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A coder considers the waning days of the craft

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Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#831

Post by emporas »

elif wrote: post #704
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The article points this out: middling generalists can now compete with specialists. They can't, and aren't even trying to. It's OpenAI that's competing with the specialists. If the specialists go out of business, the middling generalists obviously aren't going to survive either so in the long term it is not in the interest of the "middling generalists" to use ChatGPT for code generation. What is in their interest…

It REALLY depends on the task. For instance, if you provide GPT with a schema, it can produce a complex and efficient SQL query in I would also argue that not only are the models improving, we have less than a year practically interfacing with LLM's. OUR ability to communicate with them is in infancy, and a generation that is raised speaking with them will be more fluent and able to navigate some of the clear pitfall…

There is not much of a need for humans to get closer to the machine long term, when with new datasets for training the machine will get closer to humans. Magic keywords like "step by step" won't be as necessary to know.

One obstacle for interfacing with LLM's is the magic cryptic commands it executes internally, but that need not be the case in the future.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#832

Post by muldvarp »

savanaly wrote: post #821
muldvarp wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think a "so-so programmer" would need to google to figure out how to select random lines from a file.

I would have to Google. You really have the library methods you would need for that memorized? I think the last time I had to select random elements from a list at work was...never. Why would I still know that? Would it be Random.int()? Or Random.range()? Or maybe there's a better choice that operates directly on a list? Or wait is it gonna return the value or a Generator of the value? Etc. Even if you remember how t…

It doesn't sound like the author had to google for specific library methods (otherwise they wouldn't have had to think about the problem for a few minutes beforehand). It sounds like they genuinely couldn't figure it out (even given those library functions).

I don't think googling for library methods is a sign of a bad developer. On the contrary, googling for specific library functions instead of hacking something together using general library functions is a sign of a good developer.

That said, at least for python, I personally wouldn't have to google. I use random.choices a few times a year.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#833

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

Xelynega wrote: post #405
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. For every 100 problems that would be convenient to solve in software, maybe 1 is important enough to the whims of the market that there are actually programmers working on it. If software becomes 100x easier to make, then you don't end up with fewer programmers, you end up with more problems being solved. And once 100% of the problems that can be solved with software are already solved with software... th…

Who's paying those programmers to solve those problems you've identified the market doesn't care about? It sounds like that would require an economic shift more than "just add chatgpt"

Well, the market cares a little, it just doesn't care a hire-a-full-time-software-engineer amount.

It'll probably be the people who are already being paid to solve those problems, but who couldn't afford to hire a software engineer for them. They'll be able to automate their jobs without having to hire that person after all.

I'm not saying that chatgpt alone will cause this. I'm saying that if software becomes so easy to make that a vastly reduced set of software engineers can do the same job, then it will get easier for everyone else too, and an economic shift will indeed be upon us.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#834

Post by hhsectech »

miiiiiike wrote: post #409

I have a simple front-end test that I give to junior devs. Every few months I see if ChatGPT can pass it. It hasn’t. It can’t. It isn’t even close. It answers questions confidently but with subtle inaccuracies. The code that it produces is the same kind of non-sense that you get from recent bootcamp devs who’ve “mastered” the 50 technologies on their eight page résumé. If it’s gotten better, I haven’t noticed. Self-d…

Cool...so what's the test? We can't verify if you're talking shit without knowing the parameters of your test.

AI isn't capable of generating the same recipe for cookies as my grandma, she took the recipe to her grave. I loved her cookies they were awesome...but lots of people thought they were shit but I insist that they are mistaken.

Unfortunately, I can't prove I'm right because I don't have the recipe.

Don't be my grandma.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#835

Post by [deleted] »

andy99 wrote: post #764
steveBK123 wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about my experience. The worst dev on my team uses ChatGPT a lot, and its facilitated him producing more bad code more quickly. I'm not sure it's a win for anyone, and he's still unlikely to be with the team in a year. It allows a dev who doesn't care about their craft or improving to generate code without learning anything. The code they generate today or a year from today is the same quality. Part of it is t…

> The worst dev on my team uses ChatGPT a lot, and its facilitated him producing more bad code more quickly. This is great. The exact same is true with writing, which I think it's trivial for anyone to see. Especially non-native speakers or otherwise bad writers can now write long-winded nonsense, which we're starting to see all over. It hasn't made anyone a good writer, it's just helped bad ones go faster.

