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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?

#431

Post by jaco6 »

samiv wrote: post #163
allreduce wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all software development will be automated immediatly. But I've noticed that many skills I've built are lessened in worth with every model release. Having a lot of specifics about a programming environment memorized for example used to be the difference between building something in a few hours and a week, but now is pretty unimportant. Same with being able to do some quick data wrangling on the command line. LLM…

The capitalists and industrialists have waited for centuries to get rid of paid labor. Imagine the profits once the cost of human work gets out of the loop! Of course the question that is left unanswered is how the economy will work there's no one left with purchasing power. But I guess the answer to this is, the same way it works now in any developing country without much of a middle class.

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

#433

Post by alexey-pelykh »

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…

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

#434

Post by alexey-pelykh »

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?

#435

Post by rkagerer »

Is anyone concerned how dependant the industry as it's described here is becoming on one, two or three service providers who take prompts and spit out tokens? And the amount of your proprietary infrastructure you're exposing to them?

Are local models anywhere close to gaining enough capability and traction to do it in-house? Or are there good options for those who'd rather own the capability than rent it?

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

#436

Post by Otek »

rkagerer wrote: post #435

Is anyone concerned how dependant the industry as it's described here is becoming on one, two or three service providers who take prompts and spit out tokens? And the amount of your proprietary infrastructure you're exposing to them? Are local models anywhere close to gaining enough capability and traction to do it in-house? Or are there good options for those who'd rather own the capability than rent it?

> Are local models anywhere close to gaining enough capability and traction to do it in-house?

Cloud providers will always be able to offer more performance and more powerful options.

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

#437

Post by anon7000 »

FuckButtons wrote: post #335
dorfsmay wrote: post #260

For me, the biggest shift is people who don't care about local AI. The idea that you can no longer code without paying a tax to one of the billion $ backed company isn't sitting well.

I don’t understand why more people aren’t focused on how to get the benefits of ai but on your own machine. If the last 20 years of software transitioning off of our desktops and into the cloud has taught us anything, it’s that letting corporate entities run the software you rely on end to end gives you: worse software with more bugs, surveillance and subscriptions. Why on earth would you want that for everything you…

Because a lot of the AI hype/use is driven by companies who just want to pay money for a service? Besides, my laptop would need a pretty big RAM upgrade.

I agree local is better, but the big companies are making decent products and companies are willing to to pay for that. They’re not willing to spend engineering money to make local setups better.

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

#438

Post by auggierose »

zazibar wrote: post #144
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…

>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…

Well, Visual Studio Code + Claude Code is better than the other options.

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

#439

Post by habinero »

coldtea wrote: post #131
habinero wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've generated 250KLoC this week It's horrifying, all right, but not in the way you think lol. If you don't understand why this isn't a brag, then my job is very safe.

If managers can't understand why this isn't a brag, then your job is hardly safe.

Tell me you're not a SWE without telling me. Engineers hire engineers at tech companies. Managers do the hiring paperwork.

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

#440

Post by notpachet »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #370
notpachet wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at least as well as the bottom 10% of programmers I don't think this is the flex you think it is... in my experience, the bottom 10% of programmers are actively harmful and should never be allowed near your codebase.

Quite a few people think that about Claude code. I disagree with them, personally, but I think we can agree that AI code generation is qualitatively at least as good as the worst human professionals. I think we would also probably agree that the state of the art today is not as good as the very best. The value per dollar spent is a different calculus and I would say that state of the art models completely surpass any…

I don't understand how:

> the state of the art today is not as good as the very best

and

> state of the art models completely surpass any individual’s productive output

are not contradictory. If the models completely surpass any individual's productive output, doesn't that mean they're better than the best humans? Or maybe I don't understand what you mean by "surpassing productive output." Are you talking about raw quantity over quality? I mean, yeah... but I could also do that with a bash script.

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