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The end of classical Computer Science is coming

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Re: The end of classical Computer Science is coming

#71

Post by awill88 »

> I don’t think this idea is crazy.

And other things the author likes to tell themselves.. or perhaps they enjoy building clout for saying outrageous things.. yawn

Sure there will be obsolete concepts, algorithms, and plenty of AI assistance, but programming is building a state machine, or like a house in an abstract space that powers machinery to accomplish tasks of value using a general-purpose computation device.. computer science is informs and is informed by a craft (programming) and that can only be replaced by another craft (whatever this is rests in the imagination the author). You’re still doing creative work, and you will only be as effective as your abilities in practice of applying theory.. the theory will not be “use AI” or “don’t learn computer architecture lmao what a nerd”

Imho that is.

Re: The end of classical Computer Science is coming

#72

Post by mattnewport »

jmfldn wrote: post #2

This keeps me awake at night I must admit. How do I best future proof my career? I was sceptical about this until I started playing with GPT 3 and has it not only writen code for me, but also "explained" code to me. Sure, it's kind of limited right now, but it can only be a matter of time now before this all radically improves. Maybe I should focus on system design and translating the messy real world into systems. T…

An AI capable of replacing human programmers will have to be a full AGI. At that point worrying about your career is probably moot.

Re: The end of classical Computer Science is coming

#73

Post by kkfx »

I totally disagree... Seeing actual development instead I think the era of end-user programming will came back. Really.

Try see ANY large enough project: no matter if it's a kernel or a GUI desktop application, at a certain point ALL of them try to integrate, this, that, that other etc becoming monsters. Original desktops was designed as a single OS-application-framework where "applications" where just "code added to the core image". That's the missing level of integration we can't achieve in modern systems and that's why all complex software became monsters trying to circumvent the lack of integration adding features directly.

Unix at first succeed over classic systems stating they are too complex and expensive, separating "the system" and "users" is the best cheap and quick solution. They they backpedal violating unix KISS logic with X11 and GUIs, libraries, frameworks etc because the KISS principle do not scale. Widget based GUIs born and succeed over document-oriented UIs stating those are too complex and expensive. The modern web prove they were wrong. In another ten years I think we will came back to Xerox...

Re: The end of classical Computer Science is coming

#74

Post by bigbillheck »

angry_octet wrote: post #18
bigbillheck wrote: post #8

> 99% of people who are writing software have almost no clue how a CPU actually works, let alone the physics underlying transistor design. My undergraduate education was in the early 90s, and at no point in my life have I ever had much of a clue regarding the physics underlying transistor design. EDIT: also at one time I probably did have a reasonably solid grasp on how CPUs work, there's been an awful lot of advance…

For a CS person transistor design would be useless, but for EE it’s still core knowledge. But CPU design constraints are still the same now as they were in the 90s: speed of light, cache and coherency architecture, Amdahl’s law, pipelining. You’re way ahead of most coders if you understand even the basics of memory hierarchy.

I didn't learn anything about caches, and NUMA postdates my education.

Re: The end of classical Computer Science is coming

#75

Post by angry_octet »

bigbillheck wrote: post #74
angry_octet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a CS person transistor design would be useless, but for EE it’s still core knowledge. But CPU design constraints are still the same now as they were in the 90s: speed of light, cache and coherency architecture, Amdahl’s law, pipelining. You’re way ahead of most coders if you understand even the basics of memory hierarchy.

I didn't learn anything about caches, and NUMA postdates my education.

NUMA was around but it's an advanced topic. Never to late to learn about caches and memory hierarchy.

Re: The end of classical Computer Science is coming

#76

Post by jmfldn »

chowells wrote: post #12
jmfldn wrote: post #2

This keeps me awake at night I must admit. How do I best future proof my career? I was sceptical about this until I started playing with GPT 3 and has it not only writen code for me, but also "explained" code to me. Sure, it's kind of limited right now, but it can only be a matter of time now before this all radically improves. Maybe I should focus on system design and translating the messy real world into systems. T…

Just take a look at the generated code and explanations. A surprising amount of it is subtly but fundamentally wrong because gpt is just a regurgitation engine. The issues may look superficial, but when you start looking at why they happen, you realize the truth. The ml tools are usually great at writing boilerplate that's the same every time. The instant you do anything else, they fall over. They're statistical auto…

This was pretty much my take too until I played with GPT 3. I suspect that you're still basically right, but the code it was writing, whilst a bit quirky and sometimes full of errors, showed a simulacra of creativity. I use this term as I know it's an illusion, it is what you suggest, but it's amazing to me that this trick can be pulled off. I got the program to write some fairly esoteric functional programming code. I then pasted some of my own code and got a convincing "explanation". If nothing else, if GPT 3 can simulate understanding in some narrow cases through what is essentially a giant search engine trained on a gazillion data points, then it's a good trick.

It's quite possible that this avenue doesn't scale to anything more broadly useful. We shouldn't mistake solving 20% of a problem to being on the right path. Maybe this remains as auto-complete on steroids and it's a dead end. I was honestly just surprised by GPT 3's apparent abilities, smoke and mirrors though they may be!

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