[deleted]

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#836

Post by ultra_nick »

adastra22 wrote: post #232
pdimitar wrote: post #226

It's quite amazing how divisive the AI topic turned out to be in HN. My opinion is that AI proponents extrapolate too much and too optimistically; they always assume linear or simply uninterrupted improvement, and they assume they breadth of AI will increase as well. I see no proof for any of those so far. Time will tell, obviously, and they may very well turn out to be correct. I just wonder why people get so worked…

AI proponent typically assume exponential growth. They'd consider linear to be pessimistic :)

Compound growth has been the most realistic historically.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#837

Post by city41 »

ern wrote: post #444
miiiiiike wrote: post #409

I have a simple front-end test that I give to junior devs. Every few months I see if ChatGPT can pass it. It hasn’t. It can’t. It isn’t even close. It answers questions confidently but with subtle inaccuracies. The code that it produces is the same kind of non-sense that you get from recent bootcamp devs who’ve “mastered” the 50 technologies on their eight page résumé. If it’s gotten better, I haven’t noticed. Self-d…

I was on a team developing a critical public safety system on a tight deadline a few years ago, and i had to translate some wireframes for the admin back-end into CSS. I did a passable job but it wasn’t a perfect match. I was asked to redo it by the team-lead. It had zero business value, but such was the state of our team…being pixel perfect was a source of pride. It was one of the incidents that made me to stop fron…

I'm a developer but also have an art degree and an art background. I'm very mediocre at art and design. But lately I've been using AI to help plug that gap a bit. I really think it will be possible for me to make an entire game where I do the code, and AI plus my mediocre art skills get the art side across the line.

I think at least in the short term, this is where AI's power will lie. Augmentation, not replacement.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#838

Post by ptyyy »

andy99 wrote: post #764
steveBK123 wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about my experience. The worst dev on my team uses ChatGPT a lot, and its facilitated him producing more bad code more quickly. I'm not sure it's a win for anyone, and he's still unlikely to be with the team in a year. It allows a dev who doesn't care about their craft or improving to generate code without learning anything. The code they generate today or a year from today is the same quality. Part of it is t…

> The worst dev on my team uses ChatGPT a lot, and its facilitated him producing more bad code more quickly. This is great. The exact same is true with writing, which I think it's trivial for anyone to see. Especially non-native speakers or otherwise bad writers can now write long-winded nonsense, which we're starting to see all over. It hasn't made anyone a good writer, it's just helped bad ones go faster.

> Especially non-native speakers or otherwise bad writers can now write long-winded nonsense

You have now described 95% of Quora's content.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#839

Post by raducu »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #794
jameshart wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s the thing though: If a new version of the app can be generated on the fly in minutes, why would we need to worry about reusability? GPT generated software can be disposable . Why even check the source code in to git - the original source artifact is the prompt after all.

Let me know how you get on with a disposable financial system, safety system or electoral voting system.

I work with java and do a lot of integration, but a looot of my effort goes into exploring and hacking away some limitations of a test system, and doing myself things that would take a lot of time if I had to ask the proper admins.

I had a problem where I was mocking a test system (for performance testing of my app) and I realized the mocked system was doing an externalUserId to internalUserId mapping.

Usually that would have been a game stopper, but instead I did a slow run, asked Chat GPT to write code that reads data from a topic and eventually create a CSV of 50k user mappings; it would have taken me at least half a day to do that, and Chat GPT allowed me to do it in 15 minutes.

While very little code went into my app, Chat GPT did write a lot of disposable code that did help me a lot.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#840

Post by reactordev »

ikari_pl wrote: post #421
reactordev wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3rd option. They got complacent and old and have trouble learning (don’t realize it) and can’t grok the new medium.

4th option. They're trying to enter the market and get a good job, but some companies consider them less experienced but more expensive than Copilot.

ooo, that's a good point too. In this case, wouldn't the coder be more productive if given a Copilot?
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