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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

#991

Post by hyperthesis »

julianeon wrote: post #205
hyperthesis wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be really fair, there are levels of programming. The easiest level is traditionally vulnerable to automation. There's a lot of "accidental complexity" ( https://wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet ), e.g. ffmpeg, git; even in recalling syntax and idiom of an infrequently used tool, e.g. bash, jq. Once upon a time, developers had to pore over manpages, paper textbooks, or memorize it. Then came google. Next, stacke…

I know that last line is wry but I feel like people need the reminder: The graveyards are filled to overflowing with companies that were challenged by low-end 'crappy' products and said 'they are going after the bottom of the market, we are safe'... a few years before they entered a terminal decline, and a decade before they went extinct.

The significant factor in "disruption" [Christensen] is not low-end products - incumbents typically crush them, and markets consolidate over time; many competitors become few. What's newsworthy and puzzling is when the low-end entrant does win. The key factor (IMHO from reading several of his books) is when incumbents cannot address low-end entrants, because their customers have captured them in some way (e.g. all aspects of the organization are optimized to their customers).

Thought experiment: how could this apply to human thought? i.e. what is a low-end that we couldn't address?

Disclaimer: I really like Christensen's reasoning, theories, and expression of them... but he did predict the iphone would not be disruptive. So, at best, difficult to apply!

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#992

Post by shrimpx »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #144
cglan wrote: post #6

Maybe I’m in the minority. I’m definitely extremely impressed with GPT4, but coding to me was never really the point of software development. While GPT4 is incredible, it fails OFTEN. And it fails in ways that aren’t very clear. And it fails harder when there’s clearly not enough training resources on the subject matter. But even hypothetically if it was 20x better, wouldn’t that be a good thing? There’s so much of t…

I've been saying the same thing. Coding is the worst part of the process. I've been doing it for 20 years professionally and another 10 or more on top of that as a hobby. Don't care about code, just want to make things. Code sucks.

If you don't want to code, how do you "make things"? (Presumably by "things" you mean programs/apps.) "Making" and "coding" are synonymous for programmers.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#993

Post by shrimpx »

corethree wrote: post #288
cglan wrote: post #6

Maybe I’m in the minority. I’m definitely extremely impressed with GPT4, but coding to me was never really the point of software development. While GPT4 is incredible, it fails OFTEN. And it fails in ways that aren’t very clear. And it fails harder when there’s clearly not enough training resources on the subject matter. But even hypothetically if it was 20x better, wouldn’t that be a good thing? There’s so much of t…

>Maybe I’m in the minority. I’m definitely extremely impressed with GPT4, but coding to me was never really the point of software development. You're not the minority. You're the majority. The majority can't look reality in the face and see the end. They lie to themselves. >While GPT4 is incredible, it fails OFTEN. And it fails in ways that aren’t very clear. And it fails harder when there’s clearly not enough traini…

I appreciate your position but I want to push back against this type of rhetorical defense of stuff that has no basis in evidence or reasonable expectation.

This sentiment parrots Sam Altman's and Musk's insistence that "AI" is super-powerful and dangerous, which is baseless rhetoric.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#994

Post by lucubratory »

thfuran wrote: post #370
nextos wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI might help programmers become more rigorous by lowering the cost of formal methods. Imagine an advanced language where simply writing a function contract, in some kind of Hoare logic or using a dependently-typed signature, yields provably correct code. These kinds of ideas are already worked on, and I believe are the future.

LLMs are pretty much the antithesis of rigor and formal methods.

So is the off the cuff, stream of consciousness chatter humans use to talk. We still manage to write good scientific papers (sometimes...), not because we think extra hard and then write a good scientific treatment in one go without edits, research or revisions. Instead we we have a whole text structure, revision process, standardised techniques of analysis, searchable research data collections, critique and correction by colleagues, searchable previous findings all "hyperlinked" together by references, and social structures like peer review. That process turns out high-quality, high-information work product at the end, without a significant cognitive adjustment to the humans doing the work aside from just learning the new information required.

