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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

#391

Post by panta »

agotterer wrote: post #253
fisherjeff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I think we are quite a ways out from a tool being able to devise a solution to a complex high-level problem without online precedent, which is where I find the most satisfaction anyway. LLMs in particular can be a very fast, surprisingly decent (but, as you mention, very fallible) replacement for Stack Overflow, and, as such, a very good complement to a programmer's skills – seems to me like a net positive at l…

Spreadsheets didn’t replace accountants, however, it made them more efficient. I don’t personally believe AI will replace software engineers anytime soon, but it’s already making us more efficient. Just as Excel experience is required to crunch numbers, I suspect AI experience will be required to write code. I use chat-gpt every day for programming and there are times where it’s spot on and more times where it’s blat…

> But I’ve learned that whatever the output is requires as much scrutiny as a good code review. I fear there’s a lot of copy and pasting of wrong answers out there. The good news is that for now they will need real engineers to come in and clean up the mess.

isn't it sad that real engineers are going to work as cleaners for AI output? And doing this they are in fact training the next generation to be more able to replace real engineers... We are trading our future income for some minor (and questionable) development speed today.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#393

Post by Xelynega »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #68
cglan wrote: post #6

Maybe I’m in the minority. I’m definitely extremely impressed with GPT4, but coding to me was never really the point of software development. While GPT4 is incredible, it fails OFTEN. And it fails in ways that aren’t very clear. And it fails harder when there’s clearly not enough training resources on the subject matter. But even hypothetically if it was 20x better, wouldn’t that be a good thing? There’s so much of t…

If I’m doing something thousands of people have coded before me then yes please hold my hand while I write this CSV import. When I’m writing business logic unique to this specific domain then please stop mumbling bs at me.

If thousands of people have done it before you than why isn't it abstracted to the point that it's just as easy to tell an LLM to do it as it is to do it yourself?

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#394

Post by teschmitt »

cglan wrote: post #6

Maybe I’m in the minority. I’m definitely extremely impressed with GPT4, but coding to me was never really the point of software development. While GPT4 is incredible, it fails OFTEN. And it fails in ways that aren’t very clear. And it fails harder when there’s clearly not enough training resources on the subject matter. But even hypothetically if it was 20x better, wouldn’t that be a good thing? There’s so much of t…

Although you are absolutely right, I think the point the author is trying to make is more melancholic. He's grieving about a loss of significance of the craft he has devoted so much of his life to. He's imagining software engineers becoming nothing more than a relic, like elevator operators or blacksmiths.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#395

Post by happytiger »

Do people seriously consider this the waning days of the craft? I don’t understand that.

My view is that I am about to enter the quantum productivity period of coding.

I am incredibly excited about AI assistance on my coding tasks, because it improves not only what I’m writing, but also helps me to learn as I go. I have never had a better time writing software than I have in the last year.

I’ve been writing software for a few decades. But now I’m able to overcome places where I get stuck and have almost a coach available to help me understand the choices I’m making and make suggestions constantly. And not just wandering over to a fellow cuders desk to ask them about a problem I am facing, but actually give me some productive solutions that are actually inspirational to the outcome.

It’s amazing.

So why do people think that coding is coming to some kind of end? I don’t see any evidence that artificial intelligence coding assistants are about to replace coders, unless you… suck badly at building things, so what are people getting on about?

I feel like somebody came along and said, “foundations are now free, but you still get to build a house. But the foundations are free.”

I still have to build a house, and I get to build an entire house and architect it and design it and create it and socialize it and support it and advocate for it and explain it to people who don’t understand it but… I don’t have to build a foundation anymore so it’s easier.

Shoot me down. I’m not relating here at all.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#396

Post by Xelynega »

physicsguy wrote: post #353
kccqzy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I chatgpt translated this:

"Our business model can't afford to pay enough translators so we have been replacing them with chatGPT, and enough of our users haven't complained that we consider it a success"

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#397

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

skepticATX wrote: post #82

Am I the only one becoming less impressed by LLMs as time passes? I will admit, when Copilot first became a thing in 2021, I had my own “I’m about to become obsolete” moment. However, it’s become clear to me, both through my own experience and through research that has been conducted, that modern LLMs are fundamentally flawed and are not on the path to general intelligence. We are stuck with ancient (in AI terms) tec…

Yes. Much of the "wow factor" of generative AI is simple sleight of hand. Humans are trained to see patterns where there are none, and ignore anything that doesn't fit our preconceived notions of order. Often AI is just a complicated Clever Hans effect.

For a real example: once you start analyzing an AI image with a critical mind, you see that most of the image violates basic rules of composition, perspective and anatomy. The art is frankly quite trash, and once you see it it is hard to unsee.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#398

Post by ReptileMan »

Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #71
alexmuro wrote: post #10

I don't feel like we are in the waning days of the craft at all. Most of the craft is creating an understanding between people and software and most human programmers are still bad at it. AI might replace some programmers but none who program as a craft.

"Chess engines might get better than some chess players, but none who play Chess as a craft." Do you think people in the 90s thought this? Probably... In the article, the author mentions that Chess centaurs (a human player consulting an engine) can still beat an engine alone. But the author is wrong. There was a brief period a while ago when that was true, but chess engines are so strong now that any human interventi…

Programmer is just a problem solver. As long as there are people with problems, there will be market for people to solve them.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#399

Post by hcks »

Coders had decades to unionise and setup legal barriers to protect their livelihood.

(Doctors won’t ever be out of a job because of AI because they’ll always get a fat paycheck even just to look at the output spat out by the machine.)

They didn’t out of misplaced hubris and elitism ("just be the best 10x engineer ever and you’ll be safe").

Now they have less than 10 years before their wages start crashing hard.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#400

Post by tangjurine »

I don't think you can call this guy a coder.

I can solve some math problems/write some proofs, but I wouldn't call myself a mathematician.

It's about if you do it for a living, and this guy mostly has some fun side projects.

Don't think this guy is qualified to comment on ChatGPT taking over, like another comment was saying.

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