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The Programmer Identity Crisis

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Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#221

Post by y0eswddl »

jackblemming wrote: post #207
tyleo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and I’m surprised more people don’t get this. Bad behaviors aren’t suddenly okay because AI makes them easy. If you are wasting time you may be value negative to a business. If you are value negative over the long run you should be let go. We’re ultimately here to make money, not just pump out characters into text files.

How do you know the net value add isn’t greater with the AI, even if it requires more code review comments (and angrier coworkers)?

all the recent studies (that are constantly posted here) that say so.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#222

Post by y0eswddl »

bloppe wrote: post #187
GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the issue isn't recognizing malign influence within your current organization... it's an issue throughout the entire industry, and I think what we're all afraid of is that it's becoming more inevitable every day, because we're not the ones who have the final say. the luddites essentially failed, after all, because the wider world was not and is not ready for a discussion about quality versus profit.

A poor quality product can only be profitable if no high quality alternative exists (at a similar price point). Every time that's the case, it's an epic opportunity for anybody with the wherewithal to raise some funding and build that high quality alternative themselves. A dysfunctional industry running on AI slop will not be able to keep you from eating their lunch unless they can achieve some sort of regulatory cap…

...have you seen the funding numbers for AI startups versus non-AI? it's not even remotely close rn...

A major problem of the way we have built our society in a way such that the wrong people end up with the most power and authority.

the majority of engineers across the industry feel the same way we do and yet there's little most of us can do unless we all decide to do something together :/

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#223

Post by y0eswddl »

smoody07 wrote: post #200
strix_varius wrote: post #57

To me, the most salient point was this: > Code reviewing coworkers are rapidly losing their minds as they come to the crushing realization that they are now the first layer of quality control instead of one of the last. Asked to review; forced to pick apart. Calling out freshly added functions that are never called, hallucinated library additions, and obvious runtime or compilation errors. All while the author—who cl…

This is a broader issue about how where we place blame when LLMs are involved. Humans seem to want to parrot the work and take credit when it’s correct while deflecting blame when it’s wrong. With a few well placed lawsuits this paradigm will shift imho

that's just capitalism 101 - privatize profits, socialize failures

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#224

Post by cutemonster »

ge96 wrote: post #144
strix_varius wrote: post #57

To me, the most salient point was this: > Code reviewing coworkers are rapidly losing their minds as they come to the crushing realization that they are now the first layer of quality control instead of one of the last. Asked to review; forced to pick apart. Calling out freshly added functions that are never called, hallucinated library additions, and obvious runtime or compilation errors. All while the author—who cl…

I'm working on the second project handed to me that was vibe-coded. What annoys me assuming it runs is the high number of READMEs which I'm not even sure which one to use/if applicable. They are usually verbose/include things like "how to run a virtual env for python"

Lots of READMEs? Might make total sense, if lines of code added, is a metrics the managers look at.

Can't be any compilation errors in a README, no need to worry about bugs. And if they're long and boring enough, no one will ever read them.

AI generated READMEs = free metrics bonus points, for the performance reviews :-)

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#225

Post by Terr_ »

gdulli wrote: post #140
psunavy03 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's sillier is people associating em-dashes with AI slop specifically because they are unsophisticated enough never to have learned how to use them as part of their writing, and assuming everyone else must be as poor of a writer as they are. It's the literary equivalent of thinking someone must be a "hacker" because they have a Bash terminal open.

You're overthinking it. LLMs exploded the prevalence of em-dashes. That doesn't mean you should assume any instance of an em-dash means LLM content, but it's a reasonable heuristic at the moment.

