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Human coders are still better than LLMs

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Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#741

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

Terr_ wrote: post #692
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tbf, there's a phase of learning to code where everything is pretty much an incantation you learn because someone told you "just trust me." There really shouldn't be. You don't need to know all the turtles by name, but "trust me" doesn't cut it most of the time. You need a minimal understanding to progress smoothly. Knowledge debt is a b*tch.

> There really shouldn't be. I don't see how, barring some kind of transcendental change in the human condition. Simple lies [0] and ignore-this-until-later is basically human nature for learning, you see it in every field and topic. The real problem is not about if , but when certain kinds of "incantations" should be introduced or destroyed, and in what order. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children

Please, reread the statement I'm arguing with. I posit that you can mostly avoid "everything is an incantation for a while" if you're onto the correctly constructed track to knowledge.

Consider, how it's been done traditionally for imperative programming: you explain the notion of programming (encoding algorithms with a specific set of commands),explain basic control flow, explain flowcharts, introduce variables and a simplified computation model. Then you drop the student into a simplified environment where they can test the basics in practice, without the need to use any "incantations".

By the time you need to introduce `#include ` they already know about types, functions, compilation, etc. At this point you're ready to cover C idioms (or any other language) and explain why they are necessary.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#742

Post by thegrim33 »

If LLMs really do eventually replace programmers in X years (I don't believe they will), I wouldn't even care in the slightest about losing my job, since we'd effectively have reached singularity state where computers can now do any task; humans would no longer be needed for anything. I couldn't care less about losing my job in that scenario, the world would be fundamentally changed forever. Would the concept of a job even still exist at that point?

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#743

Post by lores »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #721
lores wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recognised newspapers will curate by hiring smart, knowledgeable reporters and funding them to get reliable information. Recognised books will be written by a reliably informed author, and reviewed by other reliably informed people. There are no recognised LLMs, and their method of working precludes reliability.

Malcolm Gladwell, Jonah Lehrer, Daniel Kahneman, Matthew Walker, Stephen Glass? The New York Times, featuring Judith Miller on the existence of WMD, or their award winning podcast "Caliphate"? (Award returned when it became known the whole thing was made up, in case you haven't heard of that one).

As opposed to a LLM trained on all the Sh1tL0rd69 of the web?

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#744

Post by gitaarik »

JoshCole wrote: post #740
gitaarik wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, this is interesting indeed and I'll investigate more into it. But I think my points still stand. Let me elaborate. An LLM only learns through input text. It doesn't have a first-person 3D experience of the world. So it can't execute physical experiments, or even understand them. It can understand the texts about it, but it can't visualize it, because it doesn't have a visual experience. And ultimately our physica…

You're doing this thing again where you say tons of things that aren't true. > An LLM only learns through input text. This is false. There already exist LLM which understand more than just text. Relevant search term: multi-modality. > It doesn't have a first-person 3D experience of the world. Again false. It is trivial to create such an experience with multi-modality. Just set up an input device which streams that. >…

You come up with very interesting points, and I'm thankful for that. But I also think you're missing the crux or my message. LLMs don't experience the world the same way humans do. And they also don't think in the same way. So you can train them very far with enough input data, but there will always be a limit of what they can understand compared to a human. If you want them to think and experience the world in the same way, you basically have to create a complete human.

My example about the visualization was just an example to prove a point. What I ultimately mean is the whole complete human experience. And besides, if you give it eyes, what data are you gonna train it on? Most videos on the internet are filmed with one lens, which doesn't give you a 3D visual. So you would have to train it like a baby growing up, trial on error. And then again we're talking only about the visual.

Hellen Keller wasn't born blind, so she did have a chance to develop her visual brain functions. Most people can visualize things with their eyes closed.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#745

Post by Panzer04 »

cushychicken wrote: post #629
Panzer04 wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of things is it doing? I have a hard time imagining an LLM being able to do arbitrary things. It always feels like LLMs can do lots of the easy stuff, but if they can't do everything you need the skilled engineer anyway, who'd knock the easy things out in a week anyway.

What kind of things is it doing? Wrote me: - a SPI deserializer that sets a bit after 12 bits read in, to trigger a prefetch - an SDC constraints file for the deserializer that correctly identified the SPI clock and bus clock as separate domains requiring their own statement - a test bench that validated both that the prefetch bit was being set, and that it was being set at the proper time relative to the SPI clock -…

Fair enough. I guess it's all about degrees - I work at a place where we use FPGAs for our hardware, and I find it really hard to imagine an LLM being remotely capable of solving the problems our FPGA guys do.

If the FPGA is mostly doing simpler stuff with lots of boilerplate, I can see current LLMs offering a lot for someone who doesn't regularly write code for them; I guess that's similar to the current case for software.

