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Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

nytimes.com

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Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#261

Post by seanmcdirmid »

chmod775 wrote: post #92
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially when you have to work out how and why the AI-generated code is structured the way it is. You could just ask it? Or you don’t trust the AI to answer you honestly?

You're anthropomorphizing. LLMs can't lie nor can they tell the truth. These concepts just don't apply to them. They also cannot tell you what they were "thinking" when they wrote a piece of code. If you "ask" them what they were thinking, you just get a plausible response, not the "intention" that may or may not have existed in some abstract form in some layer when the system selected tokens*. That information is go…

I’m not anthropomorphizing. I’ve been in many situation where the AI wrote some code some way and I had to ask why, it told me why and then we moved on to better solutions as needed. Better if it just wrote the code and its reasoning was still in context, but even if it’s not, it can usually reverse engineer what it wrote well enough. Then it’s a conversation about whether there is a better clearer way to do it, the code improves.

It sounds like you either have access to bad models or you are just imagining what it’s like to use an LLM in this way and haven’t actually tried asking it why it wrote something. The only judgement you need to make is the explanation makes sense or not, not some technical or theoretical argument about where the tokens in the explanation come from. You just ask questions until you can easily verify things for yourself.

Also, pretending that the LLM is still just token predicting and isn’t bringing in a lot of extra context via RAG and using extra tokens for thinking to answer a query is just way out there.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#262

Post by arcxi »

dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv wrote: post #96

> in coding, L.L.M.s take away the drudgery and leave the human, soulful parts to you. I've always hated solving puzzles with my deterministic toolbox, learning along the way and producing something of value at the end. Glad that's finally over so I can focus on the soulful art of micromanaging chatbots with markdown instead.

amidst this whole AI craze it's illuminating to learn how many programmers secretly hated programming all along

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#263

Post by xienze »

AstroBen wrote: post #244
EagnaIonat wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All run of the mill software is gone or on borrowed time. Why pay a subscription for a product that I can get something Claude to build it for me. Before I was building tools, now I am building full applications in less time than I did before for tools. What will be around for a while is where you need an expert in the loop to drive the AI. For example enterprise applications. You simply can't hand that off to an AI…

Can we see the applications?

... no.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#264

Post by joefourier »

kuboble wrote: post #101
mech422 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head, I can think of the following during my career: 1. COBOL (we actually did still use it back in the 80s) 2.AI back in the 80s (Dr. Dobbs was all concerned about it ...) 3. RAD 4. No-Code 5. Off-shoring 6. Web 2.0 7. Web 3.0 8. possibly the ADA/provably correct push depending on your area of programming TBH - I think the AI's are nice tools, but they got a long way to go before it's the 'end of c…

Stack overflow (and internet in general) changed the programming as we (at least some of us) knew it. When I was learning programming I had no internet, no books outside of library, nobody to ask for days. I remember vividly having spent days trying to figure out how to use the stdlib qsort, and not being able to.

I'm not from that generation so that's a bit hard for me to understand. Even if you used a closed-source C compiler, wouldn't you still have been able to look at the header file, which would have been pretty self-explanatory?

E.g.

void qsort(void* base, size_t nmemb, size_t size, int (compar)(const void , const void* ));

And surely if you bought a C compiler, you would have gotten a manual or two with it? Documentation from the pre-Internet age tended to be much better than today.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#265

Post by barnabee »

dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv wrote: post #96

> in coding, L.L.M.s take away the drudgery and leave the human, soulful parts to you. I've always hated solving puzzles with my deterministic toolbox, learning along the way and producing something of value at the end. Glad that's finally over so I can focus on the soulful art of micromanaging chatbots with markdown instead.

I like designing data, algorithms, and systems. I like picking the right tools for the job. I like making architectural and user interface (CLI, configuration format, GUI, whatever) decisions.

Actually typing code is pretty dull. To the extent that I rarely do it full time (basically only when prototyping or making very simple scripts etc.), even though I love making things.

So for me, personally, LLMs are great. I'm making more software (and hardware) than ever, mostly just to scratch an itch.

