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AI Stole the Joy of Programming

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Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#71

Post by daemin »

deadbabe wrote: post #36
daemin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why learn to paint or draw if generative ML can create a picture for you? Why practice writing if generative ML can create a poem or short story for you? In that regard you're best off just sitting down in front of a screen and consuming content generated by ML. And from the example in the original blog post the author had the generative ML do the fun stuff in solving the problem and all they did was drudge work clea…

You didn’t answer your questions.

To me the joy of not doing anything productive means just sitting/laying on the couch consuming content in one form or another. I'm sure it can also mean just sitting and enjoying a coffee, which is fine but I don't find that necessarily enjoyable by itself.

Making art, music, painting, are all creative and productive endevours, so when you're saying to be okay not being productive to me it means to be okay being a couch vegetable. We need the occasional rest but I don't want generative ML to do all the creative and rewarding things.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#72

Post by taosx »

When we're building something, we don't have all the specs upfront (unless it's simple). I'm learning and adapting as I write more of the project, and at some points I may backtrack or start from scratch. For projects where you have the whole code upfront, I guess you could pass that to an LLM (maybe).

The way I found most success using LLMs is as a partner to ping-pong ideas, to come up with code design, algorithms, and data structures that would fit a particular scenario. Then I'm ignoring its code and writing it to fit the project. The trick is to use the randomness combined with the vast array of information it holds to your advantage - like a supercharged Google.

Regarding my joy of programming, for me it's not even close. I get my joy from the project as a whole, not from snippets of code sprinkled around (sometimes I wish it could - I have hundreds of projects I would like to tackle but they're not worth my time). The only thing I worry about is that the next version would not be accessible to the public or they would cost exorbitant amounts.

edit: for the way I'm using LLMs I found the approach taken by Zed editor to be the best, really recommend it's buffer, easy to copy-p, modify and search (it would be nice to also have divergence from a chat, hopefully in the future)

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#73

Post by hitchstory »

neuronet wrote: post #43

If I were a trained professional software engineer who found joy in writing tests and TDD, maybe I'd feel differently, but I write software to help with basic scientific analysis, and ChatGPT has been an absolute game changer for writing tests. I personally find writing tests to be soul-crushing, boring, work. I never really learned it properly, and when I have a well-documented function, CGPT typically does a decent…

Tests are usually soul crushing and boring for the same reason PHP was in 1999 - a complete lack of structure, tooling and separation of concerns made it tedious and difficult.

I find it interesting that when people describe to me how they use LLMs to write code it's either short throwaway scripts or to write the kind of code that would make me retch (e.g. tests stuffed full of horrible mocks, spaghetti boilerplate).

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#74

Post by pluc »

uh_uh wrote: post #32
pluc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds about right. Let's throw more money, power and natural resources at it and see if the scale tips the other way! If not well nothing of value will have been lost right? What's shortening humanity's lifetime in comparison to the potential productivity gains!

Aren't you at least a little bit excited for the potential benefits?

I am not. If AI delivers on its promises, an unprecedented dumbing down of humanity is to follow. If it doesn't, it was all a waste. Even if we win, we lose.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#75

Post by code_for_monkey »

meiraleal wrote: post #66
zamadatix wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people don't/didn't set out in life to be a hyper-adaptiver worker who puts 110% into the latest thing they can be the best at all the time. They set out to be an average worker who learns a skill and lives a life focused on things outside of being the maximal worker. For these people it's even less about if an LLM can beat them (which, to be honest, for most all of us is or will be true at least for certain…

> A lot of people don't/didn't set out in life to be a hyper-adaptiver worker who puts 110% into the latest thing they can be the best at all the time This used to be life for 99% of human history. Don't take the past 30 years lifestyle for granted just because we created government, free market or whatever. Human nature is to be a hyper-adaptiver worker who puts 110% into the latest thing they can be the best at all…

this is absolutely not true. Human history is not the story of hyper adaptive silicon valley disruptors, in fact your completely backwards. Most of human history growth was enormously slow, and only in the past few decades has it really skyrocketed to the point where people become obsolete this quickly. If you were born in 1008 you could be a blacksmith for the next 600 years at least without too much issue.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#76

Post by uh_uh »

pluc wrote: post #74
uh_uh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you at least a little bit excited for the potential benefits?

