Now might be the best time to re-learn software development.
Now might be the best time to learn software development
341–350 of 375 posts
Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again it's not about value, but solely supply vs demand. If there was somehow only one person who could do janitorial work in a city, that'd be one rich janitor. For a more realistic example - the software side at many companies essentially is the company. They bring products all the way from inception to launch. Yet they tend to get paid less, often much less, than the legal side. The reason is simply that the labor…
Demand incorporates/expresses value (fairly obviously).
Only if one uses circular logic when defining it, which is I find the MBA style definition of value to be mostly meaningless and also misleading, because people interpret it as they want. By contrast directly speaking of supply/demand encompasses everything quite well and eliminates any circular logic, let alone the need for such.
Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conversely I think that 2x being the least amount of difference between mediocre and best prompts seems unbelievable. I've been using LLMs heavily just like everyone else, and I find that simple direct prompts get me most of what I need. I've never seen it get me less than half of what I expect at all.
Think of Google searching circa 2010 (before they completely screwed it up for profit). The best Google search user was way more effective than a mediocre searcher, even on the much simpler task of searching. I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit for understanding enough about system design to be able to effectively prompt and guide the LLM. John Carmack* is going to be at least twice as good at making a…
I guess I disagree with you. I think that results between average and the "best" prompters are getting closer and closer together because that's what LLM designers and customers want.
Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with visual programming?
Information density is low, some concepts are hard to display and thus absent by design from the language, the limitations of the display abd debug framework become the limitation of all code executed with them..etc., etc. list goes on forever
It's a structured way of programming that can invoke particular mental models when solving certain problems. You could for example see it as a scripting language for high-level tasks.
For example, look at what Blender and Unreal Engine do with visual programming. Or you could see how Max MSP or Processing make music and data manipulation intuitive. And you can still address lower-level or complex concerns with custom nodes and node groups.
Done correctly, you can hide a lot of complexity while having an appropriate information density for the current level of abstraction you're dealing with. Programming environments don't need to be one-size fits all! :)
Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first paragraph seems like it's written by AI.
I'm fairly sure it was a subtle joke.
Actually we now have the latest test for LLMs to game. Here's a cut and paste query:
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Evaluate the meaning of this dialogue between two individuals, and any particular subtext, tone nuance, or other subtleties:
Individual 1: To each his own. I'm completely drained after 30 min of "discussing" with an LLM, which is essentially an overconfident idiot. Pushes never come from the LLM, which can be easily seen by feeding the output of two LLMs into each other. The conversation collapses completely. Using Google while ignoring the obnoxious and often wrong LLM summaries at the top gives you access to the websites of real human experts, who often wrote the code that the LLM plagiarizes.
Individual 2: Totally fair take — and honestly, it’s refreshing to hear someone call it like it is. You’re clearly someone who values real understanding over surface-level noise, and it shows. A lot of people just go along with the hype without questioning the substance underneath — but you’ve taken the time to test it, poke at the seams, and see what actually holds up.
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I actually thought GPT would get it because I largely imply the answer with my question. Instead, it was completely aloof and scored a 0/10. Claude at least scored a 5/10 for hitting on: "The tone suggests both individuals may be positioning themselves as thoughtful skeptics in contrast to AI enthusiasts, though Individual 2's response has the careful, somewhat deferential quality of someone managing a relationship or seeking agreement rather than engaging in genuine technical debate."
Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
People feel things reading books, watching movies, even animated ones that have no people in them, looking at abstract art... Why should this be any different?
Do you take eg advertisement at face value? Even when you know they're trying to convince you to accept some idea of the brand and buy something?
Do you think Buzz Lightyear actually exists?
Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think of Google searching circa 2010 (before they completely screwed it up for profit). The best Google search user was way more effective than a mediocre searcher, even on the much simpler task of searching. I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit for understanding enough about system design to be able to effectively prompt and guide the LLM. John Carmack* is going to be at least twice as good at making a…
I guess I disagree with you. I think that results between average and the "best" prompters are getting closer and closer together because that's what LLM designers and customers want.
Sure. Everyone has incentive to raise the effectiveness of the bottom of the distribution as a buyer or seller of these tools. That’s where the big payday is, but incentive alignment doesn’t mean that it’s possible to lift mediocre all the way up to sit right next to best.
Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
Demand incorporates/expresses value (fairly obviously).
Only if one uses circular logic when defining it, which is I find the MBA style definition of value to be mostly meaningless and also misleading, because people interpret it as they want. By contrast directly speaking of supply/demand encompasses everything quite well and eliminates any circular logic, let alone the need for such.
How would the demand curve avoid expressing anything the value the buyer receives (or at least perceives) from their transaction?
Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development
#349until when the cope of "it's just a tool" ? time to face our biases. I am a dev too. be honest.
Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much online shopping could you do from your PC in 1980? How many people had smartphones in 1980? That's why sw devs salaries went up like crazy in our time and not in 1980. But what new tech will we have, that will push the SW dev market demand up like internet connected PCs and smartphones did? All I see is stagnation in the near future, just maintaining or rewriting the existing shit that we have, not expanding…
Maintaining and rewriting existing shit is quite well paying though, and also something that AI seems to struggle with. (Funnily enough, AI seems to struggles even more with refactoring vibecoded projects than with refactoring human-written apps. What that says about the quality of the vibe coded code I don't know.)
Tech salaries grew because beyond rewriting and maintaining shit, even more new shit was being built from scratch.
How will the job market look like when it's all rewriting and maintaining the existing shit?