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747s and coding agents

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Re: 747s and coding agents

#51

Post by getnormality »

cortesoft wrote: post #17

I am not sure how many other people on here are old enough to remember, but I first learned to program before I had the internet. I had to read books, and then if I was trying to figure out how to do something, I would have to figure out which book to look it up in, and then figure out where in the book to find it and how to apply it to my situation. It made me learn a ton, because I would have to read a lot of books…

So much AI moaning and groaning these days seems based on the idea that people have to be forced to do anything of value, even for themselves.

It seems to imply a great deal of pessimism about human self-determination. Like, I can't be anything good unless there is an external mold pressing me into the good shape. And it can't be my choice because I would never choose anything good. I'll only do good things for myself if forced.

Since AI is supposedly taking everybody's jobs and making it so we can choose never to better ourselves, maybe future governments will need to institute taskmasters to force us into regimens of physical and mental health and vigor. A whole new adult school system will have to be instituted.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#52

Post by scuff3d »

What the fuck are people working on where it's possible for the LLM to just add entire features. Refactors and class/method level code can be impressive, anything highly structured with good guard rails. As soon as things start to reach beyond that it falls to absolute garbage.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#53

Post by amelius »

andoando wrote: post #42
cedws wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may very well have stunted my learning. What’s the point of absorbing information when you have a consortium of experts available 24/7? Saying what you said about it being down to being how you use LLM comes from a privileged position. You likely already know how to code. You likely know how to troubleshoot. Would you develop those same skillsets today starting from zero?

Supposedly because AI has limits and you still have to know what you're doing so you can guide it and do it better. If that's not true, then what's the problem with not learning the material? Go do something more productive with your time if the personal curiosity isn't good enough. Were in a whole new world. >Saying what you said about it being down to being how you use LLM comes from a privileged position. You like…

The problem is that the abstraction level moved up so far that we're now programming in the English language, and we're more like managers than programmers. This will only get worse. The next step will be that AIs run entire companies. And BigAI will not allow us to profit from that because they will just run the AI themselves, the current situation was just a stepping stone.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#54

Post by amelius »

mgfist wrote: post #37
SoftTalker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use AI for very little but I do like using it for stuff I'm just not very interested in but have to get done. For programming, I don't like it. It's like a master carpenter building furniture from IKEA. Sure it's faster and he doesn't have to think very hard and the end result is acceptable but he feels lazy and after a while he feels like he is losing his skills. The best days of computing for me were what you rem…

All fair, but I think a different interpretation could be that AI allows you to vastly expand the scope of the possible, such to create a situation again where things are challenging and frustrating and fun.

Most programmers don't like the fuzziness of AI, so things may be challenging and frustrating, but certainly not fun.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#55

Post by gmueckl »

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #28
LatencyKills wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always felt a little odd saying, "Back in my day we had to understand the cpu, registers, etc." It's a true statement, but doesn't help in any way. Is that stuff still worth knowing, IMHO? Yes. Can you create incredibly useful code without that knowledge today? Absolutely.

There are some people who still know these things, and are able to use LLMs far more effectively than those who do not. I've seen the following prediction by a few people and am starting to agree with it: software development (and possibly most knowledge work) will become like farming. A relatively smaller number of people will do with large machines what previously took armies of people. There will always be some pe…

I think that tt's more likely at this point that we turn the depleting quantities of exploitable resources on this planet into more and more data centers and squander any remaining opportunity at space exploration/colonization at scale.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#56

Post by andoando »

amelius wrote: post #53
andoando wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly because AI has limits and you still have to know what you're doing so you can guide it and do it better. If that's not true, then what's the problem with not learning the material? Go do something more productive with your time if the personal curiosity isn't good enough. Were in a whole new world. >Saying what you said about it being down to being how you use LLM comes from a privileged position. You like…

The problem is that the abstraction level moved up so far that we're now programming in the English language, and we're more like managers than programmers. This will only get worse. The next step will be that AIs run entire companies. And BigAI will not allow us to profit from that because they will just run the AI themselves, the current situation was just a stepping stone.

Managers still need technical skills though.

If AIs really get there, we're all out of jobs to do.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#57

Post by tass »

omoikane wrote: post #7
tass wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interpreted this as not as good a way to learn. I learn the most from struggling through a problem, and reading someone’s code doesn’t teach me all the wrong ways they attempted before it looked like the way it now does.

I was thinking in situations where a coworker might send me something to review, and I might have thought "hmm, I wouldn't have done it like that, but this is a great way to do it too". Also, a good source of teachable code is to participate in a programming contest, and then review the repositories of the teams who scored better than me after the contest. I agree that if I don't already know how to implement somethi…

Yeah I learn from reading other work too, but it doesn’t stick as well as when I work through it.

The problem now is the pressure to use llms means creating more code but understanding so much less.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#59

Post by William_BB »

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #28
LatencyKills wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always felt a little odd saying, "Back in my day we had to understand the cpu, registers, etc." It's a true statement, but doesn't help in any way. Is that stuff still worth knowing, IMHO? Yes. Can you create incredibly useful code without that knowledge today? Absolutely.

There are some people who still know these things, and are able to use LLMs far more effectively than those who do not. I've seen the following prediction by a few people and am starting to agree with it: software development (and possibly most knowledge work) will become like farming. A relatively smaller number of people will do with large machines what previously took armies of people. There will always be some pe…

If this happens to software development, this will happen to most mental jobs.
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