Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leave Me Behind

androidessence.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 344 posts

Re: Leave Me Behind

#211

Post by Philpax »

roxolotl wrote: post #201

One of the things I really don’t understand about the “learn or youll be left behind” sentiment is it also comes from people saying “we’re building PhDs in a box!” It cannot both be the case that AI is something challenging enough to use that a current software engineer can’t learn how to use it and that the promises of these tools are fulfilled.

You won't be left behind because you don't know how to use them - as you say, it doesn't take that much time to be at useful proficiency - but you will be left behind if you refuse to engage with them at all.

Re: Leave Me Behind

#212

Post by simonw »

ary wrote: post #167

There are a number of comments here where people open up about their contrasting experiences of not being a part of a programming community. Those are well addressed, I think, but there is another point to consider. We need to remember the people, that we may never talk to, that are downstream of all of this software. Not necessarily “the users” as there are many pieces of software meant for other devs, but I think t…

> Shipping poor quality and user hostile software actually hurts people. Real people.

I couldn't agree more. If you're using AI tools to produce worse software, faster, you should rethink how you are using them.

If we're not delivering better software with this stuff then what are we using it for?

Re: Leave Me Behind

#213

Post by MyHonestOpinon »

miyoji wrote: post #202
Kuyawa wrote: post #196

For me it's incomprehensible how a tool that allows you to be 100 times more productive is derided as something we should never use for the sake of craftmanship. Same as shoemakers or horseback messengers 100 years ago. Those who fund the next Nike or FedEx will be the winners of this new race. AI is a tool, an exceptional tool for providing solutions.

"100 times more productive" is such a wild exaggeration. Do you understand that productivity is not equal to lines of code written? Yeah, AI can write many lines of code very quickly. Productivity is about making something economically valuable. Are you producing 100 times more value with AI than you were without AI? Is your business making 100 times more money? Are you being paid 100 times as much? The factories tha…

I also think 100x is an exageration. May be 5x for producing coed ? And in terms of understanding, may be 2x.

Re: Leave Me Behind

#214

Post by hansmayer »

aspenmartin wrote: post #186
ary wrote: post #167

There are a number of comments here where people open up about their contrasting experiences of not being a part of a programming community. Those are well addressed, I think, but there is another point to consider. We need to remember the people, that we may never talk to, that are downstream of all of this software. Not necessarily “the users” as there are many pieces of software meant for other devs, but I think t…

> Handing over software quality to the stochastic code extruder is causing a sharp drop in the quality of software put out into the world. Well, first of all you and the author point to the same derisive comment of these models being, in your words "stochastic code extruder" or the one I have heard a lot "next-token predictors", and the connotation I read from these being that this makes them inherently dumb or unint…

> to the same derisive comment of these models being, in your words "stochastic code extruder"

So many excited and insulted LLM adopters on this thread. There is nothing derisive in that comment, it is simply the purest possible definition of how they work. Stochastics is a branch of maths you know.

> can solve Erdos problems is sort of the proof in the pudding

For the non-engineer, non-mathematician it may sound authoritative, but you'd probably be surprised to learn that most of Erdos problems are not at all complex - they are just not very interesting or relevant. So it is a proof in the pudding, provided the pudding is made of shit - the kind of stuff LLMs produce most of the time.

> I just don't quite understand this, is it that: (1) agentic code is inherently inferior to human code and thus (2) shipping agentic code is actively harmful?

Yes and yes - have you not heard of that AWS incident with Kiro when the "agentic" shit deleted an entire infrastructure environment, complete with data, config, etc.?

> Also I wonder how many folks honestly look in the mirror and think: how does the median programmer differ from an LLM

Apart from the obvious absurdity of this statement - I know a lot of you non-engineer types feel "empowered" by the LLMs, in the sense of how they immediately seem a genius when you ask them on a topic you are not expert in, but you may want to read a book on programming first - maybe you'll get a clue then.

