I quit. The clankers won(dbushell.com)
dbushell.com
I quit. The clankers won
https://dbushell.com/2026/04/01/i-quit-the-clankers-won/
512 comments
This is going to catch some heat, but what if the most important professional “developer skill” to learn or improve is how to effectively use coding agents?
I saw something similar in ML when neural nets came around. The whole “stack moar layerz” thing is a meme, but it was a real sentiment about newer entrants into the field not learning anything about ML theory or best practices. As it turns out, neural nets “won” and using them effectively required development and acquisition of some new domain knowledge and best practices. And the kids are ok. The people who scoffed at neural nets and never got up to speed not so much.
Edit: as an aside, I have learned plenty from reviewing coding agent generated implementations of various algorithms or methods.
I saw something similar in ML when neural nets came around. The whole “stack moar layerz” thing is a meme, but it was a real sentiment about newer entrants into the field not learning anything about ML theory or best practices. As it turns out, neural nets “won” and using them effectively required development and acquisition of some new domain knowledge and best practices. And the kids are ok. The people who scoffed at neural nets and never got up to speed not so much.
Edit: as an aside, I have learned plenty from reviewing coding agent generated implementations of various algorithms or methods.
> what if the most important professional “developer skill” to learn or improve is how to effectively use coding agents?
Well, it's not. There's a small moat around that right now because the UX is still being ironed out, but in a short while able to use coding agents will be the new able to use Excel.
What will remain are the things that already differentiate a good developer from a bad one:
- Able to review the output of coding agents
- Able to guide the architecture of an application
- Able to guide the architecture of a system
- Able to minimize vulnerabilities
- Able to ensure test quality
- Able to interpret business needs
- Able to communicate with stakeholders
Well, it's not. There's a small moat around that right now because the UX is still being ironed out, but in a short while able to use coding agents will be the new able to use Excel.
What will remain are the things that already differentiate a good developer from a bad one:
- Able to review the output of coding agents
- Able to guide the architecture of an application
- Able to guide the architecture of a system
- Able to minimize vulnerabilities
- Able to ensure test quality
- Able to interpret business needs
- Able to communicate with stakeholders
I think you're agreeing with him. All of the things you just listed are key senior developer skills.
> in a short while able to use coding agents will be the new able to use Excel.
Yeah, but there’s “able to use Excel”, and then there’s “able to use Excel.”
There is a vast skill gap between those with basic Excel, those who are proficient, and those who have mastered it.
As in intermittent user of Excel I fall somewhere in the middle, although I’m probably a master of knowing how to find out how to do what I need with Excel.
The same will be true for agentic development (which is more than just coding).
Yeah, but there’s “able to use Excel”, and then there’s “able to use Excel.”
There is a vast skill gap between those with basic Excel, those who are proficient, and those who have mastered it.
As in intermittent user of Excel I fall somewhere in the middle, although I’m probably a master of knowing how to find out how to do what I need with Excel.
The same will be true for agentic development (which is more than just coding).
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And the last two are much more important.
Don't forget that most decision makers and people with capital are normies, they don't live in a tech bubble.
> Able to review the code output of coding agents
That probably won’t be necessary in a few years.
That probably won’t be necessary in a few years.
It's necessary for devs right now, no matter how good they are, and it's those devs' code the models are trained on
Even worse, the training set probably includes a lot of code that needed review but didn't get it...
If we know the outcome of that code, such as whether it caused bugs or data corruption or a crappy UX or tech debt -- which is potentially available in subsequent PR commit messages -- it's still valuable training data.
Probably even more valuable than code that just worked, because evidently we have enough of that and AI code still has issues.
Probably even more valuable than code that just worked, because evidently we have enough of that and AI code still has issues.
I see this line of thought put out there many times, and I've been thinking: why do people do anything at all? What's the point? If no one at all is even reviewing the output of coding agents, genuinely, what are we doing as a society?
I fail to see how we transition society into a positive future without supplying means of verifying systemic integrity. There is a reason that Upton Sinclair became famous: wayward incentives behind closed doors generally cause subpar standards, which cause subpar results. If the FDA didn't exist, or they didn't "review the output", society would be materially worse off. If the whole pitch for AI ends with "and no one will even need to check anything" I find that highly convenient for the AI industry.
I fail to see how we transition society into a positive future without supplying means of verifying systemic integrity. There is a reason that Upton Sinclair became famous: wayward incentives behind closed doors generally cause subpar standards, which cause subpar results. If the FDA didn't exist, or they didn't "review the output", society would be materially worse off. If the whole pitch for AI ends with "and no one will even need to check anything" I find that highly convenient for the AI industry.
You could e.g. write specs and only review high level types plus have deterministic validation that no type escapes/"unsafe" hatches were used, or instruct another agent to create adversarial blackbox attempts to break functionality of the primary artifact (which is really just to say "perform QA").
As a simple use-case, I've found LLMs to be much better than me at macro programming, and I don't really need to care about what it does because ultimately the constraint is just that it bends the syntax I have into the syntax I want, and things compile. The details are basically irrelevant.
As a simple use-case, I've found LLMs to be much better than me at macro programming, and I don't really need to care about what it does because ultimately the constraint is just that it bends the syntax I have into the syntax I want, and things compile. The details are basically irrelevant.
Code quality will impact the effectiveness of ai. Less code to read and change in subsequent changes is still useful. There was a while where I became more of a paper architect and stopped coding for a while and I realized I wasn't able to do sufficient code reviews anymore because I lacked context. I went back into the code at some point and realized the mess my team was making and spent a long while cleaning it up. This improved the productivity of everyone involved. I expect AI to fall into a similar predicament. Without first hand knowledge of the implementation details we won't know about the problems we need to tell the AI to address. There are also many systems which are constrained in terms of memory and compute and more code likely puts you up against those limits.
I don't disagree that code quality is currently more important than it's ever been (to get the most out of the tools). I expect that quality will increase though as people refine either training or instructions. I was able to get much better (well factored, aligned to business logic) output that I'm generally happy-ish with a couple months ago with some coding guidelines I wrote. It's possible that newer models don't even need that, but they work well enough with it that I haven't touched those instructions since.
I mean, sure, for programming macros. Or programming quick scripts, or type-safe or memory-safe programs. Or web frontends, or a11y, or whatever tasks for which people are using AI.
But if you peel back that layer to the point where you are no longer discussing the code, and just saying "code X that does Y"... how big is X going to get without verifying it? This is a basic, fundamental question that gets deflected by evaluating each case where AI is useful.
When you stop being specific about what the AI is doing, and switch to the general tense, there is a massive and obvious gap that nobody is adequately addressing. I don't think anyone would say that details are irrelevant in the case of life-threatening scenarios, and yet no one is acknowledging where the logical end to this line of thinking goes.
But if you peel back that layer to the point where you are no longer discussing the code, and just saying "code X that does Y"... how big is X going to get without verifying it? This is a basic, fundamental question that gets deflected by evaluating each case where AI is useful.
When you stop being specific about what the AI is doing, and switch to the general tense, there is a massive and obvious gap that nobody is adequately addressing. I don't think anyone would say that details are irrelevant in the case of life-threatening scenarios, and yet no one is acknowledging where the logical end to this line of thinking goes.
I mean, the promise of perfect AI and perfect robotics is that humans would no longer have to do anything. They could live a life of leisure. Unfortunately, we're going to get these perfect AI and perfect robotics before we transition socially into a post-scarcity, post-ownership society. So what will happen is that ownership of the AI and robots will be consolidated into the hands of the few, the vast rest of us will have nothing economically relevant to do, and we'll probably just subsist or die.
We're already seeing this today. Every year, thousands of people are becoming essentially irrelevant to the economy. They don't own much, they don't invest much, they don't spend much money, they don't make much money, and they are invisible to economics.
We're already seeing this today. Every year, thousands of people are becoming essentially irrelevant to the economy. They don't own much, they don't invest much, they don't spend much money, they don't make much money, and they are invisible to economics.
> They don't own much, they don't invest much, they don't spend much money, they don't make much money, and they are invisible to economics.
Indeed. Sometimes I think the so-called “lower classes” end up functioning more like crops to be farmed by the rich. Think, dollar stores that sell tiny packages of things at worse unit cost, checking account fees, rent-a-center, 15% interest auto loans and store credit cards with 30% interest…
Indeed. Sometimes I think the so-called “lower classes” end up functioning more like crops to be farmed by the rich. Think, dollar stores that sell tiny packages of things at worse unit cost, checking account fees, rent-a-center, 15% interest auto loans and store credit cards with 30% interest…
I've definitely felt this kind of way in the past. But these days I'm not so sure.
Setting aside the AI point about it, the idea of people becoming essentially irrelevant to the economy is an indictment on society. But I'd argue that the indictment really is towards what constitutes measurement in the economy. Not an indictment on society itself, or technology.
Sure, someone may not spend much money or produce much money, but if they produce scientific research or cultural work that is intangibly valuable it is still valuable regardless of whether economists can point to a metric or not. Same goes for the infinite amounts of contributions to our world from nature: what is the economic value of a garden snake or a beetle? A meaningless question when the economy can only see things in dollars.
Setting aside the AI point about it, the idea of people becoming essentially irrelevant to the economy is an indictment on society. But I'd argue that the indictment really is towards what constitutes measurement in the economy. Not an indictment on society itself, or technology.
Sure, someone may not spend much money or produce much money, but if they produce scientific research or cultural work that is intangibly valuable it is still valuable regardless of whether economists can point to a metric or not. Same goes for the infinite amounts of contributions to our world from nature: what is the economic value of a garden snake or a beetle? A meaningless question when the economy can only see things in dollars.
They will still be turning out the same problematic code in a few years that they do now, because they aren’t intelligent and won’t be intelligent unless there is a fundamental paradigm shift in how an LLM works.
I use LLMs with best practices to program professionally in an enterprise every day, and even Opus 4.6 still consistently makes some of the dumbest architectural decisions, even with full context, complete access to the codebase and me asking very specific questions that should point it in the right direction.
I use LLMs with best practices to program professionally in an enterprise every day, and even Opus 4.6 still consistently makes some of the dumbest architectural decisions, even with full context, complete access to the codebase and me asking very specific questions that should point it in the right direction.
I keep hearing “they aren’t intelligent” and spit out “crap code”. That’s not been my experience. LLMs prevented and also caught intricate concurrency issues that would have taken me a long time.
I just went “hmmm, nice” and went on. The problem there is that I didn’t get that sense of accomplishment I crave and I really didn’t learn anything. Those are “me” problems but I think programmers are collectively grappling with this.
I just went “hmmm, nice” and went on. The problem there is that I didn’t get that sense of accomplishment I crave and I really didn’t learn anything. Those are “me” problems but I think programmers are collectively grappling with this.
They are not intelligent. Full stop. Very sophisticated next word prediction is not intelligence. LLMs don’t comprehend or understand things. They don’t think, feel or comprehend things. That’s just not how they work.
That said, very sophisticated next word predictors can and sometimes do write good code. It’s amazing some of the things they get right and then can turn around and make the weirdest dumbest mistakes.
It’s a tool. Sometimes it’s the right tool, sometimes it’s not.
That said, very sophisticated next word predictors can and sometimes do write good code. It’s amazing some of the things they get right and then can turn around and make the weirdest dumbest mistakes.
It’s a tool. Sometimes it’s the right tool, sometimes it’s not.
None of those things will be necessary if progress continues as it has. The AI will do all of that. In fact it will generate software that uses already proven architectures (instead of inventing new ones for every project as human developers like to do). The testing has already been done: they work. There are no vulnerabilites. They are able to communicate with stakeholders (management) using their native language, not technobabble that human developers like to use, so they understand the business needs natively.
If this is the case then none of us will have jobs; we will be completely useless.
I think, most likely, you'll still need developers in the mix to make sure the development is going right. You can't just have only business people, because they have no way to gauge if the AI is making the right decisions in regards to technical requirements. So even if the AI DOES get as good as you're saying, they wouldn't know that without developers.
I think, most likely, you'll still need developers in the mix to make sure the development is going right. You can't just have only business people, because they have no way to gauge if the AI is making the right decisions in regards to technical requirements. So even if the AI DOES get as good as you're saying, they wouldn't know that without developers.
To play devils advocate, do the technical requirements even matter in that case if nobody can tell they aren’t being met?
It’s short term thinking IMO, but it’s my interpretation of the argument AI proponents are making.
It’s short term thinking IMO, but it’s my interpretation of the argument AI proponents are making.
> They work
For some definition of work, yes, not every definition. Their product is not without flaw, leaving room at for improvement, and room for improvement by more than only other AI.
> There are no vulnerabilities
That's just not true. There's loads of vulnerabilities, just as there's plenty of vulnerabilities in human written code. Try it, point an AI looking for vulns at the output of an AI that's been through the highest intensity and scrutiny workflow, even code that has already been AI reviewed for vulnerabilities.
For some definition of work, yes, not every definition. Their product is not without flaw, leaving room at for improvement, and room for improvement by more than only other AI.
