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The Last Programmers?

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Re: The Last Programmers?

#81

Post by ijusthadto »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #29

However true or false the vision described in the article may be, the crux of the matter is, that the dev described in the article depends on a third party to even be able to do their job. That third party can change or disappear quickly, or ramp up the costs to a level that will be unacceptable to pay for. To me it looks like a rather bleak outlook on the future, if we all are supposed to work like that.

We are witnessing how techno-feudalism is eating capitalism. "Subscribe to your job skills. Only today, 30% off!"

Re: The Last Programmers?

#82

Post by danhite »

> The product quality matters, but it's table stakes. What matters is whether people know your brand exists and trust it enough to buy it.

On a related note, my wife today suggested we buy a replacement Ninja toaster oven for just half the price I'd seen anywhere from a website odd~name.shop that I'd never heard of... the site looked normal, even slick, but a little research turns up the domain didn't exist a month ago.

Now perhaps this is a new business that failed to mention that fact, instead of an AI generated scam website, but I could not be certain without more effort than I wished to exert.

And this is a simple example of my worries from OP's line of thinking--I fear that AI will be increasingly bulldozing us past our cognitive capacity to function normally.

Re: The Last Programmers?

#83

Post by germandiago »

fragmede wrote: post #77
germandiago wrote: post #39

Poor the people/assistants that make mistakes when they have to fit, intrgrate and modify all AI-written code. My experience is always that there is a complexity threshold at which things start to take longer, not shorter, with the use of AI. This is not one-off scripts or small programs. But when you have systems that touch a lot of context, different languages and parts of the stack, IA sucks for how to design that…

> Give any AI any atypical problem and you will see it spit big hallucinations. So don't give it atypical problems. Hammers are really bad at driving in screws.

True, but then it begs the question: if I am a very specialized programmer, how can AI help?

AI just helps me with scaffolding and fast scripts. It does not help me at building better solutions.

It just does a better job when I do not know enough about the topic and sometimes I found it drives me the worst path.

For example, the other day I asked for "the fastest way to get a docker container with gcc15". It offered me Ubuntu + build the source via a checkout. So I suggested that it would be slow to wait to compile it (plus the problems if you do not compile with the right flags, etc.). So I suggested GUIX. I had some problems with GUIX daemon and channels, etc.

I ended up asking, after some fighting with GUIX. Maybe there is a container with gcc15? And it did exist.

So I wasted more time than if I had just found a gcc15 container myself...

There were also multiple things that could be improved, like I had to proactively ask for a non-root container, which did not give me.

So if you do not know what you want exactly, it kind of sucks and can do much better more often than not, but when you know what you are doing, just drive it a bit to scaffold but keep correcting.

All in all: I do not see how a tool like this can replace an expert that is fitting all stuff into a system that needs integration, whose software needs long-term maintenance, etc. It is not as good as advertised and anyway, when you ask something complex, it can seem to be working at first, but there is a point where it starts to make mistakes and lose additional context. Now you have a bunch of code where you understand a small part of it and have to maintain it.

I am not sure if this is good for software development at all in the sense that you are going to pay the bills in different phases of the project. It is not like you cannot do anything: it is just that the whole discipline must take into account context, maintenance and the human cognitive part (bc the human must keep understand what she is doing to be able to remain effective).

I also saw it spitting a lot, I mean, a lot of additional unnecessary code at times that just adds a ton of noise and that a professional programmer would make it much simpler (and hence, maintainable).

I still use it every day for things it does well: a bit of scaffolding here and there, an algorithm that is typical and I could clean up (depending of what I am doing), or to ask why something does not work to spot a bug or one-off scripts. To give me full solutions.... no, it actually sucks at that in a way that is not that obvious to people that did not work at it for some time and know the potential problems you will find down the road if you abuse it.

It is also quite ok at code reviews for pieces of code.

Re: The Last Programmers?

#84

Post by DauntingPear7 »

mikewarot wrote: post #74
pferde wrote: post #13

We're doomed, when even supposed experts, working on these "AI" tools can't help but anthropomorphize those tools. "when edge cases emerge that the AI didn't anticipate" The only "anticipation" that is happening within those tools is on token level, the tools have no idea (and are fundamentally unable to even have an idea) what the code is even supposed to do in the real world.

>The only "anticipation" that is happening within those tools is on token level When you were composing your reply, did you just start typing, then edit and compose your thoughts better a few times before hitting the reply button? I ask, because that's what I do. Most of the time, I never know what the next word is going to be , I just start typing. Sometimes I'll think it out, or even type out a whole screed until I…

L take

Re: The Last Programmers?

