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For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

christophermeiklejohn.com

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Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

#131

Post by llmthrowaway20 »

raddan wrote: post #115
TFNA wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't code (well, I write scripts for my own personal use and use Emacs), but I follow with interest these reports from software developers. Why? Because my profession is similar screen- and keyboard-based intellectual work, and what has come for devs will probably come for many other careers.

It's worth mentioning that one reason LLMs can clean up on coding tasks is because of the volumes of available data. Not only has the world produced copious volumes of code, they continue to produce copious volumes of code, and some code can even be generated synthetically (ie, not from an LLM, albeit at high cost). Other domains are not like this. There will probably never be enough poetry out there to make an LLM d…

This is a wild take. Of all things, you think a large language model will be stumped by poetry?

I would wager everything I had that an AI could already win a blind poetry contest, especially if any effort was put into fine-tuning it. Unbelievable effort has been put into optimizing them for coding given the financials; next to none for poetry.

Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

#132

Post by dr_kretyn »

Arainach wrote: post #76
dgellow wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t really clarify

It explicitly says "the band". All the context in the first paragraphs is about the music. It absolutely clarifies. The rest of the article talks about listening to the music, watching them (or wanting to watch them) in concert or in tour. Read the article. Or just look at the top search result for Phish. Stop being lazy.

I re read that paragraph a few times hoping that I missed something. Then gave up and went on to find the answer in comments. I thought the author was describing some feeling, or maybe some action. That "that to me" isn't clear with "that".

Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

#133

Post by slopinthebag »

coffeefirst wrote: post #107
robotswantdata wrote: post #51

IMO assisted coding (auto complete style) has more flow state than the old days of getting stuck on obscure bugs (as satisfying as those were to crack). Full agent coding however is the complete opposite, you’re in constant damage control of a junior who moves fast and breaks everything. They’ve got better but still do dumb mistakes. lot of engineers are discovering firsthand what it’s like to manage a team of eager…

The other thing is as far as I can tell, the power-tool style modes where you use AI to boost focus and do quick research is both much cheaper and, by the time you account for all the damage control/prompt tuning/other externalities, roughly as fast as full agentic. I suspect with the prices going up, that realization is going to be pretty appealing.

I agree, I also think there are long term costs to agentic coding that we won't see yet for a while, gradually and then suddenly.

It feels like nobody is even trying to iterate on the "power-tool style" usage of language models, everyone jumped straight to agents. It's not clear to me that removing a human from the loop is strictly more efficient though. Imagine an editor with an embedded language model (either running locally or using cheap cloud models) that is constantly churning, analysing code, reading debug logs, offering suggestions. Refactoring is not b̴e̴g̴g̴i̴n̴g̴ asking a chat interface to make changes, but structured refactors utilising the language models powered by the underlying ast representations to pull off much larger or involved refactors that surpass the abilities of current IDEs. Or doing codegen in your editor in a more structured (and thus repeatable) way compared to an agent spitting out code that you have to then review.

Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

#134

Post by shomp »

"This is engineering. I keep being told that" -- made me laugh out loud. We've gone from painting, to pointing to finished pieces in catalogues. Not to be utterly unhinged and tone-deaf but, there are other genres, such as jazz and screamo and noise that might suit the mood more aptly.

Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

#135

Post by shomp »

jmbwell wrote: post #124

I’ve been finding it difficult to hand things over to an LLM completely, and I wonder if this is part of it. I’ll let it help me organize at the beginning, and then I’ll have it come through and refactor or review, but the crafting part is where I want to spend my time. I love hitting tab but it seems like every time I do, I get this sensation like I’ve sort of time-warped into the future by a few seconds, and I wond…

If the LLM behaved more like a programmer-in-flow-state and we could "hitch a ride" or "ride the wave" along, maybe we can recover some of this unbrokenness of attentivity.

Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

#136

Post by shomp »

sudopsuedo wrote: post #52
Mizza wrote: post #34

If you found Phish twinned well with deep, focused work, you might enjoy grindcore for frequently interrupted work, since most of the songs are less than a minute long, like these: https://discordanceaxis.bandcamp.com/album/original-sound-ve...

Incredible comment, lmao

If you can't change the work, change the genre

Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

#137

Post by nu11ptr »

furyofantares wrote: post #56
nu11ptr wrote: post #24

People are blown away when I tell them that, in the last 6 months, my job of coding has changed entirely, and that I now write very little code, but instead manage agents who write it. It is still engineering, and I still very much care what that code is, it's interfaces, how it interacts with the world, how it is tested, etc. etc., but it has taken me a while to get used to the idea of me not writing the code. I'm s…

Really? When I've brought it up with anyone that doesn't code, I've found them to be totally disinterested in the topic.

It isn't about the code (they probably don't even know what that is), they focus on the fact that my daily job tasks have changed entirely (iow, I used to do 'something', 'what' doesn't matter, and now I dictate to an AI to do it). Most people can't fathom this unless they change to a completely different profession/job.

Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

#138

Post by ffsm8 »

raddan wrote: post #115
TFNA wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't code (well, I write scripts for my own personal use and use Emacs), but I follow with interest these reports from software developers. Why? Because my profession is similar screen- and keyboard-based intellectual work, and what has come for devs will probably come for many other careers.

It's worth mentioning that one reason LLMs can clean up on coding tasks is because of the volumes of available data. Not only has the world produced copious volumes of code, they continue to produce copious volumes of code, and some code can even be generated synthetically (ie, not from an LLM, albeit at high cost). Other domains are not like this. There will probably never be enough poetry out there to make an LLM d…

Urm, isn't that a terrible example? LLMs are better at poetry and rhyming then most people trying their best...

Also you're thinking with an extremely short time horizon there.

All jobs which are centered around computers will be impacted the same way programming is today in the medium term. It's just a question of time until the data is gathered and tooling is adjusted. Because every company that's currently employing people to do something with software will start to use that data as training material, and a few years later they'll be swallowed along.

So that means eg bookkeeping is still safe... I sincerely doubt it'll be like that in 2035. It'll probably still be somewhat safe in 2030 though

I suspect most industries aren't quiet filled with people like the author though, most people treat their job as... Well, a job.

Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

#139

Post by mday27 »

hyperadvanced wrote: post #123
uncircle wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people are just born something (engineers, in this case), and they're that something for life. Yes, and it's very not fun when your identity is being reshaped before your eyes in the matter of a couple years. I wonder how many developers are going through real grief right now, while everybody else, lacking empathy, are just repeating "get a grip, it's just a tool" or "you better adapt or you're done". Well, I…

This is a great reason not to identify too much with your work. I have enjoyed AI because it has reminded me that my real calling is art, and that I should be doing that at 8 pm, not coding

True, but if your true calling was coding, this change would be much harder to stomach

Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day

#140

Post by bluefirebrand »

perrygeo wrote: post #83
bluefirebrand wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we really miss typing ascii characters into an editor? Yes. > Dare I say those stuck on nostalgia for pressing keys are demonstrating that they cared more about their own personal experience than about the outcome of their work I care about the outcome, which is why I don't trust it to a fucking LLM Valuing quality over velocity is not selfish

> Valuing quality over velocity is not selfish Fully agree. I never mentioned velocity or advocated for lower quality. In fact, this statement very well sums up my point: we should care about the thing we're producing, not our personal experience of coding it.

If you're arguing for using LLMs, you are effectively arguing in favor of sacrificing quality for speed as far as I'm concerned

In my experience anyone saying they're still producing high quality work while using LLMs is full of shit when the work is actually reviewed properly

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