> There are no vulnerabilities
That's just not true. There's loads of vulnerabilities, just as there's plenty of vulnerabilities in human written code. Try it, point an AI looking for vulns at the output of an AI that's been through the highest intensity and scrutiny workflow, even code that has already been AI reviewed for vulnerabilities.
Humans are still in the loop as the final signoff responsible for liability, and to do an audit you’ll need someone who knows what they’re looking at.
Liabilty will be waived in the terms of use.
Terms of use are not a legal “get of out jail” free card.
> This is going to catch some heat, but what if the most important professional “developer skill” to learn or improve is how to effectively use coding agents?
If it does go as far that way as many seem to expect (or, indeed, want), then most people will be able to do it, there will be a dearth of jobs and many people wanting them so it'll be a race to the bottom for all but the lucky few: development will become a minimum wage job or so close to that it'll make no odds. If I'm earning minimum wage it isn't going to be sat on my own doing someone else's prompting, I'll find a job that involves not sitting along in front of a screen and reclaim programming for hobby time (or just stop doing it at all, I have other hobbies to divide my time between). I dislike (effectively) being a remote worker already, but put up with it for the salary, if the salary goes because “AI” turns it into a race-to-the-bottom job then I'm off.
Conversely: if that doesn't happen then I can continue to do what I want, which is program and not instruct someone else (be it a person I manage or an artificial construct) to program. I'm happy to accept the aid of tools for automation and such, I've written a few of my own, but there is a line past which my interest will just vanish.
If it does go as far that way as many seem to expect (or, indeed, want), then most people will be able to do it, there will be a dearth of jobs and many people wanting them so it'll be a race to the bottom for all but the lucky few: development will become a minimum wage job or so close to that it'll make no odds. If I'm earning minimum wage it isn't going to be sat on my own doing someone else's prompting, I'll find a job that involves not sitting along in front of a screen and reclaim programming for hobby time (or just stop doing it at all, I have other hobbies to divide my time between). I dislike (effectively) being a remote worker already, but put up with it for the salary, if the salary goes because “AI” turns it into a race-to-the-bottom job then I'm off.
Conversely: if that doesn't happen then I can continue to do what I want, which is program and not instruct someone else (be it a person I manage or an artificial construct) to program. I'm happy to accept the aid of tools for automation and such, I've written a few of my own, but there is a line past which my interest will just vanish.
What the people excited about the race to the bottom scenario don’t seem to understand is that it doesn’t mean low skill people will suddenly be more employable, it means fewer high skill people will be employable.
No one will be eager to employ “ai-natives” who don’t understand what the llm is pumping out, they’ll just keep the seasoned engineers who can manage and tame the output properly. Similarly, no one is going to hire a bunch of prompt engineers to replace their accountants, they’ll hire fewer seasoned accountants who can confidently review llm output.
No one will be eager to employ “ai-natives” who don’t understand what the llm is pumping out, they’ll just keep the seasoned engineers who can manage and tame the output properly. Similarly, no one is going to hire a bunch of prompt engineers to replace their accountants, they’ll hire fewer seasoned accountants who can confidently review llm output.
And those that do have not yet understood what will happen when those seasoned workers retire, and there are no juniors or mid that can grow because they have been replaced by AI
> What the people excited about the race to the bottom scenario
I'm not excited about it. I just see it as a logical consequence if what people are predicting comes to pass, and I've thought about how I will deal with that.
I'm not excited about it. I just see it as a logical consequence if what people are predicting comes to pass, and I've thought about how I will deal with that.
The endgame in programming is reducing complexity before the codebase becomes impossible to reason about. This is not a solved problem, and most codebases the LLMs were trained on are either just before that phase transition or well past it.
Complexity is not just a matter of reducing the complexity of the code, it's also a matter of reducing the complexity of the problem. A programmer can do the former alone with the code, but the latter can only be done during a frank discussion with stakeholders.
A vibe coder using an LLM to generate complexity will not be able to tell which complexity to get rid of, and we don't have enough training data of well-curated complexity for LLMs to figure it out yet.
Complexity is not just a matter of reducing the complexity of the code, it's also a matter of reducing the complexity of the problem. A programmer can do the former alone with the code, but the latter can only be done during a frank discussion with stakeholders.
A vibe coder using an LLM to generate complexity will not be able to tell which complexity to get rid of, and we don't have enough training data of well-curated complexity for LLMs to figure it out yet.
No kidding. So far the complexity introduced by LLM-generated code in my current codebase has taken far more time to deal with than the hand-written code.
Overall, we are trying to "silo" LLM-generated code into its own services with a well-defined interface so that the code can just be thrown away and regenerated (or rewritten by hand) because maintaining it is so difficult.
Overall, we are trying to "silo" LLM-generated code into its own services with a well-defined interface so that the code can just be thrown away and regenerated (or rewritten by hand) because maintaining it is so difficult.
Yeah, same. I like the silo idea, I'll have to explore that.
I'm relieved to hear this because the LLM hype in this thread is seriously disorienting. Deeply convinced that coding "by hand" is just as defensible in the LLM age as handwriting was in the TTY age. My dopamine system is quite unconvinced though, killing me.
I'm relieved to hear this because the LLM hype in this thread is seriously disorienting. Deeply convinced that coding "by hand" is just as defensible in the LLM age as handwriting was in the TTY age. My dopamine system is quite unconvinced though, killing me.
I have a silo’d service that handles file uploads of PDFs, images and so on. It was largely vibe coded.
It sits on an isolated tier and isn’t allowed to persist state or have permanent storage. We wanted to reduce the impact of a security flaw in this code.
We’ve ended up doing similar things for search and for an orchestration tool used for testing. The key thing is it’s non critical so we can live without it.
It sits on an isolated tier and isn’t allowed to persist state or have permanent storage. We wanted to reduce the impact of a security flaw in this code.
We’ve ended up doing similar things for search and for an orchestration tool used for testing. The key thing is it’s non critical so we can live without it.
Yes, a retreading of the accidental vs. implicit complexity discussion is in order here. I asked an AI agent to implement function calls in a programming language the other day. It decided the best way to do this was to spin up a new interpreter for every function call and evaluate the function within that context. This actually worked but it was very very very slow.
The only way I was able to direct the AI to a better design was by saying the words I know in my head that describe better designs. Anyone without that knowledge wouldn't be able to tell the heavy interpreter architecture wasn't good, because it was fast enough for simple test cases which all passed.
And you can say "just prompt better" but we're very quickly coming to a place where people won't even have the words to say without AI first telling them what they are. At that point it might as well just say "The design is fine don't worry about it" and how would the user know any better.
The only way I was able to direct the AI to a better design was by saying the words I know in my head that describe better designs. Anyone without that knowledge wouldn't be able to tell the heavy interpreter architecture wasn't good, because it was fast enough for simple test cases which all passed.
And you can say "just prompt better" but we're very quickly coming to a place where people won't even have the words to say without AI first telling them what they are. At that point it might as well just say "The design is fine don't worry about it" and how would the user know any better.
I also remember a similar wave around 10-15 years ago regarding ML tooling and libraries becoming more accessible, more open source releases etc. People whose value add was knowing MATLAB toolboxes and keeping their code private got very afraid when Python numpy, scikit learn and Theano etc came to the forefront. And people started releasing the code with research papers on github. Anyone could just get that working code and start tweaking the equations put different tools and techniques together even if you didn't work in one of those few companies or didn't do an internship at a lab who were in the know.
Or other people who just kept their research dataset private and milked it for years training incrementally better ML models on the same data. Then similar datasets appeared openly and they threw a hissy fit.
Usually there are a million little tricks and oral culture around how to use various datasets, configurations, hyperparameters etc and papers often only gave the high level ideas and math away. But when the code started to become open it freaked out many who felt they won't be able to keep up and just wanted to keep on until retirement by simply guarding their knowledge and skill from getting too known. Many of them were convinced it's going to go away. "Python is just a silly, free language. Serious engineers use Matlab, after all, that's a serious paid product. All the kiddies stacking layers in Theano will just go away, it's just a fad and we will all go back to SVM which has real math backing it up from VC theory." (The Vapnik-Chervonenkis kind, not the venture capital kind.)
I don't want to be too dismissive though. People build up an identity, like the blacksmith of the village back in the day, and just want to keep doing it and build a life on a skill they learn in their youth and then just do it 9 to 5 and focus on family etc. I get it. But wishing it won't make it so.
Talented, skilled people with good intuition and judgements will be needed for a long time but that will still require adapting to changing tools and workflows. But the bulk of the workforce is not that.
Or other people who just kept their research dataset private and milked it for years training incrementally better ML models on the same data. Then similar datasets appeared openly and they threw a hissy fit.
Usually there are a million little tricks and oral culture around how to use various datasets, configurations, hyperparameters etc and papers often only gave the high level ideas and math away. But when the code started to become open it freaked out many who felt they won't be able to keep up and just wanted to keep on until retirement by simply guarding their knowledge and skill from getting too known. Many of them were convinced it's going to go away. "Python is just a silly, free language. Serious engineers use Matlab, after all, that's a serious paid product. All the kiddies stacking layers in Theano will just go away, it's just a fad and we will all go back to SVM which has real math backing it up from VC theory." (The Vapnik-Chervonenkis kind, not the venture capital kind.)
I don't want to be too dismissive though. People build up an identity, like the blacksmith of the village back in the day, and just want to keep doing it and build a life on a skill they learn in their youth and then just do it 9 to 5 and focus on family etc. I get it. But wishing it won't make it so.
Talented, skilled people with good intuition and judgements will be needed for a long time but that will still require adapting to changing tools and workflows. But the bulk of the workforce is not that.
This is so true... I am having issues with the change right now.. being older and trying to incorporate agentic workflow into MY workflow is difficult as I have trust issues with the new codebase.. I do have good people skills with my clients, but my secret sauce was my coding skilz.. and I built my identity around that..
The cure for me has been to write an agent myself from first principles.
Tailored to my workflow, style, goals, projects and as close as possible to what I think is how an agent should work. I’m deliberately only using an existing agent as a rubber duck.
It’s a very empowering learning experience.
Tailored to my workflow, style, goals, projects and as close as possible to what I think is how an agent should work. I’m deliberately only using an existing agent as a rubber duck.
It’s a very empowering learning experience.
Using a coding agent seems quite low skill to me. It’s hard to see it becoming a differentiator. Just look at the number of people who couldn’t code before and are suddenly churning out work to confirm that.
I think your argument is predicated on LLM coding tools providing significant benefit when used effectively. Personally I still think the answer is "not really" if you're doing any kind of interesting work that's not mostly boilerplate code writing all day.
Define interesting. In my experience most business logic is not innovative or difficult, but there are ways to do it well or ways to do it terribly. At the senior levels I feel 90% of the job is deciding the shape of what to build and what NOT to build. I find AI very useful in exploring and trying more things but it doesn’t really change the judgment part of the job.
How much of software programmer work is interesting? A fraction of a percent? I'd argue most of us including most startups work on things that help make businesses money and that's pretty "boring" work.
Of course! If it were interesting, they wouldn't need to pay you. You would pay them!
It absolutely is, but the fundamental misunderstanding around this seems to be that "effectively using coding agents" is a superset of the 2023-era general understanding of "Senior Software Engineer".
At least when you're talking about shipping software customers pay for, or debugging it, etc. Research, narrow specializations, etc may be a different category and some will indeed be obsoleted.
At least when you're talking about shipping software customers pay for, or debugging it, etc. Research, narrow specializations, etc may be a different category and some will indeed be obsoleted.
Many of those skills have temporary value before they're incorporated into the models/harnesses
There was a moment we thought JS had won. And then crypto. I personally believed low-level development was done.
Claude Code is written in TypeScript, which compiles to JS, so I think JS _did_ win...
Crypto did win, just not where you're looking.
I don’t think it could be the most important skill to have. The most common, and the most standardized one for sure, but if coding agents are doing fundamental R&D or running ops then nobody needs skills anyway.
> As it turns out, neural nets “won”
> The people who scoffed at neural nets and never got up to speed not so much.
I get the feeling you don’t know what you’re talking about. LLMs are impressive but what have they “won” exactly? They require millions of dollars of infrastructure to run coming around a decade after their debut, and we’re really having trouble using them for anything all that serious. Now I’m sure in a few decades’ time this comment will read like a silly cynic but I bet that will only be after those old school machine learning losers come back around and start making improvements again.
> As it turns out, neural nets “won”
> The people who scoffed at neural nets and never got up to speed not so much.
I get the feeling you don’t know what you’re talking about. LLMs are impressive but what have they “won” exactly? They require millions of dollars of infrastructure to run coming around a decade after their debut, and we’re really having trouble using them for anything all that serious. Now I’m sure in a few decades’ time this comment will read like a silly cynic but I bet that will only be after those old school machine learning losers come back around and start making improvements again.
Neural nets are used in way more applications than just LLMs. They did win. They won decisively in industry, for all kinds of tasks. Equating the use of one with the other is a pretty strong signal of:
> you don’t know what you’re talking about
Consider: Why did Google have a bazillion TPUs, anyway?
> you don’t know what you’re talking about
Consider: Why did Google have a bazillion TPUs, anyway?
