec, and the errors I've seen so far are pretty minor.
That's not how things work in practice. I think the concern is not that "people don't know how everything works" - people never needed to know how to "make their own food" by understanding all the cellular mechanisms and all the intricacies of the chemistry & physics involved in cooking. BUT, when you stop understanding the basics - when you no longer know how to fry an egg because you just get it already prepared fr…