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"People who don't use AI will be left behind"

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Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#181

Post by sshine »

JeremyNT wrote: post #153
sshine wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dont let AI make decisions, its supposed to take your decisions and turn those into code. I let the AI make decisions all the time. I often approve them, and I sometimes revert them. Most of the time they’re really good decisions based on my initial intent, but followed by analysis I didn’t make but agree with.

I think there's a spectrum of where to draw the line. There's clearly some level where you want a human making decisions for even the most vibey of project, because without some kind of a spec about what you're trying to build and what features you want you'd get nonsense. But like... maybe don't stress the details too much.

> clearly some level where you want a human making decisions

Yes, clearly. There was a meme out there, "just make something cool idk".

Statements like "Don't let AI make decisions" are made because of the loss of control we experience as mechanical parts of our work (such as writing to files) gets automated.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#182

Post by CamperBob2 »

cassianoleal wrote: post #144
CamperBob2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i always found it to be easier to write code myself than to direct a junior developer. Me, too. But that doesn't mean I'm a great developer, just a shitty manager.

Perhaps but at least when you are directing a junior developer, even if badly, you'll eventually get a non-junior developer on the other side. With an AI agent, you'll get ... what?

With current models, you're right, there will be nothing to show for the effort except the code itself.

I suspect that will change sooner or later. Models will be cultivated over time the way we cultivate full-time employees now, with an acquired awareness of what they're building, new skills picked up in the process, and insight into how the larger system works.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#184

Post by ixxie »

Organizations and communities that embrace both AI users and AI abstainers will be the true winners.

A bimodal strategy gets you the best of both worlds: the ability to rapidly explore and develop ideas, and the ability to critically and cautiously assess them.

Diversity fuels evolution.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#185

Post by cmiles74 »

buffalobuffalo wrote: post #114
jerhewet wrote: post #87

Thank ghod I'm retiring in six months. I'm very thankful I came of age during the golden age of personal computing. I was able to own my own computer(s) and earn a living writing software on them and for them. Fifty years was a good run, and I consider myself lucky to have participated in it. IMO we've gone full circle: dumb terminals chained to mainframes and the whimsey of someone else's rules, restrictions, and re…

I mean, that works for you since you're retiring. But for people still working in the industry, you adapt or die. As it's always been. The fact of the matter is, a person working with a bunch of agents is a lot more productive than just a person. It makes research faster. It makes experimentation faster. It makes output cleaner. And this is true across many disciplines, not just tech. Also, it is a skill. Yes, anyone…

Are they? I remember when heavyweight IDEs where all the rage, there was a similar sentiment that if you weren't using one of them then you would eventually be so much slower that you'd be out of a job. It only took maybe five years until people started asking themselves if the dependency on a big IDE (and cost) was worth it. I don't think anyone would look at someone who prefers a stripped down text editor today and think they are backward or doing it wrong.

We have yet to see hard numbers on time saved by those who use LLM tooling extensively. It could be it doesn't turn out as compelling as we might expect.

Just sayin', I never forced software developers to use NetBeans or Intellij IDEA. I'm certainly not changing my tune and forcing them to use LLM tooling either.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#186

Post by rurp »

jerhewet wrote: post #87

Thank ghod I'm retiring in six months. I'm very thankful I came of age during the golden age of personal computing. I was able to own my own computer(s) and earn a living writing software on them and for them. Fifty years was a good run, and I consider myself lucky to have participated in it. IMO we've gone full circle: dumb terminals chained to mainframes and the whimsey of someone else's rules, restrictions, and re…

A huge part of what attracted me to programming was how free and open it was. The fact that literally anyone with a computer could install Python/Javascript/etc for free and create virtually any software they wanted, limited only by their own abilities and determination, was wildly exciting to me. I would say empowering, if that weren't such a cheesy overused term. If you were any good at it, you could get a great job at an interesting company.

Now like you said we're entering a world where anyone with a computer can pay a giant tech company thousands of dollars a year to spin up some agents for them. That's much less exciting to me, and I'm certain I would not enter the field if I were just starting out right now (assuming there even was a junior job available).

We've seen how big tech monopolies treat domains they control like search and social media. They try to extract all of the value, leaving nothing for the individual or common good, and they're quite effective at it. I'm not looking forward to them gatekeeping the field of software development as a whole.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#187

Post by bergie »

buffalobuffalo wrote: post #114
jerhewet wrote: post #87

Thank ghod I'm retiring in six months. I'm very thankful I came of age during the golden age of personal computing. I was able to own my own computer(s) and earn a living writing software on them and for them. Fifty years was a good run, and I consider myself lucky to have participated in it. IMO we've gone full circle: dumb terminals chained to mainframes and the whimsey of someone else's rules, restrictions, and re…

I mean, that works for you since you're retiring. But for people still working in the industry, you adapt or die. As it's always been. The fact of the matter is, a person working with a bunch of agents is a lot more productive than just a person. It makes research faster. It makes experimentation faster. It makes output cleaner. And this is true across many disciplines, not just tech. Also, it is a skill. Yes, anyone…

> a person working with a bunch of agents is a lot more productive than just a person

[citation needed]

I try LLMs for something every couple of months, and I have yet to see them produce anything actually correct. Calling non-existing library methods, confabulations, etc.

But sure, they produce a lot of stuff in a short while. The utility of any of that another question.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#188

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

joe_mamba wrote: post #99
jerhewet wrote: post #87

Thank ghod I'm retiring in six months. I'm very thankful I came of age during the golden age of personal computing. I was able to own my own computer(s) and earn a living writing software on them and for them. Fifty years was a good run, and I consider myself lucky to have participated in it. IMO we've gone full circle: dumb terminals chained to mainframes and the whimsey of someone else's rules, restrictions, and re…

[flagged]

> "...EXACTLY what machinists were saying..."

I'm baffled by the stream of obviously hallucinated facts from AI promoters.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#189

Post by Insanity »

mjr00 wrote: post #103
Insanity wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students score lower on standardized tests in the 2020s than those in the 1990s. So your stance feels misguided. Although I don’t think Google and Calculators are the main culprits, I do think it’s due to larger technology/internet landscape.

> Although I don’t think Google and Calculators are the main culprits, I do think it’s due to larger technology/internet landscape. That's extremely speculative, especially given there was a major event in 2020 which massively disrupted education worldwide.

It was declining since 1990s, not since 2020s.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#190

Post by ASalazarMX »

simonw wrote: post #146
sdevonoes wrote: post #62

Any engineer (any person actually) can “learn to use AI” in a couple of days. It’s not rocket science; there’s no chance of left behind. If you haven’t use LLMs at all, a weekend would be enough to be on par with everyone else in the industry

Firmly disagree. Learning how to use these tools effectively is unintuitively difficult. They're great at some stuff and terrible at other stuff in ways that are very hard to predict. I'm figuring out new and better ways to use them in a daily basis, and I've been an almost daily user for nearly three years.

They're difficult and hard to predict because they're still primitive, despite what their companies say. When (or if) they get advanced enough to deliver consistently, there will be no chance of being left behind, because even a kid will be able to use them effectively. Right now they're still at the gimmick level, although a very impressive one.
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