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AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

koshyjohn.com

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Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#651

Post by cyclopeanutopia »

traderj0e wrote: post #571
daemin wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to look at the entire program at the assembly level to figure out parts that you want to optimise or prove for correctness. You do need to look at all the code the LLM generates in order to understand it. You can learn to understand the patterns that compilers spit out and there are many tools out there to aid in that understanding. You can't learn to understand what an LLM spits out because by design…

I dunno, I'd rather proofread (or better yet just test) LLM-generated code than have to reason about assembly. You can't just look at part of the assembly to prove that the rest is right, especially if it's hand-written, or maybe just -O3. But anyway compilers are not what come to mind when someone mentions LLM coding.

This is an illusion: reasoning about typical NPM-based project with hundreds of dependencies that you will NEVER dig into is not at all easier, it's just that most people completely give up on this and base their "reasoning" not on the facts, but on the made-up stories about what do those things supposedly do.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#653

Post by threethirtytwo »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #649
threethirtytwo wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a compliment. I’m saying you’re speaking from an incredibly obscure perspective because you took what the other person said way to literally and pedantically.

Your intent here is irrelevant. ;) I know why my perspective is the correct one here and the fact that is "incredibly obscure" only supports my findings. Majority of software sucks and majority of "software engineers" suck too. It's not a herd that one should ever want to be associated with.

Right but the topic at hand is communication. I’m saying what is being communicated is from the majority perspective but you completely missed that and tried to prove him wrong from a perspective he was not referring to and ended up looking pedantic.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#654

Post by cyclopeanutopia »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #653
cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your intent here is irrelevant. ;) I know why my perspective is the correct one here and the fact that is "incredibly obscure" only supports my findings. Majority of software sucks and majority of "software engineers" suck too. It's not a herd that one should ever want to be associated with.

Right but the topic at hand is communication. I’m saying what is being communicated is from the majority perspective but you completely missed that and tried to prove him wrong from a perspective he was not referring to and ended up looking pedantic.

My interpretation is that there is a missing part and the full sentence should be "the majority doesn't miss assembly programming and the majority is obviously right".

Moreover, when there is a big majority group but also a well-known minority (and everyone knows there is one in this case), saying "nobody does the thing that minority does" is not a simple generalization, it's devalueing the minority opinion.

Which is super offensive, and this is my potentially hot take, but whatever: the "high level" people who are so disgusted by looking under the hood, are only being able to deliver value thanks to those who build the libraries, hairy OSes and the messy hardware, and actually understand how all this stuff works.

And what triggers me is that now those people look down upon the low level people even more, especially with LLMs exploiting the blood and sweat that we put into building stuff.

It's abhorrent.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#655

Post by threethirtytwo »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #654
threethirtytwo wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but the topic at hand is communication. I’m saying what is being communicated is from the majority perspective but you completely missed that and tried to prove him wrong from a perspective he was not referring to and ended up looking pedantic.

My interpretation is that there is a missing part and the full sentence should be "the majority doesn't miss assembly programming and the majority is obviously right". Moreover, when there is a big majority group but also a well-known minority (and everyone knows there is one in this case), saying "nobody does the thing that minority does" is not a simple generalization, it's devalueing the minority opinion. Which is…

Nobody looks down on low level people. I can assure you that. But they are such a minority that common vernacular simply doesn't refer to them. That is a linguistic consequence of a practical reality; it is not a form of disrespect. In fact, most people respect low level people because it take much more skill and brain power to operate in that realm.

But LLMs are making a lot of your skillset redundant. That is ALSO a stark reality.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#656

Post by cyclopeanutopia »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #655
cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interpretation is that there is a missing part and the full sentence should be "the majority doesn't miss assembly programming and the majority is obviously right". Moreover, when there is a big majority group but also a well-known minority (and everyone knows there is one in this case), saying "nobody does the thing that minority does" is not a simple generalization, it's devalueing the minority opinion. Which is…

Nobody looks down on low level people. I can assure you that. But they are such a minority that common vernacular simply doesn't refer to them. That is a linguistic consequence of a practical reality; it is not a form of disrespect. In fact, most people respect low level people because it take much more skill and brain power to operate in that realm. But LLMs are making a lot of your skillset redundant. That is ALSO…

Maybe, so far it's the other way around - my low level team grew 2x over last year, we still have openings that we can't fill, and the amount of work still grows faster than what we can handle.

LLMs don't help.

And OTOH, what got redundant was the skills of people glueing together high level component, because apparently even open source models can do that part, as libraries and frameworks do all the heavy lifting.

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