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Now might be the best time to learn software development

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Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#351

Post by aeonik »

sanderjd wrote: post #106
veqq wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, have you heard of datalog or Prolog? Declarative programming really does work. SQL was just... Botched.

I think SQL is better than datalog. I suspect this is one of those opinions that may be somewhat outside consensus on a forum like HN, but is strongly within the consensus more broadly.

I like both, they excel at different things.

SQL is pretty horrifying when you start getting tree structures or recursive structures. While Datalog handles those like a champ.

SQL is really nice for columnar data, and it's well supported almost everywhere.

Though Datalog isn't half bad at columnar data either.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#352

Post by somenameforme »

sokoloff wrote: post #348
somenameforme wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It doesn't. It simply makes clear that the reason is not 'value', as somebody might interpret it, but scarcity. If there were 100 million competent software engineers in the US, the value they add to companies wouldn't change, but their labor costs would - quite dramatically. In such a scenario coding and flipping burgers would offer relatively comparable wages.

Supply:demand makes the reason for this change completely clear, vague notions of poorly (and often circularly) defined 'value' do not.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#354

Post by pier25 »

bondarchuk wrote: post #346
pier25 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're missing the point. I'm not talking about the actual content but the intentions of creating said content.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#355

Post by sarchertech »

flashgordon wrote: post #323
sarchertech wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve had many improvements that increased productivity at least as much as current LLMs, and I don’t think any of them ever temporarily caused downsizing in the total number of programmers.

Is it possible that we dont remember them precisely because they are temporary (atleast in the grand scheme of things)?

It think the only way that’s hiding in the data is if these downturns happen to always coincide with large economic downturns in general.

Or if they are so temporary that they last less than a year.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#356

Post by bondarchuk »

pier25 wrote: post #354
bondarchuk wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Buzz Lightyear actually exists?

You're missing the point. I'm not talking about the actual content but the intentions of creating said content.

I get the point, I just disagree with it.. If you think an AI is "pretending" or has "intentions" then you are anthropomorphizing it more strongly than people who are emotionally moved by chatting with an AI while knowing that it's a chatbot.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#357

Post by pier25 »

bondarchuk wrote: post #356
pier25 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. I'm not talking about the actual content but the intentions of creating said content.

I get the point, I just disagree with it.. If you think an AI is "pretending" or has "intentions" then you are anthropomorphizing it more strongly than people who are emotionally moved by chatting with an AI while knowing that it's a chatbot.

I never said AI itself is pretending. Quite the contrary.

But AI companies are certainly trying to create the illusion that chatbots are behaving like humans. If someone is being fooled by this then these people are the ones anthropomorphizing it.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#358

Post by dakiol »

somenameforme wrote: post #277
dakiol wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we assume that Prompt Engineering is going to pay less money? As usual, what one brings to the company is value, and if AI-generated code needs to be prompted first and reviewed later, I don’t see how prompters in the future could earn less than software engineers now. Prompt engineering is like singing: sure thing everyone can physically sing… now whether it’s pleasant listening to them is another topic.

People aren't paid by value brought to companies, they're paid by the scarcity of their skill. Your analog is actually perfect for this. There's a reason saying you want to be a professional singer is generally something only a child would say. It's about as reliable a career as winning the lottery, simply because everybody can sing, lots of them quite decently. And so singer, as a career, mostly isn't a thing - it's…

> There's going to be a way larger pool of people capable of 'prompt engineering' which is going to send wages proportionally way down.

My wife knows how to prompt chatgpt, but she wouldn't be able to create an app just by putting together what the llm throws at her. Same could be said about my junior engineer colleague; he knows way more than my wife, sure, but he doesn't know what he doesn't know, and it would take a lot of resources and effort for him to put together a distributed system just by following what an llm throws at him.

So, I see the pool of potential prompters just as the pool of potential software engineers: some are good, some are bad, there will be scarcity of the good ones (as in any other profession), and so wages don't necessarily have to go down.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#359

Post by sanderjd »

aeonik wrote: post #351
sanderjd wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think SQL is better than datalog. I suspect this is one of those opinions that may be somewhat outside consensus on a forum like HN, but is strongly within the consensus more broadly.

I like both, they excel at different things. SQL is pretty horrifying when you start getting tree structures or recursive structures. While Datalog handles those like a champ. SQL is really nice for columnar data, and it's well supported almost everywhere. Though Datalog isn't half bad at columnar data either.

Yeah. I think you and I have the same opinions about this :)

I like SQL more when working with tabular data (especially for analytical use cases), but that has (thus far) dominated the kinds of work I've done.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#360

Post by eru »

lipowitz wrote: post #149
eru wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but automating these away means that food becomes cheaper. We increase the overall total prosperity with that automation.

Increasing total prosperity is the wrong goal if distribution is completely unregulated. Investor and real estate owning classes like the 1% get more, the salaries can trend down because food costs are down, in a deflation spiral the youth are perpetual dependents and/or debtors who can't possibly earn enough over day to day costs given global competition includes people with no debts or debts from an economy that wa…

When and where has that ever happened?

Btw, most countries have taxes and welfare anyway.

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