> but it's a reasonable heuristic

I dunno, I feel like the base rate fallacy [0] could easily become a factor... Especially if we don't even have an idea what the false-positive or false-negative rates are yet, let alone true prevalence.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#226

Post by igor47 »

zamalek wrote: post #194
strix_varius wrote: post #57

To me, the most salient point was this: > Code reviewing coworkers are rapidly losing their minds as they come to the crushing realization that they are now the first layer of quality control instead of one of the last. Asked to review; forced to pick apart. Calling out freshly added functions that are never called, hallucinated library additions, and obvious runtime or compilation errors. All while the author—who cl…

> LLM-written ones are almost entirely additive I have noticed Claude's extreme and obtuse reluctance to delete code, even code that it just wrote that I told it is wrong. For example, it might produce a fn: fn foo(bar) And then I say, no, I actually wanted you to "foo with a frobnitz", so now we get: fn foo(bar) // Never called fn foo_with_frobnitz(bar)

This tendency must get reenforced through RL in the training phase. It's very high profile when an LLM deletes the wrong thing, eg https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/07/ai-co...

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#227

Post by igor47 »

altairprime wrote: post #204

> LLMs seem like a nuke-it-from-orbit solution to the complexities of software. Rather than addressing the actual problems, we reached for something far more complex and nebulous to cure the symptoms. The author overlooks a core motivation of AI here: to centralize the high-skill high-cost “creative” workers into just the companies that design AIs, so that every other business in the world can fire their creative wor…

Yes! This happened in so many industries. Banking is my go to example, where we used to have local bankers making decisions based on local knowledge of their community, but then decision making was centralized into remote central HQs and the local bankers moved into living below the API, while the central HQ guys began to make all the bucks. See also "seeing like a state" and the concept of legibility.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#228

Post by skydhash »

carlosjobim wrote: post #199
skydhash wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things is most times, you are indeed buying the car that is going to make the delivery. And it's going to live in your garage. And if you're not careful, one day it will drive itself off a cliff, stall in the middle of a 10 hour drive, or you'll get robbed by individuals hiding in the trunk. People that realize this care about their oil type and what tire they put on. People that do not, pay it forward when that…

> Even if you're not dogfooding your own software, if you do not take care of it properly, the cost of changes will climb up. How do you mean? If the software works, then it's done. There is no maintenance and it will continue working like that for decades. It doesn't have corrosion and moving parts like a car. Businesses make sure not to touch it or the systems it is depending on.

That would be fine if the dependencies were permanent. Hardware fail and need to be replaced. The OS will be upgraded (macOS is more than happy to make breaking changes). If the software is networked, that’s another transient plane. Libraries will fall out of support range.

Then there’s the fact that the user’s needs fluctuate. Imagine having to pay for a whole another software because the current code is spaghetti and full of hardcoded value and magic constants. It worked, but now you want a slight adjustment, but that can’t no longer be made unless you’re willing to rewrite the whole thing (and pay for it). That would be like having to buy a whole new car, because you moved to the house next door, as the car is hardwired to move only between your old place and where you work.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#229

Post by igor47 »

smoody07 wrote: post #201

It really is a higher level language for coding though. Not as precise as Fortran but far more upside. I imagine monks bemoaning the printing press that took away the joy of their perfectly handwritten bibles they made in solitude

Welcome to HN! I don't think you understood TFA. A) LLM prompting is categorically different from Fortan, not another version of it that's 'less precise'. B) 'upside' again is entirely different from craftsmanship.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#230

Post by igor47 »

muldvarp wrote: post #67

I think in a few years, we will realize that LLMs have impacted our lives in a deeply negative way. The relatively small improvements LLMs bring to my life will be vastly outweighted by the negatives. If LLM abilities stagnate around the current level it's not even out of the question that LLMs will negatively impact productivity simply because of all of the AI slop we'll have to deal with.

Hmmm. Interesting prediction. I think even on social media, the consensus is still shaky, and social media is an unalloyed bad IMHO. I think personal cars impacted our lives in a deeply negative way but most people disagree. There is really no consensus on LLMs right now, I think if they stagnate this is where the discourse will stagnate also.

More likely, like other tools, it will be possible to point to clear harms and clear benefits, and people will disagree about the overall impact.

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