They are saying coding agents are winning similarly to NNs and that’s what I’m pushing back on
Not sure why this would catch heat rationally speaking. It is quite clear in a professional setting effective use of coding agents is the most important skill to develop as an individual developer.
It’s also the most important capability engineering orgs can be working on developing right now.
Software Engineering itself is being disrupted.
It’s also the most important capability engineering orgs can be working on developing right now.
Software Engineering itself is being disrupted.
>This is going to catch some heat [...]
It does seem like a roundabout way of saying "but what if full sending on AI didn't have downsides, tho?"
Just phrased in a way that can put the onus on the other party with a perfect weasel word qualifier like "most important".
It does seem like a roundabout way of saying "but what if full sending on AI didn't have downsides, tho?"
Just phrased in a way that can put the onus on the other party with a perfect weasel word qualifier like "most important".
I'd offer an edit that the most important skill may be knowing when the agent is wrong.
There's so much hand wringing about people not understanding how LLMs work and not nearly enough hand wringing about people not understanding how computer systems work.
There's so much hand wringing about people not understanding how LLMs work and not nearly enough hand wringing about people not understanding how computer systems work.
I'd say viewing it as most important is pretty unprofessional. But isn't it the point of this extreme AI push? To replace professional skills with dummy parrots.
> This is going to catch some heat, but what if the most important professional “developer skill” to learn or improve is how to effectively use coding agents?
Doing so will effectively force a (potentially unwanted) career change for many people and will lead to the end of software engineering (and software as a career), assuming AI continues to improve.
"Effectively" using agents means that you're writing specs and reading code (in batches through change diffs) instead of writing code directly. This requires the ability to write well (or well enough to get what you want from the agent) and clearly communicate intent (in your language of choice, not code; very different IMO).
The way that you read code is different with agents as well. Agents can produce a smattering of tests alongside implementation in a single turn. This is usually a lot of code. Thus, instead of red-green-refactor'ing a single change that you can cumulatively map in your head, you're prompt-build-executing entire features all at once and focusing on the result.
Code itself loses its importance as a result. See also: projects that are moving towards agentic-first development using agents for maintenance and PR review. Some maintainers don't even read their codebases anymore. They have no idea what the software is actually doing. Need security? Have an agent that does nothing but security look at it. DevOps? Use a DevOps agent.
This isn't too far off from what I was doing as a business analyst a little over 20 years ago (and what some technical product managers do now for spikes/prototypes). I wrote FRDs [^0] describing what the software should do. Architects would create TRDs [^1] from those FRDs. These got sent off to developers to get developed, then to QA to get bugs hammered out, then back to my team for UAT.
If agents existed back then, there would've been way fewer developers/QA in the middle. Architects would probably do a lot of what they would've done. I foresee that this is the direction we're heading in, but with agents powered by staff engineers/Enterprise Architects in the middle.
> Edit: as an aside, I have learned plenty from reviewing coding agent generated implementations of various algorithms or methods.
People learn differently. I (and others) learn from doing. Typing code from Stack Overflow/Expertsexchange/etc instead of pasting it, then modifying it is how I learned to code. Some can learn from reading alone.
[^0]: https://www.modernanalyst.com/Resources/Articles/tabid/115/I...
Doing so will effectively force a (potentially unwanted) career change for many people and will lead to the end of software engineering (and software as a career), assuming AI continues to improve.
"Effectively" using agents means that you're writing specs and reading code (in batches through change diffs) instead of writing code directly. This requires the ability to write well (or well enough to get what you want from the agent) and clearly communicate intent (in your language of choice, not code; very different IMO).
The way that you read code is different with agents as well. Agents can produce a smattering of tests alongside implementation in a single turn. This is usually a lot of code. Thus, instead of red-green-refactor'ing a single change that you can cumulatively map in your head, you're prompt-build-executing entire features all at once and focusing on the result.
Code itself loses its importance as a result. See also: projects that are moving towards agentic-first development using agents for maintenance and PR review. Some maintainers don't even read their codebases anymore. They have no idea what the software is actually doing. Need security? Have an agent that does nothing but security look at it. DevOps? Use a DevOps agent.
This isn't too far off from what I was doing as a business analyst a little over 20 years ago (and what some technical product managers do now for spikes/prototypes). I wrote FRDs [^0] describing what the software should do. Architects would create TRDs [^1] from those FRDs. These got sent off to developers to get developed, then to QA to get bugs hammered out, then back to my team for UAT.
If agents existed back then, there would've been way fewer developers/QA in the middle. Architects would probably do a lot of what they would've done. I foresee that this is the direction we're heading in, but with agents powered by staff engineers/Enterprise Architects in the middle.
> Edit: as an aside, I have learned plenty from reviewing coding agent generated implementations of various algorithms or methods.
People learn differently. I (and others) learn from doing. Typing code from Stack Overflow/Expertsexchange/etc instead of pasting it, then modifying it is how I learned to code. Some can learn from reading alone.
[^0]: https://www.modernanalyst.com/Resources/Articles/tabid/115/I...
> This requires the ability to write well (or well enough to get what you want from the agent) and clearly communicate intent (in your language of choice, not code; very different IMO).
I do not see why you can't write your spec in pseudocode if you really want to - communicating your intent to the LLM, for how the code should be developed is far closer to programming than writing skillwise.
I do not see why you can't write your spec in pseudocode if you really want to - communicating your intent to the LLM, for how the code should be developed is far closer to programming than writing skillwise.
Doing so will effectively force a (potentially unwanted) career change for many people and will lead to the end of software engineering (and software as a career), assuming AI continues to improve.
If you expected things to stay the same forever, maybe software engineering wasn't the right career move for you. Even though it looked safe enough, given that we've spent 50 years writing the same old code the same old way, that was never guaranteed.
I for one am glad to see something genuinely new come along. The last dozen or so "paradigm shifts" turned out to be disappointing variations on the same old paradigm. Not this one, though.
If you expected things to stay the same forever, maybe software engineering wasn't the right career move for you. Even though it looked safe enough, given that we've spent 50 years writing the same old code the same old way, that was never guaranteed.
I for one am glad to see something genuinely new come along. The last dozen or so "paradigm shifts" turned out to be disappointing variations on the same old paradigm. Not this one, though.
I think you missed the part where I outlined how software engineering will become a business analyst spec-writing kind of job, a job I did and know that I dislike...
But, hey! Different strokes for different folks. This might be for you, and that's cool! I'm allowed to be sad about it, though.
But, hey! Different strokes for different folks. This might be for you, and that's cool! I'm allowed to be sad about it, though.
> Improving developer skills is not valuable to your company
Every company I've ever worked at has genuinely believed in and invested in improving developer skills.
Every company I've ever worked at has genuinely believed in and invested in improving developer skills.
I've worked for 35ish companies (contract and fulltime), largely on the west coast of the US. I have experienced the lip service, from the vast majority. I have experienced maybe 2 or 3 earnest attempts at growing engineer skills through subsidized admission/travel to talks, tools, or invited instructors.
> I've worked for 35ish companies
It seems they were correct not to invest in your skills.
I've worked for six companies over almost 20 years. The majority invested in my skills, and I hope that investment has paid off for them!
It seems they were correct not to invest in your skills.
I've worked for six companies over almost 20 years. The majority invested in my skills, and I hope that investment has paid off for them!
I've worked for five companies, on the same products (well, variations there-of over time), for 25 years, due to take-overs (I nearly left ~10 years ago due to management numskullery, but a timely buy-out of the bit I worked for fixed my problems while the rest of the company died off).
Hanging around for a while (a long while) doesn't necessarily mean dedication worth investing in, it could just be that I have a shocking lack of ambition :)
Hanging around for a while (a long while) doesn't necessarily mean dedication worth investing in, it could just be that I have a shocking lack of ambition :)
Perhaps the lack of investment in their skills was the cause for the commenter’s job hopping, not the effect.
Consider the rate of job hopping that would be evident on that resume. I'm not sure how many companies would be willing to invest in sending a FTE who stays somewhere for likely less than a year to a conference or say "Ok, you an spend 20% of your time improving your skills."
What is more likely with the 35 number is that these are multiple simultaneous contracts. When working as a contractor you're fixing that problem or that project. The company isn't going to have you around for longer than a month after it's been fixed and documented.
There's no reason to spend company resources on training a person any more than there's reason for you to pay a plumber to be reading "learn to be an electrician in 10 days" while they're supposed to be working on fixing the sink or doing the plumbing for new construction.
What is more likely with the 35 number is that these are multiple simultaneous contracts. When working as a contractor you're fixing that problem or that project. The company isn't going to have you around for longer than a month after it's been fixed and documented.
There's no reason to spend company resources on training a person any more than there's reason for you to pay a plumber to be reading "learn to be an electrician in 10 days" while they're supposed to be working on fixing the sink or doing the plumbing for new construction.
It's all so vague. "lack of investment in their skill".
You just spent $250k and 5 years in college learning stuff.
You get hired to do a job for money.
What "investment" do you expect company to do?
Give me number of weeks and amount of dollars per year and tell me how it stacks against $250k and 5 years that you just spent?
If you want to learn on the job, shouldn't YOU be paying the company for teaching you, like you pay college to teach you?
You just spent $250k and 5 years in college learning stuff.
You get hired to do a job for money.
What "investment" do you expect company to do?
Give me number of weeks and amount of dollars per year and tell me how it stacks against $250k and 5 years that you just spent?
If you want to learn on the job, shouldn't YOU be paying the company for teaching you, like you pay college to teach you?
Continuing education is recognized and required in many fields.
This argument falls apart if you consider what field we're talking about. At what point would going to school for 5 years give you the whole education you actually needed? Does learning C in 1995-2000 prepare you for Rust in 2026? No, and it shouldn't, but work needs done, so _yes_ there is a dollar amount of value for educating your workforce that has already been vetted and already knows the context for your business goals. Asking what that number is completely misses the point.
Actually I found that if you have a pretty good understanding of the core parts of the C standard (e.g. the idea of the abstract machine, storage durations, unspecified vs undefined behavior, etc.) and working experience with the language, Rust is then quite natural. To first approximation, Rust basically makes lifetime management/ownership semantics that would be "good practice" in C into mandatory parts of the type system.
I agree - I was mostly trying to think of an example against OP's rather facetious attitude towards the time and effort required to maintain engineering performance.
In my experience, a lot of the Rust fighting with the borrow checker is really just enforcing better quality code I should've been writing anyway.
In my experience, a lot of the Rust fighting with the borrow checker is really just enforcing better quality code I should've been writing anyway.
If all you got out of a Computer Science undergrad program was "learning C" you were severely shortchanged. An 8-week bootcamp could have done that.
Point still stands. You're going to take up the mantle for suggesting a computer science degree from 2000 completely qualifies someone for work in 2026? No further education needed?
If you've been working all that time, probably not, at least not any more than you had to learn any other language your employer was using.
The core concepts covered by a good CS curriculum haven't really changed. Specific languages were never the focus.
The core concepts covered by a good CS curriculum haven't really changed. Specific languages were never the focus.
I don't disagree about the core CS fundamentals - 100% the same page. I suppose this really boils down to a difference in what constitutes "training/education".
Any $PROGRAMMER_TITLE worth their salary can learn a new stack for a project, because they know the fundamentals. BUT there's still a lead time on being comfortable with new languages, frameworks, problem domains, etc. It's this kind of time and effort that I am trying to get at when discussing companies paying for training/education. It can be worth investing in your people if your goals are longer horizon.
I don't think it makes sense for companies to pay for their employees to learn basic data structures or other "prerequisite" fundamentals, though. That would be a large investment!
Any $PROGRAMMER_TITLE worth their salary can learn a new stack for a project, because they know the fundamentals. BUT there's still a lead time on being comfortable with new languages, frameworks, problem domains, etc. It's this kind of time and effort that I am trying to get at when discussing companies paying for training/education. It can be worth investing in your people if your goals are longer horizon.
I don't think it makes sense for companies to pay for their employees to learn basic data structures or other "prerequisite" fundamentals, though. That would be a large investment!
[deleted]
If you include consulting that could easily be 10 companies a year...
Why would a company you are consulting for invest in training you up exactly? They are paying a consultant with the expectation that they are bringing the knowledge.
Eh, consultants are brought in not for the knowledge or advice! Management already knows what todo and where to go- they just want somebody external sanctify the decision!
Could easily be, yes. And they'd be right not to invest in OP's skills.
(To explicitly state the obvious: I'm not saying OP's a bad person for doing this, just saying the employers were right not to invest in them...)
(To explicitly state the obvious: I'm not saying OP's a bad person for doing this, just saying the employers were right not to invest in them...)
What exactly do you have in mind? The large companies I've worked at had book subscriptions, internal training courses, and would pay for school. Personally I don't see the point of any of it. For software engineering, the info you need is all online for free. You can go download e.g. graduate level CS courses on youtube. MIT OCW has been around for almost a quarter century now. IME no one's going to stop you from spending a couple hours a week of work time watching lectures (at least if you're fulltime). Now at least at my company, we have unlimited use of codex, which you can ask for help explaining things to you. I also don't really see how attending conferences relates to skill improvement. Meanwhile, I've been explicitly told by managers that spending half my time mentoring people sounds reasonable.
