251–260 of 918 posts
This makes me think about the craftsmen whose careers vanished or transformed through the ages due to industries, machines etc. They did not have online voices to write 1000's of blogs everyday. Nor did they have people who can read their woes online.
As an (ex-)programmer in his late 40s, I couldn't agree more. I'm someone who can be detail-oriented (but, I think also with a mind toward practicality) to the point of obsession, and I think this trait served me extremely well for nearly 25 years in my profession. I no longer think that is the case. And I think this is true for a lot of developers - they liked to stress and obsess over the details of "authorship", but now that programming is veering much more towards "editor", they just don't find the day-to-day work nearly as satisfying. And, at least for me, I believe this while not thinking the change to using generative AI is "bad", but just that it's changed the fundamentals of the profession, and that when something dies it's fine to mourn it.
If anything, I'm extremely lucky that my timing was such that I was able to do good work in a relatively lucrative career where my natural talents were an asset for nearly a quarter of a century. I don't feel that is currently the case regarding programming, so I'm fortunate enough to be able to leave the profession and go into violin making, where my obsession with detail and craft is again a huge asset.
It makes me sad to read posts like this. If it is a necessary step for you on the journey from denial to acceptance to embracing the new state of the world, then sure, take your time. But software engineering is the only industry that is built on the notion of rapid change, constant learning, and bootstrapping ourselves to new levels of abstraction so that we don't repeat ourselves and make each next step even more p…
> software engineering is the only industry that is built on the notion of rapid change, constant learning, and bootstrapping ourselves to new levels of abstraction Not sure I agree. I think most programming today looks almost exactly the same as it did 40 years ago. You could even have gotten away with never learning a new language. AI feels like the first time a large percentage of us may be forced to fundamentally…
I'll believe it when I start seeing examples of good and useful software being created with LLMs or some increase in software quality. So far it's just AI doom posting, hype bloggers that haven't shipped anything, anecdotes without evidence, increase in CVEs, increase in outages, and degraded software quality.
It would be helpful if you could define “useful” in this context. I’ve built a number of team-specific tools with LLM agents over the past year that save each of us tens of hours a month. They don’t scale beyond me and my six coworkers, and were never designed to, but they solve challenges we’d previously worked through manually and allow us to focus on more important tasks. The code may be non-optimal and won’t beco…
I absolutely disagree with this. All the things the author said will still exist and keep on existing. Nothing will prevent you from typing “JavaScript with your hands”, from “holding code in our hands and molding it like clay…”, and all the other metaphors. You can still do all of it. What certainly will change is the way professional code will be produced, and together with that, the avenue of having a very well-pa…
I don’t think it’s that simple. A couple of examples: Food: A lot of the processed foods that are easily available make us unhealthy and sick. Even vegetables are less nutritious than they were 50 years ago. Mass agriculture also has many environmental externalities. Consumer goods: It has become difficult to find things like reliable appliances. I bought a chest freezer. It broke after a year. The repairman said it…
Cars make people unhealthy and lead to city designs that hurt social engagement and affordability, but they are so much more efficient that it's hard not to use them.
And then the obvious stuff about screens/phones/social media.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article isn't really about losing a job. Coding is a passion for some of us. It's similar to artists and diffusion, the only difference being that many people can appreciate human art - but who (outside of us) cares that a human wrote the code?
The people outside of us didn’t care about your beautiful code before. Now we can quickly build their boring applications and spend more time building beautiful things for our community’s sake. Yes, there are economic concerns, but as far as “craft” goes, nothing is stopping us from continuing to enjoy it.
LLMs are only a threat if you see your job as a code monkey. In that case you're likely already obsoleted by outsourced staff who can do your job much cheaper. If you see your job as a "thinking about what code to write (or not)" monkey, then you're safe. I expect most seniors and above to be in this position, and LLMs are absolutely not replacing you here - they can augment you in certain situations. The perks of a…
I'm not so confident that it'll only be code monkeys for too long
That's the future for maybe half of programmers.
Remember, it's only been three years since ChatGPT. This is just getting started.
I do not mourn. For my whole life I’ve been trying to make things—beautiful elegant things. When I was a child, I found a cracked version of Photoshop and made images which seemed like magic. When I was in college, I learned to make websites through careful, painstaking effort. When I was a young professional, I used those skills and others to make websites for hospitals and summer camps and conferences. Then I learn…
>It was, for me, never about the code. Then it wasn't your craft.
Almost none of the code I wrote in 2015 is still in use today. Probably some percentage of people can point to code that lasted 20 years or longer, but it can’t be a big percentage. When I think of the work of a craft, I think of doing work which is capable of standing up for a long time. A great builder can make a house that can last for a thousand years and a potter can make a bowl that lasts just as long.
I’ve thought of myself as a craftsman of code for a long time but maybe that was just wrong.
I'll believe it when I start seeing examples of good and useful software being created with LLMs or some increase in software quality. So far it's just AI doom posting, hype bloggers that haven't shipped anything, anecdotes without evidence, increase in CVEs, increase in outages, and degraded software quality.