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I don't care how well your "AI" works

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Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#161

Post by tester756 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

>the job is easy

software engineering is easy? you live in bubble, try teaching programming to someone new to it and you'll realize how muuuuch effort it requires

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#162

Post by zajio1am »

> We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft.

Valuation is fundamentally connected to scarcity. 'Devaluation' is just negative spin for making it plentyful.

When cicumstances changed to make something less scarce, one cannot expect to get the same value for it because of past valuation. That is just rent-seeking.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#163

Post by solids »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #137
thunky wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly is being de-valuated for a profession You're probably fine as a more senior dev...for now. But if I was a junior I'd be very worried about the longevity I can expect as a dev. It's already easier for many/most cases to assign work to a LLM vs handholding a human through it. Plus as an industry we've been exploiting our employer's lack of information to extract large salaries to produce largely poor qua…

If one is a junior the goal is to become a senior though. Not to remain a junior.

Yes, but the barrier to become a senior is what’s currently in dispute

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#164

Post by chud37 »

spicyusername wrote: post #115
thunky wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly is being de-valuated for a profession You're probably fine as a more senior dev...for now. But if I was a junior I'd be very worried about the longevity I can expect as a dev. It's already easier for many/most cases to assign work to a LLM vs handholding a human through it. Plus as an industry we've been exploiting our employer's lack of information to extract large salaries to produce largely poor qua…

> assign work to an LLM This is just not happening anywhere around me. I don't know why it keeps getting repeated in every one of these discussions. Every software engineer I know is using LLM tools, but every team around me is still hiring new developers. Zero firing is happening in any circle near me due to LLMs. LLMs can not do unsupervised work, period. They do not replace developers. They replace Stack Overflow…

Completely agree. I use LLM like I use stackoverflow, except this time i get straight to the answer and no one closes my question and marks it as a duplicate, or stupid.

I dont want it integrated into my IDE, i'd rather just give it the information it needs to get me my result. But yeah, just another google or stackoverflow.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#165

Post by cpburns2009 »

mono442 wrote: post #140

The author may not care but I doubt people care that a software has been developed by AI instead of a human. Just like nobody cares whenever a hole has been dug by hand using a shovel or by an excavator.

The problem is the AI excavator destroying the road because it hallucinated the ditch.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#166

Post by gavmor »

0xFEE1DEAD wrote: post #155

I honestly don't get vibe coding. I've tried it multiple times, but even after spending 4 hours on a fresh project I don't feel like I know what the hell is going on anymore. At that point I'm just guessing what the next prompt is to make it work. I have no critical knowledge about the codebase that makes me feel like I could fix an edge case without reading the source code line by line (which at that point would pro…

> I have no critical knowledge about the codebase that makes me feel like I could fix an edge case without reading the source code line by line (which at that point would probably take longer than 4 hours).

Peter Naur argues that programming is fundamentally an activity of theory building, not just program text production. The code itself is merely the artifact of the real work.

You must not confuse the artifact (the source code) with the mind that produced the artifact. The theory is not contained in the text output of the theory-making process.

The problems of program modification arise from acting on the assumption that programming is just text production; the decay of a program is a result of modifications made by programmers without a proper grasp of the underlying theory. LLMs cannot obtain Naur's Ryleian "theory" because they "ingest the output of work" rather than developing the theory by doing the work.

LLMs may _appear_ to have a theory about a program, but this is an illusion.

To believe that LLMs can write software, one must mistakenly assume that the main activity of the programmer is simply to produce source code, which is (according to Naur) inaccurate.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#167

Post by swatcoder »

embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

The "devaluation" they mention is just the correction against the absurd ZIRP bump, that lured would-be doctors and lawyers into tech jobs at FAANG and FAANG-alike firms with the promise of upper middle class lifestyles for trivially weaving together API calls and jockeying JIRA tickets. You didn't have to spend years more in grad school, you didn't have to be a diligent engineer. You just had to had to have a knack for standardized tests (Leetcode) and the time to grid some prep.

The compensation and hiring for that kind of inexpert work were completely out of sync with anything sustainable but held up for almost a decade because money was cheap. Now, money is held much more tightly and we stumbled into a tech that can cheaply regurgitate a lot of so the trivial inexpert work, meaning the bottom fell out of these untenable, overpaid jobs.

You and I may not be effected, having charted a different path through the industry and built some kind of professional career foundation, but these kids who were (irresponsibly) promised an easy upper middle class life are still real people with real life plans, who are now finding themselves in a deeply disappointing and disorienting situation. They didn't believe the correction would come, let alone so suddenly, and now they don't know how they're supposed to get themselves back on track for the luxury lifestyle they thought they legitimately earned.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#168

Post by RHSeeger »

embedding-shape wrote: post #90
DJBunnies wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah it's pretty bad, but congrats on being an outlier.

Literally the worst job you can find as a programmer today (if you lower you standards and particularly, stay away from cryptocurrency jobs) is 10x better than the non-programmer jobs you can find. If you don't trust me, give a non-programming job a try for 1 year and then come back and tell me how much more comfy $JOB was :)

> Literally the worst job you can find as a programmer today (if you lower you standards and particularly, stay away from cryptocurrency jobs) is 10x better than the non-programmer jobs you can find.

This is a ridiculous statement. I know plenty of people (that are not developers) that make around the same as I do and enjoy their work as much as I do. Yes, software development is a great field to be in, but there's plenty of others that are just as good.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#169

Post by cons0le »

rsynnott wrote: post #130
rho4 wrote: post #23

And then there is the moderate position: Don't be the person refusing the use a calculator / PC / mobile phone / AI. Regularly give the new tool a chance and check if improvements are useful for specific tasks. And carry on with your life.

Don't be the person refusing the 4GL/Segway/3D TV/NFT/Metaverse. Regularly give the new tool a chance and check if improvements are useful for specific tasks. Like, I mean, at a certain point it runs out of chances. If someone can show me compelling quantitive evidence that these things are broadly useful I may reconsider, but until then I see no particular reason to do my own sampling. If and when they are useful, t…

I detest LLMs , but I want to point out that segway tech became the basis for EUCs , which are based https://youtu.be/Ze6HRKt3bCA?t=1117

These things are wicked, and unlike some new garbage javascript framework, it's revolutionary technology that regular people can actually use and benefit from. The mobility they provide is insane.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ElectricUnicycle/comments/1ddd9c1/i...

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#170

Post by Spivak »

rsynnott wrote: post #130
rho4 wrote: post #23

And then there is the moderate position: Don't be the person refusing the use a calculator / PC / mobile phone / AI. Regularly give the new tool a chance and check if improvements are useful for specific tasks. And carry on with your life.

Don't be the person refusing the 4GL/Segway/3D TV/NFT/Metaverse. Regularly give the new tool a chance and check if improvements are useful for specific tasks. Like, I mean, at a certain point it runs out of chances. If someone can show me compelling quantitive evidence that these things are broadly useful I may reconsider, but until then I see no particular reason to do my own sampling. If and when they are useful, t…

I mean sure but none of these even claimed to help you do things you were already doing. If your job is writing code none of these help you do that.

That being said the metaverse happened but it just wasn't the metaverse those weird cringy tech libertarians wanted it to be. Online spaces where people hang out are bigger than ever. Segways also happened they just changed form to electric scooters.

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