I can't understand what people are looking for when they talk about lack of investment into training for engineers. It's not the kind of job where someone can train you. It's like an executive complaining they aren't trained. You're the one who's supposed to be coming up with answers and making decisions. You need to spend time on self-motivated learning/discovering how to better do your work. Every company I've been at big or small assumes that's part of the job.
I can't understand what people are looking for when they talk about lack of investment into training for engineers. It's not the kind of job where someone can train you. It's like an executive complaining they aren't trained. You're the one who's supposed to be coming up with answers and making decisions. You need to spend time on self-motivated learning/discovering how to better do your work. Every company I've been at big or small assumes that's part of the job.
> For software engineering, the info you need is all online for free.
Guided learning with instant feedback can be much more efficient than just consuming and tinkering on your own. Depends on the topic, the teacher and situation of course. The quality of available material is also all over the place, and not every topic has enough material, or anything at all.
Guided learning with instant feedback can be much more efficient than just consuming and tinkering on your own. Depends on the topic, the teacher and situation of course. The quality of available material is also all over the place, and not every topic has enough material, or anything at all.
For foundational knowledge, there's been high quality information for free from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc. out there for years. Just look there first. If you're beyond that, you're beyond the canon that you can "learn" and closer to needing to follow/participate in SOTA R&D. And if you need a more structured environment, that's why people go to school. Engineering jobs expect you're at the level of someone who's completed undergrad, minimum. Part of an undergrad degree is getting used to seeking out resources yourself and learning from them instead of having a teacher spoon-feed it.
Again I just don't have any idea of what training people expect. The entire job is basically "we might have some idea of what we want to do, but no one here knows the details. Go figure it out."
What kind of guided learning would you want? How to solve problems? That's what 16 years of school was for!
Again I just don't have any idea of what training people expect. The entire job is basically "we might have some idea of what we want to do, but no one here knows the details. Go figure it out."
What kind of guided learning would you want? How to solve problems? That's what 16 years of school was for!
Often doesn’t matter. Fancy degree gets an interview in this job market. Not, “I read a bunch for free.”
The explosion of stacks means it’s hard to keep everything in your head at once. Lookup is routine but will sink you as a candidate.
Personally not great under the gun in adversarial interviews, so my extensive self learning is not well highlighted.
The explosion of stacks means it’s hard to keep everything in your head at once. Lookup is routine but will sink you as a candidate.
Personally not great under the gun in adversarial interviews, so my extensive self learning is not well highlighted.
Inefficient credentialism is a different problem from lack of opportunity to grow your skills though, which was the original contention I replied to. IME companies are perfectly happy for their employees to spend deliberate time learning how to be better at their job, and this is actually usually even formalized as a written expectation.
Putting people on projects they’re only partly qualified for, ideally with mentoring, and letting them learn even though it takes longer than having the mentor do it by themselves. Allowing people to fail and try again without risking their ratings or their career.
Book subscriptions and conference travel are quite cheap in comparison.
Book subscriptions and conference travel are quite cheap in comparison.
Is that not what every company does? At least any company big enough to have HR/some formalized ladder/promotion process? And any company large enough to have teams probably has a leads where a decent chunk of their work is doing that mentoring and figuring out who's ready for what work, or how to break it down into something their team is ready for if needed?
e.g. my current company's ladder explicitly mentions that the first two levels are receiving active mentoring and supervision. Third (~5 yrs xp) is still receiving mentoring but also providing it. Fourth and up you're generally expected to be the one doing the mentoring.
What that actually means on the ground is that I try to make sure my teammates are asking good questions/paying attention to the right things/thinking from the right perspectives. I can also let them know about some solution or basic approach for what they're doing, but then they need to go read more and think more deeply about what I'm talking about. So to me, "skills" are just something people need to pick up themselves.
e.g. my current company's ladder explicitly mentions that the first two levels are receiving active mentoring and supervision. Third (~5 yrs xp) is still receiving mentoring but also providing it. Fourth and up you're generally expected to be the one doing the mentoring.
What that actually means on the ground is that I try to make sure my teammates are asking good questions/paying attention to the right things/thinking from the right perspectives. I can also let them know about some solution or basic approach for what they're doing, but then they need to go read more and think more deeply about what I'm talking about. So to me, "skills" are just something people need to pick up themselves.
What is your expectation, exactly?
In US you go to college for 4-5 years and pay $50k per year. Or more.
You pay to learn. A lot of money, a lot of time.
Then you get a job, where the idea is that you get paid for doing work and you expect the employer to do what?
You seem to expect that not only you won't be doing the things you're being paid to do but the employer will pay for your education on company's time.
How many weeks per year of time off do you expect to get from a company?
You'll either say a reasonable number, like 1 or 2, which is insignificant to the time you supposedly spent learnings (5 years). You just spend 250 weeks supposedly learning but 1 or 2 weeks a year is supposed to make a difference?
Or you'll say unreasonable number (anything above 2 weeks) because employment is not free education.
In US you go to college for 4-5 years and pay $50k per year. Or more.
You pay to learn. A lot of money, a lot of time.
Then you get a job, where the idea is that you get paid for doing work and you expect the employer to do what?
You seem to expect that not only you won't be doing the things you're being paid to do but the employer will pay for your education on company's time.
How many weeks per year of time off do you expect to get from a company?
You'll either say a reasonable number, like 1 or 2, which is insignificant to the time you supposedly spent learnings (5 years). You just spend 250 weeks supposedly learning but 1 or 2 weeks a year is supposed to make a difference?
Or you'll say unreasonable number (anything above 2 weeks) because employment is not free education.
Care to explain a bit more?
With 35 companies, that would be around 1-2 years per company on average if you are retired or near retirement. I doubt any company is seriously investing in a worker who would likely be gone the next year. Getting lip service seems already good deal at that point.
With 35 companies, that would be around 1-2 years per company on average if you are retired or near retirement. I doubt any company is seriously investing in a worker who would likely be gone the next year. Getting lip service seems already good deal at that point.
> I doubt any company is seriously investing in a worker who would likely be gone the next year.
There is a mismatch between how you would expect industry to work and what my last 30 years has taught me.
> With 35 companies, that would be around 1-2 years per company on average if you are retired or near retirement.
I have been at 4 companies for around 2 years or more. The rest of the positions were either contract or startup or contract-to-hire. The vast majority of engineers seem to settle in and suffer at terrible companies, rather than make moves to better jobs. They also tend to settle at whatever they are assigned and grow their skillsets by their employer's needs, rather than on their own.
Over the last 2 decades, if you stayed somewhere for over 2 years, you better have added concrete skills to your resume and have increased your compensation by over 10%. If that's not on track, look for another job, imo.
Contract-to-hire has been very popular. ie JPMC, credit, medical, adtech, games, big retail, subcontractor shops, to startups (4 of which were acquired). All initiatives to progress the careers of developers is applied more or less company wide because the line between contract-to-hire and fulltime is considered an engineering issue if there is more than hub. If you are a sole contributor, on some satellite project or still considered in training, you might not participate due to scheduling that had already been arranged, but the idea that contractors are excluded is more a possibility than a certainty. Most of the initiatives are little more than maybe someone talking with you every quarter, anyway.
> Getting lip service seems already good deal at that point.
It's strange that people are assuming engineers are treated special because of a resume that nobody looks at after an offer is made - having conducted hundreds of interviews. This must be a very rare thing some people may do.
There is a mismatch between how you would expect industry to work and what my last 30 years has taught me.
> With 35 companies, that would be around 1-2 years per company on average if you are retired or near retirement.
I have been at 4 companies for around 2 years or more. The rest of the positions were either contract or startup or contract-to-hire. The vast majority of engineers seem to settle in and suffer at terrible companies, rather than make moves to better jobs. They also tend to settle at whatever they are assigned and grow their skillsets by their employer's needs, rather than on their own.
Over the last 2 decades, if you stayed somewhere for over 2 years, you better have added concrete skills to your resume and have increased your compensation by over 10%. If that's not on track, look for another job, imo.
Contract-to-hire has been very popular. ie JPMC, credit, medical, adtech, games, big retail, subcontractor shops, to startups (4 of which were acquired). All initiatives to progress the careers of developers is applied more or less company wide because the line between contract-to-hire and fulltime is considered an engineering issue if there is more than hub. If you are a sole contributor, on some satellite project or still considered in training, you might not participate due to scheduling that had already been arranged, but the idea that contractors are excluded is more a possibility than a certainty. Most of the initiatives are little more than maybe someone talking with you every quarter, anyway.
> Getting lip service seems already good deal at that point.
It's strange that people are assuming engineers are treated special because of a resume that nobody looks at after an offer is made - having conducted hundreds of interviews. This must be a very rare thing some people may do.
I mean the comment says "contract" right there; you can easily be on a contract with multiple companies simultaneously. When I was freelancing full-time ca. 2010-2013 or so I often had 5-6 active contracts running simultaneously. I probably worked for 15-20 different companies total in that 3-4 year span.
Yes, likely, but make even less sense, as you can't except support for education as a freelancer. I mean a freelancers whole purpose is to sell skill and be gone when the job is finished. You are from the beginning just an expendable tool they don't want to polish outside the scope of the job.
These two statements go hand in hand though. While I do believe companies could take the altruistic take of training people whether or not they stay, and some places do, they're certainly not going to make the effort for someone who has clear markers of being someone who will leave anyway.
That's not how these initiatives are executed, unless the shop is very small. In which case, there's no concrete training offered anyway. If it's large, they don't want to allocate a lot of budget rather than starting a new hiring round. I would say the lack of in-job developer training (or resourcing) is due to multiple factors that results in a consistency rather than specifically targeting individuals.
It's not like I don't speak with ex-coworkers or run into them at times - eg one guy I taught Java to (at a position where java wasn't required except for a tiny tool), is the team lead at blizzard now. If I was made a pariah, I would hear about it over the years.
It's not like I don't speak with ex-coworkers or run into them at times - eg one guy I taught Java to (at a position where java wasn't required except for a tiny tool), is the team lead at blizzard now. If I was made a pariah, I would hear about it over the years.
I wasn't specifically calling you out, but more broadly companies know that the average tenure keeps getting lower, for reasons on both the employee and employer side. But even places I have seen career development done, it was generally reserved as a "perk" for employees who at least had a few years in.
This percentage is probably right on the money!
[deleted]
Hard same over 20 years
Every company I worked for didn’t give a shit about my skills. They just wanted to solve the problem in front of them and if they couldn’t then they would hire someone in with the right skills. Improving my skills was seen as a risk as I might leave.
I’ve had both experiences, sometimes at the exact same company.
That’s been my experience, too. But now I get a sort of, “I dunno. Maybe don’t use AI on Fridays?”
There doesn’t seem to be a plan for maintaining that culture.
There doesn’t seem to be a plan for maintaining that culture.
Given the rest of the paragraph, I believe the parent is trying to say that merely improving developer skills is not valuable to the company, not that improving developer skills cannot provide value in terms of improved work product, morale, retention, etc.
The opposite is true in my case - though 1 organization that had a small budget for things like AWS certs. I remember almost everyone who would get those certificates would never really learn anything from it either. They would just take the exams.
> Improving developer skills is not valuable to your company. They don't tell a customer how many person-hours of engineering talent improvement their contract is responsible for. They just want a solved problem.
Doesn't credentialism kinda throw a spanner in that - where it's not enough to have people with a good track record of solving issues, but then someone along the way says "Yeah, we'd also like the devs who'll work on the project to have Java certs." (I've done those certs, they're orthogonal to one's ability to produce good software)
Might just be govt. projects or particular orgs where such requirements are drawn up by dinosaurs, go figure (as much as I'd love software development to be "real" engineering with best practices spanning decades, it's still the Wild West in many respects). Then again, the same thing more or less applies to security, a lot of it seems like posturing and checklists (how some years back the status quo was that you'll change your password every 30-90 days because IT said so) instead of the stuff that actually matters.
Not to detract from the point too much, but I've very much seen people not care about solving problems and shipping fast as stuff like that, or covering their own asses by paying for Oracle support or whatever (even when it gets in the way of actually shipping, like ADF and WebLogic and the horror that is JDeveloper).
But yeah, I think many companies out there don't care that much about the individual growth of their employees that much, unless they have the ability to actually look further into the future - which most don't, given how they prefer not to train junior devs into mid/senior ones over years.
Doesn't credentialism kinda throw a spanner in that - where it's not enough to have people with a good track record of solving issues, but then someone along the way says "Yeah, we'd also like the devs who'll work on the project to have Java certs." (I've done those certs, they're orthogonal to one's ability to produce good software)
Might just be govt. projects or particular orgs where such requirements are drawn up by dinosaurs, go figure (as much as I'd love software development to be "real" engineering with best practices spanning decades, it's still the Wild West in many respects). Then again, the same thing more or less applies to security, a lot of it seems like posturing and checklists (how some years back the status quo was that you'll change your password every 30-90 days because IT said so) instead of the stuff that actually matters.
