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Re: You Are Here

#31

Post by wiseowise »

mohsen1 wrote: post #6

I am thinking about this a lot right now. Pretty existential stuff. I think builders are gonna be fine. The type of programmer were people would put up with just because they could really go in their cave for a few days and come out with a bug fix that nobody else on the team could figure out is going to have a hard time. Interestingly AI coding is really good at that sort of thing and less good at fully grasping use…

> The type of programmer were people would put up with just because they could really go in their cave for a few days and come out with a bug fix that nobody else on the team could figure out is going to have a hard time.

Amen. It was a good time while it lasted.

Re: You Are Here

#32

Post by autoexec »

heliumtera wrote: post #23
stephenlf wrote: post #3

> The cost of turning written business logic into code has dropped to zero Didn’t realize this was science fiction.

But it is true, the cost is effectively zero. There will be, for a long time, free models available and any one of them will give you code back, always! They never refuse. Worst case scenario the good models ask for clarification. The cost for producing code is zero and code producers are in a really bad spot.

> The cost for producing code is zero

Zero as long as your time is worth nothing, and bad code and security issues cost you nothing maybe.

"Getting code" has always been dead simple and cheap. Getting actually good code that works and doesn't turn into a problem for you down the road is the expensive part

Re: You Are Here

#33

Post by chasd00 »

autoexec wrote: post #32
heliumtera wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is true, the cost is effectively zero. There will be, for a long time, free models available and any one of them will give you code back, always! They never refuse. Worst case scenario the good models ask for clarification. The cost for producing code is zero and code producers are in a really bad spot.

> The cost for producing code is zero Zero as long as your time is worth nothing, and bad code and security issues cost you nothing maybe. "Getting code" has always been dead simple and cheap. Getting actually good code that works and doesn't turn into a problem for you down the road is the expensive part

> Zero as long as your time is worth nothing

i can't remember who said it but a long time ago i remember reading "Linux is free if your time is worthless". Now we all use Linux one way or the other.

Re: You Are Here

#34

Post by dt3ft »

heliumtera wrote: post #23
stephenlf wrote: post #3

> The cost of turning written business logic into code has dropped to zero Didn’t realize this was science fiction.

But it is true, the cost is effectively zero. There will be, for a long time, free models available and any one of them will give you code back, always! They never refuse. Worst case scenario the good models ask for clarification. The cost for producing code is zero and code producers are in a really bad spot.

I beg to differ. Let's say you're right. Code producers should turn to agriculture and let their managers and product owners prompt AI to produce code. How about code maintainers? Ever heard the mantra "You build it, you run it"? Lets say that AI can build it. Can it run it though? All alone, safely, securely and reliably? No. It can't. We can keep dreaming though, and when will AI code production services turn profitable? Is there a single one which turned profitable?

Re: You Are Here

#35

Post by jongjong »

I predict it's going to be a bloodbath. People who worked for Big Tech have no idea what's coming. Some of us software engineers who have been outside have been experiencing issues for almost a decade. The industry is extremely anti-competitive.

Whatever you produce, nobody is going to use unless you produce it under the banner of Big Tech. There are no real opportunities for real founders.

The problem is spreading beyond software. The other day, I found out there is a billion dollar company whose main product is a sponge... Yes, a sponge, for cleaning. We're fast moving towards a communist-like centrally planned economy, but with a facade of meritocracy where there is only one product of each kind and no room for competition.

This feeling of doom that software engineers started to feel after LLMs is how I was feeling 5 years earlier. People are confused because they think the problem is that AI is automating them but reality is that our problems arise from a deeper systemic issue at the core of our economic system. AI is just a convenient cover story, it's not the reason why we are doomed. Once people accept that we can start to work towards a political solution like UBI or better...

