I spent 20 years in industry before moving to academia, and this resonates for me. I'm not naive enough to think that we'll do the right thing here, but I can dream.
To my students
151–160 of 221 posts
Re: To my students
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sense that the frustration you feel is that professors are able to make choices based on their values, but the average person is not. That is broadly speaking, of course. I think it is a great shame that we live in a modern world where we do we must to survive regardless of how it makes us feel. I suspect it is the root of much suffering.
Seriously. This thread is so depressing. It's like the entire software industry has given up and just accepted "increase speed forever at any cost" as some kind of iron law of software employment. Is nobody even pushing back anymore? Even offering token resistance? The 'bros have truly won. Our only imperative now is "Can we crush it in the market?"
The parent comment (cdfalcon) has 41 votes right now, it's disgusting
Re: To my students
#153There's something so off-putting about academics giving industry advice when they haven't spent a day working as an engineer at a company. > Care deeply about your craft. Refactor code until it is clear and elegant. Write good documentation for other humans to read. Have the courage to go slowly, especially when everyone else is telling you that you need to go fast and cut corners. Outside of the bit on avoiding cutt…
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And it's actually his only comment ever
Re: To my students
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sense that the frustration you feel is that professors are able to make choices based on their values, but the average person is not. That is broadly speaking, of course. I think it is a great shame that we live in a modern world where we do we must to survive regardless of how it makes us feel. I suspect it is the root of much suffering.
Seriously. This thread is so depressing. It's like the entire software industry has given up and just accepted "increase speed forever at any cost" as some kind of iron law of software employment. Is nobody even pushing back anymore? Even offering token resistance? The 'bros have truly won. Our only imperative now is "Can we crush it in the market?"
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Re: To my students
#155There's something so off-putting about academics giving industry advice when they haven't spent a day working as an engineer at a company. > Care deeply about your craft. Refactor code until it is clear and elegant. Write good documentation for other humans to read. Have the courage to go slowly, especially when everyone else is telling you that you need to go fast and cut corners. Outside of the bit on avoiding cutt…
What gets me is the craft point. I've shipped more useful software in the last year than probably the previous five combined, and most of that is because I stopped treating code as the artifact and started treating the product as the artifact. The craft moved up a layer. > until it is clear and elegant New grads who spend weeks refactoring code are going to get lapped by new grads who ship something and iterate. Ther…
AI is not an abstraction layer. If this is not obvious to a so-called engineer, they should probably not be throwing stones.
Re: To my students
#156Do the people in this thread dunking on this article think that moving and delivering as quickly as humanly possible, just because it can physically be done now, is going to lead to positive results in the long term? There is a vast gulf of difference between the current industry climate and what this professor is encouraging his students to consider. I don't see how caring about the craft is mutually exclusive with delivering good products that create value. If you think slowing down a bit is going to lead to you taking a trip to the poorhouse, maybe you should examine your own anxieties and perceptions of what's happening around you and whether this current pace is sustainable for everybody.
Obviously it's up to the practitioner to figure out how to make commercial imperatives and craftsmanship align. Maybe remembering that professor's lesson will lead to better outcomes for humanity on a timeline greater than the next quarter. Who knows. I'm just an idealistic 20+ YoE nobody being left behind at this point with nothing of value to contribute.
Re: To my students
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get why it's so hard for you and others in this comment section to understand why people hate AI so much because it's not just the theft and environmental destruction. A college professor, especially one at a liberal arts school, is obviously not going to like something that enables you to outsource your thinking and steals your agency. I think that's a perfectly valid viewpoint; maybe talk to someone without…
I've recently been amplifying this excellent piece about that by Nilay Patel https://www.theverge.com/podcast/917029/software-brain-ai-ba... I don't need computer science professors to like LLMs, but I still want them to be able to poke at them with a stick without feeling like they are violating their principles regarding energy usage and unlicensed training data.
> I don't need computer science professors to like LLMs, but I still want them to be able to poke at them with a stick without feeling like they are violating their principles regarding energy usage and unlicensed training data.
Why? Language models are interesting from a technical perspective, but so are tons of areas of CS. There's nothing inherently virtuous about using an LLM.
Re: To my students
#158Do the people in this thread dunking on this article think that moving and delivering as quickly as humanly possible, just because it can physically be done now, is going to lead to positive results in the long term? There is a vast gulf of difference between the current industry climate and what this professor is encouraging his students to consider. I don't see how caring about the craft is mutually exclusive with…
This forum, unfortunately, selects for FAANG mercenaries. Other forums will have radically different takes.
Re: To my students
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fads come and go in industry. This version of LLMs will come and go as well, as will the coding languages and paradigms we used before (and, presuming you want your code to actually run, still do with some decent frequency). Will LLMs in their current ergonomics have staying power? Perhaps. Nobody can predict the future. But I don’t think it’s a given in the least
Automatic coding systems have way too much economic value to be considered a "fad". I don't think you need to be Nostradamus to predict that we're never going back to manual coding. Sure, the systems will evolve and improve, but they're certainly not going anywhere.
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Re: To my students
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps your vantage point from industry is in fact myopic. We all have our own biases.
Completely fair - but at least my PoV comes from having actually worked as a SWE, you know? I feel like the best understanding this fellow can have is purely secondhand from watching the success / failures of his students. I also think I get doubly upset from advice like this because it’s given and marketed to impressionable young students. Even agreeing with all the moral points he’s made, I truly think this advice…
I worked at a FAANG in a senior role for around 6 years and I completely agree with the article. (I left before LLM/agent use became widespread, but I would have flamed out anyway if it was forced upon me.)