Not to detract from the point too much, but I've very much seen people not care about solving problems and shipping fast as stuff like that, or covering their own asses by paying for Oracle support or whatever (even when it gets in the way of actually shipping, like ADF and WebLogic and the horror that is JDeveloper).
But yeah, I think many companies out there don't care that much about the individual growth of their employees that much, unless they have the ability to actually look further into the future - which most don't, given how they prefer not to train junior devs into mid/senior ones over years.
Pour yourself a drink, as I have a longish story that might be a useful metaphor.
Back in the day, there were more or less two consumer flight sims: MS Flight Simulator and XPlane. MSFS was and has always been the much prettier one, much easier to work with; xplane is kludgy, very old-school *NIX, and chonky in terms of resource usage. I was doing some work integrating flight systems data (FDAU/FDR outputs) into a cheaper flight re-creation tool, since the aircraft OEM's tool cost more than my annual salary. Hmm, actually, ten years of my salary.
So why use xplane at all, then?
The difference was that MSFS flight dynamics was driven from a model using table-based lookup that reproduced performance characteristics for a given airframe, whereas xplane (as you might be able to tell from the company name, Laminar Research) does fluid and gas simulation over the actual skin of the airframe, and then does the physics for the forces and masses and such.
I caught some flack for going with xplane: "Why not MSFS!? It's so much prettier!"
Unless the airframe is in a state that is near-equivalent with tabular lookup model, the actual flight is not going to be actually re-created. A plane in distress is very often in a boundary state- at best. OR you might be flying a plane that doesn't really have a model, like, say, a brand new planform (like the company was trying to develop). Without the aerodynamic fundamentals, the further away you get from the model represented by the tabular lookups, the greater the risk gets.
And how does this relate?
Those fundamentals- aerodynamic or mathematical or electrical- will be able to deal with a much broader range than models trained on existing data, regardless of whether or not they are LLMs or tabular lookups. If we rely on LLMs for aerodynamics, for chemistry, for electrical engineering, we are setting ourselves up for something like the 2008 Econopalypse except now it affects ALL the physical sciences; a Black Swan event that breaks reality.
I am genuinely worried we're working outselves into just such an event, where the fundamentals are all but forgotten, and a new phenomenon simply breaks the nuts and bolts of the applied sciences.
As for my xplane selection, it helped in other ways. Because often the FDR data is just plain wrong, but with xplane you could actually tell, because a control surface sticking out one way, while the flight instruments say another, lights up a "YOU GOT PROBLEMS" light in the cockpit as the aircraft inexplicably lurches to the right.
Back in the day, there were more or less two consumer flight sims: MS Flight Simulator and XPlane. MSFS was and has always been the much prettier one, much easier to work with; xplane is kludgy, very old-school *NIX, and chonky in terms of resource usage. I was doing some work integrating flight systems data (FDAU/FDR outputs) into a cheaper flight re-creation tool, since the aircraft OEM's tool cost more than my annual salary. Hmm, actually, ten years of my salary.
So why use xplane at all, then?
The difference was that MSFS flight dynamics was driven from a model using table-based lookup that reproduced performance characteristics for a given airframe, whereas xplane (as you might be able to tell from the company name, Laminar Research) does fluid and gas simulation over the actual skin of the airframe, and then does the physics for the forces and masses and such.
I caught some flack for going with xplane: "Why not MSFS!? It's so much prettier!"
Unless the airframe is in a state that is near-equivalent with tabular lookup model, the actual flight is not going to be actually re-created. A plane in distress is very often in a boundary state- at best. OR you might be flying a plane that doesn't really have a model, like, say, a brand new planform (like the company was trying to develop). Without the aerodynamic fundamentals, the further away you get from the model represented by the tabular lookups, the greater the risk gets.
And how does this relate?
Those fundamentals- aerodynamic or mathematical or electrical- will be able to deal with a much broader range than models trained on existing data, regardless of whether or not they are LLMs or tabular lookups. If we rely on LLMs for aerodynamics, for chemistry, for electrical engineering, we are setting ourselves up for something like the 2008 Econopalypse except now it affects ALL the physical sciences; a Black Swan event that breaks reality.
I am genuinely worried we're working outselves into just such an event, where the fundamentals are all but forgotten, and a new phenomenon simply breaks the nuts and bolts of the applied sciences.
As for my xplane selection, it helped in other ways. Because often the FDR data is just plain wrong, but with xplane you could actually tell, because a control surface sticking out one way, while the flight instruments say another, lights up a "YOU GOT PROBLEMS" light in the cockpit as the aircraft inexplicably lurches to the right.
Ah, but it's no longer "inexplicably!"
>Improving developer skills is not valuable to your company
What's valuable to a company is not necessarily what's valuable to the customers or even more so, to a civilization at large.
What's valuable to a company is not necessarily what's valuable to the customers or even more so, to a civilization at large.
> I think I'm mostly just mourning the fact that I got to do my hobby as a career for the past 15 years, but that’s ending. I can still code at home.
It could hardly have been a hobby if people were willing to pay you for it (and good rates too)?
I will rephrase it like this - the market has shifted away from providing value to the customers of said companies to pumping itself instead and it does not need to employ people for that. Simple as.
It could hardly have been a hobby if people were willing to pay you for it (and good rates too)?
I will rephrase it like this - the market has shifted away from providing value to the customers of said companies to pumping itself instead and it does not need to employ people for that. Simple as.
The irony is that the vast deskilling that's happening because of this means that most "software engineers" will become incapable of understanding, let alone fixing or even building new versions of the systems that they are utterly dependent on.
There should be thousands or tens of thousands people worldwide that can build the operating systems, virtual machines, libraries, containers, and applications that AI is built on. But the number will dwindle and we'll ironically be unable to build what our ancestors did, utterly dependent on the AI artifacts to do it for us.
God I hope it doesn't all crash at once.
There should be thousands or tens of thousands people worldwide that can build the operating systems, virtual machines, libraries, containers, and applications that AI is built on. But the number will dwindle and we'll ironically be unable to build what our ancestors did, utterly dependent on the AI artifacts to do it for us.
God I hope it doesn't all crash at once.
There is a deadly game of chicken going on. Junior recruiting already stopped for the most part. Only way this doesn’t end in a catastrophe is if AI becomes genuinely as good as the most skilled developers before we run out of them. Which I doubt very much but don’t find completely impossible.
And the irony is that AI usage should make onboarding juniors easier.
Before it was "hey $senior_programmer where's the $thing defined in this project?", which either required a dedicated person onboarding or someone's flow was interrupted - an expected cost of bringing up juniors.
Now a properly configured AI Agent can answer that question in 60 seconds, unblocking the Junior to work on something.
And no, it doesn't mean Juniors or anyone else get to make 10k line PRs of code they haven't read nor understand. That's a very different issue that can be solved by slapping people over the head.
Before it was "hey $senior_programmer where's the $thing defined in this project?", which either required a dedicated person onboarding or someone's flow was interrupted - an expected cost of bringing up juniors.
Now a properly configured AI Agent can answer that question in 60 seconds, unblocking the Junior to work on something.
And no, it doesn't mean Juniors or anyone else get to make 10k line PRs of code they haven't read nor understand. That's a very different issue that can be solved by slapping people over the head.
The problem is that juniors given access to AI don't seem to learn as much. AI just gives them fish over and over instead of learning how to fish.
> The problem is that juniors given access to AI don't seem to learn as much.
Yea, giving people a blank Claude with no setup will get you that.
What you could do is encourage (or force with IT's assistance) them to use a prompt (or hook or whatever) that refuses to do work for them, but instead telling them where to change and what without actually doing the work.
What you could do is encourage (or force with IT's assistance) them to use a prompt (or hook or whatever) that refuses to do work for them, but instead telling them where to change and what without actually doing the work.
Or if code quality stops mattering, in a kind of "ok, the old codebase is irretrievably sphagettified. Lets just have the chatbot extract all the requirements from it, and build a clean room version" kind of way. It's also not impossible we go that route.
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How many kernel devs does the world need? A dozen or two?
It will be the same with software. AI will be writing and consuming most software. We will be utilizing experiences built on top of that, probably generated in real time for hyper personalization. Every app on your phone will be replaced by one app. (Except maybe games, at least for a short while longer).
Everyone's treating writing code as this reverent thing. No one wrote code 100 years ago. Very few today write assembly. It will become lost because the economic neccesity is gone.
It's the end of an era, but also the beginning of a new one. Building agentic systems is really hard, a hard enough problem that we need a ton of people building those systems. AI hardware devices have barely been registered, we need engineers who can build and integrate all sorts of systems.
Engineering as a discipline will be the last job to be automated, since who do you think is going to build all the worlds automation?
It will be the same with software. AI will be writing and consuming most software. We will be utilizing experiences built on top of that, probably generated in real time for hyper personalization. Every app on your phone will be replaced by one app. (Except maybe games, at least for a short while longer).
Everyone's treating writing code as this reverent thing. No one wrote code 100 years ago. Very few today write assembly. It will become lost because the economic neccesity is gone.
It's the end of an era, but also the beginning of a new one. Building agentic systems is really hard, a hard enough problem that we need a ton of people building those systems. AI hardware devices have barely been registered, we need engineers who can build and integrate all sorts of systems.
Engineering as a discipline will be the last job to be automated, since who do you think is going to build all the worlds automation?
> How many kernel devs does the world need? A dozen or two?
You're low by several orders of magnitude. "The 2025 development cycle saw 2,134 developers contribute to [Linux] kernel 6.18" [1]
[1] https://commandlinux.com/statistics/linux-kernel-contributor...
You're low by several orders of magnitude. "The 2025 development cycle saw 2,134 developers contribute to [Linux] kernel 6.18" [1]
[1] https://commandlinux.com/statistics/linux-kernel-contributor...
How wildly dismissive of the foundation of the X$ billion dollar software industry. You think humans just stumbled into writing code by accident or something?
How does building agentic systems, a "really hard" problem, not just end up a "regular code" problem? Because that is what it is. A distributed systems problem with non-deterministic run lengths. How do you switch agent contexts? Similar to how you solve regular program context switching. How do you search tool capabilities and verify them? How do you effectively manage scheduled tasks?
Oh, look, you've just invented the operating system kernel. Suddenly, those 'dozen or two' experts don't seem so archaic after all!
How does building agentic systems, a "really hard" problem, not just end up a "regular code" problem? Because that is what it is. A distributed systems problem with non-deterministic run lengths. How do you switch agent contexts? Similar to how you solve regular program context switching. How do you search tool capabilities and verify them? How do you effectively manage scheduled tasks?
Oh, look, you've just invented the operating system kernel. Suddenly, those 'dozen or two' experts don't seem so archaic after all!
Does it even make sense to build everything on top of machines that are 70% reliable? The sheer orchestration and validation overhead at scale risks being more expensive than just keeping most software engineers and having them manage a few AI agents.
Also, 200 years ago we didn't have bike mechanics. Car mechanics. Boat mechanics. Plumbers. Electricians. Not all new professions fade away.
Also, 200 years ago we didn't have bike mechanics. Car mechanics. Boat mechanics. Plumbers. Electricians. Not all new professions fade away.
I feel I've upskilled in so many directions (not just "ability to prompt LLMs") since going all in on LLM coding. So many tools, techniques, systems, and new areas of research I'd never have had the time to fully learn in the past.
I have a hard time believing any tenured developer is not actually learning things when using LLMs to build. They make interesting choices that are repeatable (new CLIs I didn't even know existed, writing scripts to churn through tricky data, using specific languages for specific tasks like Go for concurrently working through large numerous tasks, etc.)
Anyone not learning things via LLM coding right now either doesn't care at all about the underlying code/systems, or they had no foundational knowledge or interest in programming to begin with (which is also a valid way to use these tools, but they don't work very well without guidance for too long [yet]).
I have a hard time believing any tenured developer is not actually learning things when using LLMs to build. They make interesting choices that are repeatable (new CLIs I didn't even know existed, writing scripts to churn through tricky data, using specific languages for specific tasks like Go for concurrently working through large numerous tasks, etc.)
Anyone not learning things via LLM coding right now either doesn't care at all about the underlying code/systems, or they had no foundational knowledge or interest in programming to begin with (which is also a valid way to use these tools, but they don't work very well without guidance for too long [yet]).
Learning calculus by watching the professor solve integrals on the board for an hour doesn't result in the same level and depth of understanding as working through homeworks every week for a semester. If you ran off to your TA to solve every problem in your homework, you just won't learn calculus.
I've vibe coded plenty. I mostly don't look at the crap coming out. Don't want to. When I do I absorb a tiny bit, but not enough to recreate the thing from scratch. I might have a modicum more surface-level knowledge, but I don't have deep understanding and I don't have skills. To the extent that I've fixed or tweaked AI-generated code, it's not been to restructure, rearchitecture, or refactor. If this is all I did day in and day out, my entire skillset would atrophy.
I've vibe coded plenty. I mostly don't look at the crap coming out. Don't want to. When I do I absorb a tiny bit, but not enough to recreate the thing from scratch. I might have a modicum more surface-level knowledge, but I don't have deep understanding and I don't have skills. To the extent that I've fixed or tweaked AI-generated code, it's not been to restructure, rearchitecture, or refactor. If this is all I did day in and day out, my entire skillset would atrophy.
