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Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

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Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#641

Post by vunderba »

menaerus wrote: post #249
lolinder wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but I've had the same experience, and that's with tools that purport to handle the context for you. And frankly, if you can't automate context, then you don't have an AI tool that can realistically replace a programmer. If I have to manually select which of my 10000 files are relevant to a given query, then I still need to be in the loop and will also likely end up doing almost as much work as I would have to…

I see that you deleted your previous response which was unnecessarily snarky while my question was genuine and simple I suppose. > And frankly, if you can't automate context, How about ingesting the whole codebase into the model? I have seen that this is possible with at least one such tool (Devon) and which I believe is using gpt model underneath meaning that other providers could automate this step too. I am curiou…

> How about ingesting the whole codebase into the model?

You keep referring to this vague idea of "ingesting the whole codebase". What does this even mean? Are you talking about building a code base specific rag, fine tuning against a model, injecting the entire code base into the system context, etc.?

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#643

Post by tmnvdb »

RivieraKid wrote: post #307
dham wrote: post #144

There's such a huge disconnect between people reading headlines and developers who are actually trying to use AI day to day in good faith. We know what it is good at and what it's not. It's incredibly far away from doing any significant change in a mature codebase. In fact I've become so bearish on the technology trying to use it for this, I'm thinking there's going to have to be some other breakthrough or something…

I'm surprised to see a huge disconnect between how I perceive things and the vast majority of comments here. AI is obviously not good enough to replace programmers today. But I'm worried that it will get much better at real-world programming tasks within years or months. If you follow AI closely, how can you be dismissive of this threat? OpenAI will probably release a reasoning-based software engineering agent this y…

People somehow have expectations that are both too high and too low at the same time. They expect (demand) current language models completely replace a human engineer in any field without making mistakes (this is obviously way too optimistic) while at the same time they are ignoring how rapid the progress has been and how much these models can now do that seemed impossible just 2 years ago, delivering huge value when used well, and they assume no further progress (this seems too pessimistic, even if progres is not guaranteed to continue at the same rate).

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#644

Post by vunderba »

menaerus wrote: post #470
Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are simply no models that can keep in context the amount of info required in enterprise codebases before starting to forget or hallucinate. I've tried to give it relevant context myself (a tedious task in itself to be honest) and even tools that claim to automatically be able to do so fail wonderfully at bigger than toy project size in my experience. The codebase I'm working on day to day at this moment is give…

The largest context that I am aware that an open-source model (e.g. qwen) can manage is 1M tokens. This should translate to ~30kLoC. I'd envision that this could in theory work even on large codebases. It certainly depends on the change to be done but I can imagine that ~30kLoC of context is large enough for most of the module-specific changes. Possibly the models that you're using have a much smaller context window?…

I've heard pretty mixed opinions about the touted capabilities of Devon.

https://www.itpro.com/software/development/the-worlds-first-...

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#645

Post by tmnvdb »

cejast wrote: post #637
RivieraKid wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised to see a huge disconnect between how I perceive things and the vast majority of comments here. AI is obviously not good enough to replace programmers today. But I'm worried that it will get much better at real-world programming tasks within years or months. If you follow AI closely, how can you be dismissive of this threat? OpenAI will probably release a reasoning-based software engineering agent this y…

Nobody can tell you whether progress will continue at current, faster or slower rates - humans have a pretty terrible track record at extrapolating current events into the future. It's like how movies in the 80's made predictions about where we'll be in 30 years time. Back to the Future promised me hoverboards in 2015 - I'm still waiting!

Compute power increases and algorithmic efficiency improvements have been rapid and regular. I'm not sure why you thought that Back to the Future was a documentary film.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#646

Post by prewett »

ryandrake wrote: post #527
reverius42 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a paperclip maximizer, with all humans reduced to shareholders in the paperclip maximizer, and also possibly future paperclips.

> all humans reduced to shareholders That seems pretty optimistic. The shareholder / capital ownership class isn't exactly known for their desire to spread that ownership across the public broadly. Quite the opposite: Fewer and fewer are owning more and more. The more likely case is we end up like Elysium, with a tiny <0.1% ownership class who own everything and participate in normal life/commerce, selling to each ot…

> The shareholder / capital ownership class isn't exactly known for their desire to spread that ownership across the public broadly.

This seems like a cynical take, given that there are two stock markets (just in the US), it's easy to set up a brokerage account, and you don't even need to pay trading fees any more. It's never been easier to become a shareholder. Not to mention that anyone with a 401(k) almost surely owns stocks.

In fact, this is a demonstrably false claim. Over half of Americans have owned stock in every year since 1998, frequently close to 60%. [1]

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#647

Post by gausswho »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #508
lolinder wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't this be the case for people using LLM like it was for everyone else? I feel like it's a bit different this time because LLMs aren't just an abstraction. To make an analogy: Ruby on Rails serves a similar role as highways—it's a quick path to get where you're going, but once you learn the major highways in a metro area you can very easily break out and explore and learn the surface streets. LLMs are a G…

The problem is now that the LLM GPS will lead you to the wrong place once a day on average, and then you still need either open the map and study where you are and figure out the route, or refine the destination address and pray it will bring you to the correct place. Such a great analogy!

Strangely this reminds me of exactly how you would navigate in parts of India before the Internet became ubiquitous.

The steps were roughly: Ask a passerby how to get where you want to go. They will usually confidently describe the steps, even if they didn't speak your language. Cheerfully thank them and proceed to follow the directions. After a block or two, ask a new passerby. Follow their directions for a while and repeat. Never follow the instructions fully. This triangulation served to naturally fill out faulty guidance and hucksters.

Never thought that would one day remind me of programming.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#648

Post by xp84 »

dham wrote: post #144

There's such a huge disconnect between people reading headlines and developers who are actually trying to use AI day to day in good faith. We know what it is good at and what it's not. It's incredibly far away from doing any significant change in a mature codebase. In fact I've become so bearish on the technology trying to use it for this, I'm thinking there's going to have to be some other breakthrough or something…

> It's incredibly far away from doing any significant change in a mature codebase.

I agree with this completely. However the problem that I think the article gets at is still real because junior engineers also can't do significant changes on a mature codebase when they first start out. They used to do the 'easy stuff' which freed the rest of us up to do bigger stuff. But:

1. Companies like mine don't hire juniors anymore

2. With Copilot I can be so much more productive that I don't need juniors to do "the easy stuff" because Copilot can easily do that in 1/1000th the time a junior would.

3. So now who is going to train those juniors to get to the level where we need them to be to make those "significant changes"?

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#649

Post by outworlder »

dham wrote: post #144

There's such a huge disconnect between people reading headlines and developers who are actually trying to use AI day to day in good faith. We know what it is good at and what it's not. It's incredibly far away from doing any significant change in a mature codebase. In fact I've become so bearish on the technology trying to use it for this, I'm thinking there's going to have to be some other breakthrough or something…

> I'm thinking there's going to have to be some other breakthrough or something other than LLM's.

We actually _need_ a breakthrough for the promises to materialize, otherwise we will have yet another AI Winter.

Even though there seems to be some emergent behavior (some evidence that LLMs can, for example, create an internal chess representation by themselves when asked to play), that's not enough. We'll end up with diminishing returns. Investors will get bored of waiting and this whole thing comes crashing down.

We'll get an useful too in our toolbox, as we do at every AI cycle.

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