Coding Jobs and GPT-4 • Hacker News Board

Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4

#51

Post by muzani » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 9:35 PM UTC

daxfohl wrote: post #19

Not for a while. They seem decent at generating scaffolding or algorithms, but like for any of the projects I've done recently, it's "figure out what this big piece of mangled code does, take some requirements or high-level idea that's not fully complete and probably has some contradictions, work with people to flesh those out, figure out a way to cram that in, which layer of the code it should be in, or which layers…

"figure out what this big piece of mangled code does"

This is my use case for GPT-4. It usually does it better than most humans, including those who wrote the code and those who have maintained the codebase for years.

Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4

#52

Post by karmakaze » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 10:11 PM UTC

Anyone have experiences using GPT-4 with functional languages? There's lots of examples with procedural languages that automates much of the boilerplate but I'm wondering how effective it is when the source is more terse and concept-dense.

I don't do a lot of functional programming myself but would prefer to. I'm guessing that the output might be be one arbitrarily selected from the described domain but could just as well have been composed completely differently. If it's able to output multiple distinct compositions and we can choose one that suits the team's way of thinking/working that would be pretty cool.

What would be awesome is if it could find the shared characteristics across domains and synthesize a solution in the posed domain that was only ever used in other ones.

Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4

#53

Post by jselysianeagle » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 6:36 AM UTC

I can see it going a couple different ways:

1) The dichotomy between frontend vs backend dev evaporates entirely. Because GPT-x can churn out code so quickly, all devs will be expected to be fullstack and the job breakdown will be more like 20-30% coding (assisted by these tools) with the rest of the time spent on higher level concerns like architecture, security (and perhaps lots of meetings...) etc.

2) The vast majority of dev jobs simply get folded into business functions. So your product managers, accountants, etc will increasingly be expected to do prompt engineering work as part of the job. This change will probably take a while to happen and needs more work to occur on hooking up these tools to other tools like compilers and whatnot, but I'm pretty sure startups will emerge to tackle this. Companies that aren't developing any real tech as their main product/service simply won't need many devs anymore, although they might keep a few on staff here and there just in case the others need someone to step in from time to time. The only places that will need sizable numbers of actual devs will be the ones building brand new software - think new database sytems, compilers, device drivers, OS kernel work etc. - basically the really cutting edge stuff for which original research + thinking is needed. Since these tools tend to be trained on existing knowledge out there I'm not sure if they can be used to build brand new technologies from scratch... at least for now. But who knows what future iterations of these tools will lead to!

Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4

#54

Post by jselysianeagle » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 6:46 AM UTC

gedy wrote: post #17

AbsoluteCabbage wrote: post #6

Demand for coders like React monkeys and java bloats, yes. Demand for actual software engineers with a strong penchant for system design, no.

Actually I've found the "React monkeys" you dismiss to be the people who work with product & UX on what the actually product being developed should do. The "backend people" who write API plumbing and DB tables are the ones I'd worry about.

That's a good point. However, it could also happen that a good chunk of frontend work gets folded directly into the product owner/manager role. Hard to say which way things could go but it's interesting to speculate.

Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4

#55

Post by HugoDz » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 7:40 AM UTC

GTP-4 acts as a reminder the value is not in programming but in the things you create with.

In an ideal world, you even not coding to achieve things that help others. Today it's required but it's not the point of a valuable product.

Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4

#56

Post by gedy » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

jselysianeagle wrote: post #54

gedy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I've found the "React monkeys" you dismiss to be the people who work with product & UX on what the actually product being developed should do. The "backend people" who write API plumbing and DB tables are the ones I'd worry about.

That's a good point. However, it could also happen that a good chunk of frontend work gets folded directly into the product owner/manager role. Hard to say which way things could go but it's interesting to speculate.

Yes, while I agree AI code gen will be disruptive, I have a very hard time believing PMs or UX will soon be able to "talk to AI" and get an actual logical product out of that. The subset I've worked with certainly wouldn't. Feels like possibly the engineers will do more PM work.

Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4

#57

Post by InfamousRece » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

We just went through layoffs and the remaining employees were told to become more productive by utilizing GPT. So in my employer’s case the reduction is already happening - though it’s probably caused more by GPT hype rather than the GPT-4 itself.

Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4

#58

Post by Tommstein » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

stuckinhell wrote: post #46

0xDEF wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>de-dollarization American social media has been surprisingly loud in their predictions about the total imminent collapse of the US dollar and economy since February 2022. As a European I would like cheaper American products and services caused by a weakened US dollar. But I don't see it happening yet. The US dollar is still strong, American companies are still competitive, and the S&P500 is a lucrative ingredient in…

Maybe but I think France's Macron has spooked a lot people who do global strategy. That's the only big thing I can think of in the news, that might be why I've been asked to start de-dollarization research and related business research.

Macron has no say in anything outside France. Even his closest allies, fellow EU members, have unanimously told him to STFU with that sucking up to China from what I've seen, including their biggest economy, Germany. Macron's time would be better spent dealing with the riots sweeping his country than trying to distract from them by pissing on the United States and sucking up to China. Your global strategists may not be the finest in the business if they think Macron talking shit is going to make even the slightest global difference.