"I mostly don't look at the crap coming out."
This is pretty much my point. I use LLMs to code _and_ to learn. I read everything that comes out. Half of it is wrong or incomplete. The other half saved me a bunch of time and taught me things.
This is pretty much my point. I use LLMs to code _and_ to learn. I read everything that comes out. Half of it is wrong or incomplete. The other half saved me a bunch of time and taught me things.
This. I never had patience to figure how to build a from-scratch iOS app because it required too much boilerplate work. Now i do, and i got to enjoy Swift as a language, and learned a lot of iOS (and Mac) APIs.
But it isn't "from scratch", is it? It's "from Claude".
If you build a house from scratch but you didn't mill the lumber, did you build it from scratch?
If you make a pizza from scratch but you used canned sauce was it from scratch? What if you used store bought dough? What if you made the sauce and the dough but you didn't grow the tomato?
If you make a pizza from scratch but you used canned sauce was it from scratch? What if you used store bought dough? What if you made the sauce and the dough but you didn't grow the tomato?
I think there's a considerable difference in its ability to help with breadth vs. depth of expertise.
For me both are true at the same time.
I vividly remember understanding how calculus works after watching some 3blue1brown videos on youtube, but once I looked at some exercises I quickly realized I was not able to solve them.
Similar thing happens with LLMs and programming. Sure I understand the code but I'm not intimately familiar with it like if I programmed it "old school".
So yes, I do learn more but I can't shake the feeling that there is some dunning kruger effect going on. In essence I think that "banging my head against the wall" while learning is a key part of the learning process. Or maybe it's just me :D
I vividly remember understanding how calculus works after watching some 3blue1brown videos on youtube, but once I looked at some exercises I quickly realized I was not able to solve them.
Similar thing happens with LLMs and programming. Sure I understand the code but I'm not intimately familiar with it like if I programmed it "old school".
So yes, I do learn more but I can't shake the feeling that there is some dunning kruger effect going on. In essence I think that "banging my head against the wall" while learning is a key part of the learning process. Or maybe it's just me :D
It's not just you. I feel the same thing, and I saw it in practice helping my son study for a chemistry test just last night. He had worked through a bunch of problems by following the steps in his notes and got the right answers, but couldn't solve them without the notes because his comprehension of why he was taking all the steps wasn't solid.
Once we addressed that, he did great solo. Working the mechanics of the problems with the notes helped, but it was getting independent understanding of the reason for each step that put everything together for him.
Once we addressed that, he did great solo. Working the mechanics of the problems with the notes helped, but it was getting independent understanding of the reason for each step that put everything together for him.
> Anyone not learning things via LLM coding right now either doesn't care at all about the underlying code/systems
How many bytes is a pointer in C? How many bytes is a shared pointer in C++? What does sysctl do? What about fsync?
What is a mutex lock? How is it different from a spin lock?
You want to find the n nearest points to a given point on a 2-D Cartesian plane. Could you write the code to solve that on your own?
Can you answer any of these questions without searching for the answer?
I don't use LLMs and I learn things fine. Always have. For several decades. I care deeply about the underlying code and systems. It annoys me when people say they do and they cannot even understand how the computer works. I'm fine with people having domain-specific knowledge of programming: maybe you've only been interested in web development and scripting DOM elements. But don't pretend that your expertise in that area means you understand how to write an operating system.
Or worse: that it prevents you from learning how to write an operating system.
You can do that without an LLM. There's no royal road. You have to understand the theory, read the books, read the code, write the code, make mistakes, fix mistakes, read papers, talk to other people with more experience than you... and just write code. And rewrite it. And do it all again.
I find the opposite is true: those who use LLM coding exclusively never enjoyed programming to begin with, only learned as much as they needed to, and want the end results.
How many bytes is a pointer in C? How many bytes is a shared pointer in C++? What does sysctl do? What about fsync?
What is a mutex lock? How is it different from a spin lock?
You want to find the n nearest points to a given point on a 2-D Cartesian plane. Could you write the code to solve that on your own?
Can you answer any of these questions without searching for the answer?
I don't use LLMs and I learn things fine. Always have. For several decades. I care deeply about the underlying code and systems. It annoys me when people say they do and they cannot even understand how the computer works. I'm fine with people having domain-specific knowledge of programming: maybe you've only been interested in web development and scripting DOM elements. But don't pretend that your expertise in that area means you understand how to write an operating system.
Or worse: that it prevents you from learning how to write an operating system.
You can do that without an LLM. There's no royal road. You have to understand the theory, read the books, read the code, write the code, make mistakes, fix mistakes, read papers, talk to other people with more experience than you... and just write code. And rewrite it. And do it all again.
I find the opposite is true: those who use LLM coding exclusively never enjoyed programming to begin with, only learned as much as they needed to, and want the end results.
Agree with pretty much everything you wrote here, I guess with the addendum that LLMs can be a part of the learning experience you're describing. It's as easy as telling the LLM "don't write a single line of code nor command, I want to do everything, your goal is to help me understand what we're doing here."
There are always going to be people who just want the end result. The only difference now is that LLM tools allow them to get much closer to the end result than they previously were able to. And on the other side, there are always going to be people who want to _understand_ what's happening, and LLMs can help accelerate that. I use LLMs as a personalized guide to learning new things.
There are always going to be people who just want the end result. The only difference now is that LLM tools allow them to get much closer to the end result than they previously were able to. And on the other side, there are always going to be people who want to _understand_ what's happening, and LLMs can help accelerate that. I use LLMs as a personalized guide to learning new things.
I know it sounds extreme to dismiss that workflow, but I don't think people are talking enough about the subtle psychological consequences of LLM writing for this kind of thing.
In the same way that googling for an SEO article's superficial answer ends up meaning you never really bother to memorize it, "ask chat" seems to lead to never really bothering to think hard about it.
Of course I google things, but maybe I should be trying to learn in a way that minimizes the need. Maybe its important to learn how to learn in way that minimizes exposure to sycophantic average-blog-speak.
In the same way that googling for an SEO article's superficial answer ends up meaning you never really bother to memorize it, "ask chat" seems to lead to never really bothering to think hard about it.
Of course I google things, but maybe I should be trying to learn in a way that minimizes the need. Maybe its important to learn how to learn in way that minimizes exposure to sycophantic average-blog-speak.
Best of luck in your journey!
To those reading this thread though, be wary of the answers LLMs generate: they're plausible sounding and the LLM's are designed to be sycophants. Be wary, double check their answers to your queries against credible sources.
And read the source!
To those reading this thread though, be wary of the answers LLMs generate: they're plausible sounding and the LLM's are designed to be sycophants. Be wary, double check their answers to your queries against credible sources.
And read the source!
What do you mean by "LLM coding"? That's not a very meaningful term, it covers everything from 100% vibe coded projects, to using the LLM to gradually flesh out a careful initial design and then verifying that the implementation is done correctly at every step with meticulous human review and checking.
The latter.
Trust me. All those people do it for the love of doing it, so I don't think they will outsource the jobs to some automation....
I have been coding long before internet and before there were huge demand for software devs..and I would be coding even after there is no demand for the same.
I have been coding long before internet and before there were huge demand for software devs..and I would be coding even after there is no demand for the same.
If a catastrophic failure occurs we will have to return to first principles and re-derive the solutions. Not so bad, probably enlivening even to get to spin up the mind again after a break.
"What if the AI goes away" seems to be a common argument but it's just not ever going to happen without, say, a solar flare wiping out all electronics, which will be an issue which skilled programmers can't help anyway. The same thing happened when high-level languages came around, not many people can hand-write assembly anymore or work with punch cards but society hasn't collapsed.
>But the number will dwindle and we'll ironically be unable to build what our ancestors did, utterly dependent on the AI artifacts to do it for us.
That's only a brief moment in time. We learned it once, we can learn it again if we have to. People will tinker with those things as hobbies and they'll broadcast that out too. Worst case we hobble along until we get better at it. And if we have to hobble along and it's important, someone's going to be paying well for learning all of that stuff from zero, so the motivation will be there.
Why do people worry about a potential, temporary loss of skill?
That's only a brief moment in time. We learned it once, we can learn it again if we have to. People will tinker with those things as hobbies and they'll broadcast that out too. Worst case we hobble along until we get better at it. And if we have to hobble along and it's important, someone's going to be paying well for learning all of that stuff from zero, so the motivation will be there.
Why do people worry about a potential, temporary loss of skill?
Because they may have studied history... There are countless examples of eras of lost technology due to a stumble in society. Where those societies were never able to recover the lost "secrets" of the past. Ultimately, yes, humans can rediscover/reinvent how to do things we know are possible. But it is a very real and understandable concern that we could build a society that slowly crumbles without the ability to relearn the way to maintain the systems it relies upon, fast enough to stop it from continued degradation.
Like, yeah, you have the resources right now to boot strap your knowledge of most coding languages. But that is predicated on so many previous skills learn through out your life, adulthood and childhood. Many of which we take for granted. And ultimately AI/LLM's aren't just affecting developers, they are infecting all strata of education. So it is quite possible that we build a society that is entirely dependent on these LLM's to function, because we have offloaded the knowledge from societies collective mind... And getting it back is not as simple as sitting down with a book.
Like, yeah, you have the resources right now to boot strap your knowledge of most coding languages. But that is predicated on so many previous skills learn through out your life, adulthood and childhood. Many of which we take for granted. And ultimately AI/LLM's aren't just affecting developers, they are infecting all strata of education. So it is quite possible that we build a society that is entirely dependent on these LLM's to function, because we have offloaded the knowledge from societies collective mind... And getting it back is not as simple as sitting down with a book.
And we're still here right? We have more books and knowledge and capabilities than ever. Despite theoretically losing knowledge along the way, we're okay (mostly).
Society can replace the systems it relies on. The replacement might not be the best, but it'll probably handle things until we can reinvent a newer, better system. It probably won't be easy, but you can't convince me that humanity suddenly cannot adapt and fix problems right in front of them. How long does history have us doing that?
These are extraordinary claims that all of society will just become dumb and not be able to do any of this. History is also littered with people fretting about the next generation not being smart enough or whatever, and those fears rhyme pretty closely with what we're talking about here.
Society can replace the systems it relies on. The replacement might not be the best, but it'll probably handle things until we can reinvent a newer, better system. It probably won't be easy, but you can't convince me that humanity suddenly cannot adapt and fix problems right in front of them. How long does history have us doing that?
These are extraordinary claims that all of society will just become dumb and not be able to do any of this. History is also littered with people fretting about the next generation not being smart enough or whatever, and those fears rhyme pretty closely with what we're talking about here.
You could have lived 200 years. But instead, people decided they'd rather invest in crypto or LLMs instead.
Maybe humans will still be here in a century. But you won't be. It didn't have to be this way.
Maybe humans will still be here in a century. But you won't be. It didn't have to be this way.
I don't see how they are actually exclusive in the long-term. Crypto investment isn't that big, and LLMs, or AI in general, may provide support for better treatments, thus possibly allowing people to reliably live onto 200 years.
>"That's only a brief moment in time. We learned it once, we can learn it again if we have to. "
Yes we can but there is a big problem here. We will "learn it again" after something breaks. And the way the world currently functions there might not be a time to react. It is like growing food on industrial scale. We have slowly learned it over the time. If it breaks now with the knowledge gone and we have to learn it again it will end the civilization as we know it.
Yes we can but there is a big problem here. We will "learn it again" after something breaks. And the way the world currently functions there might not be a time to react. It is like growing food on industrial scale. We have slowly learned it over the time. If it breaks now with the knowledge gone and we have to learn it again it will end the civilization as we know it.
>It is like growing food on industrial scale.
How many people do you think know how to do that today? It's in the millions (probably 10s to 100s), scattered all across the globe because we all need to eat. Not to mention all of the publications on the topic in many different languages. The only credible case for everyone forgetting how to farm is nuclear doomsday and at that point we'll all be dead anyway.
>If it breaks now with the knowledge gone and we have to learn it again it will end the civilization as we know it.
I don't think there is a single piece of technology that is so critical to civilization that everyone alive easily forgets how to do it and there is also zero documentation on how it works.
These vague doomsday scenarios around losing knowledge and crashing civilization just have zero plausibility to me.
How many people do you think know how to do that today? It's in the millions (probably 10s to 100s), scattered all across the globe because we all need to eat. Not to mention all of the publications on the topic in many different languages. The only credible case for everyone forgetting how to farm is nuclear doomsday and at that point we'll all be dead anyway.
>If it breaks now with the knowledge gone and we have to learn it again it will end the civilization as we know it.
I don't think there is a single piece of technology that is so critical to civilization that everyone alive easily forgets how to do it and there is also zero documentation on how it works.
These vague doomsday scenarios around losing knowledge and crashing civilization just have zero plausibility to me.
I imagine it being a "does anybody know COBOL?!" but much sooner than sixty years rom now.
COBOL also came to mind.
The COBOL thing seems to be working out just fine last I heard. Today a small number of people get paid well to know COBOL's depths and legacy platforms/software. The world moved on, where possible, to lower cost labor and tools.
