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

Code is cheap. Show me the talk

nadh.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 237 posts

Re: Code is cheap. Show me the talk

#51

Post by skydhash »

HorizonXP wrote: post #41
Waterluvian wrote: post #34

I think if your job is to assemble a segment of a car based on a spec using provided tools and pre-trained processes, it makes sense if you worry that giant robot arms might be installed to replace you. But if your job is to assemble a car in order to explore what modifications to make to the design, experiment with a single prototype, and determine how to program those robot arms, you’re probably not thinking about…

This is actually a really good description of the situation. But I will say, as someone that prided myself on being the second one you described, I am becoming very concerned about how much of my work was misclassified. It does feel like a lot of work I did in the second class is being automated where maybe previously it overinflated my ego.

SWE is more like formula 1 where each race presents a unique combination of track, car, driver, conditions. You may have tools to build the thing, but designing the thing is the main issue. Code editor, linter, test runner, build tools are for building the thing. Understanding the requirements and the technical challenges is designing the thing.

Re: Code is cheap. Show me the talk

#52

Post by heliumtera »

Please no. Talk is cheap.

I hate this trend of using adjectives to describe systems.

Fast Secure Sandboxed Minimal Reliable Robust Production grade AI ready Let's you _____ Enables you to _____

But somewhat I agree, code is essentially free, you can shit out infinite amounts of code. Unless it's good, then show the code instead. If your code is shit, show the program. If your program is shit, your code is worse, but you still pursing an interesting idea (in your eyes), show the prompt instead of the slop generated. Or even better communicate an elaborate version of the prompt.

>One can no longer know whether such a repository was “vibe”

This is absurd. Simply false, people can spot INSTANTLY when the code is good, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46753708

Re: Code is cheap. Show me the talk

#53

Post by Waterluvian »

enlyth wrote: post #48
Waterluvian wrote: post #34

I think if your job is to assemble a segment of a car based on a spec using provided tools and pre-trained processes, it makes sense if you worry that giant robot arms might be installed to replace you. But if your job is to assemble a car in order to explore what modifications to make to the design, experiment with a single prototype, and determine how to program those robot arms, you’re probably not thinking about…

A software engineer with an LLM is still infinitely more powerful than a commoner with an LLM. The engineer can debug, guide, change approaches, and give very specific instructions if they know what needs to be done. The commoner can only hammer the prompt repeatedly with "this doesn't work can you fix it". So yes, our jobs are changing rapidly, but this doesn't strike me as being obsolete any time soon.

I think it's a bit like the Dunning-Kruger effect. You need to know what you're even asking for and how to ask for it. And you need to know how to evaluate if you've got it.

This actually reminds me so strongly of the Pakleds from Star Trek TNG. They knew they wanted to be strong and fast, but the best they could do is say, "make us strong." They had no ability to evaluate that their AI (sorry, Geordi) was giving them something that looked strong, but simply wasn't.

Re: Code is cheap. Show me the talk

#54

Post by quadrifoliate »

rewilder12 wrote: post #4

The original phrase "talk is cheap" is generally used to mean "it's easy to say a whole lot of shit and that talk often has no real value." So this cleaver headline is telling me the code has even less value than the talk. That alone betrays a level of ignorance I would expect from the author's work. I go to read the article and it confirmed my suspicion.

I think you are hyper-focusing on the headline, which is just a joke. The underlying article does not indicate to me that the author is ignorant of code, and if you care to look, they seem to have a substantial body of public open source contributions that proves this quite conclusively.

The underlying point is just that while it was very cognitively expensive to back up a good design with good code back in 2000, it's much cheaper now. And therefore, making sure the design is good is the more important part. That's it really.

Re: Code is cheap. Show me the talk

#55

Post by CuriouslyC »

raincole wrote: post #38

Talk is never cheap. Communicating your thoughts to people without the exact same kind of expertise as you is the most important skill. This quote is from Torvalds, and I'm quite sure that if he weren't able to write eloquent English no one would know Linux today. Code is important when it's the best medium to express the essence of your thoughts. Just like a composer cannot express the music in his head with English…

You want a real mind bender? Imagine a universe where Linus's original usenet post didn't go viral.