Those people that really love it should be fine. Hobbies aren't supposed to make you money anyway.

I don't have much interest in maintaining the existence of software development/engineering (or anything else) as a profession if it turns out it's not necessary. Not that I think that's really what's happening. Software engineering will continue as a profession. Many developers have been doing barely useful glue work (often as a result of bad/overcomplicated abstractions and tooling in the first place, IMO) and perhaps that won't be needed, but plenty more engineers will continue to design and build things just more effectively and with better tools.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#266

Post by in_cahoots »

lpnam0201 wrote: post #186
andoando wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im curious though, what do you consider slightly out of the ordinary that it fails to do?

Haven't tried Claude for this, but I can't think how it could possibly do. I built a game bot using Win32 API to send input and screen capture to OCR and some OpenCV to recognize game elements. Dead simple and actually quite boring and repeatitive after I worked on it for a while. How could Claude agents possibly do this ? I did use Claude to refer docs and API, though.

My elementary schooler did this with pictures of his stuffed animals last week. I helped a little bit, but most of it was Claude. He's never coded before.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#267

Post by seanmcdirmid »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #179
pipes wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or ask another model to tell you what the changes do.

And you could first read the thing to which you are replying. Don't tell me it was too long.

It was too long, but thankfully AI can summarize so it’s no excuse anymore.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#268

Post by GorbachevyChase »

dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv wrote: post #96

> in coding, L.L.M.s take away the drudgery and leave the human, soulful parts to you. I've always hated solving puzzles with my deterministic toolbox, learning along the way and producing something of value at the end. Glad that's finally over so I can focus on the soulful art of micromanaging chatbots with markdown instead.

You can always code by hand as a hobby.

If someone is paying you for your work results, that you find it interesting or fun is orthogonal. I get the sense from the commentary section here that there’s a perception that writing programs is an exceptional profession where developer happiness is an end unto itself, and everyone doing it deserves to be a millionaire in the process. It just comes across as child-like thinking. I don’t think many of us spend time, wondering if the welder enjoys the torch or if a cheaper shop weld is robbing the human welder of the satisfaction of a field weld. And we don’t shed so much ink wondering if digital spreadsheets are a moral good or not because perhaps they robbed the accountant of the satisfaction of holding a beautiful quill in hand dipped expertly in carefully selected ink. You’re lucky if you enjoy your job, I think most of us find a way to learn to enjoy our work or at least tolerate it.

I just wish all the moaning would end. Code generation is not new, and that the state of the art is now as good at translating high-level instructions into a program at least as well as the bottom 10% of programmers is a huge win for humanity. Work that could be trivially automated, but is not only because of the scarcity of programming knowledge is going to start disappearing. I think the value creation is going to be tremendous and I think it will take years for it to penetrate existing workflows and for us to recognize the value.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#269

Post by [deleted] »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #261
chmod775 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're anthropomorphizing. LLMs can't lie nor can they tell the truth. These concepts just don't apply to them. They also cannot tell you what they were "thinking" when they wrote a piece of code. If you "ask" them what they were thinking, you just get a plausible response, not the "intention" that may or may not have existed in some abstract form in some layer when the system selected tokens*. That information is go…

I’m not anthropomorphizing. I’ve been in many situation where the AI wrote some code some way and I had to ask why, it told me why and then we moved on to better solutions as needed. Better if it just wrote the code and its reasoning was still in context, but even if it’s not, it can usually reverse engineer what it wrote well enough. Then it’s a conversation about whether there is a better clearer way to do it, the…

[deleted]

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#270

Post by EagnaIonat »

AstroBen wrote: post #244
EagnaIonat wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All run of the mill software is gone or on borrowed time. Why pay a subscription for a product that I can get something Claude to build it for me. Before I was building tools, now I am building full applications in less time than I did before for tools. What will be around for a while is where you need an expert in the loop to drive the AI. For example enterprise applications. You simply can't hand that off to an AI…

Can we see the applications?

They are in work, so sorry no. But I can tell you started off

- Getting Claude to do the work

- creating in python tools

- Docker apps

- XCode

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