We've reached the conclusion of Goodhart's Law "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" - Our economic system has been so heavily monitored and controlled in every aspect that is has begun to fail in every aspect. Somebody has managed to profit from every blindspot, every exploit exposed by the measurement and control apparatus. Everything is getting qualitatively worse in every way that is not explicitly measured and the measurement apparatus is becoming increasingly unreliable... Most problems we're experiencing are what people experienced during the fall of communism except filter bubbles are making us completely blind to the experience of other people.

I think if we don't address the root causes, things will get worse for everyone. People's problems will get bigger, become highly personalized, pervasive, inexplicable, unrelatable. Everyone will waste their energy trying to resolve their own experience of the symptoms but the root causes would remain.

Re: You Are Here

#36

Post by falloutx »

mohsen1 wrote: post #6

I am thinking about this a lot right now. Pretty existential stuff. I think builders are gonna be fine. The type of programmer were people would put up with just because they could really go in their cave for a few days and come out with a bug fix that nobody else on the team could figure out is going to have a hard time. Interestingly AI coding is really good at that sort of thing and less good at fully grasping use…

meetings hardly reach anywhere. most of the details are eventually figured out by developers when interacting with the code. If all ideas from PMs are implemented in a software, it would eventually turn into bloatware before even reaching MVP stage.

Re: You Are Here

#37

Post by bopbopbop7 »

heliumtera wrote: post #23
stephenlf wrote: post #3

> The cost of turning written business logic into code has dropped to zero Didn’t realize this was science fiction.

But it is true, the cost is effectively zero. There will be, for a long time, free models available and any one of them will give you code back, always! They never refuse. Worst case scenario the good models ask for clarification. The cost for producing code is zero and code producers are in a really bad spot.

Because who cares about correct and compilable code, any code will do!

Re: You Are Here

#38

Post by falloutx »

YZF wrote: post #27
ossa-ma wrote: post #2

With all due respect to the author, this is a lot of words for not much substance. Rehashing the same thoughts everyone already thinks but not being bold enough to make a concrete prediction. This is the time for bold predictions, you’ve just told us we’re in a crucible moment yet you end the article passively….

Predictions - Small companies using AI are going to kick the sh*t out of large companies that are slow to adapt. - LLMs will penetrate more areas of our lives. Closer to the STTNG computer. They will be agents in the real life sense and possibly in the physical world as well (robots). - ASICs will eat nVidia's lunch. - We will see an explosion of software and we will also see more jobs for people who are able to main…

> Small companies using AI are going to kick the sh*t out of large companies that are slow to adapt.

Big companies are sales machines and their products have been terrible for ages. Microsoft enjoys the top spot in software sales only due to their sales staff pushing impossible deals every year.

Re: You Are Here

#39

Post by heliumtera »

falloutx wrote: post #30

> The cost of turning written business logic into code has dropped to zero. Or, at best, near-zero. Zero if you dont consider Anthropic's API pricing, the prompter's hourly rate and verification bottleneck.

Everybody offers a generous free tier.

Verification? LoL, lmao even. Your vibes are low.

If you're a professional code producer, you shit out code as fast as possible. Don't give anyone time to analyze the disgusting pile of shit you generated, just shit out code as fast as you can and call it a win! Who would prove you wrong?

Would someone waste their biological precious resources reviewing machine generated slop, when your cadence is super human? Would someone use the same machine you used to evaluate itself? Lol

Re: You Are Here

#40

Post by falloutx »

jdjdndbdhsjsb wrote: post #4
ossa-ma wrote: post #2

With all due respect to the author, this is a lot of words for not much substance. Rehashing the same thoughts everyone already thinks but not being bold enough to make a concrete prediction. This is the time for bold predictions, you’ve just told us we’re in a crucible moment yet you end the article passively….

Here is my bold prediction: 2026 is the year where companies start the lay offs. 2026 is the year where we all realise that we can be our own company and build the stuff in our dreams rather than the mundane crap we do at work. Honestly I am optimistic about computing in general. Llms will open things up for novices and experts alike. We can move into I the fields where we can use our brain power... But all we need i…

Except it started in 2023, we are in the middle of layoff waves.
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