I think if we put resources and engineering time into trying to build a "research lab" or "working scientist tool access and support network" with every intelligent actor involved emulated with LLMs, we could probably get much, much more rigorous results out the other end of that process. Approaches like this exist in a sort of embryonic form with LLM strategies like expert debate.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#995

Post by aerhardt »

disqard wrote: post #937
aerhardt wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was totally written by a programmer though, what would make you say that?

Like many other communities, programming has historically had its share of gatekeeping, and it's often easy to forget that "programming" spans a wide range of abilities and skill levels. So, while GP might be technically correct in some narrow sense, I would be less quick to judge the OP article author. Some years hence, anyone who is not actively building (as opposed to using) one of these LLMs might be dismissed as…

The article’s author is a professional programmer, I don’t think anyone in their right mind would ever say that that’s not a programmer. I think the comment OP just screwed up and either merely skimmed the article or confused the author with the author’s friend who is not a programmer.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#996

Post by danielmarkbruce »

kumarvvr wrote: post #499
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say the same about math or reading?

Reading is one of the major means of information gathering for humans, apart from introspection, inspection and vocal communication. It is not comparable.

It is now. It wasn't 200 years ago. Verbal communication was. In the very near future, the major means for getting anything done might well be producing instructions for a computer. Those who cannot do that might well be in a lot of trouble employment wise.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#997

Post by Shocka1 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #477
happytiger wrote: post #395

Do people seriously consider this the waning days of the craft? I don’t understand that. My view is that I am about to enter the quantum productivity period of coding. I am incredibly excited about AI assistance on my coding tasks, because it improves not only what I’m writing, but also helps me to learn as I go. I have never had a better time writing software than I have in the last year. I’ve been writing software…

I agree it's amazing. But your comment doesn't touch on the key economic question that will decide for how many people it will be this amazing new dev experience. If AI makes developers twice as productive (maybe a few years down the road with GPT-6), will this additional supply of developer capacity get absorbed by existing and new demand? Or will there be half as many developers? Or will the same number of develope…

Regarding economics, this has been brought up about automation for many decades now. Humans adapt, adjust and productivity output increases to even higher levels.

Yes, it may harm certain professions, careers and people, but the only option is to accept and adapt. We can talk all day and night about how sad and unfair this is, but unfortunately there is nothing stopping such technological advancements.

Though a little blunt at times, the libertarian economist and journalist Henry Hazlitt talks about this in great detail in his book, Economics in One Lesson, which I highly recommend to anyone no matter what belief system. He also wrote many essays on it, including one I'll share here: https://fee.org/articles/the-curse-of-machinery/

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#998

Post by kubanczyk »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #446
decasia wrote: post #52

I have been having the following debate with my friend who does AI and neural network stuff: Him: Coding will soon be obsolete, it will all be replaced by chatgpt-type code gen. Me: OK but the overwhelming majority of my job as a "senior engineer" is about communication, organizational leadership, and actually understanding all the product requirements and how they will interface with our systems. Yes, I write code,…

Wait before product-gen AI emerges. No, seriously. Do folks here not see it's possible even today with a complex system based on LLMs? It's a matter of time.

I read you. Connecting AI directly to a bank account and removing a human from the loop is a logical next step. It's a classical Paperclip Factory scenario though, i.e. playing with fire[0], yes, but it's nothing novel.

[0] Actually, playing with hypnodrones.

Re: A coder considers the waning days of the craft

#1000

Post by w4ffl35 »

shrimpx wrote: post #992
w4ffl35 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying the same thing. Coding is the worst part of the process. I've been doing it for 20 years professionally and another 10 or more on top of that as a hobby. Don't care about code, just want to make things. Code sucks.

If you don't want to code, how do you "make things"? (Presumably by "things" you mean programs/apps.) "Making" and "coding" are synonymous for programmers.

That's why I still program.
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