Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Revenge of the Junior Developer

sourcegraph.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 94 posts

Re: Revenge of the Junior Developer

#41

Post by rocmcd »

disambiguation wrote: post #12

Everyone: telling me how great AI is. No one: making anything great with AI. Sourcegraph: an AI company, routinely promoting their LLM-optimism blogposts to HN, perpetuating the hype cycle their business model depends on.

This is the true litmus test IMO. If LLMs are so great and make everyone so productive, then where are the results? Where are all of the amazing products being released that otherwise would have required 10x the investment? Shouldn't there be _anything_ we can point to that shows that the "productivity needle" is being moved?

Re: Revenge of the Junior Developer

#43

Post by victorbjorklund »

jcgrillo wrote: post #38
disambiguation wrote: post #12

Everyone: telling me how great AI is. No one: making anything great with AI. Sourcegraph: an AI company, routinely promoting their LLM-optimism blogposts to HN, perpetuating the hype cycle their business model depends on.

> We’re talking about each developer gradually boosting their productivity by a multiplier of ~5x by Q4 2025 (allowing for ramp-up time), for an additional amortized cost of only maybe $50k/year the first year. Who wouldn’t go for that deal? OK, I'll take the other side of that bet. If in Q4 '25 devs using cursor or whatever are 5x as productive as me using emacs, I'll give this AI stuff another chance. But I'm prett…

You should probably compare the same dev using AI vs not using AI. Otherwise you can use that argument for anything.

Notepad is a better IDE than emacs if we compare a really good dev using notepad vs a shitty dev using emacs.

Re: Revenge of the Junior Developer

#44

Post by LoganDark »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #21
LoganDark wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$300? That much sounds like it would last a year. You don't need to spend anywhere near $300 just to try things out

I burned through $50 credits in a sitting the first time I used Claude Code to see what I could vibe-code from scratch. You're pushing whole files of tokens through it every time you interact with it.

Huh, maybe the reason it doesn't use this much for me is because my work has mostly source files that are far too large for Claude Code to read. It always has to ask for permission to use grep because it can't figure out how to use the read tool properly. I've done entire new features on probably around $15 of credit max.

Re: Revenge of the Junior Developer

#45

Post by jcgrillo »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #43
jcgrillo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’re talking about each developer gradually boosting their productivity by a multiplier of ~5x by Q4 2025 (allowing for ramp-up time), for an additional amortized cost of only maybe $50k/year the first year. Who wouldn’t go for that deal? OK, I'll take the other side of that bet. If in Q4 '25 devs using cursor or whatever are 5x as productive as me using emacs, I'll give this AI stuff another chance. But I'm prett…

You should probably compare the same dev using AI vs not using AI. Otherwise you can use that argument for anything. Notepad is a better IDE than emacs if we compare a really good dev using notepad vs a shitty dev using emacs.

Ok, if I notice other devs suddenly getting 5x as productive I'll give it a try, but so far no such effect has been demonstrated. It seems like a pretty straightforward research question, and you'd think if there was any demonstrable effect the companies selling these things would use such research to market their products. So where is it?

Re: Revenge of the Junior Developer

#46

Post by Timber-6539 »

rocmcd wrote: post #41
disambiguation wrote: post #12

Everyone: telling me how great AI is. No one: making anything great with AI. Sourcegraph: an AI company, routinely promoting their LLM-optimism blogposts to HN, perpetuating the hype cycle their business model depends on.

This is the true litmus test IMO. If LLMs are so great and make everyone so productive, then where are the results? Where are all of the amazing products being released that otherwise would have required 10x the investment? Shouldn't there be _anything_ we can point to that shows that the "productivity needle" is being moved?

The demo is the work. Social media views is where the productivity is being moved. And VCs are paying for this ball to keep rolling hoping to eventually cash out big some day.

AI is an irrational market at the moment and this is not going to change anytime soon.

Re: Revenge of the Junior Developer

#47

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

> We think the flat hiring right now is just companies signalling that they don’t know what to do yet.

The whole article seems to be written disingenuously for the junior developer audience but this one kinda irked me: the flat hiring is because interest rates are high and has nothing to do with companies figuring out what to do with vibe coding.

On topic, nothing in this article suggests anything fundamentally useful about vibe coding other than it being an easier way to start for juniors and entry-levels. If you are a junior, go ahead and keep vibe coding but also do your best to understand the code you’re given. I strongly suspect that will (continue to) be something that makes people stand out.

Re: Revenge of the Junior Developer

#48

Post by Timber-6539 »

nickysielicki wrote: post #6

I’m usually one of the people complaining about hype cycles, and it’s usually been correct to be pessimistic about them. But in this particular case I have to think a lot of people just haven’t tried it in its best form. No, not a local model on your MacBook. No, not the web interface on the free plan. Go lay down $300 into API credits, spend a weekend (or maybe two) fully setting up aider, really give it a shot. It’…

How much does the Deepseek's equivalent cost?

Re: Revenge of the Junior Developer

#49

Post by edoceo »

jcgrillo wrote: post #39
bayindirh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remembered the dialogue from the movie Snatch: T: What's happening with this sausages, Charlie? C: 2 minutes, Turkish. -- 5 Minutes later --- T: How long for the sausages? C: 5 minutes, Turkish. T: It was 2 minutes, 5 minutes ago. I don't know why I remembered it. Is it AI, or self driving cars, or both. Huh.

Don't forget the electric air taxis!

Drone-bot delivering my new dishwasher-top-rack-rails today; waiting 4 days for a human; SMH
Post reply on HN