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I quit. The clankers won

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Re: I quit. The clankers won

#351

Post by simianwords »

BeetleB wrote: post #331
staminade wrote: post #95

Anti-AI articles like this seem to be the new "Doing my part to resist big tech: Why I'm switching back from Chrome to Firefox" genre that popped up on HN for a decade or so. If it makes you feel better, great, but don't kid yourself that your actions will make any difference whatsoever to the overall trajectory of AI adoption in IT or society.

While it's relevant to the particular submission, this type of comment is thrown around way too often. Me boycotting some company's product due to bad practices (slavery, etc). Response: You know your boycotting isn't going to change anything, right? Me: Yes, and ....? I'm not trying to change the world. I don't use FF as some form of protest. It's just a browser I like more. I'm not anti-AI the way much of HN is, bu…

I think much of current day neuroticism can be attributed to insincere comparisons of genuinely normal trade offs (like AI) to slavery in the past.

I think people are so afraid to do a hecking racism that they start comparing any normal thing to racism. I also think there’s an incentive here: by comparing to racism they potentially gain some social status points like - I’m more morally superior to you because I didn’t do a hecking racism like you.

But it can backfire, like with your comment. People are catching up to how ridiculous this comparison is

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#352

Post by code_for_monkey »

rglover wrote: post #287
code_for_monkey wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major, big big major, not just me either. How is it alarming beyond words? If I said "Im an emt and I just ask the AI everything" now that would be alarming beyond words.

Because it's a bank and apparently a big one.

do you think the other big banks arent doing this? Bank jobs are pretty broad, theres a ton of code getting written here.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#353

Post by code_for_monkey »

Eextra953 wrote: post #284
code_for_monkey wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major, big big major, not just me either. How is it alarming beyond words? If I said "Im an emt and I just ask the AI everything" now that would be alarming beyond words.

I have a buddy who is a cop and he tells me that they use AI to write reports and even to check if their reason for pulling someone over will hold up later. As annoying as it is in SW, people using AI outside of SW is much more alarming.

Now thats alarming!

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#354

Post by mikkupikku »

zozbot234 wrote: post #189
mikkupikku wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're fooling yourself. It's very easy to get demonstrably working results in an afternoon that would take weeks at least without coding agents. Demonstrably working , as in you can prove the code actually works by then putting it to use. I had a coding agent write an entire declarative GUI library for mpv userscripts, rendering all widgets with ASS subtitles, then proceeded to prove to my satisfaction that it does…

> Demonstrably working, as in you can prove the code actually works by then putting it to use. That's not how you prove that code works properly and isn't going to fail due to some obscure or unforessen corner case. You need actual proof that's driven by the code's overall structure. Humans do this at least informally when they code, AI's can't do that with any reliability, especially not for non-trivial projects (fo…

> That's not how you prove that code works properly

Yes it is. What do you expect, formal verification of a toy GUI library? Get real.

> and isn't going to fail due to some obscure or unforessen corner case.

That's called "a bug", they get fixed when they're found. This isn't aerospace software, failure is not only an option, it's an expected part of the process.

> You need actual proof that's driven by the code's overall structure.

I literally don't.

> Humans do this at least informally when they code, AI's can't do that with any reliability

Sounds like a borderline theological argument. Coding agents one-shot problems a lot more often than I ever did. Results are what matters, demonstrable results.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#355

Post by bigstrat2003 »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #117
Waterluvian wrote: post #44

Improving developer skills is not valuable to your company. They don't tell a customer how many person-hours of engineering talent improvement their contract is responsible for. They just want a solved problem. Some companies comprehend how short-sighted this is and invest in professional development in one way or another. They want better engineers so that their operations run better. It's an investment and arguably…

Maybe I’m just getting extremely lucky, but I don’t use AI to code at work and I’m still keeping up with my peers who are all Clauded up. I do a lot of green field network appliance design and implementation and have not felt really felt the pressure in that space. I do use Claude code at home maybe a couple hours a week, mostly for code base exploration. Still haven’t figured out how to fully vibe code: the generate…

Yeah, the AI productivity gains are a myth in my experience.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#356

Post by qsera »

WarmWash wrote: post #307
qsera wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>using synthetic training data yea, look up how it is done. It is exactly how a perpetual motion machine scam would project an appearance of working like using a generator to drive a motor, and the motor driving the generator..something that would obscure the fact that there is energy loss happening along the way....

