251–260 of 419 posts
I'll be the contrarian and say that I don't find anything wrong with this, and if I were a candidate I'd simply take this as useful information for the application process. They do encourage use of AI, but they're asking nicely to write my own texts for the application - that's a reasonable request, and I'd have nothing against complying. sshine reply above is coming from a very conflictual mindset. "Can I still use…
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> I don't find anything wrong with this It’s not about being wrong, it’s about being ironic. We have LLMs shoved down our throats as this new way to communicate—we are encouraged to ask them to make our writing “friendlier” or “more professional”—and then one of the companies creating such a tool asks the very people most interested in it to not use it for the exact purpose we’ve been told it’s good at. They are aski…
Yes, and they should state that they also don't use AI in the selection process.
I think they will get better results by having applicants talk to an AI during the application process.
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> Sure, but the output of your daily programming work isn't just the code you write for the company. It's also your own self-improvement, how you work with others, etc Agreed, but I as the "end user" care not at all whether you're running a local LLM that you fine tune, or storing it all in your eidetic memory, or writing it down on post it notes that are all over your workspace[1]. Anything that works, works. I'm re…
I think we're agreeing on the aim—good results—but disagreeing on what those results consist of. If I'm acting as a 'company', one that wants a beneficial relationship with a productive programmer for the long-term, I would rather have [ program that works 90%, programmer who is 10% better at their job having written it ] as my outputs than a perfect program and a less-good programmer.
What is the difference between a "less good programmer" and a "more good programmer" if you can't tell via their work output? Are we doing telepathy or soul gazing here? If they produce good work they could be a team of raccoons in a trench coat as far as I'm aware, unless they start stealing snacks from the corner store.
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This is fascinating. The idea of leveling off in the learning curve is one that I hadn't considered before, although with hindsight it seems obvious. Based on your recollection (and without revealing too many personal details), do you recall any specific areas that caused the struggle? For example, was it a lack of understanding of the program architecture? Was it an issue of not understanding data structures? (or wh…
A big problem was that he couldn't attain a mental model of how the code was behaving at runtime, in particular the lifetimes of data and objects - what would get created or destroyed when, exist at what time, happen in what sequence, exist for the whole runtime of the program vs. what's a temporary resource, that kind of thing. The overall "flow" of the code didn't exist in his head, because he was basically taking…
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I agree with your sentiment. But coming from a generative AI company that says "career development" and "communication" are among their two most popular use cases... That's like a tobacco company telling employees they are not permitted to smoke tobacco
Well, they probably aren't permitted to smoke tobacco indoors. I honestly fail to see even the irony. "Company that makes hammers doesn't want you to use hammers all the time". It's a tool. But if I squint, I _can_ see a mean-spirited "haha, look at those hypocrites" coming from people who enjoy tearing others down for no particular reason.
This is quite a conundrum. These AI companies thrive on the idea that very soon people will not be replaced by AI, but by people who can effectively use AI to be 10x more productive. If AI turns a normal coder into a 10x dev, then why wouldn't you want to see that during an interview? Especially since cheating this whole interview system has become trivial in the past months. It's not the applicants that are the prob…
Because as someone who’s interviewing, I know you can use AI — anyone can. It likely obscures me from judging the pitfalls, and design and architecture decisions that are required in proper engineering roles. Especially for senior and above applications, I want to make an assessment of how you think about problems, where it gives a chance for the candidate to show their experience, their technical understanding, and…
If people can AI their way into the position you are advertising, then at least one of the following two things have to be true:
1) the job you are advertising can be _literally_ solved by AI
2) you are not tailoring your interview process properly to the actual job that the candidate will need to do, hence the handwave-y "oh well harder problems will come up later that the AI will not be able to do". Focus the interview on the actual job that the AI can't do, and your worries will disappear.
My impression is that the people who are crying about AI use in interviews are the same people who refuse to make an effort themselves. This is just the variation of the meme where you are asked to flip a red black tree on a whiteboard, but then you get the job, and your task is to center a button with CSS. Make an effort and focus your interview on the actual job, and if you are still worried people will AI their way into it, then what position are you even advertising? Either use the AI to solve the problem then, or admit that the AI can't solve this and stop worrying about people using it.
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Can't disagree more. Talent is built and perfected upon thousands hours practice, LLMs just make you lazy. One thing people with seniority in the field don't realize, as I guess you are, is that LLMs don't help develop "muscle memory" in young practioners, it just make them miserable, often caged in an infinite feedback loop of bug fixing or trying to untangle a code mess. They may extract some value by using it for…
I hear this argument all the time, and I think “this is exactly how people who coded in assembly back in the day thought about those using higher level programming languages.” It is a paradigm shift, yes. And you will know less about the implementation at times, yes. But will you care when you can deploy things twice, three times, five times as fast as the person not using AI? No. And also, when you want to learn mor…
2. Compilers are deterministic. You can recompile the source code and get the same assembly a million times.
You can also take a bit of assembly then look at the source code of the compiler and tell exactly where that assembly came from. And you can change the compiler to change that output.
3. Source code is written in a formal unambiguous language.
I’m sure LLMs will be great at spitting out green field apps, but unless they evolve to honest to goodness AGI, this won’t get far beyond existing low code solutions.
No one has solved or even proposed a solution for any of these issues beyond “the AI will advance sufficiently that humans won’t need to look at the code ever. They’ll never need to interact with it in any way other than through the AI”.
But to get to that point will require AGI and the AI won’t need input from humans at all, it won’t need a manager telling it what to build.
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I strongly agree with this comment. Anecdotal evidence time! I'm an experienced dev (20 years of C++ and plenty of other stuff), and I frequently work with younger students in a mentor role, e.g. I've done Google Summer of Code three times as a mentor, and am also in KDE's own mentorship program. In 2023/24, when ChatGPT was looming large, I took on a student who was of course attempting to use AI to learn and who wa…
I have a feeling that "almost getting there" will simply become the norm. I have seen a lot of buggy and almost but not exactly right applications, processes and even laws that people simply have to live with. If US can be the worlds biggest economy while having an opiod epidemy and writing paper cheques, if Germany can be Europes manufacturing hub while using faxes, sure we as a society can live in the unoptimal sta…
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> It reminded me of the time Roy Wood Jr visited a pro-gun rally where they argued guns make people safe, while simultaneously asking people to not carry guns because they were worried about safety. The cognitive dissonance is worth pointing out. Well, no. It's irony, but it's only cognitive dissonance in a comedy show which misses the nuance. Most pro-gun organizations are heavily into gun safety. The message is tha…
Huge miss on the gun analogy. The likes of NRA are pushing for 50-state constitutional carry. Everyone has a gun on their person with no licensing requirements. Yet at the NRA conference they ban guns. There’s probably actually some other hidden factor though, like the venue not allowing it. Edit: FWIW those late night TV shows are nothing but rage bait low brow “comedy” that divides the country. But the above remain…
That's not what the NRA is pushing for, any more than there are Democrats pushing for mandatory sex changes for all kids (yes, this is cited on similar right-wing comedy shows, and individuals on the right believe it). Pushing for a right doesn't mean 100% of the population will exercise that right.
And yes, most venues (as well as schools, government buildings, etc.) will not allow guns. If there's a security guard, police, or similar within spitting distance, there isn't a reasonable self-defence argument.
One of the interesting pieces of data is looking at 2nd amendment support versus distance to the nearest police station / police officer / likely law enforcement response times. It explains a lot about where support / opposition comes from.