I am not. If AI delivers on its promises, an unprecedented dumbing down of humanity is to follow. If it doesn't, it was all a waste. Even if we win, we lose.

Is there anything AI (or more like AGI) could do for you that would change your opinion? Eternal life, interstellar travel, curing diseases, educating people with superhuman patience and competence would not be worth it?

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#77

Post by zamadatix »

meiraleal wrote: post #66
zamadatix wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people don't/didn't set out in life to be a hyper-adaptiver worker who puts 110% into the latest thing they can be the best at all the time. They set out to be an average worker who learns a skill and lives a life focused on things outside of being the maximal worker. For these people it's even less about if an LLM can beat them (which, to be honest, for most all of us is or will be true at least for certain…

> A lot of people don't/didn't set out in life to be a hyper-adaptiver worker who puts 110% into the latest thing they can be the best at all the time This used to be life for 99% of human history. Don't take the past 30 years lifestyle for granted just because we created government, free market or whatever. Human nature is to be a hyper-adaptiver worker who puts 110% into the latest thing they can be the best at all…

Humans never needed to be hyper-adaptive. 80+% of people in the far past were farmers their whole life, just like their parents, and their children, and everyone they associated with. Prior to farming, dumber means of food gathering. You worked your ass off or died but it was never about the latest thing, that's a purely modern invention. Hardly anybody went to "school" or learned a trade, nobody expected job changes every 5 years. You were a dirt poor, uneducated, worn down farmer. The modern invention was the idea we'd have time to be something else (or be a significantly more educated farmer not so concerned with imminent death) and the very recent invention is that you'd need to be multiple something elses over time.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#78

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

friggeri wrote: post #27

I've had the absolute opposite experience, AI has brought back a lot of the joy of programming and building products for me. I've been using Cursor extensively these past few months, for anything ranging from scaffolding to complex UIs. The trick, I've found, is to treat the AI like I would work with a junior engineer, giving in concrete detailed tasks to accomplish, breaking the problem down myself into manageable c…

That's because you don't find joy in programming, you find joy in game design. Actually, game design can be automated too just the interfaces are not as advanced as cursor. We'll get there soon.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#79

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

Jensson wrote: post #50
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're decent at coding it's trivial to type out a few lines once you know what the problem is, and copilots barely help. It only makes sense for it to generate entire files, huge productivity savings there.

Does it write entire files that works well? Maybe if its very standard functionality you ask for?

It probably varies by environment, all I know is that it works 98% perfectly for me.

Re: AI Stole the Joy of Programming

#80

Post by gosub100 »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #56
gosub100 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online comments are about to die. First, we won't be able to tell who is real anymore. People will profit by running huge botnets for advertising and political manipulation. (Inb4 someone says this already happens: AI will keep lowering the bar to enter and evade detection). But a knock on effect is there will be a market for farming fake accounts for later sale to said manipulators.

It'll be sad but the brain rot from pervasive social media is getting severe, especially in older generations. If this pushes more people to touch grass, it's a net positive.

I totally agree that many online comments are toxic and many people should go touch grass. However I also see this as the next step in a series of humans getting their communications cut off by computers.

Talking to people online is in fact a way that some people get socialization and develop writing skills. If my prognostication is correct and people give up even trying to interact on most websites because "it's not worth starting a conversation only to find out 10 minutes later that they're a bot" or "no one listens to my opinion because that's what all the bots say so they don't think I'm real", the effect is to make the web even more "read-only" where people are discouraged from sharing themselves.

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