I'm confused with the point you are trying to make, because they are using synthetic data, and the models are getting stronger. There is no "conservation of fallacy" law (bad data must conserve it's level of bad), so I'm struggling to connect the dots on the analogy, unless I ignore the fact that training on synthetic data works, is being used, and the models are getting better.

If the training that did not use synthetic data failed to capture some aspect of the information contained, then using data synthesized from the original data could help to capture it, thus it could result in the models getting better.

But that is because the synthetic data helped the model capture what was already there in the training data.

But after all such information has been extracted, then it would not be possible to use synthetic data or anything that is derived from the original data to create "new" information for training....

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#357

Post by sublinear »

If writing code was the only value your employer ever saw in you, it's for the best that you're forced to find a better job now. You would have eventually hit this point in your career anyway regardless of "AI".

The broader corporate world has never wanted code monkeys. They want "boring" reliability and pay a reasonable wage for it. On the other hand, they also won't tolerate contrarians who can't deliver, so maybe some of the fear from people posting this sort of thing really is justified.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#358

Post by SoftTalker »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #207
pfisherman wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to catch some heat, but what if the most important professional “developer skill” to learn or improve is how to effectively use coding agents? I saw something similar in ML when neural nets came around. The whole “stack moar layerz” thing is a meme, but it was a real sentiment about newer entrants into the field not learning anything about ML theory or best practices. As it turns out, neural nets “won”…

> what if the most important professional “developer skill” to learn or improve is how to effectively use coding agents? Well, it's not. There's a small moat around that right now because the UX is still being ironed out, but in a short while able to use coding agents will be the new able to use Excel . What will remain are the things that already differentiate a good developer from a bad one: - Able to review the ou…

None of those things will be necessary if progress continues as it has. The AI will do all of that. In fact it will generate software that uses already proven architectures (instead of inventing new ones for every project as human developers like to do). The testing has already been done: they work. There are no vulnerabilites. They are able to communicate with stakeholders (management) using their native language, not technobabble that human developers like to use, so they understand the business needs natively.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#359

Post by bobthepanda »

SoftTalker wrote: post #358
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what if the most important professional “developer skill” to learn or improve is how to effectively use coding agents? Well, it's not. There's a small moat around that right now because the UX is still being ironed out, but in a short while able to use coding agents will be the new able to use Excel . What will remain are the things that already differentiate a good developer from a bad one: - Able to review the ou…

None of those things will be necessary if progress continues as it has. The AI will do all of that. In fact it will generate software that uses already proven architectures (instead of inventing new ones for every project as human developers like to do). The testing has already been done: they work. There are no vulnerabilites. They are able to communicate with stakeholders (management) using their native language, n…

Humans are still in the loop as the final signoff responsible for liability, and to do an audit you’ll need someone who knows what they’re looking at.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#360

Post by mixmastamyk »

ndriscoll wrote: post #294
PurpleRamen wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For software engineering, the info you need is all online for free. Guided learning with instant feedback can be much more efficient than just consuming and tinkering on your own. Depends on the topic, the teacher and situation of course. The quality of available material is also all over the place, and not every topic has enough material, or anything at all.

For foundational knowledge, there's been high quality information for free from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc. out there for years. Just look there first. If you're beyond that, you're beyond the canon that you can "learn" and closer to needing to follow/participate in SOTA R&D. And if you need a more structured environment, that's why people go to school. Engineering jobs expect you're at the level of someone wh…

Often doesn’t matter. Fancy degree gets an interview in this job market. Not, “I read a bunch for free.”

The explosion of stacks means it’s hard to keep everything in your head at once. Lookup is routine but will sink you as a candidate.

Personally not great under the gun in adversarial interviews, so my extensive self learning is not well highlighted.

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