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Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

nytimes.com

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Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#401

Post by rjh29 »

falkensmaize wrote: post #318
rjh29 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two types of coder argument seems strong to me. Coders who love the art of programming (optimisation for the sake of it, beautiful designs, data structures...) and builders. The former are in for a rough time. The latter are massively enabled and no longer have to worry about smashing together libs by hand to make crud apps.

Thinking carefully about the details of implementation MATTERS. Even with crud apps. Getting something “built” fast isn’t and should not be the only consideration. I can go to a junkyard and assemble the parts to build a car. It may run, but for a thousand tiny reasons it will be worse than a car built by a team of designers and engineers who have thought carefully about every aspect of its construction.

I agree. However manual code review and heavy refactoring is a laborious and error prone process, and even most human projects don't keep up with it successfully. Plenty of horrible code debt ridden projects in the real world. As long as you're not writing safety-critical code, use of LLM is not incompatible with what you're saying.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#402

Post by bryanrasmussen »

mech422 wrote: post #308
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, those are all ones that didn't change programming as we know it, but some came closer than others right? I definitely considered some of those in my list of failed revolutions. My one completely successful revolution is moving from punch card programming.

Oh yeah - thats a good one... Maybe the move from teletype to CRT's as well ?

hmm, yeah good one. not sure if really changed things as I guess you still programmed the same, but maybe.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#403

Post by cyberax »

swader999 wrote: post #178
zazibar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think though that the day is coming where I can trust the code it produces and at that point I'll just by writing specs. It's not there yet though. Must be nice to still have that choice. At the company I work for they've just announced they're cancelling all subscriptions to JetBrains, Visual Studio, Windsurf, etc. and forcing every engineer to use Claude Code as a cost-saving measure. We've been told we should b…

I didn't renew Jet Brains this month. Been a loyal customer and would have quit jobs from 2008 onwards without it.

I'm using Claude in JetBrains, using the Zed editor's ACP connector.

It's actually pretty slick. And you can expose the JetBrains inspections through its MCP server to the Claude agent. With all the usual JetBrains smarts and code navigation.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#404

Post by apsurd »

IanCal wrote: post #395
apsurd wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you proving the point that it's nuanced? Thread seems to be saying LLMs are great because they do the dirty work and leave the fun work to humans. The counter-point is not exactly that LLMs aren't capable of doing dirty-work, it's that the nature of work isn't going to split so cleanly. And cooking is a good example. Cooking is work. And slop. And it's also incredibly rewarding and creative, if you want it to…

The comment I was responding to was looking at a state where we looked at markdown files instead of programming, my point was to agree with the original quote that they can remove the drudgery. > Maybe this is the core point: "cooking is a solved problem" that's how engineers always think. But it isn’t, that’s a lazy stereotype of a subset.

Gotcha. the engineer generalization was to plant a stake in the ground. I do hear that quite often, especially from higher titled engineers. in any case, definitely admit it's not all of them, and perhaps it's even a vocal minority that i'm better served to intentionally work to expand my influences.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#405

Post by triyambakam »

nickjj wrote: post #200
triyambakam wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the take when you haven't really tried driving these tools with much practice

I don't think it's that Here's an example from Gemini with some Lua code: label = key:gsub("on%-", ""):gsub("%-", " "):gsub("(%a)([%w_']*)", function(f, r) return f:upper() .. r:lower() end) if label:find("Click") then label = label:gsub("(%a+)%s+(%a+)", "%2 %1") elseif label:find("Scroll") then label = label:gsub("(%a+)%s+(%a+)", "%2 %1") end I don't know Lua too well (which is why I used AI) but I know programming…

This sounds like moving the goal posts but Gemini is generally not a good model. Try Sonnet

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#406

Post by dehrmann »

comrade1234 wrote: post #48

Having an AI is like having a dedicated assistant or junior programmer that sometimes has senior-level insights. I use it to do tedious tasks where I don't care about the code - like today I used it to generate a static web page that let me experiment with the spring-ai chat bot code I was writing - basic. But yesterday it was able to track down the cause of a very obscure bug having to do with a pom.xml loading two…

> pom.xml loading two versions of the same library

Just checking that you're using maven-enforcer-plugin

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#407

Post by dehrmann »

EagnaIonat wrote: post #146
bikelang wrote: post #89

If coding truly becomes effortless to produce - and by that extension a product becomes near free to produce - then I find it quite odd that the executive class thinks their businesses won’t be completely up ended by a raging sea of competition.

All run of the mill software is gone or on borrowed time. Why pay a subscription for a product that I can get something Claude to build it for me. Before I was building tools, now I am building full applications in less time than I did before for tools. What will be around for a while is where you need an expert in the loop to drive the AI. For example enterprise applications. You simply can't hand that off to an AI…

> Why pay a subscription for a product that I can get something Claude to build it for me.

We've already seen this with OSS. Even with free software, support, self-hosting, and quirky behavior have proven to be enough to keep most people and business away.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#409

Post by dehrmann »

shinycode wrote: post #188
yubainu wrote: post #115

[flagged]

That’s the exact definition our CEO gave of our job this week. That’s how he sees and expects us to work now. I feel some anxiety because that’s too much too fast. We went from « we need to fix every single bug we encounter » to « it doesn’t matter if there’s bugs as long as we ship a feature fast »

Isn't the AI sales pitch that you can do both?

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#410

Post by paradox460 »

AstroBen wrote: post #244
EagnaIonat wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All run of the mill software is gone or on borrowed time. Why pay a subscription for a product that I can get something Claude to build it for me. Before I was building tools, now I am building full applications in less time than I did before for tools. What will be around for a while is where you need an expert in the loop to drive the AI. For example enterprise applications. You simply can't hand that off to an AI…

Can we see the applications?

Full fledged applications, with full functionality, minimal bugs, localized entirely within your computer?!
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