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Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

antirez.com

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Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#301

Post by leonidasv »

wmwragg wrote: post #32
RadiozRadioz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly for a different reason. I put my code out there, licensed under the GPL. It is now, through a layer of indirection, being used to construct products that are not under the GPL. That's not what I signed up for. I know the GPL didn't have a specific clause for AI, and the jury is still out on this specific case (how similar is it to a human doing the same thing?), but I like to imagine, had it been mad…

Yep, this is my take as well. It's not that open source is being stolen as such, as if you abide by an open source license you aren't stealing anything, it's that the licenses are being completely ignored for the profit of a few massive corporations.

What profit? All labs are taking massive losses and there's no clear path to profit for most of them yet.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#302

Post by seanmcdirmid »

phicoh wrote: post #198
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

The problem I see is not so much in how you generate the code. It is about how to maintain the code. If you check in the AI generated code unchanged then do you start changing that code by hand later? Do you trust that in the future AI can fix bugs in your code. Or do you clean up the AI generated code first?

Are you just generating code with the LLM? Ya, you are screwed. Are you generating documentation and tests and everything else to help to code live? Your options for maintenance go up. Now just replace “generate” with “maintain” and you are basically asking AI to make changes to a description at the top that then percolate to multiple artifacts being updated, only one happening to be the code itself, and the code updates multiple time as the AI checks tests and stuff.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#303

Post by convolvatron »

layer8 wrote: post #273
loubbrad wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer... Reminds me of this excerpt from Richard Hamming's book: > Finally, a more complete, and more useful, Symbolic Assembly Program (SAP) was devised—after more years than you are apt to believe during which most programmers continued their heroic absolute binary programming. At t…

I think this is beside the point, because the crucial change with LLMs is that you don’t use a formal language anymore to specify what you want, and get a deterministic output from that. You can’t reason with precision anymore about how what you specify maps to the result. That is the modal shift that removes the “fun” for a substantial portion of the developer workforce.

its not not about fun. when I'm going through the actual process of writing a function, I think about design issues. about how things are named, about how the errors from this function flow up. about how scheduling is happening. about how memory is managed. I compare the code to my ideal, and this is the time where I realize that my ideal is flawed or incomplete.

I think alot of us dont get everything specced out up front, we see how things fit, and adjust accordingly. most of the really good ideas I've had were not formulated in the abstract, but realizations had in the process of spelling things out.

I have a process, and it works for me. Different people certainly have other ones, and other goals. But maybe stop telling me that instead of interacting with the compiler directly its absolutely necessary that instead I describe what I want to a well meaning idiot, and patiently correct them, even though they are going to forget everything I just said in a moment.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#304

Post by proddev123 »

simonw wrote: post #173
wasmainiac wrote: post #168

These personal blogs are starting to feel like Linkdin Lunatic posts, kinda similar. to the optimised floor sweeping blog, “I am excited to provide shareholder value, at minimum wage”

What does it tell you that programmers with the credibility of antirez - and who do not have an AI product to sell you - are writing things like this even when they know a lot of people aren't going to like reading them?

[dead]

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#305

Post by AndrewKemendo »

embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

Dead on and well said

Almost more importantly is: the people who pay you to build software, don’t care if you type or enjoy it, they pay you for an output of working software

Literally nothing is stopping people from writing assembly in their free time for fun

But the number of people who are getting paid to write assembly is probably less than 1000

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#306

Post by aleph_minus_one »

jt2190 wrote: post #279
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

> … not all programmers program for the same reason, for some of us, LLMs helps a lot, and makes things even more fun. For others, LLMs remove the core part of what makes programming fun for them. Hence we get this constant back and forth of "Can't believe others can work like this!" vs "I can't believe others aren't working like this!", but both sides seems to completely miss the other side. Unfortunately the job ma…

> Unfortunately the job market does not demand both types of programmer equally: Those who drive LLMs to deliver more/better/faster/cheaper are in far greater demand right now.

I doubt that the LLM drivers deliver something better; quite the opposite. But I guess managers will only realize this when it's too late: and of course they won't take any responsibility for this.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#307

Post by zahlman »

loubbrad wrote: post #149
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer... Reminds me of this excerpt from Richard Hamming's book: > Finally, a more complete, and more useful, Symbolic Assembly Program (SAP) was devised—after more years than you are apt to believe during which most programmers continued their heroic absolute binary programming. At t…

I don't know what book you're talking about, but it seems that you intend to compare the switch to an AI-based workflow to using a higher-level language. I don't think that's valid at all. Nobody using Python for any ordinary purpose feels compelled to examine the resulting bytecode, for example, but a responsible programmer needs to keep tabs on what Claude comes up with, configure a dev environment that organizes the changes into a separate branch (as if Claude were a separate human member of a team) etc. Communication in natural language is fundamentally different from writing code; if it weren't, we'd be in a world with far more abundant documentation. (After all, that should be easier to write than a prompt, since you already have seen the system that the text will describe.)

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#308

Post by yobbo »

phtrivier wrote: post #22

How would we measure the effects of AI coding tool taking over manual coding ? Would we see an increase in the number of GitHub projects ? In the number of stars (given the ai is so good) ? In the number of start up ipos (surely if all your engineers are 1000x engineers thanks to Claude code, we'll have plenty of googles and Amazons to invest in) ? In the price of software (if I can just vibe code everything, than a…

> How would we measure the effects of AI coding tool taking over manual coding ?

Falling salaries?

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#309

Post by habinero »

ben_w wrote: post #227
martin-t wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> programmer who actually do like the actual typing It's not about the typing, it's about the understanding. LLM coding is like reading a math textbook without trying to solve any of the problems. You get an overview, you get a sense of what it's about and most importantly you get a false sense of understanding. But if you try to actually solve the problems, you engage completely different parts of your brain. It's a…

> LLM coding is like reading a math textbook without trying to solve any of the problems. You get an overview, you get a sense of what it's about and most importantly you get a false sense of understanding. Can be, but… well, the analogy can go wrong both ways. This is what Brilliant.org and Duolingo sell themselves on: solve problems to learn. Before I moved to Berlin in 2018, I had turned the whole Duolingo German…

Yeah, there's a big difference between edutainment like Brilliant and Duolingo and actually studying a topic.

I'm not trying to be snobbish here, it's completely fine to enjoy those sorts of products (I consume a lot of pop science, which I put in the same category) but you gotta actually get your hands dirty and do the work.

It's also fine to not want to do that -- I love to doodle and have a reasonable eye for drawing, but to get really good at it, I'd have to practice a lot and develop better technique and skills and make a lot of shitty art and ehhhh. I don't want it badly enough.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#310

Post by zahlman »

embedding-shape wrote: post #207
phicoh wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see is not so much in how you generate the code. It is about how to maintain the code. If you check in the AI generated code unchanged then do you start changing that code by hand later? Do you trust that in the future AI can fix bugs in your code. Or do you clean up the AI generated code first?

Depends on what you do. When I'm using LLMs to generate code for projects I need to maintain (basically, everything non-throw-away-once-used), I treat it as any other code I'd write, tightly controlled with a focus on simplicity and well-thought out abstractions, and automated testing that verify what needs to be working. Nothing gets "merged" into the code without extensive review, and me understanding the full scop…

... And with this level of quality control, is it still faster than writing it yourself?
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