Re: Code is cheap. Show me the talk

#56

Post by raincole »

Waterluvian wrote: post #34

I think if your job is to assemble a segment of a car based on a spec using provided tools and pre-trained processes, it makes sense if you worry that giant robot arms might be installed to replace you. But if your job is to assemble a car in order to explore what modifications to make to the design, experiment with a single prototype, and determine how to program those robot arms, you’re probably not thinking about…

> I know a lot of counter arguments are a form of, “but AI is automating that second class of job!”

Uh, it's not the issue. The issue is that there isn't that much demand for the second class of job. At least not yet. The first class of job is what feeds billions of families.

Yeah, I'm aware of the lump of labour fallacy.

Re: Code is cheap. Show me the talk

#57

Post by mehagar »

gipp wrote: post #5

I see a lot of the same (well thought out) pushback on here whenever these kinds of blind hype articles pop up. But my biggest objection to this "engineering is over" take is one that I don't see much. Maybe this is just my Big Tech glasses, but I feel like for a large, mature product, if you break down the time and effort required to bring a change to production, the actual writing of code is like... ten, maybe twen…

The book Software Engineering at Google makes a distinction between software engineering and programming. The main difference is that software engineering occurs over a longer time span than programming. In this sense, AI tools can make programming faster, but not necessarily software engineering.

Re: Code is cheap. Show me the talk

#58

Post by Waterluvian »

skydhash wrote: post #51
HorizonXP wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a really good description of the situation. But I will say, as someone that prided myself on being the second one you described, I am becoming very concerned about how much of my work was misclassified. It does feel like a lot of work I did in the second class is being automated where maybe previously it overinflated my ego.

SWE is more like formula 1 where each race presents a unique combination of track, car, driver, conditions. You may have tools to build the thing, but designing the thing is the main issue. Code editor, linter, test runner, build tools are for building the thing. Understanding the requirements and the technical challenges is designing the thing.

The other day I said something along the lines of, "be interested in the class, not the instance" and I meant to try to articulate a sense of metaprogramming and metaanalysis of a problem.

Y is causing Z and we should fix that. But if we stop and study the problem, we might discover that X causes the class of Y problem so we can fix the entire class, not just the instance. And perhaps W causes the class of X issue. I find my job more and more being about how far up this causality tree can I reason, how confident am I about my findings, and how far up does it make business sense to address right now, later, or ever?

Re: Code is cheap. Show me the talk

#59

Post by bambax »

> Code was always a means to an end. Unlike poetry or prose, end users don’t read or care about code.

Yes and no. Code is not art, but software is art.

What is art, then? Not something that's "beautiful", as beauty is of course mostly subjective. Not even something that works well.

I think art is a thing that was made with great care.

It doesn't matter if some piece of software was vibe-coded in part or in full, if it was edited, tested, retried enough times for its maker to consider it "perfect". Trash is something that's done in a careless way.

If you truly love and use what you made, it's likely someone else will. If not, well... why would anyone?

Re: Code is cheap. Show me the talk

#60

Post by bambax »

enlyth wrote: post #48
Waterluvian wrote: post #34

I think if your job is to assemble a segment of a car based on a spec using provided tools and pre-trained processes, it makes sense if you worry that giant robot arms might be installed to replace you. But if your job is to assemble a car in order to explore what modifications to make to the design, experiment with a single prototype, and determine how to program those robot arms, you’re probably not thinking about…

A software engineer with an LLM is still infinitely more powerful than a commoner with an LLM. The engineer can debug, guide, change approaches, and give very specific instructions if they know what needs to be done. The commoner can only hammer the prompt repeatedly with "this doesn't work can you fix it". So yes, our jobs are changing rapidly, but this doesn't strike me as being obsolete any time soon.

Agree totally.
Post reply on HN