The main use I find for LLMs is code review and corrections following a list of criteria. It helps to detect overlooked issues.
It is also useful for learning from independent code snippets, for e.g., learning a new API.
The Bitter Prediction
131–140 of 189 posts
Re: The Bitter Prediction
#132> I've never been more productive Maybe it’s because my approach is much closer to a Product Engineer than a Software Engineer, but code output is rarely the reason why projects that I worked on are delayed. All my productivity issues can attributed to poor specifications, or problems that someone just threw over the wall. Every time I’m blocked is because someone didn’t make a decision on something, or no one has th…
For most software jobs, knowing what to build is harder than building it.
I’m working hard on building something right now that I’ve had several false starts on, mostly because it’s taken years for us to totally get our heads around what to build. Code output isn’t the problem.
Re: The Bitter Prediction
#133[flagged]
Re: The Bitter Prediction
#134> I've never been more productive Maybe it’s because my approach is much closer to a Product Engineer than a Software Engineer, but code output is rarely the reason why projects that I worked on are delayed. All my productivity issues can attributed to poor specifications, or problems that someone just threw over the wall. Every time I’m blocked is because someone didn’t make a decision on something, or no one has th…
Yeah, something like 95% of project issues are management and planning issues, not programming or tech ones. So often projects start out without anyone on the team researching the original problem or what their users would actually need, then hastily rejigging the whole thing to fix that midway through development.
Re: The Bitter Prediction
#135Coding itself can be fun, perhaps especially when one is trying to optimize in some way (faster, less memory usage, more minimal, etc), but at least for me (been S/W eng for 45+ years) I think the real satisfaction is conquering the complexity and challenges of the project, and ultimately the ability to dream about something and conjure it up to become a reality. Maybe coding itself was more fun back in the day of 8-bit micros where everything was a challenge (not enough speed or memory), but nowadays typically that is not the case - it's more about the complexity of what is being built (unless it's some boilerplate CRUD app where there is no fun or challenge at all).
With today's AI, driven by code examples it was trained on, it seems more likely to be able to do a good job of optimization in many cases than to have gleaned the principles of conquering complexity, writing bug-free code that is easy and flexible to modify, etc. To be able to learn these "journeyman skills" an LLM would need to either have access to a large number of LARGE projects (not just Stack Overflow snippets) and/or the thought processes (typically not written down) of why certain design decisions were made for a given project.
So, at least for time being, as a developer wielding AI as a tool, I think we can still have the satisfaction of the higher level design (which may be unwise to leave to the AI, until it is better able to reason and learn), while leaving the drudgework (& a little bit of the fun) of coding to the tool. In any case we can still have the satisfaction of dreaming something up and making it real.
Re: The Bitter Prediction
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the lifelong dream of many businesspeople is to create the perfect "cog in the machine" or ideally run a business without workers at all. (Tony Stark, Elon Musk's role model, is a good example of that. As far as the movies are concerned, he builds all his most important inventions himself, or with the help of AI, no workers involved) Independent of what AI can do today, I suspect this was a reason why so many…
You say it like it's a bad thing.
Of course, humans are social beings if technology 'allows' you to be antisocial, are you still being human?
Re: The Bitter Prediction
#137I think AI is posing a challenge to people like the person in TFA because programming is their hobby and one that they’re good at. They aren’t used to knowing someone or something can do it better and knowing that now makes them wonder what the point is. I argue that amateur artists and musicians have dealt with this feeling of “someone can always do it better” for a very long time. You can have fun while knowing som…
I'm both relatively experienced as a musician and software engineer so I kinda see both sides. If musicians want to get better, they have to go to the practice room and work. There's a satisfaction to doing this work and coming out the other side with that hard-won growth.
Prior to AI, this was also true with software engineering. Now, at least for the time being, programmers can increase productivity and output, which seems good on the surface. However, with AI, one trades the hard work and brain cells created by actively practicing and struggling with craft for this productivity gain. In the long run, is this worth it?
To me, this is the bummer.
Re: The Bitter Prediction
#138The thing is: the industry does not need people who are good at (or enjoy) programming, it needs people who are good at ( and enjoy) generating value for customers through code. So the OP was in a bad place without Claude anyways (in industry at least). This realization is the true bitter one for many engineers.
> generating value for customers through code. Generating value for the shareholders and/or investors , not the customers. I suspect this is the next bitter lesson for developers.
Investors don’t make money if the customers don’t
Re: The Bitter Prediction
#139To put the cost into context, spending $5 a day on tools is ludicrously cheap compared to paying minimum wage, let alone a programmer’s salary. Programming is only free if you already know how to code and don’t value your time.
Many of us do write code for fun, but that results in a skewed perspective where we don’t realize how inaccessible it is for most people. Programmers are providers of expensive professional services and only businesses that spread the costs over many customers can afford us.
So if anything, these new tools will make some kinds of bespoke software development more accessible to people who couldn’t afford professional help before.
Although, most people don’t need to write new code at all. Using either free software or buying off-the-shelf software (such as from an app store) works fine for most people in most situations. Personal, customized software is a niche.
Re: The Bitter Prediction
#140The calculator made it less important to be relatively good with arithmetic. Many people just cannot add or subtract two numbers without one. And it feels like they lose intuition , somehow: if numbers don't "speak" to you at all, can you ever realize that 17 is roughly a third of 50? The only way you realise it with a calculator is if you actually look for it. Whereas if you can count, it just appears to you. Simila…
> Back to coding: if you have a deep understanding of your codebases and dependencies, you may end up finding that you could actually extract some part of one codebase into a library and reuse it in another codebase. I understand the point you are making. But what makes you think refactoring won't be AI's forte. Maybe you could explicitly ask for it. Maybe you could ask it to minify while being human-understandable a…
Perhaps it will, but right now I find it much better at generating code from scratch than refactoring.