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I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

jamesdrandall.com

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Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#691

Post by shafoshaf »

zepolen wrote: post #578
shafoshaf wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[55yo] My sense is that those problems we worked on in the 80s and 90s were like the perfectly balanced MMORPG. The challenges were tough, but with grit, could be overcome and you felt like you could build something amazing and unique. My voxel moment was passing parameters in my compilers class in college. I sat down to do it and about 12 hours later I got it working, not knowing if I could even do it. With AI, it i…

> With AI, it is like coding is on GOD mode Which mythical AI are you using that does this? All the ones I've tried feel like little toddlers that completely miss the point, forget half the requirements mid way, are adamant that they are completely correct then have the gall to act an authority when you point out glaring issues. I take way less time doing it myself vs coaxing an AI to get a decent solution that catch…

I was extending into the future a little bit. Think of it as playing with a cheat code that let's you have more health or power rather than God mode.

But God mode is on the way. ChatGPT mysteriously went from not understanding SAP ByDesign's WSDLs to having fantastic information over the course of a month. The amount of effort being put into AI isn't about the theoretical limitations of LLMs it is how many everyday problems will AI with all the workarounds and hacks ultimately be able to replace mid life career developers?

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#692

Post by saghm »

abustamam wrote: post #681
saghm wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Engineers who waste other engineers' time reviewing slop PRs should just be fired. AI is no excuse to start producing bad code. The engineer should still be responsible for the code they ship. Yeah, this is the unfortunate truth about what's going on here in my opinion. The underlying problem is that some workplaces just have bad culture or processes that don't do enough to prevent (or even actively encourage) bein…

Agreed! I think AI just accelerates existing processes. If existing processes suck, then you'll just get sucky code faster.

That's a super concise way of phrasing it; I might need to steal that in the future...

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#694

Post by alexgarden »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #492
alexgarden wrote: post #48

Wow... I really relate to this. I'm 50 as well, and I started coding in 1985 when I was 10... I remember literally every evolutionary leap forward and my experience with this change has been a bit different. Steve Yegge recently did an interview on vibe coding ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuJyJP517Uw ) where he says, "arch mage engineers who fell out-of-love with the modern complexity of shipping meaningful code…

Maybe you should disclose you work at an AI startup: "Now building trust infrastructure for AI agents at Mnemom (mnemom.ai)" Casts your comment in a different light, I think.

Actually, I don't really work at an AI startup. My day job is investing in cool companies that push the limits across all sorts of industries (space, defense, disaster response, aviation, etc.)

In the case of Mnemom, all the passion projects I'm working on hit a brick wall that was hard to get past without reliable alignment tools, which I couldn't find anywhere. After 30 years of being an entrepreneur, it's hard to walk away from an obvious need.

Also... regarding disclosure, I put it in my bio. :)

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#695

Post by hinkley »

nprz wrote: post #324
sho_hn wrote: post #14

My advice to everyone feeling existential vertigo over these tools is to remain confident and trust in yourself. If you were a smart dev before AI, chances are you will remain a smart dev with AI. My experience so far is that to a first approximation, the quality of the code/software generated with AI corresponds to the quality of the developer using the AI tool surprisingly well. An inexperienced, bad dev will still…

I think there is more existential fear that is left unaddressed. Most commenters in this thread seem to be under the impression that where the agents are right now is where they will be for a while, but will they? And for how long? $660 billion is expected to be spent on AI infrastructure this year. If the AI agents are already pretty good, what will the models trained in these facilities be capable of?

When the VC money runs out, the AI will have to get twice as good in order to make the price work out to be the same. Or they'll keep the price and enshittify the results.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#696

Post by orangecoffee »

cstever wrote: post #493
skydhash wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any change that I’ve done which resulted in more than a a 10 lines diff are done with tools (copy-paste, vim-fu, refactor tools or script, snippets, code generators,…) Why would I spend time babysitting an LLM when I could have just done it myself? The purpose of automation is to lighten my workload, not to add to it.

>> Why would I spend time babysitting an LLM when I could have just done it myself Exactly this. From what I understand an LLM has a limited context and will get that context wrong anyway and that context is on the edge of a knife and can easily be lost. I'd rather mentor developers and build a team of living, breathing, thinking, compassionate humans who then in turn can mentor other living, breathing, thinking, com…

If we're honest - you are not being stopped from mentoring developers. You're saying you'd want to do it on time paid for by others, and competing with teams not doing that.

So the actual pain point is compensation, and IMO we should directly call that out and address it.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#697

Post by akdev1l »

saghm wrote: post #654
akdev1l wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before there was some understanding that at least they wrote and understood their own garbage code Now it is not true. Someone can spend a few minutes generating a non-sense change and push for review. I will have to spend a non-trivial amount of time to even know it’s non-sense. This problem is already impacting projects like curl who just recently closed their bug bounty because of low-effort AI generated PRs

> Before there was some understanding that at least they wrote and understood their own garbage code > Now it is not true. Someone can spend a few minutes generating a non-sense change and push for review. I will have to spend a non-trivial amount of time to even know it’s non-sense. The problem sounds basically the same to me honestly. If someone submits code that I can't understand and asks me to review it, the onu…

You can’t really claim any PR is “low-effort” without actually reading and digesting the thing

Yes in the past you could check “oh this doesn’t have back trace or any steps to reproduce, close with won’t fix”

Now you cannot do that, the “low-effort” could be a 500+ lines code change with accompanying documentation and a 300 lines in prose describing the “problem” alongside with “backtraces” showing the issue

Except, the fix is non-sense but you have to read 500+ lines too know that. The documentation doesn’t match the changes but you have to read it to know that. The backtraces literally contain made up functions but once again you need to look closely to verify.

And if the thing isn’t immediately obvious to be AI generated then you’ll end up asking questions which will get forwarded to some AI and end up playing broken telephone.

All of this literally happened to curl in different issues.

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