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Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

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Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#851

Post by bigfishrunning »

MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #443
supergarfield wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's all fun and games until you realise you can't run a consumer economy without consumers. If the issue is that the AI can't code, then yes you shouldn't replace the programmers: not because they're good consumers, just because you still need programmers. But if the AI can replace programmers, then it's strange to argue that programmers should still get employed just so they can get money to consume, even though…

The natural conclusion I see is dropping the delusion that every human must work to live. If automation progresses to a point that machines and AI can do 99% of useful work, there's an argument to be made for letting humanity finally stop toiling, and letting the perhaps 10% of people who really want to do the work do the work. The idea that "everybody must work" keeps harmful industries alive in the name of jobs. It…

So how do you choose who has to work vs who gets to just hang out? Who's gonna fix the machines when they break?

It honestly doesn't matter, because we're hundreds of years from > a point that machines and AI can do 99% of useful work

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#852

Post by bigfishrunning »

mattfrommars wrote: post #195

I read this on Reddit, but it capture in essence where we are headed in the future. "AI won't replace you. Programmers using AI will."

No they won't. The programmers that are using AI are the ones who are too lazy/untalented to learn to do their jobs; AI makes easy things easy and hard things impossible, and that's not changing any time soon.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#853

Post by foobarchu »

thedanbob wrote: post #440
abeppu wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think also a critical weakness is that LLMs are trained on the code people write ... and our code doesn't annotate what was written by a human and what was suggested by a tool. In your analogy, this would be like if your sat nav system suggests that you turn right where other people have turned right ... because they were directed to turn by their sat nav.

In fact, I'm pretty sure this already happens and the results are exactly what you'd expect. Some of the "alternate routes" Google Maps has suggested for me in the past are almost certainly due to other people making unscheduled detours for gas or whatever, and the algorithm thinks "oh this random loop on a side street is popular, let's suggest it". And then anyone silly enough to follow the suggestion just adds more…

An example I notice frequently on interstate highways that go through large cities is GM suggesting you get off on an exit, take the access road and skip one of no exits, then get back on at the next ramp. It does it especially often during rush hour traffic. Denver is where I've noticed it the most, but it's not limited to that area by any means.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#854

Post by Glawen »

thomasfromcdnjs wrote: post #451
thechao wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right; I can see it in the accelerating growth curve of my good Junior devs; I see grandOP's vision in my bad Junior devs. Optimistically, I think this gives more jr devs more runway to advance deeper into more sophisticated tech stacks. I think we're gonna need more SW devs, not fewer, as these tools get better: things that were previously impossible will be possible.

I agree with this stance. Junior developers are going to learn faster than previous generations, and I'm happy for it. I know that is confronting for a lot of people, but I think it is better to accept it, and spend time thinking about what your experience is worth. (A lot!)

> Junior developers are going to learn faster than previous generations, and I'm happy for it.

How? Students now are handing out LLM homework left and right. They are not nurturing the resolve to learn. We are training a cohort of youngs who will give up without trying hard, and end learning nothing

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#855

Post by aucisson_masque »

lolinder wrote: post #769
aucisson_masque wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yeah so you got a smartphone, the dude was saying he doesn't have a smartphone.

no smartphone make it a real pain in the ass to do most things nowadays, job is one of the biggest but it's not the least. to even connect to my bank account on my computer i need a phone.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#856

Post by zahlman »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #855
lolinder wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yeah so you got a smartphone, the dude was saying he doesn't have a smartphone. no smartphone make it a real pain in the ass to do most things nowadays, job is one of the biggest but it's not the least. to even connect to my bank account on my computer i need a phone.

Cell phones exist which are not smartphones, and everyone who uses phones for 2FA is happy to send 2FA codes to a "dumb" phone. They only have your phone number, after all.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#857

Post by MyOutfitIsVague »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #851
MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The natural conclusion I see is dropping the delusion that every human must work to live. If automation progresses to a point that machines and AI can do 99% of useful work, there's an argument to be made for letting humanity finally stop toiling, and letting the perhaps 10% of people who really want to do the work do the work. The idea that "everybody must work" keeps harmful industries alive in the name of jobs. It…

So how do you choose who has to work vs who gets to just hang out? Who's gonna fix the machines when they break? It honestly doesn't matter, because we're hundreds of years from > a point that machines and AI can do 99% of useful work

I would much rather work than not work. Many other people are the same. If I don't have a job, I will work on my free time. I enjoy it. I don't have to work for a living, but I have to work to be alive.

There are many people like me, and we will be the ones to work. It won't be choosing who has to work, it will be who chooses that they want to work.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#858

Post by z3n0n »

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…

Been heavily testing Cursor, Windsurf and VSCode w/CP lately. Most low level stuff works surprisingly well. But for anything slightly more complex I just end up wasting 90% credits watching the AI chase its own tail.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#859

Post by harpiaharpyja »

Terr_ wrote: post #839
bgoated01 wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the kind of guy who decently likes maps, and I pay attention to where I'm going and also to the map before, during, and after using a GPS (Google maps). I do benefit from Google maps in learning my way around a place. It depends on how you use it. So if people use LLMs to code without trying to learn from it and just copy and paste, then yeah, they're not going to learn the skills themselves. But if they are payi…

> I do benefit from Google maps in learning my way around a place. Tangent: I once got into a discussion with a friend who was surprised I had the map (on a car dashboard display) locked to North-is-up instead of relative to the car's direction of travel. I agreed that it's less-convenient for relative turn decisions, but rationalized that setting as making it easier to learn the route's correspondence to the map , a…

It's neat to hear that I'm not the only one who does this. It makes a night-and-day difference for me.

When the map is locked north, I'm always aware of my location within the larger area, even when driving somewhere completely new.

Without it, I could never develop any associations between what I'm seeing outside the windshield and a geospatial location unless I was already familiar with the area.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#860

Post by rpcope1 »

batuhandumani wrote: post #547
rpcope1 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI generated slop like your comment here should be a ban-worthy offense. Either you've fed the it through an LLM or you've managed to perfect the art of using flowery language to say little with a lot of big words.

I used for just translation. What makes you think this my thoughts are AI? Which parts specifically?

If they're not your words, which you've just admitted they're not, then it's slop and sounds and reads like shit. I can't believe someone would use AI for translation given how easy it is to peg it as LLM generated and how grating and pseudo intellectual the crap coming out of an LLM is.
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