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The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

techtrenches.dev

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Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#891

Post by Arainach »

WalterBright wrote: post #878
Arainach wrote: post #873

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk received 0 benefit from DOGE. Besides eviscerating all the regulatory agencies enforcing rules against his companies and huge amounts of private data from all sorts of agencies?

USAID was not involved with regulating Musk's companies. Let's say Musk has all that private data. What did he do with it? Is he extorting anyone? How does it help his rocket business? Is he draining anyone's bank accounts?

Who said anything about USAID? DOGE eviscerated all sorts of agencies. At this point I no longer consider you to be arguing in good faith. I'm done here.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#892

Post by RataNova »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #583
RataNova wrote: post #550

The worrying scenario is not that AI writes code. It's that companies stop creating the people who can tell whether the code is any good.

Do you think judging code quality can’t be automated?

The risk is that if companies stop training humans to make those calls, the automated judge becomes unquestionable rather than useful

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#893

Post by p0w3n3d »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #855
willhslade wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bronze age collapse? The end of Rome?

I thought the cause of the bronze age collapse wasn't known (it wasn't a single civilization either), and the end of Rome, whichever "end" you ascribe to isn't caused by failure to manage or adapt to new technology. they weren't out-teched by anyone, or forgot how to do some technical work.

look at the roman roads and compare them to the contemporary ones. Those ancient roads are superior in some aspects (unbreaking, not filling with water etc), and still people try to find out how were they made.

Having that said, I agree with you: the forgetting of the technology was not a direct reason of the fall, it was a feature though...

I'm from Poland, and I have comparison with my colleagues from east. They can fix things we've already forgot how to fix in Poland. My friend fixed a broken Sony TV with a microscope and a soldering gun. I'd pay just 1000$ for the new TV, as he got advised in the official repair store, but since he was Russian, he fixed it by himself.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#894

Post by premun »

Server6 wrote: post #769
liendolucas wrote: post #152

I still code daily without any coding assistance mostly because I believe this is the way to not forget how things are done, even trivial things. My main point against using AI is that I do not want to depend basically on anything when I'm in front of the screen (obviously not including, documentation, books, SO and alike). I closely see people that are 100% dependent on AI for literally everything, even the most tri…

I think your forgetting what programming actually is. Its a way convert instructions into 1 & 0s. The programming language your using is irrelevant. If AI can do the same thing with natural language is just a matter of time before we drop the "programming language" layer and AI just creates programs using straight up machine code.

Conceptually, this is correct, but you must account for the fact that some problems are so hard to explain in English and have so many restrictions and strict rules that you end up writing a much longer and much more brittle program. In the end, you need to explain the real world problem as without it, the AI does not know what to do, however smart it is.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#895

Post by simondotau »

Terr_ wrote: post #131
simondotau wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ, insofar as my own experience has been the exact opposite. I enjoy fixing other people's mistakes. And I especially enjoy outsmarting the LLMs. I find that I can obsessively breathe down the neck of an LLM for far longer than I could ever stay in the traditional flow state.

I think I might enjoy it for a little bit and then become very depressed at the idea that it will never end, a future of fixing things that should never have been broken in the first place and which won't stay fixed.

Literally the job of a senior developer, and always has been.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#896

Post by luckylion »

hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #598
luckylion wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that that plainly does not work. I work with developers of both types, and the junior ones who are part of the first group are limited in their ability by experience, but they have an inquisitive mind and don't give up quickly when they encounter something they don't understand. Much more experienced developers of the second type just throw their hands up and give up (or now: turn to AI). I've worked…

>My experience is that that plainly does not work. The apprenticeship model isn't in practice at any scale in software, I don't see how you could believe that. Practically every career start is self-taught or university to junior positions which is not the high-attention, one-on-one focus you'd get. >Why invest a lot of money and high-talent attention into someone who might quit? What happens if you don't and they st…

I'm not saying we shouldn't improve the skill of our team members -- that's an obvious yes. But about transforming someone from "I don't want to think" into "I like a challenge and want to figure it out" doesn't work in my experience.

> An apprenticeship model also helps if you can do 3-5 year agreements for training where you see the most benefit from the person in the last 1-2 years.

That's illegal in a lot of countries. If you have to invest with no assurance, you're taking on a lot of risk. Money is part of it, attention from other developers is the much bigger part in my experience.

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