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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

#361

Post by eru »

bluGill wrote: post #234
eru wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#Coal_butter fascinating. > Strictly speaking, farming is where all our livelihoods come from, in the greatest part. We're all living off the surplus value of food production. I don't think farming is special here, because food isn't special. You could make exactly the same argument for water (or even air) instead of food, and all of a sudden all our livelihoods w…

Except in a few places drinkable water is in such abundance that nobody every spent significant effort trying to get it. Likewise for air, few people have ever spent much effort getting air to breathe - even in the worst polluted areas bottled air was reserved for airplanes, hospitals (and a few people with medical conditions), and scuba divers.

And food is now in such abundance (at least in the western world) that we don't spend much effort on it, either. Or at least, if you only care about energy and nutrition, you can get it for really cheap. If you want something tastier, you can pay more. Exactly the same with drinks.

You could argue that water being so cheap is exactly what you'd expect when the surplus value of water production is sky-high: people only spend a fraction of their income on both food and water production, exactly because the surplus is so high.

Thus if water isn't the basis for all our livelihoods, neither is food production these days.

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

#362

Post by eru »

tpm wrote: post #139
eru wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the problem in ORM is the O. Objection-orientation is just a worse way to organise your data and logic than relational algebra. It's just a shame that many languages don't support relational algebra well. We had relations as a datatype and all the relevant operations over them (like join) in a project I was working on. It was great! Very useful for expressing business logic.

The problem in ORM is the M, the mapping is always lossy and a leaky abstraction.

Yes. So if you have the same thing in both the database and in your program, you don't need no mapping.

And I suggest that having relations in both places is the way to go.

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

#363

Post by tpm »

eru wrote: post #362
tpm wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem in ORM is the M, the mapping is always lossy and a leaky abstraction.

Yes. So if you have the same thing in both the database and in your program, you don't need no mapping. And I suggest that having relations in both places is the way to go.

It's not enough, there is no way to represent some db stuff (not relational, more impl oriented) or some special queries in the program with an ORM. No ORM I have seen comes close to 100% of what you could do with the DB. So still the best way to get closest to the db is using raw queries in the program, but of course that does not scale with more tables, does not scale with more db engines, and does not scale with juniors taking over your codebase and not understanding it.

So to conclude, objection-orientation is fine and relational is fine too, the issue is that the optimal way to translate between them does not scale.

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

#364

Post by somenameforme »

dakiol wrote: post #358
somenameforme wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course, but again the issue is the number of people. Software development, as it currently is, has huge barriers to entry. Working in code is something that many people simply cannot do, and of those that can - a huge chunk will find it intolerable as an occupation. 'Prompt engineering' will have far smaller barriers to entry which will, even all other things being equal, significantly increase the labor pool.

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

#365

Post by collingreen »

idiotsecant wrote: post #327
collingreen wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No true Scotsman would struggle with sql

Are you saying that expecting software developers to know how to use SQL is a no true scotsman fallacy? What's next? Do we stop expecting people to know how FOR loops work?

Do you think that's where I'm going with that? Expectations for people and for loops?

> 'real' engineers can use SQL just fine.

To be very explicit instead of snarky about my point: I think it is both factually incorrect and unnecessary gatekeeping to say real engineers know sql and imply not knowing sql marks someone as not a real engineer, hence the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

I probably agree with most of your opinions here within the context of the thread - I think good engineers can learn sql and other tools as necessary. I don't, however, think experience with any particular technology is a valid bar for a good or bad engineer at this point and I'm happy to speak against that when I see it.

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

#366

Post by bondarchuk »

pier25 wrote: post #357
bondarchuk wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can be emotionally affected without being fooled. Just like with other types of art. Indeed there is a lot of capital and marketing behind it, but that's true of other types of art too (like, idk, American war movies). You said "I'm always amazed that people feel anything when chatting with an AI bot", I am just trying to take away your amazement by pointing out the similarity with other cases in which people feel things due to art or entertainment.

By the way, you also said "Don't people realize it's a machine "pretending" to be human?" so I don't think it's true that as you now say "I never said AI itself is pretending".

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

#367

Post by sokoloff »

somenameforme wrote: post #352
sokoloff wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 complete…

Scarcity is reflected in the supply curve.

Value in the demand curve.

Where they intersect gives the market price.

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

#368

Post by Anamon »

jimbokun wrote: post #238
shinedog wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hit this so hard it was impossible not to recognize. In every sense there is too much "ok" shit (in every media realm) that we cannot help but miss amazing stuff. Knowing that I don't have enough time for all the incredible things that technology has enabled crushes me.

All of the old, great classic movies are available for streaming somewhere. I still find great value in the TCM cable channel. Simply because if I tune in at a random time, it's likely to be showing an excellent old film I either never heard of or never got around to watching. The service they are offering is curation, which has a lot of value in an age of infinite content flooding our attention constantly.

TCM is also my go-to example for why linear TV still has value in the age of streaming. You not only get curation and exposure to stuff you didn't know about, but also knowledgeable people putting it in context and explaining backgrounds to you. Such a wonderful channel.

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

#369

Post by ak-47 »

dotancohen wrote: post #148
michaelteter wrote: post #71

Having experienced several overhyped corporate knee-jerk (and further press-amplified) silver bullets, I expect this will play out about as well as the previous ones. And by that, I mean corps will make poor decisions that will be negative for thought workers while never really threatening executive compensation. I see this latest one somewhat like TFA author: this is a HUGE opportunity for intelligent, motivated bui…

I've already started. I've been recording to myself voice notes for years. Until now they've seemingly been near-read-only. The friction for recording them is often low (in settings where I can speak freely) but getting the information out of them has been difficult. I'm now writing software to help me quickly get information out of the voice notes. So they'll be useful to me too, not just to future historians who ha…

For 3 years I've talked to a Philips VoiceTracer & bundled audio for a 1-time listen 3 months later.

On occasion I've used Otter or Whisper with some success.

Please let me know if you open source any of your work.

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

#370

Post by dotancohen »

ak-47 wrote: post #369
dotancohen wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've already started. I've been recording to myself voice notes for years. Until now they've seemingly been near-read-only. The friction for recording them is often low (in settings where I can speak freely) but getting the information out of them has been difficult. I'm now writing software to help me quickly get information out of the voice notes. So they'll be useful to me too, not just to future historians who ha…

For 3 years I've talked to a Philips VoiceTracer & bundled audio for a 1-time listen 3 months later. On occasion I've used Otter or Whisper with some success. Please let me know if you open source any of your work.

I'd love to hear about your workflow.

Do you transfer the files to your computer? Do you ever/often listen on the VoiceTracker? How do others respond to you making recordings? Do you organise the recording files into folders? Use filesystem tags (KDE Dolphin, etc) or symlinks? Ever have files on the computer that you needed when you're out (with the phone)?

How well do Otter and Whisper transcribe? Do you edit the transcriptions? How do you store the transcriptions? Do you ever search them? Do you store additional notes alongside the transcriptions and audio files?

Do you ever bookmark specific files? Specific timestamps in files? How long is your typical voice recording? How long are the 98th percentile long ones? How many recordings do you produce on average (per day, week, month)? Do you ever erase recordings?

What type of recordings? Reminders of things that are time sensitive (e.g. appointment dates)? Things for long-term archival (e.g. records of automotive maintenance)? Use it to assist in habit changing (recording diet) or mental health?

Yes, I intend to place the project on GitHub, probably GPL. Though I might consider MIT, I would actually love if somebody took off with it and made a business. I'd be a customer!

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