541–550 of 656 posts
"Social media should bring people together instead of being used to set them apart." "Economy should improve allocation of resources universally, instead of allowing a handful to hold what many are lacking." And so on... Society has advanced in technology but didn't progress the same way in philosophy.
For many people the root answer is insecurity. There's nothing inherently wrong with this (you would do a lot worse as an outlet) but you ought to be honest about what lengths you're willing to go to in achieving the appearance of strength since your goal isn't strength itself. Poor form, injury from cutting corners, steroids; these are all temptations that the guy hefting concrete buckets alone in his garage won't face.
I think the programmers that write code for the joy of creation and problem-solving won't have much trouble holding onto their expertise. The ones that were never that way, or that had it burned out of them, are the ones in danger.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can already do some part of that. Eventually it will be able to all of it. If it does it on it's own, it might be a good idea, but it won't be your good idea. This is not an issue of ownership or attribution, but one of content. Your ideas come from your experiences. An AI may eventually be able to make any tool fit for the task you had in mind. It can't on it's own, give you the tool that you want because you jus…
Chess is boring; it's been solved. I'm not really looking forward to a future where the only thing I get to do is play with toys while waiting for the AI to refill the cat food bowl.
Boring is, and has always been, the mind of the beholder.
> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…
> How do you think engineers in the second half got there? By writing tons and tons of code to "build those reps" and gain that experience. It's not by writing syntax that you get there. It's by creating software and gaining the experience of seeing it go wrong. "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." AI just shortens the cycle without needing to type out syntax, so you get even m…
That's why students learn how to write pseudo-code before picking up a programming language. Learning how to think through implementing a solution to a problem is extremely important. It's exactly this experience that helps engineers grow their scope and understand bigger, more complex system.
There's also the tactical components of using programming languages. The only way to know when to use one type of data structure over another, or to debug tricky language-specific behavior is _to actually have used that language._
And it's exactly this knowledge that's being threatened by LLMs given how they are implemented today.
> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…
> I don't see how that's possible, but maybe I'm thinking too myopically. you are thinking too myopically. We have people who can still do maths well after the introduction of the calculator. We have people who can still spell after the introduction of spell check. The junior only need to train without using AI to gain the skills needed - that's called education. If they choose to rely on AI solely, and gimp their ow…
/s
> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…
> I don't see how that's possible, but maybe I'm thinking too myopically. you are thinking too myopically. We have people who can still do maths well after the introduction of the calculator. We have people who can still spell after the introduction of spell check. The junior only need to train without using AI to gain the skills needed - that's called education. If they choose to rely on AI solely, and gimp their ow…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pasted it into Pangram AI and it classified the article as 100% AI generated, so take that as you will...
Ironically making the case for the thesis of the piece - what happens when you let A.I. do all the thinking instead of exercising competent judgement. Disclaimers and leaving real thought to others do not make it much better. Pangram is confidently wrong here.
I agree with the premise of your post, just felt it was a bit long and the section headers read a little weird.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chess is boring; it's been solved. I'm not really looking forward to a future where the only thing I get to do is play with toys while waiting for the AI to refill the cat food bowl.
It's really hard to tell sarcastic irony from legitimately held opinion these days. Boring is, and has always been, the mind of the beholder.
> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…
> I don't see how that's possible, but maybe I'm thinking too myopically. you are thinking too myopically. We have people who can still do maths well after the introduction of the calculator. We have people who can still spell after the introduction of spell check. The junior only need to train without using AI to gain the skills needed - that's called education. If they choose to rely on AI solely, and gimp their ow…