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I'm OK being left behind, thanks

shkspr.mobi

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Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#171

Post by keiferski »

cj wrote: post #158
keiferski wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're understanding my point. Hopping on the bandwagon is explicitly not "maximizing your foothold while minimizing your downside," nor is it early-stage almost by definition. An early stage technology with an uncertain future cannot have a bandwagon. I think the logical thing to do is to invest a minor amount of time/money across a broad spectrum of new promising tech. If you had been aware of and bou…

If applying that advice were as easy as it sounds, there would be many more billionaires in the world. If only Mt Gox didn't vaporize all of my bitcoin in the early 2010's :(

I didn’t say it was easy, I was just thinking theoretically, as a strategy that was the opposite of the OP.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#172

Post by coldpie »

sd9 wrote: post #112

> If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours. In contrast to the current top comment [1], I don't think this is a wise assessment. I'm already seeing companies in my network stall hiring, and in fact start firing. I think if you're not trying to take advantage of this technology today then there may not be a place for you tomor…

> I find it hard to empathise with people who can't get value out of AI. It feels like they must be in a completely different bubble to me.

I think it depends on why you do programming. I like programming for its own sake. I enjoy understanding a complex system, figuring out how to make change to it, how to express that change within the language and existing code structure, how to effectively test it, etc. I actively like doing these things. It's fun and that keeps me motivated.

With AI I just type in an English sentence, wait a few minutes, and it does the thing, and then I stare out the window and think about all the things I could be doing with my life that I enjoy more than what just happened. I find my productivity is way down this year since the AI push at work, because I'm just not motivated to work. This isn't the job I signed up for. It's boring now.

The money's nice, I guess. But the joy is gone. Maybe I should go find more joy in another career, even if it pays less.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#173

Post by postalcoder »

stavros wrote: post #168
postalcoder wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, this post is hitting a straw man. ngmi culture was deeply toxic and pervasive in crypto. I think the people who are really into LLMs are having a blast.

I'm definitely having a blast, but I agree with the author. You're not going to get left behind, the "getting left behind" rhetoric was just cryptocurrency pump-and-dumpers. It's fine to wait and not engage if you don't want to.

I agree with you, which is why I think it's a straw man. How many real devs are actually banging the "you're getting left behind!" drums?

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#174

Post by bonoboTP »

jwolfe wrote: post #148
bonoboTP wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a psychologically positive self identification to see yourself merely as a gatekeeper and toll extractor rent seeker who only makes a living by withholding agency and skill from others. I know many jobs are about giving partial access to secrets or insider knowledge etc but I simply can't see myself accepting that this is my value proposition. No, let the pie grow. Let more people be able to do mor…

> I don't think it's a psychologically positive self identification to see yourself merely as a gatekeeper and toll extractor rent seeker who only makes a living by withholding agency and skill from others. That's an incredibly uncharitable reading of the parent comment. At no point in history prior to maybe this year could you argue that working in software was gatekeeping, toll extracting, or rent seeking. Being a…

They complained about the skill leveling where now lower skilled people can also do what needed higher skill before. You toiled to learn the craft, now there is a fast track to those results. That's what the rug pull is.

Yes, producing software was value. (It of course still is as of today, we are talking about what may be coming). My plead is to continue searching for ways to contribute value. Don't resign to a feeling that the only way to hold on is if you try to stop others from knowing about or being able to use the skill leveling tech. This makes one bitter and negative. Embrace it, aspire to be happy about it.

Its like getting scooped in science. In research, I always try to reframe it to be happy that science has progressed. Let me try to learn from it and pivot my research to some area where I can contribute something. Sulking about having been scooped does not lead to positive change and devalues ones own self-image.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#175

Post by dw_arthur »

nemomarx wrote: post #63
stiiv wrote: post #33

> If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours. Broadly speaking, I think this is a wise assessment. There are opportunities for productivity gains right now, but it I don't think it's a knockout for anyone using the tech, and I think that onboarding might be challenging for some people in the tech's current state. It is safe to…

It also seems like skills with particular tech (prompt engineering, harnesses, mixture of experts set ups) doesn't always necessarily pay off when there's a sea change. Hard to predict what you'll want in a few years anyway, right?

Even two or three years ago I had ideas for projects but I could see the models were not ergonomic for my uses. I decided to wait for better models and sure enough the agentic models showed up which are much easier to use.

Next thing I'm waiting on is building a new server for a powerful locally hosted LLM in 5 years. No need to go through the headaches and cost of doing it now with models that may not be powerful enough.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#176

Post by raincole »

> If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours.

I mean... yeah? It's obviously true. However people use LLM coding today not because they're "afraid of being left behind" or "investing into a new tech" or whatever abstract reasoning. It's because they're already reaping the benefit right away. It takes just a few hours to go through like 80% of the learning curve.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#177

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wolframhempel wrote: post #50

There's value in being early - in the right thing. - If you'd invested in Bitcoin in 2016, you'd have made a 200x return - If you'd specialized in neural networks before the transformer paper, you'd be one of the most sought-after specialists right now - If you'd started making mobile games when the iPhone was released, you could have built the first Candy Crush Of course, you could just as well have - become an Acti…

Almost everyone chasing those returns would be better off investing in index funds.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#179

Post by fdghrtbrt »

hparadiz wrote: post #144
fdghrtbrt wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live?

At one point I lived in the Soviet Union but that's not really relevant to my point.

I don't understand your point. You said it would be nice to live..... what does that have to do with bitcoin? What's your point? Make a point.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#180

Post by newsoftheday »

heytakeiteasy wrote: post #14

Feels like a false equivalency. It's just my experience, but I've completely ignored crypto and the metaverse, and I don't get the sense I'm missing out on much. In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working implementation, which has been legitimately transformative in my software dev life. Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose…

> In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working implementation

It may have reduced the time to an implementation, based on my experiences I sincerely doubt the veracity of applying the adjective "working".

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