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The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

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Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#171

Post by elzbardico »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #145
sfblah wrote: post #137

I generally agree that it's difficult and counterproductive to try to eliminate talented programmers who put together the core of systems and set up the patterns that things like LLMs can emulate. But, the modal programmer at this point is some person who attended a front-end coding bootcamp for a few months and basically just knows how to chain together CSS selectors and React components. I do think these people are…

Oh:D I have a feeling that the bad programmers won't move anywhere. There is one reason for it. Code part is probably the smallest piece while most of the stuff is in getting actual business requirements that worth a lick.

The best engineers do something besides "getting" requirements. They usually are able to re-interpret, contextualize and evolve them.

Surprisingly, a lot of times programmers are better bring in business experience from other organizations that the business people at the current one don't possess.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#172

Post by elzbardico »

BobBagwill wrote: post #153

The potentially cool thing about LLM's is bootstrapping. No matter how much COBOL you wrote, COBOL didn't get better. LLM's can be used to make LLM's (and other software stuff) better. LLM's could be used to create their successor(s). Of course, in the end, it won't do us humans any good, because when the Singularity AKA Rapture comes, we'll all be converted to Computronium. :-)

I am convinced that LLMs can't truly create really novel knowledge. They may even surface it in a way that looks novel, but not really create any new knowledge.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#173

Post by elzbardico »

nz wrote: post #76
shiandow wrote: post #68

LLMs seem quite successful when considered something like a natural langiage interface, but expecting intelligence seems a step too far. For one they do not learn, at least not online, and that is a somewhat important requirement for truly intelligent behaviour. Arguably programming is as much learning as it is writing code. This is part of the reason some people copy an entire API and don't realise they're not so mu…

In some sense, programming is about figuring out which algorithms are a fitting metaphor for business problems. By programming, you are building a model of the business problem and a model of its solution. Most of the non-programmers who are in positions of authority (managers, CEOs, even some CTOs), do not understand that this is what programmers do. From their point of view, the authorities come up with a "strategy…

Funny thing is that from all places, banking and finance are some of the ones that more closely understand software not only as a tool for doing business, but as something that informs and define the business itself.

I once worked in a big bank where basically 70% of their C-suite and upper management were engineers (not only SE, but civil, electric, naval, etc) who had years of experience in IT. The rest were lawyers and a couple economists.

And I am not even talking about the worlds of quant and hft.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#174

Post by antonvs »

SoftTalker wrote: post #146
antonvs wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attended a CASE tools conference in the 1990s, which of course included a vendor exhibition. The vendors all had demos of creating an application using their tool. At multiple vendor stands I asked to see the code generated by their CASE tool. Invariably, the salespeople would start waffling about how the code was no longer important (sound familiar?), how you didn't need to examine the engine of a car while drivin…

Was a "to do" list the example they used at that time also?

Funnily enough todo lists didn’t really become a popular app category until the early 2000s. CASE tools in particular were very focused on enterprise applications.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#175

Post by analog31 »

elzbardico wrote: post #168
Havoc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is democratising from the perspective of non-programmers- they can now make their own tools. What you say about big tech is true at same time though. I worry about what happens when China takes the lead and no longer feels the need to do open models. First hints already showing - advance access to ds4 only for Chinese hardware makers

Programming is probably the most democratized profession ever. The problem was never access barriers, but the fact that people are too lazy to study even a 200-300 pages on something as simple as ruby on rails.

I think there’s an actual barrier. I’ve seen it, especially since the (until recently) brisk market for programmers was sucking people out of traditional engineering.

It’s puzzling because programming seems so easy and fun. And even before LLM’s, we had StackOverflow after all.

But for some reason a lot of people just hit a wall when they try to learn programming, and we don’t know why. The “CS 101” course at colleges has extremely high attrition.

A minor secondary effect may have been that if you were not a software developer, your boss didn’t want to see you programming.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#176

Post by sarchertech »

simonw wrote: post #65
edgyquant wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to have a knack for it, most people are not programmer types

I don't think it's about being a "type" so much as choosing what to specialize in. I could learn plumbing skills and do the plumbing around my house. I've chosen not to.

There’s definitely a type. My wife is much smarter and harder working than me, near perfect SAT score, made it through an engineering degree at a much better school than I went to. Then did med school, residency, and fellowship.

She’s insanely quick. I once told her about one way hashing and before I was even half way through the explanation. Before I and ever said a thing about what they were used for she stops me and says “oh so that’s why websites can’t just send you your password when you forget it”.

At her job she has to call time of death for kids, tell people their kid has cancer, deal with people who literally want her dead, work shifts where she is the one ultimately responsible for the life and death of every patient that walks in the door, and work 7a-4p one day then 10p-7a the next.

She can do all that but she says that she hated her Matlab class in college more than anything else and she could absolutely never do my job because she doesn’t have it in her to bang her head against a wall chasing down a bug for an hour that turns out to be a typo.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#177

Post by nextaccountic »

tbrownaw wrote: post #123
tkel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, people misuse this term "democratized" all the time. Because it sounds nice. But it's incorrect. Democracy is about governance, not access. A "democratized" LLM would be one in which its users collectively made decisions about how it was managed. Or if the companies that owned LLMs were ran democratically.

The claim isn't that the LLMs are democratized. The claim is that LLMs are causing software development to be democratized. As in, people who want software are more able to make it themselves rather than having to go ask the elites for some. As in, the elites in IT now have less power to govern what software other people can have. (Or alternatively, it's getting harder to stamp out "shadow IT" and all the risks and h…

Hard to state that LLMs "democratize" software development when LLM companies can ban you from software development for any reason or no reason at all, and without recourse of any kind. The HN frontpage currently showcases an Antigravity ban that applied across Gemini, and there's few companies that provide affordable LLM services.

The actual elites greatly extended their control over software development, that's the opposite of democracy

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#178

Post by falkensmaize »

simonw wrote: post #84
ryanmcl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

Congratulations. This is my favorite aspect of this whole thing: LLM tooling that's helping new people break into programming by lowering the friction and learning curve.

But the friction and learning curve is what helps you understand what you’re doing. The friction is an integral part of the process.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#179

Post by maplethorpe »

snackerblues wrote: post #142
zozbot234 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why you ask for a high level plan for something like that before you let the agent write any code. Then you review the plan for flaws, revise it, and prompt the system to fill out more details for each step. Repeat as necessary. Yes it's slow, but it's the best way of using this "glorified autocomplete" to ease and speed up real work.

People that have never written their own code won't know what the flaws are.

Those people can ask Claude to review the flaws for them.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#180

Post by simonw »

falkensmaize wrote: post #178
simonw wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations. This is my favorite aspect of this whole thing: LLM tooling that's helping new people break into programming by lowering the friction and learning curve.

But the friction and learning curve is what helps you understand what you’re doing. The friction is an integral part of the process.

The friction is why so many people never make it far up enough the learning curve to build something useful that solves their problems.
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