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Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

blog.jakesaunders.dev

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Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#391

Post by a1o »

_doctor_love wrote: post #257
djeastm wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any thoughts on what the next generation of software devs is going to look like without as much manual experience?

Honestly, I think it will look pretty much like this one. There’s a lot of manual experience that the current generation doesn’t have. For example, I haven’t racked and cabled a server in over 15 years. That used to be a valuable skill. I also used to know how to operate Cisco switches and routers (on the original IOS!). I haven't thought about CIDR and the difference between a /24 and a /30 since the year 2008. A cl…

I am pretty sure network knowledge and all those things are still necessary for people running data centers and really big computers and I imagine we will build a lot more of that.

Also anyone making a homelab has to know these stuff.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#394

Post by zeroonetwothree »

senordevnyc wrote: post #364
GeoAtreides wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you might want to brush up on the short and medium consequences of the industrial revolution and the dark satanic mills where children were maimed or where people worked for 12h a day in horrendous conditions. Do you think because 2 dev are now super productive with AI, the company will keep the other average 30 devs? no, of course not, they will fire and pocket the difference. Same for other industries, where AI wil…

where children were maimed or where people worked for 12h a day in horrendous conditions Such things were super uncommon before the industrial revolution, I'm sure.

Working conditions did decline as a result of industrialization. It wasn't until around the 20th century that we could say working conditions were better for most people than pre-industrial society.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#395

Post by crabmusket »

wrs wrote: post #219
delbronski wrote: post #172

AI is starting to look like a net negative for humanity. I remember the early days of OpenAI. I was super excited about it. There was a new space to uncover and learn about. I was hopeful. Now I have this love/hate relationship with it. Claude Code is amazing. I use it everyday because it makes me so much more efficient at my job. But I also know that by using it I’m contributing to making my job redundant one day. A…

Well, on the other hand, software isn’t all about checking emails. I know someone who worked for a nonprofit that made pregnancy health software that worked over text messaging. Its clients were women in Africa who didn’t have much, but they had a cell phone, so they could get reminders, track vitals, and so forth. They had to find enough funding to pay several software engineers to build and maintain that system. If…

So, here is a case where AI was a technical fix to a social problem: that as a global society, funding is skewed away from things which benefit people. Google can find the budget for as many ad-touchers as it wants, but nonprofits have to scrounge and make do by paying for "metered intelligence" from a megacorp.

So in isolation, I think it's great that they managed to achieve this. But I mourn that the only way they achieved it was via this rapacious truth-destroying machine.

This isn't a new trend - AI didn't cause it. It's just the latest version of it.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#396

Post by brandensilva »

sbinnee wrote: post #340

I like the analogy to woodwork and hammer. It fits perfectly to what happens when they do not pay enough attention to the end result. They are not showing the actual product because it is not as shiny as their new agentic hammer.

I think people are having a hard time figuring out use cases so yeah the AI is the most exciting part.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#397

Post by zeroonetwothree »

chatmasta wrote: post #103

What I miss is people showing off their hand-crafted libraries or frameworks. That’s become way less common now that everyone is building a layer up the stack. I fear we’ll be stuck in a permanent state of using Tailwind and React and all the LLM-favored libraries as they were frozen in time at the beginning of 2025. Then again, that’ll be the agent’s problem, not mine… All that said, it’s extremely exciting. I’ve be…

Maybe it's like how we're all still using languages from pre-2010? Python, JS, Java, C++, Go, Rust (most of those are 20th century). Once you move a layer up the stack it takes some extraordinary situation to upend the status quo.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#398

Post by SpecialistK »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #303
_doctor_love wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think it will look pretty much like this one. There’s a lot of manual experience that the current generation doesn’t have. For example, I haven’t racked and cabled a server in over 15 years. That used to be a valuable skill. I also used to know how to operate Cisco switches and routers (on the original IOS!). I haven't thought about CIDR and the difference between a /24 and a /30 since the year 2008. A cl…

> So some skills fade and others rise. And also, software has moved in predictable cycles for many decades at this point. We are still a very young field but we do have some history at this point. And there'll be a split too... like there's a giant divide between those mechanics who used to work on carburetors and the new gen with microcontrollers, injection systems, etc. People who think cars are 'too complicated' a…

And to take the analogy even further, I'm sure there will be a subset of people who develop really strong opinions about a particular toolchain or workflow. Like how we have people who specialize in 70s diesel trucks or 90-00s JDM sports cars, there'll likely be programmers who are SMEs at updating COBAL to Rust using Claude.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#399

Post by zeroonetwothree »

slfnflctd wrote: post #236
nancyminusone wrote: post #38

Among non-programmers, you always hear about some fool that fell in love with an AI girlfriend or whatever, but you never hear about the people who open chatgpt up once, tried some things with it, said to themselves "huh, that's kind of neat" and then lost interest a day or two later, having conceived of no further items to which AI could provide assistance.

> having conceived of no further items to which AI could provide assistance For me, the issue isn't that I can't conceive of work AI could help with. It's that most of the work I currently need to be doing involves things AI is useless for. I look forward to using it when I have an appropriate task. However, I don't actually have a lot of those, especially in my personal life. I suspect this is a fairly common experi…

I mainly just use it instead of Google to do research or ask simple questions. Comes up like 2-3x per day

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#400

Post by jjpones »

delbronski wrote: post #172

AI is starting to look like a net negative for humanity. I remember the early days of OpenAI. I was super excited about it. There was a new space to uncover and learn about. I was hopeful. Now I have this love/hate relationship with it. Claude Code is amazing. I use it everyday because it makes me so much more efficient at my job. But I also know that by using it I’m contributing to making my job redundant one day. A…

I feel you. This whole hoo-haa has made me so much more money-minded, and so much less optimistic about Software Development than I was 10 years ago. I just remind myself that it's bad now, but it can get much worse. Now I'm just trying to get what I can, then hopefully retire volunteering at an animal conservation sanctuary. And to the AI hopefuls, good luck, because I don't see any future where the zeitgeist of this technology won't just be about lining the pockets of already rich people.
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