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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?

#421

Post by deadbabe »

sobjornstad wrote: post #375
deadbabe wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“speeding up dev work” is pointless to a company. That benefit goes entirely to the developer and does not trickle down well. You might think “ok, we’ll just push more workload onto the developers so they stay at higher utilization!” Except most companies do not have endless amounts of new feature work. Eventually devs are mostly sitting idle. So you think “Ha! Then we’ll fire more developers and get one guy to do ev…

> Except most companies do not have endless amounts of new feature work. Eventually devs are mostly sitting idle. At every place I have ever worked (as well as my personal life), the backlog was 10 times longer than anyone could ever hope to complete, and there were untold amounts of additional work that nobody even bothered adding to the backlog. Some of that probably wouldn't materialize into real work if you could…

Where I work, if you literally implemented everything in the backlog as is you’d fuck everything up.

Things in a backlog are not independent units of work ready to go, there are nasty dependencies and unresolved questions that cross domains.

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

#422

Post by iihhhyfvhj »

triyambakam wrote: post #405
nickjj wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

#423

Post by iihhhyfvhj »

gedy wrote: post #330
andoando wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no way. Those tasks take 5 mins to do. Itd be done by the time you read the documentation for elvenlabs

You might be comparing people who know how to do something vs those who don't.

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

#424

Post by iihhhyfvhj »

in_cahoots wrote: post #266
lpnam0201 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't tried Claude for this, but I can't think how it could possibly do. I built a game bot using Win32 API to send input and screen capture to OCR and some OpenCV to recognize game elements. Dead simple and actually quite boring and repeatitive after I worked on it for a while. How could Claude agents possibly do this ? I did use Claude to refer docs and API, though.

My elementary schooler did this with pictures of his stuffed animals last week. I helped a little bit, but most of it was Claude. He's never coded before.

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

#425

Post by rjh29 »

arcxi wrote: post #262
dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv wrote: post #96

> in coding, L.L.M.s take away the drudgery and leave the human, soulful parts to you. I've always hated solving puzzles with my deterministic toolbox, learning along the way and producing something of value at the end. Glad that's finally over so I can focus on the soulful art of micromanaging chatbots with markdown instead.

amidst this whole AI craze it's illuminating to learn how many programmers secretly hated programming all along

I realised that early on when I stopped coding as much in my free time. After work I wanted to do practically anything else. But quite a few people at work continued to spend all of their free time coding, and clearly enjoyed the process. The SerenityOS/Ladybird creator spent years coding an arguably pointless project purely for the enjoyment of it.

Whereas I always liked to design and build a useful result. If it isn't useful I have no motivation to code it. Looking up APIs, designing abstractions, fixing compiler errors is just busywork that gets in the way.

I loved programming when I was 8 years old. 30+ years later the novelty is gone.

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

#426

Post by coldtea »

conartist6 wrote: post #142
coldtea wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All that stuff would take me about 5 minutes without AI. No, it wouldn't. Merely finding the examples and deps would take over an hour.

Back when, we'd just go write a blog post or SO answer so the next person wouldn't suffer as much. Thank god THOSE days are over and everyone just lets everyone else suffer alone now

And when those resources dry up for newer stuff, and LLMs start training on LLM output, they'll start degrading

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

#427

Post by bluefirebrand »

IanCal wrote: post #397
bluefirebrand wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that people have an intrinsic incentive to care about learning to cook because eating is something we have to do every single day regardless No such incentive exists for building software

No such incentive exists for an enormous amount of what humans do. People don’t only build software because they have to.

I wasn't saying otherwise, I was only making the point that cooking is a terrible counter example

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

#428

Post by JellyBeanThief »

dehrmann wrote: post #407
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…

> 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.

Thing is, AI will also be able to provide substantial support for software it writes. And it will make self-hosting a lot less painful, too. Quirky behavior will still happen, but eh, Excel imports numbers as dates. You can't buy your way out of quirky behavior for all the money in the world.

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

#429

Post by chii »

galactus wrote: post #342
barnabee wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like designing data, algorithms, and systems. I like picking the right tools for the job. I like making architectural and user interface (CLI, configuration format, GUI, whatever) decisions. Actually typing code is pretty dull. To the extent that I rarely do it full time (basically only when prototyping or making very simple scripts etc.), even though I love making things. So for me, personally, LLMs are great. I'm…

I think reducing what LLMs do to « typing » is misleading. If it was just typing, you could simply use speech-to-text. But LLMs do far more than that, they shape the code itself. And I think we lose something when we delegate that work to LLMs

with an LLM, you can have an ill formed idea, and let the LLM mold it into a shape to your liking, without having the investment required to learn how to do molding first.

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

#430

Post by leptons »

throwawaytea wrote: post #386
leptons wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm still very happy with what we got "One person's slop is another person's treasure" I'm not all that impressed with "AI". I often "race" the AI by giving it a task to do, and then I start coding my own solution in parallel. I often beat the AI, or deliver a better result. Artificial Intelligence is like artificial flavoring. It's cheap and tastes passable to most people, but real flavors are far better in every w…

Home made food is better than anything you can buy too. Im 40 but I still drive 30 minutes to my parents once a week for dinner because the food they make feels like the elixir of life compared to the slop I can buy in trader joes, Costco, or most restaurants. But I'm pretty glad trader joes exists too.

Trust me, Trader Joes is real food compared to a lot of the toxic waste being sold as food out there.

That crap will fill your belly but it won't keep you healthy. Your brain is like a muscle, if you stop flexing it, you'll end up weaker.

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