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We mourn our craft

nolanlawson.com

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Re: We mourn our craft

#701

Post by deaux »

skydhash wrote: post #693
orangecat wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s like saying that the human brain is based on simple physical field equations, and therefore its behavior is easy to understand. Right, which is the point: LLMs are much more like human coworkers than compilers in terms of how you interact with them. Nobody would say that there's no point to working with other people because you can't predict their behavior exactly.

> LLMs are much more like human coworkers than compilers in terms of how you interact with them. Human coworkers are much more predictable. A workplace where people act similarly to LLM would be a complete zoo. Imagine asking for an endpoint modification and the result is a broken backend. Or brainstorming with a PM and the reply are "you're absolutely right, whatever I was saying was completely wrong, but let me rep…

> Or brainstorming with a PM and the reply are "you're absolutely right, whatever I was saying was completely wrong, but let me repeat it in a different manner".

As if this isn't incredibly common..?

Re: We mourn our craft

#702

Post by yoyohello13 »

Gud wrote: post #494
busterarm wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We definitely have lost something. I got into computers because they're deterministic. Way less complicated than people. Now the determinism is gone and computers are gaining the worst qualities of people. My only sanctuary in life is slipping away from me. And I have to hear people tell me I'm wrong who aren't even sympathetic to how this affects me.

But no one is forcing you to use this software?

If you want to keep your job you absolutely need to use these tools.

Re: We mourn our craft

#703

Post by an0malous »

tangotaylor wrote: post #625

I feel like most of the anxiety around LLMs is because (in the USA at least) our social safety net sucks. I'd probably have way more fun debating LLMs if it wasn't tied to my ability to pay rent, have healthcare, or feel like a valued person contributing something to society. If we had universal healthcare and a federal job guarantee it would probably calm things down.

Yes that's why most of the excited folks are VCs and software engineers who made their wealth already

Re: We mourn our craft

#704

Post by richard_todd »

The craft is still there just like painting is still an alternative to a photograph. It's just not going to be valued by society anymore, and far fewer will learn how to do it. Natural language is the new programming language. For now, understanding the craft is still an edge in making better prompts, but already I can see that telling Antigravity "now look for ways to make this more efficient" works almost as well as guiding it specifically on how it had duplicated some code flows.

I do feel a kind of personal loss in the sense that society is in the process of stopping to value or admire the design and coding skill I've cultivated since I was 6yo. At the same time, I'm kind of thrilled that I can write a detailed readme.md and tell an agent to "make it so" and I can iterate to a utility program in 20 minutes instead of an hour. When I feel a pit in my stomach is when that utility program uses some framework that I haven't learned, and don't need to because their code worked perfectly the first time. Surely that means I'm going to basically stop learning the details, as the details I've accumulated over my life quickly begin to not matter anymore.

Honestly I'm planning to use AI to make a kick-ass retro development environment a la "Sending Modern Languages Back to 1980s Game Programmers" (https://prog21.dadgum.com/6.html) and spend my retirement having fun in it.

Re: We mourn our craft

#705

Post by abustamam »

kristofferR wrote: post #697
abustamam wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there's a reason there is a stereotype/trope about programmers not liking people. I like a lot of people. But I would hate to work with many of them even if I like hanging out with them. That said, I do like having an LLM that I can treat like the crappy bosses on TV treat their employees. When it gets something totally wrong I can yell at it and it'll magically figure out the right solution, but still keep a ch…

Kinda funny how we managed to type the exact same thought at the same time.

You beat me by two mins :)

Re: We mourn our craft

#706

Post by adamredwoods »

sosomoxie wrote: post #10

I started programming over 40 years ago because it felt like computers were magic. They feel more magic today than ever before. We're literally living in the 1980s fantasy where you could talk to your computer and it had a personality. I can't believe it's actually happening, and I've never had more fun computing. I can't empathize with the complaint that we've "lost something" at all. We're on the precipice of somet…

Computers did feel like magic... until I read code, think about it, understood it, and could control it. I feel we're stepping away from that, and moving to a place of less control, less thinking.

I liked programming, it was fun, and I understood it. Now it's gone.

Re: We mourn our craft

#707

Post by leecommamichael »

remify wrote: post #590
leecommamichael wrote: post #153

> Now is the time to mourn the passing of our craft. Your craft is not my craft. It's entirely possible that, as of now, writing JavaScript and Java frontends (what the author does) can largely be automated with LLMs. I don't know who the author is writing to, but I do not mistake the audience to be "programmers" in general... If you are making something that exists, or something that is very similar to something tha…

It's funnily enough quite the opposite front ends that have a focus on UX are pretty well protected from generative AI

I haven't heard this perspective. I'm kind of surprised the LLMs can't generate coherent frontend framework-ized code, if that's the implication.

Re: We mourn our craft

#708

Post by adamredwoods »

richard_todd wrote: post #704

The craft is still there just like painting is still an alternative to a photograph. It's just not going to be valued by society anymore, and far fewer will learn how to do it. Natural language is the new programming language. For now, understanding the craft is still an edge in making better prompts, but already I can see that telling Antigravity "now look for ways to make this more efficient" works almost as well a…

Natural language is not a programming language. Programming is precision. Natural language is fuzzy.

>> spend my retirement having fun in it.

People who have reaped the rewards of their careers tend not to be the ones concerned about their futures. Apathy.

Re: We mourn our craft

#709

Post by adamredwoods »

I agree with the nolanlawson's sentiment. What's interesting is many of the opposing statements here seem to be less interested in the actual code, and more interested in the final state. Both are valid, but one is going away due to technological advancements. That is the mourning.

There are some of us who enjoyed the code as a thing to explore. Others here don't seem to like that as much.

Re: We mourn our craft

#710

Post by vikkymelani »

maplethorpe wrote: post #647
sosomoxie wrote: post #10

I started programming over 40 years ago because it felt like computers were magic. They feel more magic today than ever before. We're literally living in the 1980s fantasy where you could talk to your computer and it had a personality. I can't believe it's actually happening, and I've never had more fun computing. I can't empathize with the complaint that we've "lost something" at all. We're on the precipice of somet…

> I can't empathize with the complaint that we've "lost something" at all. I agree!. One criticism I've heard is that half my colleagues don't write their own words anymore. They use ChatGPT to do it for them. Does this mean we've "lost" something? On the contrary! Those people probably would have spoken far fewer words into existence in the pre-AI era. But AI has enabled them to put pages and pages of text out into…

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