Arguably, that outcome was the right creative destruction. Market economics doesn't long-term incentivize any other outcomes. We'll see the arc of COBOL play out again with LLM coding.
The COBOL thing seems to be working out just fine last I heard. Today a small number of people get paid well to know COBOL's depths and legacy platforms/software. The world moved on, where possible, to lower cost labor and tools.
Arguably, that outcome was the right creative destruction. Market economics doesn't long-term incentivize any other outcomes. We'll see the arc of COBOL play out again with LLM coding.
I know it's just anecdotal, but I looked for COBOL salaries a couple of years ago, curious about this "paid well".
The salaries were ok but not good for COBOL.
Here's an anecdotal Reddit thread about it. https://www.reddit.com/r/developpeurs/comments/1ixfpsx/le_sa...
The salaries were ok but not good for COBOL.
Here's an anecdotal Reddit thread about it. https://www.reddit.com/r/developpeurs/comments/1ixfpsx/le_sa...
I've been waiting for the article talking about how AI is affecting COBOL. Preferably with quotes from actual COBOL programmers since I can already theorize as well as the next guy but I'm interested in the reports from the field.
While LLMs have become pretty good at generating code, I think some of their other capabilities are still undersold and poorly understood, and one of them is that they are very good at porting. AI may offer the way out for porting COBOL finally.
You definitely can't just blindly point it at one code base and tell it to convert to another. The LLMs do "blur" the code, I find, just sort of deciding that maybe this little clause wasn't important and dropping it. (Though in some cases I've encountered this, I sometimes understand where it is coming from, when the old code was twisty and full of indirection I often as a human have a hard time being sure what is and is not used just by reading the code too...) But the process is still way, way faster than the old days of typing the new code in one line at a time by staring at the old code. It's definitely way cheaper to port a code base into a new language in 2026 than it was in 2020. In 2020 it was so expensive it was almost always not even an option. I think a lot of people have not caught up with the cost reductions in such porting actions now, and are not correctly calculating that into their costs.
It is easier than ever to get out of a language that has some fundamental issue that is hard to overcome (performance, general lack of capability like COBOL) and into something more modern that doesn't have that flaw.
While LLMs have become pretty good at generating code, I think some of their other capabilities are still undersold and poorly understood, and one of them is that they are very good at porting. AI may offer the way out for porting COBOL finally.
You definitely can't just blindly point it at one code base and tell it to convert to another. The LLMs do "blur" the code, I find, just sort of deciding that maybe this little clause wasn't important and dropping it. (Though in some cases I've encountered this, I sometimes understand where it is coming from, when the old code was twisty and full of indirection I often as a human have a hard time being sure what is and is not used just by reading the code too...) But the process is still way, way faster than the old days of typing the new code in one line at a time by staring at the old code. It's definitely way cheaper to port a code base into a new language in 2026 than it was in 2020. In 2020 it was so expensive it was almost always not even an option. I think a lot of people have not caught up with the cost reductions in such porting actions now, and are not correctly calculating that into their costs.
It is easier than ever to get out of a language that has some fundamental issue that is hard to overcome (performance, general lack of capability like COBOL) and into something more modern that doesn't have that flaw.
I mean there should be. But there's not. Despite the millions of CS grads produced many people could not reasonably be expected to produce many 'standard' parts of a software stack
Maybe I’m just getting extremely lucky, but I don’t use AI to code at work and I’m still keeping up with my peers who are all Clauded up. I do a lot of green field network appliance design and implementation and have not felt really felt the pressure in that space.
I do use Claude code at home maybe a couple hours a week, mostly for code base exploration. Still haven’t figured out how to fully vibe code: the generated code just annoys me and the agents are too chatty. (Insert old man shaking fist at cloud).
I do use Claude code at home maybe a couple hours a week, mostly for code base exploration. Still haven’t figured out how to fully vibe code: the generated code just annoys me and the agents are too chatty. (Insert old man shaking fist at cloud).
We're witnessing a divergence between Coders and Clauders, with the latter dominating the market at a lower cost of labor + subscription fee to the almighty AI providers. Coders may be called in, hopefully with better renumeration, to review and debug the massive amount of code being generated. Either that or they will also be replaced by specially trained/prompted language models doing the review.
> + subscription
With how much some people spend on tokens that they've shared on here, and concerns about raising prices, I've kind of been wondering if we're actually heading to a point where seniors who don't use AI are going to be cheaper than juniors who do.
With how much some people spend on tokens that they've shared on here, and concerns about raising prices, I've kind of been wondering if we're actually heading to a point where seniors who don't use AI are going to be cheaper than juniors who do.
In the future Claude will keep a tight ship on dissenters. If your monthly quota doesn't exceed the 10k worth of tokens your employer will be notified and you will be flagged as a "dissenter". Your lease will be cancelled, because who would trust someone ignorant enough to not use LLMs in their daily life, and you'll be vetoed from the field for life, for clanker companies will proclaim that anyone who doesn't use LLM-assisted coding should be culled and so they'll run a tight ship.
And executives will get millions in bonuses for figuring it out, and the remaining programmers, probably one or two, will raise their necks over who's the best prompter and how everyone else was dumber than them for not figuring it out.
And executives will get millions in bonuses for figuring it out, and the remaining programmers, probably one or two, will raise their necks over who's the best prompter and how everyone else was dumber than them for not figuring it out.
ai skeptic fanfic evolves in fascinating ways every day
Take it a step further: AI generated AI skeptic fanfic :D
Yeah, the AI productivity gains are a myth in my experience.
> the generated code just annoys me and the agents are too chatty
I’ve eyerolled way less with Codex CLI and the GPT models than with Claude.
I’ve eyerolled way less with Codex CLI and the GPT models than with Claude.
I haven’t spent much time with Codex+GPT, will definitely give it another look
> I got to do my hobby as a career for the past 15 years, but that’s ending.
Frankly I don't think so. The AI using LLMs is the perpetual motion mechanism scam of our time. But it is cloaked in unimaginable complexity, and thus it is the perfect scam. But even the most elaborately hidden power source in a perpetual motion machine cannot fool nature and should come to a complete stop as it runs out.
Frankly I don't think so. The AI using LLMs is the perpetual motion mechanism scam of our time. But it is cloaked in unimaginable complexity, and thus it is the perfect scam. But even the most elaborately hidden power source in a perpetual motion machine cannot fool nature and should come to a complete stop as it runs out.
I love the perpetual motion machine / thermodynamics analogy.
It kind of feels like companies are being fooled into outsourcing/offshoring their jr. developer level work. Then the companies depend on it because operational inertia is powerful, and will pay as the price keeps going up to cover the perpetual motion lie. Then they look back and realize they're just paying Microsoft for 20 jr. developers but are getting zero benefit from in-house skill development.
It kind of feels like companies are being fooled into outsourcing/offshoring their jr. developer level work. Then the companies depend on it because operational inertia is powerful, and will pay as the price keeps going up to cover the perpetual motion lie. Then they look back and realize they're just paying Microsoft for 20 jr. developers but are getting zero benefit from in-house skill development.
This is silly. I can build products in a weekend that would take me a year by myself. I am still necessary 1% of the time for debug, design, and direction and those of not at all a shallow skill. I have some graduate algebra texts on the way my math friend is guiding me through because I have found a publishable result and need to shore up my background before writing the paper...
It's not perpetual motion, it's very real capability, you just have to be able to learn how to use it.
It's not perpetual motion, it's very real capability, you just have to be able to learn how to use it.
No one is saying that it cannot do what you say now.
What I am saying is that once the high quality training data runs out, it will drop in its capabilities pretty fast. That is how I compare it to perpetual motion mechanism scams. In the case of a perpetual motion machine, it appear that it will continue to run indefinitely. That is analogous to the impression that you have now. You feel that this will go on and on for ever, and that is the scam you are falling for.
What I am saying is that once the high quality training data runs out, it will drop in its capabilities pretty fast. That is how I compare it to perpetual motion mechanism scams. In the case of a perpetual motion machine, it appear that it will continue to run indefinitely. That is analogous to the impression that you have now. You feel that this will go on and on for ever, and that is the scam you are falling for.
>What I am saying is that once the high quality training data runs out, it will drop in its capabilities pretty fast.
That's more a misunderstood study that over time turned into a confidently stated fact. Yes, the model collapses if you loop the output to the input. But no, that's not how it's done.
The reality is that all the labs are already using synthetic training data, and have been for at least a year now. It basically turned out to be a non-issue if you have robust monitoring and curation in place for the generated data.
That's more a misunderstood study that over time turned into a confidently stated fact. Yes, the model collapses if you loop the output to the input. But no, that's not how it's done.
The reality is that all the labs are already using synthetic training data, and have been for at least a year now. It basically turned out to be a non-issue if you have robust monitoring and curation in place for the generated data.
>using synthetic training data
yea, look up how it is done.
It is exactly how a perpetual motion machine scam would project an appearance of working like using a generator to drive a motor, and the motor driving the generator..something that would obscure the fact that there is energy loss happening along the way....
yea, look up how it is done.
It is exactly how a perpetual motion machine scam would project an appearance of working like using a generator to drive a motor, and the motor driving the generator..something that would obscure the fact that there is energy loss happening along the way....
I'm confused with the point you are trying to make, because they are using synthetic data, and the models are getting stronger.
There is no "conservation of fallacy" law (bad data must conserve it's level of bad), so I'm struggling to connect the dots on the analogy, unless I ignore the fact that training on synthetic data works, is being used, and the models are getting better.
There is no "conservation of fallacy" law (bad data must conserve it's level of bad), so I'm struggling to connect the dots on the analogy, unless I ignore the fact that training on synthetic data works, is being used, and the models are getting better.
If the training that did not use synthetic data failed to capture some aspect of the information contained, then using data synthesized from the original data could help to capture it, thus it could result in the models getting better.
But that is because the synthetic data helped the model capture what was already there in the training data.
But after all such information has been extracted, then it would not be possible to use synthetic data or anything that is derived from the original data to create "new" information for training....
But that is because the synthetic data helped the model capture what was already there in the training data.
But after all such information has been extracted, then it would not be possible to use synthetic data or anything that is derived from the original data to create "new" information for training....
Better by which metrics?
Why would the capabilities drop instead of stagnate?
Because technologies, programming languages, best practices, won't stay frozen. If LLMs cannot catch up with it, I think it can be considered as a drop in capability. No?
Close, but no. What will happen is that "technologies, programming languages, best practices" will stay frozen because human innovation will drop, and the whole field will stagnate.
This is the biggest fear! I don’t see an easy fix.
Will the developer of a new programming language be able to reach out to model companies to give a huge amount of training data, ensuring that the models are good at that new language? I don’t think a small team can write enough code, the models already struggle in medium-popularity languages that have years of history. They hallucinate lua functionality sometimes, for example, even though I’m sure there is lots of lua code out there.
So if most people use coding agents, we’re stuck with the current most popular languages because no new language will get past the barrier of having enough code that models can write it well, meaning nobody adopts the new language, etc.
Same thing with libraries and frameworks - technical decisions are already being made based on “is this popular enough that the agents can use it well?” Rather than a newer library that meets our needs perfectly but isn’t in the training data
Will the developer of a new programming language be able to reach out to model companies to give a huge amount of training data, ensuring that the models are good at that new language? I don’t think a small team can write enough code, the models already struggle in medium-popularity languages that have years of history. They hallucinate lua functionality sometimes, for example, even though I’m sure there is lots of lua code out there.
So if most people use coding agents, we’re stuck with the current most popular languages because no new language will get past the barrier of having enough code that models can write it well, meaning nobody adopts the new language, etc.
Same thing with libraries and frameworks - technical decisions are already being made based on “is this popular enough that the agents can use it well?” Rather than a newer library that meets our needs perfectly but isn’t in the training data
You can see their ego trying to protect itself.
You're fooling yourself.
People yeating a (shitty) Github clone with Claude in a week apparently can't imagine it, but if you know the shit out of Rails, start with a good a boiler plate, and have a good git library, a solo dev can also build a (shitty) Github clone in a week. And they'll be able to take it somewhere, unlike the llm ratsnest that will require increasingly expensive tokens to (frustratingly) modify.
People yeating a (shitty) Github clone with Claude in a week apparently can't imagine it, but if you know the shit out of Rails, start with a good a boiler plate, and have a good git library, a solo dev can also build a (shitty) Github clone in a week. And they'll be able to take it somewhere, unlike the llm ratsnest that will require increasingly expensive tokens to (frustratingly) modify.
You're fooling yourself. It's very easy to get demonstrably working results in an afternoon that would take weeks at least without coding agents. Demonstrably working, as in you can prove the code actually works by then putting it to use. I had a coding agent write an entire declarative GUI library for mpv userscripts, rendering all widgets with ASS subtitles, then proceeded to prove to my satisfaction that it does in fact work by using it to make a node editor for constructing ffmpeg filter graphs and an in-mpv nonlinear video editor. All of this is stuff I already knew how to do in practice, had intended to do one day for years now, but never bit the bullet because I knew it would turn into weeks of me pouring over auto-generated ASS doing things it was never intended to do to figure out why something is rendering subtly wrong. Fairly straightforward but a ton of bitch work. The LLM blasted through it like it was nothing. Fooling myself? The code works, I'm using it, you're fooling yourself.