#85

Post by DauntingPear7 »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #50

I‘d really like to watch those 4 claude windows at once 100x developers in action. For me, claude creates plenty of bugs and hallucinations with just one. Anything besides extremely simple things or extremely overprompted commands comes out 100% broken and wrong.

Yeah. For this to work, something like git worktrees would be needed, or multiple clones of the repo. Claude loses the plot if you reject a change, and fix a line manually, and don’t tell it to explicitly recheck files. There’s no way this can be done in parallel on the same codebase without something like worktrees being used. Additionally, I can’t imagine, with how sweeping Claude’s changes can be, that there aren’t merge conflicts absolutely everywhere, crippling development speed.

Re: The Last Programmers?

#86

Post by adastra22 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #29

However true or false the vision described in the article may be, the crux of the matter is, that the dev described in the article depends on a third party to even be able to do their job. That third party can change or disappear quickly, or ramp up the costs to a level that will be unacceptable to pay for. To me it looks like a rather bleak outlook on the future, if we all are supposed to work like that.

You can run Kimi K2 (SOTA on metrics) for about $10k/mo on full speed for many parallel sessions and no quantization on rented hardware. About $20k to buy Mac Studio hardware for running locally, at a slower but usable speed. Maybe $4k or so for an Epyc box that gets you a snail's pace output, but still usable if you are very patient.

3rd party dependence is out of convenience, not necessity.

Re: The Last Programmers?

#87

Post by igor47 »

mikewarot wrote: post #74
pferde wrote: post #13

We're doomed, when even supposed experts, working on these "AI" tools can't help but anthropomorphize those tools. "when edge cases emerge that the AI didn't anticipate" The only "anticipation" that is happening within those tools is on token level, the tools have no idea (and are fundamentally unable to even have an idea) what the code is even supposed to do in the real world.

>The only "anticipation" that is happening within those tools is on token level When you were composing your reply, did you just start typing, then edit and compose your thoughts better a few times before hitting the reply button? I ask, because that's what I do. Most of the time, I never know what the next word is going to be , I just start typing. Sometimes I'll think it out, or even type out a whole screed until I…

When I type stuff, I usually have an idea of what I want to communicate, the language and tone I'm going for based on the context of the conversation, a mental model of my audience, and a goal or set of goals for what I'm trying to accomplish. It's pretty rare that I'm literally just generating one word at a time. YMMV

Re: The Last Programmers?

#88

Post by menaerus »

germandiago wrote: post #83
fragmede wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Give any AI any atypical problem and you will see it spit big hallucinations. So don't give it atypical problems. Hammers are really bad at driving in screws.

True, but then it begs the question: if I am a very specialized programmer, how can AI help? AI just helps me with scaffolding and fast scripts. It does not help me at building better solutions. It just does a better job when I do not know enough about the topic and sometimes I found it drives me the worst path. For example, the other day I asked for "the fastest way to get a docker container with gcc15". It offered…

The fallacy may be in the fact that 98% of the software we write does not necessitate _very specialized_ programmers.

Re: The Last Programmers?

#89

Post by zelphirkalt »

adastra22 wrote: post #86
zelphirkalt wrote: post #29

However true or false the vision described in the article may be, the crux of the matter is, that the dev described in the article depends on a third party to even be able to do their job. That third party can change or disappear quickly, or ramp up the costs to a level that will be unacceptable to pay for. To me it looks like a rather bleak outlook on the future, if we all are supposed to work like that.

You can run Kimi K2 (SOTA on metrics) for about $10k/mo on full speed for many parallel sessions and no quantization on rented hardware. About $20k to buy Mac Studio hardware for running locally, at a slower but usable speed. Maybe $4k or so for an Epyc box that gets you a snail's pace output, but still usable if you are very patient. 3rd party dependence is out of convenience, not necessity.

I am not getting your point. Are you saying I should be spending 2y of savings (20k) to get rid of the 3rd party dependency, and if I don't, it is merely convenience? And are you saying I should buy another lock-in system (an Apple device) in exchange?

Re: The Last Programmers?

#90

Post by warpspin »

I totally do not get why AI coding proponents constantly seem to feel the need to argue that "one day" coding through AI will work. As if you truly must be prepared for this day or "adapted" to AI as the article argues.

That day will either happen or not in my lifetime. If it happens, no amount of interacting with shitty 2025 tools will prepare me for that because as soon as any such tool would actually understand what it's doing, no amount of weird coping strategies people develop for the current generation of tools will be necessary or work anymore.

So I can just sit back, program as I always did and just wait for the day till this stuff is actually more efficient than me in coding. Then I switch to that tool and no amount of prompt massaging knowledge from yesteryears will help me with that.

And then I need to wait for the tool solving what's usually really holding me up in my work, namely guessing the best future design based on incomplete current information from the present.

When that day comes, I will start to worry about my job. Not earlier.

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