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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"

#231

Post by arcxi »

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.

can you share any examples of these "new and better ways to use them"? because the only way I've used LLM and seen other people use it is to literally just talk to it, which doesn't require any skills beyond basic conversational abilities.

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

#232

Post by cassianoleal »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #182
cassianoleal wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you reckon?

There's a long-running instance of the model on the provider that's allocated to my organisation? Or are you thinking more of a server-side memory system, similar to the (currently very fallible) ones like Honcho and Mem0?

What happens when my org stops paying that provider? Do I get to take the now senior agent with me to the next provider? Does the provider have to delete it (and all that learning is lost forever)? Does that now become a free agent that can be hired by the next organisation like an employee (one that probably doesn't know how to keep industry secrets to itself)?

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

#234

Post by jjav »

bergie wrote: post #187
buffalobuffalo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

That's too pessimistic, the productivity gains are real and substantial.

OTOH, the hype train is out of control. It is nowhere near perfect and requires a lot of handholding and guardrails to avoid going sideways.

You need to adopt it to stay relevant, but don't fall for the excessive hype. At the end of the day the limitations are significant.

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

#235

Post by jjav »

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

> If you haven’t use LLMs at all, a weekend would be enough to be on par with everyone else in the industry

Disagree. It takes a lot of experimenting to find the right balance between sufficient guardrails and insane halluciations. And it'll be different depending on work domains.

I'm still refactoring AI workflows every week after more than a year or so and still working on it. Will probably be a perpetually ongoing effort as models change.

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

#236

Post by znpy »

The author is making a very coarse reasoning mistake.

Using AI is and "think, how to write, how to do a simple reliable search, how to tell fact from fiction" are not mutually exclusive.

Yeah I don't think this line of reasoning is to be taken any seriously at all. It can be... left behind.

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

#237

Post by znpy »

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…

> that not only harvest and sell my personal information to the highest bidder but constantly change the rules and restrictions on my software

yeah i'm gonna call BS on that. what you describe was happening well before modern-day AI (LLM, agentic stuff etc) became mainstream: think of google accounts binding your identity to your searches, gmail, google adsense, facebook, instagram and twitter (and others).

And the products and services that do what you describe can do that just as well without ai.

So yeah the problem is absolutely real but AI is not the culprit here.

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

#238

Post by znpy »

rurp wrote: post #186
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 jo…

> 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.

but you can still do that, AI is not preventing you from doing any of that in any way.

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

#239

Post by znpy »

cmiles74 wrote: post #185
buffalobuffalo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Keep in mind, we don't do a lot of things that big IDES used to do.

Dumb example: graphical user interfaces. Heavyweight IDEs used to have a GUI designer (Netbeans had a very nice one).

GUI development is niche nowadays.

Also we have much better cross-editor tooling, just think of language servers (https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/) and build servers (https://build-server-protocol.github.io/). Back in the day each IDE had their own.

Vim and Emacs can do a lot of what IDEs used to offer thanks to language servers and build servers. Before those (lang/build servers) they were largely useless for large scale development (believe me, i tried).

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

#240

Post by jckahn »

DANmode wrote: post #221
jckahn wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather be poor in the city than rich and bored outside of it.

What is sensible in a literal economic recession if not “boring”? Anyway..

I'll be in my home for longer than the recession lasts. Seems a little silly to sell it and walk away from my hard-earned lifestyle (which I quite enjoy) to save some money for just a few years.
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