Re: Leave Me Behind

#216

Post by lukan »

the_biot wrote: post #194
innodendo wrote: post #145

My experience programming is so much different than theirs makes me wonder what I missed out on. I have always programmed on my own, and I can't even think about a single time I have talked to a person in depth about programming (both online and in person). It sounds fun and exciting, but unfortunately I have simply never had the opportunities in life to do so. For me, AI is the first time I have ever been able to ge…

You know it's random nonsense, and yet you still take it on faith that it "gives you answers". That's what makes me despair about all the AI nonsense: it's the death of intellect. Not the death of deep thinking, but of common sense. I can't wait for the day until all these people collectively snap out of it, and go "what the hell were we thinking with these chatbots".

If AI nonsens is doing the work I ask it to and I confirm it works and is useful .. then what exactly should I snap out of it?

It is just a tool and a useful one. Your loss for not making use of it, but .. you seem to live on a different timeline. I am reminded of old Japan, where the Samurais banned gun powder, so they could continue to fight with swords and not change their ways of living.

Re: Leave Me Behind

#217

Post by joe_mamba »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #132
joe_mamba wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>while the poor people are essentially just as poor they were hundreds of years ago. How can people say false things like this with a straight face? Thanks to industrialisation, automation and mass production, the poor of today have access to things that even kings from hundreds of years ago couldn't even fathom, let alone poor people back then: abundant cheap food that poor people can now be fat instead of starve to…

> Thanks to industrialisation, automation and mass production, the poor of today have access to things that even kings from hundreds of years ago couldn't even fathom Thanks to colonialism, also in more modern form called globalism . > Kings back then would eat hard bread, shit down a vertical shaft that emitted the scent through the whole castle, and their sleeping chambers had ice on the walls in winter and lice in…

>Thanks to colonialism, also in more modern form called globalism.

You don't have to participate in globalism, you can be a hermit state that doesn't trade with the evil imperial capitalists, like Cuba and North Korea. Everyone wants to live there because the QoL is so good.

Re: Leave Me Behind

#218

Post by daveidol »

unknownfuture wrote: post #205
ary wrote: post #167

There are a number of comments here where people open up about their contrasting experiences of not being a part of a programming community. Those are well addressed, I think, but there is another point to consider. We need to remember the people, that we may never talk to, that are downstream of all of this software. Not necessarily “the users” as there are many pieces of software meant for other devs, but I think t…

> Handing over software quality to the stochastic code extruder is causing a sharp drop in the quality of software put out into the world. I genuinely don't know if that's true and I doubt you do, either. It's all feels right now. What I do know is I run a couple of personal projects and I can say they are of objectively higher quality now that I'm using AI to build out proper CI pipelines, expand test coverage, prod…

Well said. People love to make everything black and white / good and bad. But things are rarely that simple.

Re: Leave Me Behind

#219

Post by joe_mamba »

samiv wrote: post #91
joe_mamba wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>while the poor people are essentially just as poor they were hundreds of years ago. How can people say false things like this with a straight face? Thanks to industrialisation, automation and mass production, the poor of today have access to things that even kings from hundreds of years ago couldn't even fathom, let alone poor people back then: abundant cheap food that poor people can now be fat instead of starve to…

Because most of the poor people in the world (majority of the population of the planet actually) have no access to clean water, food or medical care or education and that is the same as it was hundreds of years ago.

[flagged]

Re: Leave Me Behind

#220

Post by quaintdev »

mr_mitm wrote: post #157
quaintdev wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever this topic comes up I am reminded of the black and white picture of all the scientist of 19th century together. Each individual in that photo had contributed something to human knowledge. It feels like in 19th century we believed in our scientists and advancing our knowledge. I feel today celebrities are given more importance than our scientists. The best minds of our century are focused on extracting value…

You probably mean the Solvay conference. I just wanted to append this link to your comment: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/So... It really is a remarkable picture, but I'd like to note that it's all physicists, not scientists in general. It was the golden era of physics.

Yes this is the one.
Post reply on HN