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Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

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Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#761

Post by daveguy »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #561
daveguy wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but in all 4 of these steps you are literally describing the job transformer LLMs were designed to do. We are at 1 (mediocre job) for LLMs in coding right now. Maybe 2 in a few limited cases (eg boilerplate). There's no reason to assume LLMs will ever perform at 3 for coding. For the same reason natural language programming languages like COBOL are no longer used -- natural language is not precise.

It seems the consensus is that we will reach level 3 pretty quickly given the pace of development in the past 2 years. Not sure about 4 but I’d say in 10 years we’ll be there.

There is definitely no consensus that we will reach level 3 in coding tasks "pretty quickly". (Assuming you are talking about your own definitions of "levels" wrt translation applied to coding -- only proofread/check required)

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#762

Post by AgentK20 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #754
csmpltn wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that LLMs are only going to make people with real tech/programming skills much more in demand, as younger programmers skip straight into prompt engineering and never develop themselves technically beyond the bare minimum needed to glue things together. The gap between people with deep, hands-on experience that understand how a computer works and prompt engineers will become so insanely deep. Somebody needs to…

> as younger programmers skip straight into prompt engineering and never develop themselves technically beyond the bare minimum needed to glue things together. I'm not worried about that at all. Many young people are passionate, eager to learn and build things. They won't become suddenly dumb and lazy because they have this extra tool available to them. I think it's the opposite. They'll be better than their seniors…

Have you _seen_ the tragedy that is occurring in primary and secondary education right now with students using LLMs for the bulk of their coursework? Humans, and most forms of life in general, are lazy. They take the lowest energy route to a solution that works, whether that solution is food, shelter, or the answer to a homework question or problem at work. To some degree, this is good: An experienced has well-defined mental pathways towards getting what they need in as little time/energy as possible. I myself have dozens of things that I don't remember offhand, but that I remember a particular google query will get me to what I need (chmod args being the one that comes to mind). This leaves mental resources available for more important or difficult-to-acquire knowledge, like the subtle nuances of a complex system or cat pictures.

The problem is a lack of balance, and in some instances skipping the entirety of Critical Reasoning. Why go through the effort of working your way through a problem when you would rather be doing with your time. Iterate on this to the extreme, with what feels like a magic bullet that can solve anything, and your skills *will* atrophy.

Of course there are exceptions to this trend. Star pupils exist in any generation who will go out of their way to discover answers to questions they have, re-derive understanding of things just for the sake of it, and apply their passions towards solving problems they decide are worth solving. The issue is the _average_ person, given an _average_ (e.g. if in America, under-funded) education, with an _average_ mentor, will likely choose the path of least resistance.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#763

Post by NicuCalcea »

jopsen wrote: post #731
NicuCalcea wrote: post #511

Workers in various industries have pled for their jobs and programmers said "no, my code can replace you". Now that automation is coming for them, it's suddenly "the dumbest mistake". Tech has "disrupted" many industries, leaving some better, but many worse. Now that "disruption" is pointed inwards. Programmers will have to adapt to the new market conditions like everyone else. There will either be fewer jobs to go a…

LLMs might enable us to build things we couldn't build before. It's just as plausible that the market will simply grow.

I think so too, but only up to some point when having humans in the loop will start bringing diminishing returns. Just like the number of bank tellers actually grew after the introduction of ATMs, as the market grew because of them, but is now rapidly falling.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#764

Post by thiht »

RivieraKid wrote: post #307
dham wrote: post #144

There's such a huge disconnect between people reading headlines and developers who are actually trying to use AI day to day in good faith. We know what it is good at and what it's not. It's incredibly far away from doing any significant change in a mature codebase. In fact I've become so bearish on the technology trying to use it for this, I'm thinking there's going to have to be some other breakthrough or something…

I'm surprised to see a huge disconnect between how I perceive things and the vast majority of comments here. AI is obviously not good enough to replace programmers today. But I'm worried that it will get much better at real-world programming tasks within years or months. If you follow AI closely, how can you be dismissive of this threat? OpenAI will probably release a reasoning-based software engineering agent this y…

> If you follow AI closely, how can you be dismissive of this threat?

Just use a state of the art LLM to write actual code. Not just a PoC or an MVP, actual production ready code on an actual code base.

It’s nowhere close to being useful, let alone replacing developers. I agree with another comment that LLMs don’t cut it, another breakthrough is necessary.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#767

Post by Madmallard »

ryandrake wrote: post #289
Madmallard wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think (1) will be true? It is only generating based on training data. In mature code bases there is a massive amount of interconnected state that is not already present in any github repository. The new logic you'd want to add is likely something never done before. As other programmers have stated, it seems to be improving at generating useful boilerplate and making simple websites and such related to…

> The new logic you'd want to add is likely something never done before. 99% of software development jobs are not as groundbreaking as this. It’s mostly companies doing exactly what their competitors are doing. Very few places are actually doing things that an LLM model has truly never seen crawling through GutHub. Even new innovative products generally boil down to the same database fetches and CRUD glue and JSON pa…

I don't know man

It can't do anything in these random Phaser games I'm making and even translating my 10,000 line XNA game to Phaser. It is totally hopeless.

Phaser has been out forever now, and XNA used to be too.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#768

Post by darkhorse222 »

mulmboy wrote: post #657
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The second assumption is also wrong, intelligent companies will not layoff en masse to use AI only, they will most likely slow hiring devs because their existing enhanced devs using AI will suffice enough to their coding related needs After 20 years in tech, I can't think of a single company I've worked for/with that would fit the profile of an "intelligent" company. All of them make poor and irrational decisions r…

> After 20 years in tech, I can't think of a single company I've worked for/with that would fit the profile of an "intelligent" company. All of them make poor and irrational decisions regularly. I think you over-estimate the intelligence of leadership whilst simultaneously under-estimating their greed and eventual ability to self-destruct. Says nothing about companies and everything about you > you also over-estimate…

How old are you? All it takes is one bad experience to show you the emperor has no clothes. Corporations, executives, and middle managers are almost by definition self interested and short sighted.

Just look at the over hiring during covid and the methods used to cull that workforce after they realized their mistake. Back handed and inhumane. Executives are more followers than a junior dev is. They just have a lot more terminology to obscure that fact. But they are basically professional bullshitters, like consultant firms.

This is excluding executives with vision. But the market and corporate structure bias towards eliminating those leaders as they are not consistently profitable over every month.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#769

Post by lolinder »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #759
zahlman wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hadn't even occurred to me that there are places where enough people are using Google Maps while driving to cause significant impact on traffic patterns. Being car-free (and smartphone-free) really gives a different perspective.

Are you Theodore Kaczynski ghost? :) Seriously what job you do that allows you to not have a smartphone ?

Not OP: I have a smartphone for my own personal use but don't use it for work at all. If my employer wants me to use specific phone apps they can provide one for me like they do a laptop.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#770

Post by jmspring »

dham wrote: post #144

There's such a huge disconnect between people reading headlines and developers who are actually trying to use AI day to day in good faith. We know what it is good at and what it's not. It's incredibly far away from doing any significant change in a mature codebase. In fact I've become so bearish on the technology trying to use it for this, I'm thinking there's going to have to be some other breakthrough or something…

My favorite has been everyday people claiming Elmo will find all sorts of corruption on Fed databases using AI. Trained on what datasets? What biases? Etc.
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