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A coder considers the waning days of the craft

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Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#111

Post by CamperBob2 »

ilaksh wrote: post #83
thomaslord wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly in my brief dabbling with ChatGPT, it hasn't really felt like it's good at the stuff that I'd want taken off my plate. At work I tend to build stuff that you'd describe as "CRUD plus business logic", so there are a decent number of mundane tasks. ChatGPT can probably fill in some validation logic if I tell it the names of the fields, but that doesn't speed things up much. I work primarily in Laravel, so ther…

ChatGPT 3.5 is about 20-30 IQ points dumber than GPT-4. There is no comparison. It is not very similar. GPT-4 now also has 128,000 context tokens. They could charge $2000 per month for GPT-4 and it would be more than fair.

They could charge $2000 per month for GPT-4 and it would be more than fair.

Well, it's hard to argue with that.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#112

Post by CamperBob2 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #73
atleastoptimal wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it sucks now and I agree GPT-4 is not a replacement for coders. However the leap between GPT-3 and 4 indicates that by the 6 level, if improvements continue, it'll reach the scope and accuracy we expect from highly paid skilled humans. It's only a guess people make that AI improvements will stop at some arbitrary point, and since that point seems to always be a few steps down from the skill level of the person…

Fundamentally it cannot reach the scope or accuracy of a highly skilled person. It's a limitation of how LLMs function.

In terms of scope, it's already left the most highly-skilled people a light year behind. How broad would your knowledge base be if you'd read -- and memorized! -- every book on your shelf?

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#113

Post by Dave_Rosenthal »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #93
Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Chess engines might get better than some chess players, but none who play Chess as a craft." Do you think people in the 90s thought this? Probably... In the article, the author mentions that Chess centaurs (a human player consulting an engine) can still beat an engine alone. But the author is wrong. There was a brief period a while ago when that was true, but chess engines are so strong now that any human interventi…

Chess is a closed problem. Whereas software development very much isn't. You will also have to provide a source for 'chess engines are so strong now that any human intervention just holds them back', a cursory search suggests this is by no means settled.

Yes, the rules of chess are simpler, which is why all this happened many years ago for chess.

https://gwern.net/note/note#advanced-chess-obituary -- here is a reference about centuar/advanced chess. The source isn't perfect as the tournaments seem to have fizzled out 5-10 years ago as engines got better and it all became irrelevant. Sadly this means we don't have 100 games of GM+engine vs. engine in 2023 to truly settle it but I've been following this for a while and I have a high confidence that Stockfish_2023+human ~= Stockfish_2023.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#114

Post by fallingfrog »

You have to consider here that anyone posting on hacker news is a pretty smart cookie. We’re the clever kids in school, the ones who were curious and insightful.

Now, chatgpt in its current form cannot think better than me. Faster, for sure, but not better. Its arguments and its explanations are a bit simple and it can’t make really insightful observations. Mostly it just states the obvious.

However.

There are people in the world that it can out-think. For every one of us there are 10 or 20 people who are pleasant enough but kind of thick, and gpt can already speak more eloquently than them. So where’s the bar for “intelligence?” Does it have to outclass the smartest human alive before we can call it intelligent?

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#115

Post by evilai »

karmasimida wrote: post #60

Is driving a craft? Is plumbing a craft? Coding to me is the same to those 'crafts', with GPT it will be done faster and more efficient, that is it.

And also much cheaper, which I think is one of the main problems. If less knowledge is needed to solve these problems, then you should pay less for them. The article makes a comparison with chess, which seems absurd to me, because, although there are more people playing chess than ever before, this is due, in my opinion, to the fact that the goal continues to be to defeat another human playing, so even though it is impossible to beat a machine at the game, it does not affect the gameplay with other humans. On the other hand, coding is a job for many, what sense would it make to pay, or pay the same to a human, if a program can produce higher quality code?

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#116

Post by evilai »

decasia wrote: post #52

I have been having the following debate with my friend who does AI and neural network stuff: Him: Coding will soon be obsolete, it will all be replaced by chatgpt-type code gen. Me: OK but the overwhelming majority of my job as a "senior engineer" is about communication, organizational leadership, and actually understanding all the product requirements and how they will interface with our systems. Yes, I write code,…

I think that if that were the case, the change would be brutal. First, because as a comment below suggests, fewer people would be involved, so coordination would be simplified. Second, because many more people could access these coordination positions, and I think it would be likely that other professions would take on those roles, professions or personality types that are not usually "good coders" but now wouldn't need to be, since the machine itself could explain, for example, the general functioning of what is being produced. Therefore, I would expect the job field to be radically affected and salaries severely reduced.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#117

Post by cantSpellSober »

It's funny, back in the days of IE6, Firebug, jQuery, it was so frustrating just getting something to work.

Looking back, that's what made it fun. You could convince yourself you were a mad scientist building the next Turing machine.

Having stability in the JS ecosystem now (hold for laughter) is better for users, and the developments in AI are interesting, but it's not as challenging to ship things. Maybe embracing the new challenges is the "craft" we should focus on to bring the fun back.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#118

Post by evilai »

jelsisi wrote: post #77

The article came to a romantic end that doesn't satisfy how I feel about the workplace now. I have to admit a dirty truth, that I joined this field because of the pay and job stability, not simply for a love of programming. Because of this I feel distressed for its future. No longer can someone walk into a job slightly under qualified and grow with time. Companies will opt for smaller teams of 10xers that with the co…

I completely agree, and I think that's precisely the heart of the matter. Salaries will likely begin to decrease, or at the very least, they won't increase at the rate they would have if this technology didn't exist. It seems inevitable to me that programming will become just another job. It's saddening because I deeply love to code and understand the inner workings of it all.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#119

Post by evilai »

29athrowaway wrote: post #21

If you train LLMs on code from GitHub it will output what the average GitHub repo has in it. That is, "competent level", not expert or virtuoso. And it will also carry over bugs found at the "competent" level.

Absolutely, but you really don't need virtuoso-level code most of the time ) :

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#120

Post by dang »

Uptrenda wrote: post #5

>At one point, we wanted a command that would print a hundred random lines from a dictionary file. I thought about the problem for a few minutes, and, when thinking failed Wow, this guys working on rocket science, everyone. Watch out! We might get replaced!

"Don't be snarky."

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines a ton lately (examples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38215766

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38215679

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38082131

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37800148)

We have to ban accounts that post like that, so if you'd please stop posting like that, we'd appreciate it. I don't want to ban an 8-year-old account, but we don't have much choice if the account is frequently posting like that.

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