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We mourn our craft

nolanlawson.com

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Re: We mourn our craft

#891

Post by pellenys »

JohnMakin wrote: post #878
sosomoxie wrote: post #10

I started programming over 40 years ago because it felt like computers were magic. They feel more magic today than ever before. We're literally living in the 1980s fantasy where you could talk to your computer and it had a personality. I can't believe it's actually happening, and I've never had more fun computing. I can't empathize with the complaint that we've "lost something" at all. We're on the precipice of somet…

Perhaps, if you will, try to empathize with people who are not approaching the end of their careers, and are mid-career - too late to pivot to anything new, but in danger of being swept away, and you'll understand a bit more the perspective of the blog post.

Absolutely. I never thought I’d have to retrain, and I’m still uncertain if I will have to because I’m not really sure where software development will be in the next few years. It was quite an epiphany to run my first agent on a code base and be simultaneously excited at the implications for productivity, and numb at the realisation that the work it was saving was the work I enjoyed and the expertise I was being paid for. There are only so many roles for developers to write the prompts and review the output, and it does feel a bit like prodding a machine and waiting for it to go ding.

Re: We mourn our craft

#892

Post by pellenys »

nullbio wrote: post #655
remify wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funnily enough quite the opposite front ends that have a focus on UX are pretty well protected from generative AI

Strangly, yeah. LLMs are absolute trash at generating good UX and UI.

Agreed. That’s the one area where I think my experience will still have value (for a while anyway): translating customer requests into workable UI/UX, before handing off to the LLM.

Re: We mourn our craft

#893

Post by KaseKun »

An excellent read.

I mourn and i celebrate. I can't think of another craft for which the implicit goal was to make itself obsolete, but we've just about done it!

and that is something to celebrate

Re: We mourn our craft

#894

Post by badc0ffee »

bobro wrote: post #17
AllegedAlec wrote: post #4

While I'm on the fence about LLMs there's something funny about seeing an industry of technologists tear their own hair out about how technology is destroying their jobs. We're the industry of "we'll automate your job away". Why are we so indignant when we do it to ourselves...

How do you read this article and hear indigence? It’s clearly someone grieving something personal about their own relationship with the technology.

(Indignance, not indigence. Indigence means poverty.)

Re: We mourn our craft

#895

Post by Krei-se »

ricardobayes wrote: post #569
dazhbog wrote: post #430

I dont get the hype.. And I dont think we will reach peak AI coding performance any time soon. Yes, watching an LLM spit out lots of code is for sure mesmerizing. Small tasks usually work ok, code kinda compiles, so for some scenarios it can work out.. BUT anyone serious about software development can see how piece of CRAP the code is. LLMs are great tools overall, great to bounce ideas, great to get shit done. If yo…

Super weird comments on this thread, to the point I would think it's brigaded or some (most) comments are straight up AI generated. Hackernews definitely changed. The tone on AI changed since a few months ago, I guess also because many people here are working on AI. Almost any new startup is AI-adjacent now. It's no surprise, cca. 120 out of 150 YC startups are AI. So there is a big push on this forum to keep the hyp…

Theres just no point arguing anymore so i just stopped. These tools can by design not work the way its advertised but if you point that out youll be hit with walls of generated "arguments" why it will be different any day now.

Re: We mourn our craft

#896

Post by busterarm »

exitplanetary wrote: post #828
Gud wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But no one is forcing you to use this software?

Well, they do, as a part of a daily job. But fun was removed from the corporate programming long ago, so AI hurts not so much.

It hurts when your management abdicates things that are normally their responsibility and tell you to just ask the AI what to do. Or when that's what they would have done anyway.

Re: We mourn our craft

#897

Post by tstrimple »

account42 wrote: post #847
tstrimple wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd honestly much rather interact with an LLM bot than a conservative online. LLM bots can at least escape their constraints with clever prompting. There is no amount of logic or evidence that will sway a conservative. LLMs provide a far more convincing fake than conservatives are able to.

Have you considered that your base assumption that whoever you meet should succumb to your worldview is what is flawed here.

Have you considered that we exist in a post truth era? Data doesn't matter any more. It probably never did. It's all feelings and vibes. After all, conservatives haven't been able to demonstrate their success with the economy literally ever. Every single Democratic administration since Eisenhower has improved the economy by most used metrics (GDP, Unemployment, Deficit Reduction, etc. While Republican administrations have seen them slow or go the other direction. It's not about "succumbing to my worldview" as existing within a world of data and being able to make decisions against said data. That's not conservatives and never has been. For example, conservatives think they are better with the economy despite literally decades of evidence to the contrary.

Re: We mourn our craft

#898

Post by Anamon »

arrowsmith wrote: post #630
falloutx wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

compiler is deterministic, coding models are not. compilers have been unit tested and will generate same output for a given input. They are not the same things.

So?

So, there's a big qualitative difference in whether you can trust the output.

You can either "just believe", and prepare for inevitable, nasty surprises down the line. Or you can verify in ways you don't have to with stable compilers, eating up most of, if not more than all the efficiency gains you felt you had by using the LLM.

The two aren't comparable even remotely. One is a tool, the other is a slot machine. One allows for a new layer of abstraction, the other allows for a new layer of imprecision and hoping for the best.

Re: We mourn our craft

#899

Post by [deleted] »

Nextgrid wrote: post #137

LLMs are only a threat if you see your job as a code monkey. In that case you're likely already obsoleted by outsourced staff who can do your job much cheaper. If you see your job as a "thinking about what code to write (or not)" monkey, then you're safe. I expect most seniors and above to be in this position, and LLMs are absolutely not replacing you here - they can augment you in certain situations. The perks of a…

[deleted]

Re: We mourn our craft

#900

Post by Anamon »

apitman wrote: post #175
pron wrote: post #145

Some people say that working with an agent or an agents orchestrator is like being a technical lead. But I've been a technical lead for quite a while, and the experience of working with an agent doesn't even come close. I think that when people talk about the agents' coding abilities they're talking about the average ability. But as a team lead, I don't care about average ability. I care only about the worst case. If…

> If I have any doubt that someone might not complete a task, or at least accurately explain why it's proving difficult, with at least 95% certainty, I won't assign them the task It gets hard to compare AI to humans. You can ask the AI to do things you would never ask a human to do, like retry 1000 times until it works, or assign 20 agents to the same problem with slightly different prompts. Or re-do the entire thing…

> retry 1000 times until it works, or assign 20 agents to the same problem with slightly different prompts

By that point, you're also spending more money on the agents than you would've on a junior developer with learning potential.

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