191–200 of 375 posts
Essentially it’s the same as it always was. Back in the day, Low-code or No-code solutions implemented by non-technical people have always resulted in engineers having to come in behind them to clean up their mess. I’ve had quite the lucrative career doing just that.
In fact, in my opinion, one of the benefits of AI tools that is often overlooked is "psychological support". When you are stuck at work, it will give you a push. Even if it is not completely right, it is enough to get you moving. The feeling of "no longer fighting alone at work" is actually more important than many people think.
I asked my students to write a joke about AI. Sometimes humor is the best way to get people to talk about their fears without filters. One of them wrote: "I went to work early that day and noticed my monitor was on, and code was being written without anyone pressing any keys. Something had logged into my machine and was writting code. I ran to my boss and told him my computer had been hacked. He looked at me, concern…
it would have been funnier if the story then took a turn and ended with it was the AI complaining about a human writing code instead of it.
In fact, in my opinion, one of the benefits of AI tools that is often overlooked is "psychological support". When you are stuck at work, it will give you a push. Even if it is not completely right, it is enough to get you moving. The feeling of "no longer fighting alone at work" is actually more important than many people think.
In fact, in my opinion, one of the benefits of AI tools that is often overlooked is "psychological support". When you are stuck at work, it will give you a push. Even if it is not completely right, it is enough to get you moving. The feeling of "no longer fighting alone at work" is actually more important than many people think.
To each his own. I'm completely drained after 30 min of "discussing" with an LLM, which is essentially an overconfident idiot. Pushes never come from the LLM, which can be easily seen by feeding the output of two LLMs into each other. The conversation collapses completely. Using Google while ignoring the obnoxious and often wrong LLM summaries at the top gives you access to the websites of real human experts, who oft…
I'm completely drained after 30 minutes of browsing Google results, which these days consist of mountains of SEO-optimized garbage, posts on obscure forums, Stackoverflow posts and replies that are either outdated or have the wrong accepted answer... the list goes on.
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SQL had similar promises. But it still has been immensely useful and a durable paradigm, even though usage hasn't been exactly as thought.
Excel enters the chat
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You're joking but it's true. I'm sure you know that. SQL had similar claims... Declarative, say what you need and the computer will do for you. Also written in English.
I'd long ago (1990s-era) heard that the original intent was that office secretaries would write their own SQL queries. (I'd love for someone to substantiate or debunk this for me.)
Always has been.
In fact, in my opinion, one of the benefits of AI tools that is often overlooked is "psychological support". When you are stuck at work, it will give you a push. Even if it is not completely right, it is enough to get you moving. The feeling of "no longer fighting alone at work" is actually more important than many people think.
To each his own. I'm completely drained after 30 min of "discussing" with an LLM, which is essentially an overconfident idiot. Pushes never come from the LLM, which can be easily seen by feeding the output of two LLMs into each other. The conversation collapses completely. Using Google while ignoring the obnoxious and often wrong LLM summaries at the top gives you access to the websites of real human experts, who oft…
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> This addresses the union part. lol, good luck with that. you thinking that one or two people doing non organized _boycott_ is the same thing as an union tell a lot about you.
I didn't mention one or two people, I mentioned a theoretical strategy that is also employed by non-unionized bureaucracies. And I admitted that the strategy is impeded by the fact that many software developers are self-loathing people with no spine. It is possible that obedient people need highly paid union bosses, i.e., new leaders they can follow.
Unions are for people that don't accept anything and know that they are a target taking action alone or in non organized ways.
Unions are the way to multiply the forces and work as a group with common interests, it is for people that are not extremely selfish and egocentric.
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The first thing any big technical revolution causes is suffering for a lot of people. It can bounce back over time and maybe leave us better off than before but the short term will not be pretty. Think industrial revolution where we had to stop companies by law from working children to literal death. Whether the working man or the capital class profits from the rise of productivity is a questions of political power.…
> Especially we as software engineers are not prepared for this fight as unions barely exist in our field. You can fight without unions. Tell the truth about LLMs: They are crutches for power users that do not really work but are used as excuses for firing people. You can refuse to work with anyone writing vapid pro-LLM blog posts. You can blacklist them in hiring. This addresses the union part. It is true that softw…
Search youtube for "yes minister" :)
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On topic, I think it's a fair point that fighting is borderline useless. Companies that don't embrace new tech will go out of business.
That said, it's entirely unclear what the implications will be. Often new capabilities doesn't mean the industry will shrink. The industry haven't shrunk as a result of 100x increase in compute and storage, or decrease in size and power usage.
Computers just became more useful.
I don't think we should be too excited about AI writing code. We should be more excited about the kinds of program we can write now. There is going to be a new paradigm of computer interaction.