561–570 of 656 posts
This is basically how I talked in January and its obsolete now.
I got a feeling these types of programmers are going extinct and their only value is going to be in the transition years. I really can't imagine even security critical defense work being run old school in 10 years.
This is what happens when the people building your society's advanced technology have no theory of mind. Too much science fiction, not enough human interaction. The Social Network is looking more and more prophetic. When your only ambition is success for its own sake, driven by insecurities you can never name, you're going to make things that don't actually serve other people, or only do as an unfortunate side effect…
If you don't live in the US and you are taking advantage of the US security umbrella, sure, you can deny AI and enjoy a curated lifestyle.
But living in the US means we must deal with this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish people would stop pretending that agentic coding and elevated thinking arent mutually exclusive. Theres way too much money on this hype train now though to point out the emperor isnt wearing any clothes and way too many people who always did think that "boilerplate spew" (the one thing AI really does well) is a valid form of programming rather than a shortcut to tech debt.
> I don't know how to do something so nobody else knows either
The eloquence with which this point gets (repeatedly) made is continuing to improve each next time I read it. However, I still feel like we haven't nailed it. That is, we are not yet at the "aphorism" stage of the discourse (e.g. "the medium is the message", "you ship your org chart", "9 mothers can't make a baby in a month"), in which the most pointed version of this critique packs a punch in just a few words that r…
Outsource manual labor, not your brain.
I read pretty dense philosophy and the longer I live, the more I think the writers were just bad writers with good ideas. LLMs can convert poorly written sentences into clear sentences with examples.
The 'Socrates worried about writing' analogy is usually deployed to dismiss concerns, but it misses an asymmetry which is writing preserved thought, it didn't generate it on demand. The real question is whether AI is closer to a pencil or a ghostwriter. For junior engineers the distinction matters most. The reps are not just about getting the right answer, they are about building the intuition for when the answer is…
This is why people who have been programming for 20 years don’t get the big hoo-ha about the effect on juniors.
This is what happens when the people building your society's advanced technology have no theory of mind. Too much science fiction, not enough human interaction. The Social Network is looking more and more prophetic. When your only ambition is success for its own sake, driven by insecurities you can never name, you're going to make things that don't actually serve other people, or only do as an unfortunate side effect…
Do you live in the US? Because there is a military reason for chasing success for success sake. The US doesnt really have a choice here. We live in a unipolar(or bipolar world) and the US must be number 1, or the international system breaks down and we can expect incredible amounts of war. (Its generally agreed that historically multipolar worlds are the worst to live in). If you don't live in the US and you are taki…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your prediction is... missing so much detail of how that prediction actually happens that it is pointless. This is my big dislike re. the discussion of LLMs and the effect of AI more broadly. Unless you bother to make an effort in going deeper why post it? Theres no value. The same stuff has been posted for months and even years at this point.
When GPT 3.5 was released, it could handle maybe a 500 LOC codebase. Experienced engineers were calling it cute, but zero threat to actual programmers. Then it became thousands. Now models can handle and operate on code bases with hundreds of thousands LOC, even low MLOC. So in just 3.5 years we've gone from LLMs being cute toys, to being powerful enough to actually replace junior engineers. Even if we hit a new AI w…
BTW they need to make enough to finance reinvestment internally… so it’s a lot more than you think. When they raise the price firms will then have to do a deep dive analysis on what to do - for they cannot see operating expenses climb incrementally without seeing revenue and costs of operations go in a favourable direction.
It’s easy when prices are lower than they should be.
Your prediction is missing all this detail. So….
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of the top schools don't have software/computer engineering degrees, rather people who want to be SWEs get CS degrees.
Yes, you're right. And that's a problem.
AI is creating problems. This isn’t one of them. Engineers are going to now think at a higher level of abstraction. No one misses coding in assembly.