141–150 of 151 posts
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I don't think this is related to culture, it's just the internet nowadays. You need hot takes for engagement. That user probably runs with that mindset always on
Or, you know, just plain ol’ racism
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> While technology layers would go from “who has the best transistors tech” to “should we use windows or macOS?” Those sound dangerously close to project management decisions. What about tech layers closer to coding?
I don't see that at all. These look like typical decisions that a technical team lead would make and then inform project management of the decision.
Assembly->C->LLM, used by tech lead
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We do architecture reviews now. Code reviews are going away because agents handle it. When I ask an agent to do a code change for a PR, it’s because it’s not something I think the other engineer really should waste their time on. It’s on the same level as nitpicking what lines the braces go on before we had auto-formatters and lint checkers in CI. Other staff engineers I rarely even see their code. I trust them to be…
> Code reviews are going away because agents handle it. Agents don't "handle" code review. With no human in the loop, there is no difference between "generating" code and "reviewing" code. Let's not bastardize the word "review". The code is unreviewed. Now, whether that's a dealbreaker or not for your project or company is a different question. Personally, I've found that unreviewed LLM code unnecessarily explodes in…
The real issue at hand is that humans need to decide to start resource constraining AI before it consumes the entire world.
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So how do you design a harness that tries to grow the user? As in quiz the prompter in a way that forces them to reflect and improve? And if they can do that- could they do it to themselves- going from a junior to a pro conversation?
You don't understand math with a calculator; you use paper to understand math. The same way you wouldn't let a junior electrician near a drill, he gets screwdrivers till he learns to be gentle. AI should only be for people with existing knowledge of a trade.
It largely depends on the person. We have several junior engineers who cannot solve a problem without AI. When AI can’t solve it, they just keep trying and failing. And I mean weeks to months late. Then rinse and repeat on the next task. It used to be that they would have been forced to seek help from a senior engineer. Combine the teaching with a real struggle is what makes them better. As it is now, they aren’t bei…
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The only time you really need to look at core dumps of a FORTRAN compiler is when you think the compiler has a bug. Apart from that, the abstraction doesn't leak. You don't need to know any details of the CPU to debug what is going on, every compilation you do is deterministic and has a predictable outcome. When you make a change, you should be able to predict the exact outcome. Don't like it? Reverse the change, and you're exactly where you were before. I've coded on a few machines I've never bother to learn what the metal does. It is always like this, and it's fine.
LLMs are nothing like that. Like FORTRAN the LLMs make you feel like they've abstracted you from the code. But you can't get by exclusively feeding instructions to an LLM. The OP made was making that point when he said "When AI can’t solve it, they just keep trying and failing". When your only undo is to say "fix the mess you just created", you can't replay instructions you gave yesterday to give you the same result, and you can't even say "explain what you did" and expect to get a reliable answer, there is no out. You have to look at the code.
When the abstractions leak badly, you have to learn both the abstraction and the thing it's trying to simplify. They are little better than macros that save you typing. An LLM is a very leaky abstraction.
It largely depends on the person. We have several junior engineers who cannot solve a problem without AI. When AI can’t solve it, they just keep trying and failing. And I mean weeks to months late. Then rinse and repeat on the next task. It used to be that they would have been forced to seek help from a senior engineer. Combine the teaching with a real struggle is what makes them better. As it is now, they aren’t bei…
"The worst part is that AI is covering up their deficiencies. They don’t know what skills they lack. They don’t even know what skills are required because they haven’t put the effort in." This is the biggest issue with AI. It is incredible when in the right hands (Senior devs who know good fundamentals and know how to code) but really bad when in wrong hands (Juniors with no fundamentals but they are made to believe…
It largely depends on the person. We have several junior engineers who cannot solve a problem without AI. When AI can’t solve it, they just keep trying and failing. And I mean weeks to months late. Then rinse and repeat on the next task. It used to be that they would have been forced to seek help from a senior engineer. Combine the teaching with a real struggle is what makes them better. As it is now, they aren’t bei…
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"The worst part is that AI is covering up their deficiencies. They don’t know what skills they lack. They don’t even know what skills are required because they haven’t put the effort in." This is the biggest issue with AI. It is incredible when in the right hands (Senior devs who know good fundamentals and know how to code) but really bad when in wrong hands (Juniors with no fundamentals but they are made to believe…
So how do you design a harness that tries to grow the user? As in quiz the prompter in a way that forces them to reflect and improve? And if they can do that- could they do it to themselves- going from a junior to a pro conversation?
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LLMs are not even remotely comparable to compilers. This attempt at analogy is neither humorous nor insightful.
> The junior engineer executes it, which nowadays means prompting it to an AI tool, and creating a pull request (PR). The PR receives feedback from more senior engineers. The junior engineer gets the feedback and takes it to the AI tool again, proposing changes. Yeah this part should not exist anymore. It doesn’t where I work. When I get a PR I just ask an agent to make the proposed changes. There is absolutely zero…
Is all of hackernews webdev only? I can’t imagine “coding not being a job anymore” in fields like automotive, medical, military, robotics, and HPC