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If AI Writes All the Code, What Do the Programmers Do?

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Re: If AI Writes All the Code, What Do the Programmers Do?

#21

Post by QuantumNoodle »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #11
QuantumNoodle wrote: post #10

It really depends on th SDLC of the codebase. I've sat in the park with a pad and pen and wrote down ideas for a small-ish utility that had both a DB and some low level systems interaction. I designed all the interfaces, control flow, and user facing ui. A decade ago I was designing class diagrams with public and private methods, then coding it up. Today I can articulate it with loose words and have it come to life.…

People loke you're the minority. Most people use the brilliant strategy if "prompt and pray" Because of AI speed is valued over everything else

Some of the code bases I have at work are legacy spaghetti -- hard to reason about. I too employ the prompt and pray strategy and then see if CI fails. I can only be surgical where I already have a grasp on the codebase, or if I was involved from the beginning.

Morally, I dislike what AI is doing to the profession. Rigor is suffering.

Re: If AI Writes All the Code, What Do the Programmers Do?

#22

Post by win311fwg »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #17

- in about 5 yrs of time, this is not going to age well - massive studies ll come out on how 50% of the software engineers dont know or understand what they "generated" at all and how their critical thinking skills have taken a nosedive - every major software company out there that is busy firing juniors now is going to run into the opposite problem: finding talented juniors and they ll command a hefty pay - the whol…

Not since the advent of the compiler have most developers understood what is being generated. Their efforts have instead gone into validation (often manual, but sometimes automated) to see that what was generated works as expected as that is all that really matters to the business goals.

Which is still where the effort is going, although there does seem to be more interest in automated validation now, which is welcome progress.

Re: If AI Writes All the Code, What Do the Programmers Do?

#24

Post by embedding-shape »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #17

- in about 5 yrs of time, this is not going to age well - massive studies ll come out on how 50% of the software engineers dont know or understand what they "generated" at all and how their critical thinking skills have taken a nosedive - every major software company out there that is busy firing juniors now is going to run into the opposite problem: finding talented juniors and they ll command a hefty pay - the whol…

I wonder if people said the same when compilers first appeared in the software development scene.

> the whole LLM premise runs on one little assumption that they ll improve indefinitely. you are forgetting the law of diminishing returns

To be honest, I think I'd remain happy if they just stayed at the level they are now, maybe bit faster and cheaper (and ideally more energy efficient), best would be to run it locally too, but I don't really need them to get "better" to make good use of them at this point.

Re: If AI Writes All the Code, What Do the Programmers Do?

#25

Post by foco_tubi »

embedding-shape wrote: post #24
vivzkestrel wrote: post #17

- in about 5 yrs of time, this is not going to age well - massive studies ll come out on how 50% of the software engineers dont know or understand what they "generated" at all and how their critical thinking skills have taken a nosedive - every major software company out there that is busy firing juniors now is going to run into the opposite problem: finding talented juniors and they ll command a hefty pay - the whol…

I wonder if people said the same when compilers first appeared in the software development scene. > the whole LLM premise runs on one little assumption that they ll improve indefinitely. you are forgetting the law of diminishing returns To be honest, I think I'd remain happy if they just stayed at the level they are now, maybe bit faster and cheaper (and ideally more energy efficient), best would be to run it locally…

“FORTRAN should virtually eliminate coding and debugging.” — FORTRAN Preliminary Report, 1954.

Re: If AI Writes All the Code, What Do the Programmers Do?

#26

Post by foco_tubi »

win311fwg wrote: post #19
duncanfwalker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be the perfect analogy, but it does show some important parallels and differences. Compilers reason to some extent - for example type inference is definitely some deductive reasoning that I would have to do if the compiler didn't do it for me. The hallucinations point is a difference and one that we haven't quite learnt to handle yet. Generally, compilers are deterministic (even it it might not feel like…

> Generally, compilers are deterministic Not really. Maybe more so than they used to be thanks to deterministic algorithms becoming faster, but most compilers still aren't deterministic by default. There are still advantages to non-determinism in compilers, like not having to worry about thread execution order. To be fair, most compilers these days allow you to optionally enable determinism. Then again, LLMs also all…

> LLMs also allow you to optionally enable determinism

really? Please explain

Re: If AI Writes All the Code, What Do the Programmers Do?

#28

Post by ChrisLTD »

win311fwg wrote: post #22
vivzkestrel wrote: post #17

- in about 5 yrs of time, this is not going to age well - massive studies ll come out on how 50% of the software engineers dont know or understand what they "generated" at all and how their critical thinking skills have taken a nosedive - every major software company out there that is busy firing juniors now is going to run into the opposite problem: finding talented juniors and they ll command a hefty pay - the whol…

Not since the advent of the compiler have most developers understood what is being generated. Their efforts have instead gone into validation (often manual, but sometimes automated) to see that what was generated works as expected as that is all that really matters to the business goals. Which is still where the effort is going, although there does seem to be more interest in automated validation now, which is welcom…

This is certainly overstating the difference between compiled code and the source code. If I write an if/else statement, I understand what the computer is going to do when it's evaluated even if I don't know or see the literal machine code.

Re: If AI Writes All the Code, What Do the Programmers Do?

#29

Post by benoau »

embedding-shape wrote: post #24
vivzkestrel wrote: post #17

- in about 5 yrs of time, this is not going to age well - massive studies ll come out on how 50% of the software engineers dont know or understand what they "generated" at all and how their critical thinking skills have taken a nosedive - every major software company out there that is busy firing juniors now is going to run into the opposite problem: finding talented juniors and they ll command a hefty pay - the whol…

I wonder if people said the same when compilers first appeared in the software development scene. > the whole LLM premise runs on one little assumption that they ll improve indefinitely. you are forgetting the law of diminishing returns To be honest, I think I'd remain happy if they just stayed at the level they are now, maybe bit faster and cheaper (and ideally more energy efficient), best would be to run it locally…

The difference is you can trust the compiler without knowing what System.out.println("Hello, World!") is going to ultimately look like, and the vast majority of what compilers output will never need human intervention to fix something or human oversight to ensure correctness and fitness for purpose.

Re: If AI Writes All the Code, What Do the Programmers Do?

#30

Post by tim-projects »

foco_tubi wrote: post #25
embedding-shape wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if people said the same when compilers first appeared in the software development scene. > the whole LLM premise runs on one little assumption that they ll improve indefinitely. you are forgetting the law of diminishing returns To be honest, I think I'd remain happy if they just stayed at the level they are now, maybe bit faster and cheaper (and ideally more energy efficient), best would be to run it locally…

“FORTRAN should virtually eliminate coding and debugging.” — FORTRAN Preliminary Report, 1954.

Relative to punch cards and writing in machine code, I imagine the statement was entirely correct. And still is.
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