Using them to set up the initial flow is not a bad idea either - I know coworkers who use them to write the early code for a new system or driver, where it seems to work pretty well (probably because that's a huge part of the training set - loads of tutorials out there)

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#746

Post by acquisitionsilk »

BirAdam wrote: post #408
acquisitionsilk wrote: post #192

It is quite heartening to see so many people care about "good code". I fear it will make no difference. The problem is that the software world got eaten up by the business world many years ago. I'm not sure at what point exactly, or if the writing was already on the wall when Bill Gates' wrote his open letter to hobbyists in 1976. The question is whether shareholders and managers will accept less good code. I don't s…

This is fun to think about. I used to think that all software was largely garbage, and at one point, I think this _was_ true. Sometime over the last 20 years, I believe this ceased to be the case. Most software these days actually works. Importantly, most software is actually stable enough that I can make it half an hour without panic saving. Could most software be more awesome? Yes. Objectively, yes. Is most softwar…

I ended up watching this talk this evening:

> Jonathan Blow - Preventing the Collapse of Civilization (English only) :: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk

and it made me think of your comment. In summary, I disagree, and think that video argues the point very convincingly.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#747

Post by JoshCole »

gitaarik wrote: post #744
JoshCole wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're doing this thing again where you say tons of things that aren't true. > An LLM only learns through input text. This is false. There already exist LLM which understand more than just text. Relevant search term: multi-modality. > It doesn't have a first-person 3D experience of the world. Again false. It is trivial to create such an experience with multi-modality. Just set up an input device which streams that. >…

You come up with very interesting points, and I'm thankful for that. But I also think you're missing the crux or my message. LLMs don't experience the world the same way humans do. And they also don't think in the same way. So you can train them very far with enough input data, but there will always be a limit of what they can understand compared to a human. If you want them to think and experience the world in the s…

Chess engines cannot see like a human can. When they think they don't necessarily think using the exact same method that a human uses. Yet train a chess engine for a very long time and it can actually end up understanding chess better than a human can.

I do understand the points you are attempting to make. The reason you're failing to prove your point is not because I am failing to understand the thrust of what you were trying to argue.

Imagine you were talking to someone who was a rocket scientist, and you were talking to them about engines and you had an understanding of engines that was predicated on your experience with cars. You start making claims about the nature of engines and they disagree with you they argue with you and they point out all these ways that you're wrong. Is this person going to be doing this because they're not able to understand your points? Or is it more likely that their experience with engines that are different than the engines that you're used to give them a different perspective that forced them to think of the world in a different way than you do?

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#748

Post by vidarh »

apwell23 wrote: post #464
lupire wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second, how much of commenting is really never done before?

good question. why isn't the gp using llm to generate comments then.

For some types of comment, it really would be tempting to automate the answers, because especially the "stochastic parrot" type comments are getting really tedious and inane, and ironically comes across as people parroting the same thing over and over instead of thinking.

But the other answer is that often the value in responding is to sharpen the mind and be forced to think through and formulate a response even if you've responded to some variation of the comment you reply to many times over.

A lot of comments that don't give me any value to read are comments I still get value out of through the process of replying to for that reason.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#749

Post by gitaarik »

JoshCole wrote: post #747
gitaarik wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You come up with very interesting points, and I'm thankful for that. But I also think you're missing the crux or my message. LLMs don't experience the world the same way humans do. And they also don't think in the same way. So you can train them very far with enough input data, but there will always be a limit of what they can understand compared to a human. If you want them to think and experience the world in the s…

Chess engines cannot see like a human can. When they think they don't necessarily think using the exact same method that a human uses. Yet train a chess engine for a very long time and it can actually end up understanding chess better than a human can. I do understand the points you are attempting to make. The reason you're failing to prove your point is not because I am failing to understand the thrust of what you w…

Well chess has a very limited set of rules and playing field. And the way to win in chess is to be able to think forward, how all the moves could play out, and pick the best one. This is relatively easy to create an algorithm for that surpasses humans. That is what computers are good at: executing specific algorithms very fast. A computer will always beat a human to that.

So such algorithms can replace certain functions of humans, but they can't replace the human as a whole. And that is the same with LLMs. They save us time for repetative tasks, but they can't replace all of our functions. In the end an LLM is a comprehensive algorithm constantly updated with machine learning. It's very helpful, but it has its limits. The limit is constantly surpassed, but it will never replace a full human. To do that you need to do a whole lot more than a comprehensive machine learning algorithm. They can get very close to something that looks like a human, but there will always be something lacking. Which then again can be improved upon, but you never reach the same level.

That is why I don't worry about AI taking our jobs. They replace certain functions, which will make our job easier. I don't see myself as a coder, I see myself as a system designer. I don't mind if AIs take over (certain parts of) the coding process (once they're good enough). It will just make software development easier and faster. I don't think there will be less demand for software developers.

It will change our jobs, and we'll have to adapt to that. But that is always what happens with new technology. You have to grow along with the changes and not expect that you can keep doing the same thing for the same value. But I think that for most software developers that isn't news. In the old days people were programming in assembly, then compiled languages came and then higher level languages. Now we have LLMs, which (when they become good enough) will just be another layer of abstraction.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#750

Post by npteljes »

twodave wrote: post #690
sumeno wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're doing your boss's job for them by making this an engineer vs engineer thing instead of an engineer vs management thing.

No, today I can tell my manager when someone sucks at their job, and if enough other people are saying the same thing then that engineer will either be given help so they stop sucking or be fired so they don’t subtract from the team. Because this happens fairly often I wouldn’t want to add a lot of friction to that process. Idk, maybe you can protect people from being laid off without also complicating performance-ba…

How does a union have an effect on what you described? Can't a union worker not be fired for poor performance?
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