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The Programmer Identity Crisis

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Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#261

Post by aryairani »

> There aren’t enough swear words in the English language to adequately describe how frustrating computers and programming can be, but we have at least always been able to count on them for precision: to perform exactly as instructed through programming.

This is so true. That feeling when you're debugging an issue in your code, only to rule out all the possibilities and have to expand your search to include not-your-code: the tooling, the libraries, the operating system, the hardware. This is the worst feeling in debugging, when the problem and the solution /might/ be outside of your control. With LLM/GenAI, the primary problem solving surface is nondeterministic by design, very much out of your control, and you will likely be gaslit into believing that you're just not hitting it right. Like a tube tv that has to be slapped just the right way to restore proper reception. (Sorry, bots, no offense intended.)

> What’s next, TPS reports?

I bet LLMs are really good at producing TPS reports w/ cover sheet.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#262

Post by jimbokun »

whynotminot wrote: post #139
jimbokun wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s simpler than that. It’s more of a funeral, collective expression of grievance of a great, painful loss. An obituary for a glorious, short time in history where it was possible to combine a specific kind of intelligence, creativity, discipline, passion and values and be well compensated for it. A time when the ability to solve problems and solve them well had value. Not just being better at taking credit than oth…

I get it, but fundamentally this is a forum discussing technology, and AI is part of that. Especially as it relates to software engineering. I come here to learn, discuss, and frankly, to hang onto a good life as long as I can have it. The collective whinging in every AI topic is both annoying and self-defeating.

Then find another forum.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#263

Post by filoeleven »

muldvarp wrote: post #170
RamtinJ95 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree with that statement, but I dont agree with the premise that, that is whats happening currently.

It's the explicitly stated goal of several of the largest companies on the planet which put up a lot of money to try to reach that goal. And the progress over the past few years has been stunning.

It's a pretty good trick if you don't look too hard at the details. Including how many users have been active for a year vs the weekly counts.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#264

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

senordevnyc wrote: post #184
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are chefs but they are not us. Though it will upset many to hear it, what we are is fast food workers, assembling and reheating prepackaged stuff provided to us. Now a machine threatens to do the assembling and reheating for us, better and faster than we on average do. The chefs coming up with recipes and food scientists doing the pre-packaging will do fine and are still needed. The people making the fast food…

Absolutely true. In my case, I'm trying to run a restaurant, so this is all excellent news for me.

Not really even for people running a restaurant. The fast food machine means that a dozen competitors can spring up to compete with most restaurant's niche overnight unless they are serving up something truly special. (And they're not because if they were, the fast food machine would be wholly inadequate to churn out their menu.) Success comes down to other factors like marketing and blind luck winning customers.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#265

Post by whynotminot »

jimbokun wrote: post #262
whynotminot wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it, but fundamentally this is a forum discussing technology, and AI is part of that. Especially as it relates to software engineering. I come here to learn, discuss, and frankly, to hang onto a good life as long as I can have it. The collective whinging in every AI topic is both annoying and self-defeating.

Then find another forum.

You don’t get to gatekeep this forum.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#266

Post by filoeleven »

Legend2440 wrote: post #48
layer8 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, the problem is exactly that it’s not a formal language.

This is also a strength. Formal languages struggle to work with concepts that cannot be precisely defined, which are especially common in the physical world. e.g. it is difficult to write a traditional program to wash dishes, because how do you formally define a dish? You can only show examples of dishes and not-dishes. This is where informal language and neural networks shine.

I can't wait to bring a whole restaurant's dishwashing to a halt with an adversarial plate that has some droplets of paint on it the color of steak sauce.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#267

Post by ryandrake »

crazygringo wrote: post #178
Etheryte wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion this is another case where people look at it as a technical problem when it's actually a people problem. If someone does it once, they get a stern message about it. If it happens twice, it gets rejected and sent to their manager. Regardless of how you authored a pull request, you are signing off on it with your name. If it's garbage, then you're responsible.

This a million times. If you do this three times, that's grounds for firing. You're literally not doing your job and lying that you are. It's bizarre to me that people want to blame LLMs instead of the employees themselves. (With open source projects and slop pull requests, it's another story of course.)

Seriously. What companies are these where “Oops, Claude wrote that and I have no idea what it does” is even remotely acceptable? No company I have ever worked at. This kind of behavior would be corrected immediately, at all levels from the eng TL up to director if it had to go that far.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#268

Post by dmurvihill »

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)?

You have it exactly backwards. If you are consuming my time with slop, it’s on you to prove there’s still a net benefit.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#269

Post by bloppe »

y0eswddl wrote: post #222
bloppe wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :/

An epic opportunity is an epic opportunity. If most investors are too stupid to notice one (yes, that is often true, I know), then that's also an epic opportunity for the 1 investor who might take the chance.

I'm not saying the industry is perfect, but if the scale of the missed opportunity is so large and so obvious to so many engineers, and we live in a world with tens of thousands of VC firms and probably millions of other avenues for funding like angels, incubators, and grant programs, it's hard to imagine 100% of them missing it. And it only takes 1 to take advantage.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#270

Post by dmurvihill »

bloppe wrote: post #163
Macha wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is leadership buy in. The person throwing the LLM slop at github has great metrics when the leadership are looking at cursor usage, lines of code, PR numbers, while the person slowing down to actually read wtf the other people are submitting is now so drowning in slop that they have less time to produce on their own. So the execs look at it as the person complaining "not keeping up with the times".

If leadership is that inept, then this is likely only 1 of many problems they are creating for the organization. I would be looking for alternative employment ASAP.

There is precious little alternative employment that cares about the long-term sustainability of their software, is the problem.
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