111–120 of 157 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLMs are an amplifier. The great get greater, and the lazier get lazier.
Considering the seeming increasing frequency of high severity bugs happening at FAANG companies in the last year I think perhaps The great getting greater is not actually the case.
The AI code takeover will not free engineers up to do craftsmanship. It will annihilate the last vestiges of craftsmanship forever.
> But there are serious limits. [Your coding agent] will lie to you, they don't really understand things, and they often generate bad code. I think that really high quality code can be created via coding agents. Not in one prompt, but instead an orchestration of planning, implementing, validating, and reviewing. Its still engineering work. The code still matters. Its just a different tool to write the code. I'd compa…
The practical limit is the latency and inference cost. A full planning and validation loop burns a lot of tokens, and waiting for that cycle breaks flow compared to just writing the code.
If you flow state involves elaborating complimentary specifications in parallel, it's marvelous
Earlier quoted context omitted.
New technology does not eliminate old technology or craftsmanship. It just shifts who uses it and what for. - Power tools didn't annihilate the craftsmanship of hand-tool woodworking. Fine woodworkers are still around and making money using hand tools, as well as hobbyists. But contractors universally switched to power tools because they help them make more money with less labor/cost/time. - A friend of mine still kn…
You give examples where crafts based on pre-industrial technology still exist. You're right, but you're proving the GP's point. 200 years ago, being a blacksmith was a viable career path. Now it's not. The use of hand tools, hand knitting, and hand forging is limited to niche, exotic, or hobbyist areas. The same could be said of making clothes by hand or developing film photographs. Coding will be relegated to the sa…
I doubt the laborer would describe their toil as "craft".
I think we should embrace AI to craft better software. You have a lot of control over the code generated by AI, so all your designs, patterns, best practices can be used in the generated code. This will make us better software craftsmen. A nice example is guitar building: there's a whole bunch of luthiers that stick to traditional methods to build guitars, or even just limit themselves to japanese woodworking tools.…
But your comparison is a bit off; you mention CNC machines and the like to build guitars, but those are tools that are still exactly programmed by humans. LLMs on the other hand are probabilistic - you prompt "write me a set of gcode instructions for a CNC to build a guitar body" and wait / hope. Sure, LLMs as a tool probably have a place in software development, but the danger lies in high volume, low oversight. But…
You are a lead architecture, a product manager, a lead UXer, a lead architect. You don't have 100% control over what your LLM devs are doing, but more than you think. Just like normal managers don't micromanage every action of their team.
I love the references to Jacques Ellul's ideas, which I think are interesting to reflect on in an AI age. It helps make clear that what is fundamentally at stake in much technological "progress" is an (often only tacitly acknowledged) sublimation of "efficiency" to the place of highest value. What's fascinating is that this value elevation seems to have gone largely unchallenged, despite being in essence an arbitrary…
It is harder to measure craft, care, or wonder. My best proxy is emails from real people, but those are sporadic, unpredictable, and a lot harder to judge than analytics screens that update every minute.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering the seeming increasing frequency of high severity bugs happening at FAANG companies in the last year I think perhaps The great getting greater is not actually the case.
That's assuming FAANG engineers are actually great.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But your comparison is a bit off; you mention CNC machines and the like to build guitars, but those are tools that are still exactly programmed by humans. LLMs on the other hand are probabilistic - you prompt "write me a set of gcode instructions for a CNC to build a guitar body" and wait / hope. Sure, LLMs as a tool probably have a place in software development, but the danger lies in high volume, low oversight. But…
You have a lot of control over what the LLM creates. The way you phrase your requirements, give it guidance over architecture, testing, ux, libraries to use. You can build your own set of skills to outline how you want the LLM to automate your software process. There's a lot of craftmanship in making the LLM do exactly what you think it needs to do. You are not a victim at the mercy of your LLM. You are a lead archit…
Except for the other 50% of the time where it goes off the rails and does what you explicitly asked it not to do.
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Some of both. The fabric and clothes were worse, and cheaper. This put many traditional workers out of business, making actually good clothes scarcer, and eventually, more expensive than they previously were.
I think the poster's "LLMs are not like textile machines" point hinges on whether a step down in quality is required due to engineering issues or not, at least for an equivalent product. (E.g. bulk cloth, rather than fine embroidery.)
I love the references to Jacques Ellul's ideas, which I think are interesting to reflect on in an AI age. It helps make clear that what is fundamentally at stake in much technological "progress" is an (often only tacitly acknowledged) sublimation of "efficiency" to the place of highest value. What's fascinating is that this value elevation seems to have gone largely unchallenged, despite being in essence an arbitrary…
Efficiency is easy to measure. And whatever is measured becomes the goal. It is harder to measure craft, care, or wonder. My best proxy is emails from real people, but those are sporadic, unpredictable, and a lot harder to judge than analytics screens that update every minute.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705588
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1qj03gq/wh...