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A coder considers the waning days of the craft

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Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#351

Post by uticus »

ChatGPT is another layer. Human -> ChatGPT -> high level programming language -> lower level language / IL / assembly -> microcode -> circuit.

ChatGPT will not only survive, it will get bigger as long as all those layers exist. Unless web design is ready to move to assembly level instructions via RPC (ChatGPT can do assembly), the layers will stay, the complexity will stay, and people who get (and attempt to sell) value from recombining the puzzle pieces will stay.

The real point is not that ChatGPT is so good, it is that everything we program has already been done before. We humans just have trouble finding the pieces and gluing them together.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#352

Post by dimva »

summerisle wrote: post #340

Regardless of the quality of work done by an LLM, all of this AI hype has done an absolutely stellar job of clearly dividing the world of software development into two cohorts: those who care (to literally any degree, about process or product), and those who are only involved in it because it makes money. I have never quite liked the latter, because they are often difficult to work with, tend to lack any motivation t…

I've been programming since I was 7, and I've always viewed software development as a means to an end. The alternative seems crazy to me - coding without a purpose? Why on earth would you want to do that???

I've been very successful in my career. Things I've built: Bloomberg's domain-specific language and simulation engine for asset-backed securities, a custom database that can process 100,000s of writes / second and 10,000s of reads / second, and the robotics framework powering the Cruise self-driving car (RIP). I retired at the age of 33.

The domain you're working in is usually more important to fully understand than software engineering concepts, although I try to understand both. But I don't really care about software development for its own sake, and I welcome LLMs replacing the more annoying grunt-work parts of the job.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#353

Post by physicsguy »

kccqzy wrote: post #54
qup wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be amazing if anyone can request any basic program they want. Totally amazing if they can request any complex program. I cannot really envision a more empowering thing for the common person. It should really upset the balance of power. I think we'll see, soon, that we've only just started building with code. As a lifelong coder, I cannot wait to see the day when anyone can program anything.

How would this anyone be able to evaluate whether the program they requested is correct or not? Automatic program generation from human language really feels like the same problem with machine translation between human languages. I have an elementary understanding of French and so when I see a passage machine translated into French (regardless of software, Google Translate or DeepL) I cannot find any mistakes; I may…

We’re already using ChatGPT at work to do machine translation because it takes weeks to get back translations for the 10 languages our application supports.

It’s not a work of literature, it’s quite technical language and feedback we’ve had from customers is that it’s quite good. Before this, we wouldn’t have ever supported a language like Czech because the market isn’t big enough to justify the cost of translation, and Google Translate couldn’t handle large passages of text in the docs well enough.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#354

Post by thaumasiotes »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #201
silenced_trope wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the opposite. I feel like it is true. I very much will NO LONGER THINK about "simple" problems. My most recent thing is for a game I'm working on. I got a bunch of free sound FX from freesound.org, but they were AIFF format. I googled and found an online converter, then asked ChatGPT to use ffmpeg to write a script that goes through the directory converting the AIFFs to MP3s. In the past if I would have written s…

Every time I've tried to get it to do something reasonably simple like this, it returns plausible-sounding code that doesn't work. My last attempt to use it was to do with resolving circular calculations in Excel - I wanted some way of calculating the sum of a geometric series without having the series in actual cells. It kept recommending things that didn't work. I'm always amazed to hear of people who manage to get…

> I wanted some way of calculating the sum of a geometric series without having the series in actual cells.

There are simple explicit formulas for this.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#355

Post by mrtksn »

vasco wrote: post #347
mrtksn wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this stage, it's like a junior. It's pretty useful for the boilerplate or mundane stuff and even with implementation of algorithms from human description to computer code. It's also very good at converting a code from one language to another and getting stuff done when directed properly. I can definitely see how large impact it will have on the employment prospects of many. It's not replacing the engineers yet, bu…

In most real world systems increased efficiency leads to more demand, not less - barring physical constraints. Usually because we can now apply the _thing_ to way more complex scenarios. I predict way more software will be created per year and more complex software will exist and evolve at a faster pace. Once you make agriculture more efficient we can't really eat way more than today so we need less people working th…

Sure, the total demand increases but not the same kind of demand that it's replacing. We may end up seeing CSS specialists "rust belt" falling in poverty while theres substantial wealth build up among "prompt engineers" with good taste in aesthetics.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#356

Post by devmor »

I’m far more threatened by pennies-on-the-dollar third world contracting firms (and the businesses that abuse and manipulate hiring regulations to make use of them) than the immature novelty tool that is generative AI.

That being said, those firms are certainly making use of these tools - relying on their underpaid programming staff to clean up the output into something useable for the client.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#357

Post by epcoa »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #62
kragen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've fired a lot of negativity at people for treating the entropy monster as a trustworthy information source. it's a waste of my time to prove it wrong to their satisfaction. it's great at creativity and recall but shitty at accuracy, and sometimes accuracy is what counts most

I know it sucks now and I agree GPT-4 is not a replacement for coders. However the leap between GPT-3 and 4 indicates that by the 6 level, if improvements continue, it'll reach the scope and accuracy we expect from highly paid skilled humans. It's only a guess people make that AI improvements will stop at some arbitrary point, and since that point seems to always be a few steps down from the skill level of the person…

> However the leap between GPT-3 and 4 indicates that by the 6 level, if improvements continue, it'll reach the scope and accuracy we expect from highly paid skilled humans.

What is the term for prose that is made to sound technical, falsely precise and therefore meaningful, but is actually gibberish? It is escaping me. I suppose even GPT 3.5 could answer this question, but I am not worried about my job.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#358

Post by vlunkr »

summerisle wrote: post #340

Regardless of the quality of work done by an LLM, all of this AI hype has done an absolutely stellar job of clearly dividing the world of software development into two cohorts: those who care (to literally any degree, about process or product), and those who are only involved in it because it makes money. I have never quite liked the latter, because they are often difficult to work with, tend to lack any motivation t…

I’ve never met anyone in the latter category who made it through their code bootcamp.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#359

Post by asdff »

simonw wrote: post #176

> What I learned was that programming is not really about knowledge or skill but simply about patience, or maybe obsession. Programmers are people who can endure an endless parade of tedious obstacles. This captures the reason I'm optimistic about AI-assisted programming. The learning curve for getting started programming is horribly steep - and it's not because it's hard, it's because it's frustrating. You have to s…

Honestly I think its a step back. This is like saying google translate has made everyone fluent in Spanish. At the end of the day you still need to do some vetting and understanding how code works to effectively use chatgpt. the actual writing of the code was never the hard part of software development. If this thing is only speeding up developers by six months time, then thats kind of a waste of compute compared to just offering computer science classes in schools imo, plus you'd get a much stronger generation of engineers from the latter.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#360

Post by summerisle »

calibas wrote: post #203

Until there's actual general AI, we'll still need people that understand how things work on a fundamental level. You can use AI created code, but you still need someone to tie everything together. You're also going to want an experienced person to debug when something goes wrong. I think it's funny how terrified people are at the prospect of AI and machines doing most of the work for human beings. If used intelligent…

The first point seems to be generally accepted, though the second about "prosperity for everyone" presupposes some very drastic social changes. Automation tends to make a portion of people more prosperous at the cost of displacing some other portion. In order to realize prosperity for everyone, there must be minimal displacement and likely a robust social safety net to enable the displaced to recover and attain prosperity at some later time.
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