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The rise of judgement over technical skill

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Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#131

Post by PeterStuer »

macNchz wrote: post #88
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Some learn, not all and decreasing numbers career to learn Also most juniors have no idea how to write tests, plan for data scale, know which IPC-RPC combo is best for prototyping vs production Etc… 90% of software is architecture and juniors don’t architect

> Disagree. Some learn, not all and decreasing numbers career to learn This is an organizational issue then—someone who is operating at a junior level who demonstrates that they don’t care to learn should be let go.

But they are so cheap, and they increase the headcount on my pfiefdom chart.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#132

Post by PeterStuer »

lolinder wrote: post #93
strgcmc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree that "unlimited interns who don't improve much" is less practically useful than it might seem at first, but OTOH "never improve much" seems unrealistic, given the insane progress of the field in the last 3ish years (or think back 5 years and tell me who was realistically predicting tools like Claude Code to even exist by 2025). Also, there's a decently large subset of small startups where there's 1 technic…

> but OTOH "never improve much" seems unrealistic, given the insane progress of the field in the last 3ish years The point is that no one should hire an intern or a junior because they think it will improve their team's productivity. You hire interns and juniors because there's a causal link between "I hired an intern and spent money training them" and "they joined my company full time and a year later are now produc…

"hired an intern and spent money training them" and "they joined my company full time and a year later are now productive"

Why would I do that if I can have sombody else pay for the training then poach them when they are ready?

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#133

Post by PeterStuer »

CodeMage wrote: post #117
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how to use it and exactly why it’s a huge deal In my experience so far, the people that aren’t getting value out of LLM code assistants, fundamentally like the process of writing code and using the tooling All of my senior, staff, principals love it because we can make something faster than having to deal with a junior because it’s trivial to write the spec/requirement for Claude etc…

> All of my senior, staff, principals love it because we can make something faster than having to deal with a junior because it’s trivial to write the spec/requirement for Claude etc… How will you make new senior, staff, and principal engineers without "having to deal with a junior"?

You hire seniors from other companies ofc.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#134

Post by steveBK123 »

PeterStuer wrote: post #131
macNchz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disagree. Some learn, not all and decreasing numbers career to learn This is an organizational issue then—someone who is operating at a junior level who demonstrates that they don’t care to learn should be let go.

But they are so cheap, and they increase the headcount on my pfiefdom chart.

Yes, a combination of empire building and "but $X exceeds the $Y cap set by HR for Z role! / we can hire XX juniors for this price!" type of mega corp thinking.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#135

Post by PeterStuer »

coldpie wrote: post #112
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how to use it and exactly why it’s a huge deal In my experience so far, the people that aren’t getting value out of LLM code assistants, fundamentally like the process of writing code and using the tooling All of my senior, staff, principals love it because we can make something faster than having to deal with a junior because it’s trivial to write the spec/requirement for Claude etc…

> In my experience so far, the people that aren’t getting value out of LLM code assistants, fundamentally like the process of writing code and using the tooling > All of my senior, staff, principals love it because we can make something faster than having to deal with a junior because it’s trivial to write the spec/requirement for Claude etc… Hm, interesting. As someone who has found zero joy and value in using LLMs,…

"As someone who has found zero joy and value in using LLMs"

I love programming but find zero joy in front-end coding. For me LLM's solved that bit nicely. I'm sure a real webdev would do better, but I can't afford it for my personal projects and the LLM helped me to get it done more than good=enoug for my needs.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#136

Post by schindlabua »

numpad0 wrote: post #72
prmph wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck, the code generation _is_ absolutely still a bottle-neck. I dare anyone who making these arguments that LLMs have removed the need for actual programming skill, for example, to share in a virtual pair programming session with me, and I will demonstrate their basic inability to do _any_ moderately complex coding in short order. Yes, I think that's the only way to resolve this controversy. If they have so…

Last week I was like, I might as well vibe code with free Gemini and steal his credit than researching something destined to be horrible as Android Camera2 API, and found out that at least me using this version of Gemini do better if I prompt it in a... casual language. "ok now i want xyz for pqr using stu can you make code that do" rather than "I'm wondering if...", with lowercase I and zero softening languages. So…

I totally just verbalize my inner monologue, swearing and everything. Sometimes I just type "weeeeeeeelllllll" and send it, to get more LLM output or to have it provide alternatives.

It might sound weird but I try to make the LLM comfortable. Because I find you get worse results when you point out mistake after mistake and it goes into apologetic mode. Also because being nice puts me in a better mood and it makes my own programming better.

vibe coding as it were :p

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#137

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

prmph wrote: post #60
ben30 wrote: post #6

This echoes my experience with Claude Code. The bottleneck isn't the code generation itself—it's two critical judgment tasks: 1. Problem decomposition: Taking a vague idea and breaking it down into well-defined, context-bounded issues that I can effectively communicate to the AI 2. Code review: Carefully evaluating the generated code to ensure it meets quality standards and integrates properly Both of these require d…

What the heck, the code generation _is_ absolutely still a bottle-neck. I dare anyone who making these arguments that LLMs have removed the need for actual programming skill, for example, to share in a virtual pair programming session with me, and I will demonstrate their basic inability to do _any_ moderately complex coding in short order. Yes, I think that's the only way to resolve this controversy. If they have so…

> I have to be cynical and believe those shouting about LLMs taking over technical skill must have lots of stock in the AI companies.

I'm far from being a "vibe" LLM supporter/advocate (if anything I'm the opposite, despite using Copilot on a regular basis).

But, have you seen this? Seems to be the only example of someone actually putting their "proompts" where their mouth is, in a manner of speaking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#138

Post by PeterStuer »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #115
coffeefirst wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. All this “productivity” has not resulted in one meaningful open source PR or one interesting indie app launch, and I can’t square my own experience with the hype machine. If it’s not all hat and no cattle, someone should be able to show me some cows.

>I can’t square my own experience with the hype machine. Me neither. My gut feeling is it's the inexperienced who gain the most from generative AI. That does seem to be confirmed by papers like this: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/workers-less-e... At most I've found it helps with some of the routine work but saving a few minutes typing doesn't offset the problems it creates.

I find it hard to believe the inexperienced would benefit at all. Ai assisted coding requires serious general experience in all matters software to get good value out of it.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#139

Post by Jensson »

stopthe wrote: post #74
overfl0w wrote: post #40

This reminds me of Asimov's Jokester story where the same themes are explored - there is an all-knowing computer but someone needs to ask the correct questions. "Early in the history of Multivac, it had become apparent that the bottleneck was the questioning procedure. Multivac could answer the problem of humanity, all the problems, if it were asked meaningful questions. But as knowledge accumulated at an ever-faster…

That chess metaphor didn't age well

That is the goal post moving, its done by AI optimists that thinks "we just need something that can solve X and it will be as smart as a human expert".

Wasn't true for chess, wasn't true for Go, we will see when its true, but they are constantly moving the goalposts and then arguing its others who are moving it.

Re: The rise of judgement over technical skill

#140

Post by catigula »

I love these little anecdotes because they always pre-suppose that everyone - the writer, of course, but also the reader - themselves are the people who don't lack judgment, which is a role they relegate to, perhaps, a particularly incompetent co-worker, or even unknown and faceless "drudge".

Which is to say that there's an obvious affliction of narcissism at work that precludes good judgment.

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