> Demonstrably working, as in you can prove the code actually works by then putting it to use.
That's not how you prove that code works properly and isn't going to fail due to some obscure or unforessen corner case. You need actual proof that's driven by the code's overall structure. Humans do this at least informally when they code, AI's can't do that with any reliability, especially not for non-trivial projects (for reasons that are quite structural and hard to change) so most coding agents simply work their way iteratively to get their test results to pass. That's not a robust methodology.
That's not how you prove that code works properly and isn't going to fail due to some obscure or unforessen corner case. You need actual proof that's driven by the code's overall structure. Humans do this at least informally when they code, AI's can't do that with any reliability, especially not for non-trivial projects (for reasons that are quite structural and hard to change) so most coding agents simply work their way iteratively to get their test results to pass. That's not a robust methodology.
> That's not how you prove that code works properly
Yes it is. What do you expect, formal verification of a toy GUI library? Get real.
> and isn't going to fail due to some obscure or unforessen corner case.
That's called "a bug", they get fixed when they're found. This isn't aerospace software, failure is not only an option, it's an expected part of the process.
> You need actual proof that's driven by the code's overall structure.
I literally don't.
> Humans do this at least informally when they code, AI's can't do that with any reliability
Sounds like a borderline theological argument. Coding agents one-shot problems a lot more often than I ever did. Results are what matters, demonstrable results.
Yes it is. What do you expect, formal verification of a toy GUI library? Get real.
> and isn't going to fail due to some obscure or unforessen corner case.
That's called "a bug", they get fixed when they're found. This isn't aerospace software, failure is not only an option, it's an expected part of the process.
> You need actual proof that's driven by the code's overall structure.
I literally don't.
> Humans do this at least informally when they code, AI's can't do that with any reliability
Sounds like a borderline theological argument. Coding agents one-shot problems a lot more often than I ever did. Results are what matters, demonstrable results.
>That's not how you prove that code works properly and isn't going to fail due to some obscure or unforessen corner case.
So? We didn't prove human code "isn't going to fail due to some obscure or unforessen corner case" either (aside the tiny niche of formal verification).
So from that aspect it's quite similar.
>so most coding agents simply work their way iteratively to get their test results to pass. That's not a robust methodology.
You seem to imply they do some sort of random iteration until the tests pass, which is not the case. Usually they can see the test failing, and describe the issue exactly in the way a human programmer would, then fix it.
So? We didn't prove human code "isn't going to fail due to some obscure or unforessen corner case" either (aside the tiny niche of formal verification).
So from that aspect it's quite similar.
>so most coding agents simply work their way iteratively to get their test results to pass. That's not a robust methodology.
You seem to imply they do some sort of random iteration until the tests pass, which is not the case. Usually they can see the test failing, and describe the issue exactly in the way a human programmer would, then fix it.
> describe the issue exactly in the way a human programmer would
Human programmers don't usually hallucinate things out of thin air, AIs like to do that a whole lot. So no, they aren't working the exact same way.
Human programmers don't usually hallucinate things out of thin air, AIs like to do that a whole lot. So no, they aren't working the exact same way.
>Human programmers don't usually hallucinate things out of thin air
Oh, you wouldn't believe how much they do that too, or are unreliable in similar ways. Bullshiting, thinking they tested x when they didn't, misremembering things, confidently saying that X is the bottleneck and spending weeks refactoring without measuring (to turn out not to be), the list goes on.
>So no, they aren't working the exact same way.
However they work internally, most of the time, current agents (of say, last year and above) "describe the issue exactly in the way a human programmer would".
Oh, you wouldn't believe how much they do that too, or are unreliable in similar ways. Bullshiting, thinking they tested x when they didn't, misremembering things, confidently saying that X is the bottleneck and spending weeks refactoring without measuring (to turn out not to be), the list goes on.
>So no, they aren't working the exact same way.
However they work internally, most of the time, current agents (of say, last year and above) "describe the issue exactly in the way a human programmer would".
That is not hallucinating...
LLM hallucinating is not an edge case. It is how they generate output 100% time. Mainstream media only calls it "hallucination" when the output is wrong, but from the point of view of a LLM, it is working exactly it is supposed to....
LLM hallucinating is not an edge case. It is how they generate output 100% time. Mainstream media only calls it "hallucination" when the output is wrong, but from the point of view of a LLM, it is working exactly it is supposed to....
>LLM hallucinating is not an edge case. It is how they generate output 100% time
If enough of the time it matches reality -- which it does, it doesn't matter. Especially in a coding setup, where you can verify the results, have tests you wrote yourself, and the end goal is well defined.
And conversely, if a human is a bullshitter, or ignorant, or liar, or stupid, it doesn't matter if they end up with useless stuff "in a different way" than an LLM hallucinating. The end result regarding the low utility of his output is the same.
Besides, one theory of cognition (pre LLM even) is of the human brain as a prediction machine. In which case, it's not that different than an LLM in principle, even if the scope and design is better.
If enough of the time it matches reality -- which it does, it doesn't matter. Especially in a coding setup, where you can verify the results, have tests you wrote yourself, and the end goal is well defined.
And conversely, if a human is a bullshitter, or ignorant, or liar, or stupid, it doesn't matter if they end up with useless stuff "in a different way" than an LLM hallucinating. The end result regarding the low utility of his output is the same.
Besides, one theory of cognition (pre LLM even) is of the human brain as a prediction machine. In which case, it's not that different than an LLM in principle, even if the scope and design is better.
>If enough of the time it matches reality...
But what is "enough of the time"?
But what is "enough of the time"?
> Fairly straightforward but a ton of bitch work. The LLM blasted through it like it was nothing.
One might argue that this is a substitute for metaprogramming, not software developers.
One might argue that this is a substitute for metaprogramming, not software developers.
It's interesting more people haven't talked about this. A lot of so-called agentic development is really just a very roundabout way to perform metaprogramming.
At my own firm, we generally have a rule we do almost everything through metaprogramming.
At my own firm, we generally have a rule we do almost everything through metaprogramming.
That’s actually an amazing case of agents. I love programming, but be honest, there are a lot of tasks like this that are just very time consuming and not interesting at all.
I also did a native implementation of git so I could use an S3 compatible data store, your rails guru can't do that.
Objectively, my GitHub clone is still shitty, BUT it got several ways github is shitty out of my way and allowed me to add several features I wanted, no small one of which was GitHub not owning my data.
I don't know the shit out of Rails and I don't want to, I know the shit out of other things and I want the tools I'm using to be better and Claude is making that happen.
It's a little odd the skepticism to the level that people keep telling me I'm delusional for being satisfied that I've created something useful for myself. The opposition to AI/LLMs seems to be growing into a weird morality cult trying to convince everybody else that they're leading unhappy immoral lives. I'm exaggerating but it's looking like things are going in that direction... and in my house, so to speak, here on HN there are factions. Like programming language zealots but worse.
Objectively, my GitHub clone is still shitty, BUT it got several ways github is shitty out of my way and allowed me to add several features I wanted, no small one of which was GitHub not owning my data.
I don't know the shit out of Rails and I don't want to, I know the shit out of other things and I want the tools I'm using to be better and Claude is making that happen.
It's a little odd the skepticism to the level that people keep telling me I'm delusional for being satisfied that I've created something useful for myself. The opposition to AI/LLMs seems to be growing into a weird morality cult trying to convince everybody else that they're leading unhappy immoral lives. I'm exaggerating but it's looking like things are going in that direction... and in my house, so to speak, here on HN there are factions. Like programming language zealots but worse.
Hey I understand you've gotten something out of it. You hired a robot to 3d-print a mug that fits your hand. There's a place for that. You understand that it might poison you a little bit? You understand that this doesn't make ceramics irrelevant?
Hobby-project vibe coding is pretty cool (if I'm being honest, its fucking miraculous; this tech is wild) but isn't it clear that there's a problem with the linkedincels, the investors, the management that are all convinced this will remove say 50% of programming jobs? I understand these things have legitimate uses, but I'm at my wits end hearing about how deep understanding, craftsmanship, patience and hard work aren't "results oriented".
There's definitely zealotry developing against AI, but I suspect it is a proportional (if unhelpful) response to the hype machine. Is it really zealotry to insist on the value of your mind and your competence? These people saying you should never "hand write" your code-- how the fuck did the discourse move so much that this isn't a laughably stupid thing to say? "I'm a CEO, and if you aren't using consultants to make your decisions you've already lost"
Hobby-project vibe coding is pretty cool (if I'm being honest, its fucking miraculous; this tech is wild) but isn't it clear that there's a problem with the linkedincels, the investors, the management that are all convinced this will remove say 50% of programming jobs? I understand these things have legitimate uses, but I'm at my wits end hearing about how deep understanding, craftsmanship, patience and hard work aren't "results oriented".
There's definitely zealotry developing against AI, but I suspect it is a proportional (if unhelpful) response to the hype machine. Is it really zealotry to insist on the value of your mind and your competence? These people saying you should never "hand write" your code-- how the fuck did the discourse move so much that this isn't a laughably stupid thing to say? "I'm a CEO, and if you aren't using consultants to make your decisions you've already lost"
>isn't it clear that there's a problem with the linkedincels, the investors, the management that are all convinced this will remove say 50% of programming jobs
These people have always been doing this. Starting in the 90s it was outsourcing programming jobs, they were right then, they got more work for less money and you could have less expertise on staff farming out work somewhere else that was cheaper. You also got worse results sometimes. So it goes.
LLMs are making people more powerful and sucking a lot of income off to the people who provide them. Yup. It makes idiot shysters more powerful just the same as it makes experts more powerful.
People are acting like the software engineering industry is full of fine artistry building the finest bespoke tools instead of duct taping rocks to sticks. I'm sorry but there is a tremendous amount of crap out there by people who barely know what they're doing.
Yes new technology empowers idiots, but it also empowers smart people and if you use it well it'll lead to more quality. Yes you're going to have the same problems you had before of someone doing something cheaply competing with someone trying to be careful to build something well. There also will continue to be idiots spouting off about it.
Nothing changed but the tools got more powerful and people are whining complaining about this change this time ruining everything. Like they always have forever.
These people have always been doing this. Starting in the 90s it was outsourcing programming jobs, they were right then, they got more work for less money and you could have less expertise on staff farming out work somewhere else that was cheaper. You also got worse results sometimes. So it goes.
LLMs are making people more powerful and sucking a lot of income off to the people who provide them. Yup. It makes idiot shysters more powerful just the same as it makes experts more powerful.
People are acting like the software engineering industry is full of fine artistry building the finest bespoke tools instead of duct taping rocks to sticks. I'm sorry but there is a tremendous amount of crap out there by people who barely know what they're doing.
Yes new technology empowers idiots, but it also empowers smart people and if you use it well it'll lead to more quality. Yes you're going to have the same problems you had before of someone doing something cheaply competing with someone trying to be careful to build something well. There also will continue to be idiots spouting off about it.
Nothing changed but the tools got more powerful and people are whining complaining about this change this time ruining everything. Like they always have forever.
>This is silly. I can build products in a weekend that would take me a year by myself
Is the world any better for them existing? The decline of coding and sw engineering skills in humans from outsourcing the practice of it to AI is it worth it and sustainable long term?
Is the world any better for them existing? The decline of coding and sw engineering skills in humans from outsourcing the practice of it to AI is it worth it and sustainable long term?
>Is the world any better for them existing? The decline of coding and sw engineering skills in humans from outsourcing the practice of it to AI is it worth it and sustainable long term?
The world is going to be no worse than it was when humans transitioned from writing assembly to writing compilers for high level languages. Assembly is still necessary, but not that often. In the same way writing code is going to become less necessary as tools are going to be written in higher level language in standards and requirements documents instead of code most of the time, with more specific exact coding only occasionally.
Programmers were mostly solving the same plumbing problems over and over in secret because of "proprietary" needs to hide your code, but one million separate integrations of your billing backend with Stripe didn't really add to humanity. We're cutting out the boring middle drudgery and human effort is going to be freed up to work on the edges of human knowledge instead of tromping around in the middle.
The world is going to be no worse than it was when humans transitioned from writing assembly to writing compilers for high level languages. Assembly is still necessary, but not that often. In the same way writing code is going to become less necessary as tools are going to be written in higher level language in standards and requirements documents instead of code most of the time, with more specific exact coding only occasionally.
Programmers were mostly solving the same plumbing problems over and over in secret because of "proprietary" needs to hide your code, but one million separate integrations of your billing backend with Stripe didn't really add to humanity. We're cutting out the boring middle drudgery and human effort is going to be freed up to work on the edges of human knowledge instead of tromping around in the middle.
>The world is going to be no worse than it was when humans transitioned from writing assembly to writing compilers for high level languages
When I open some Electron apps I wish we stopped right about there.
When I open some Electron apps I wish we stopped right about there.
I agree with the sentiment, but I think the problem is much wider.
Managers at companies are just doing what they've optimized their careers for: maintaining some edge over some competition, at some cost. What is pure FOMO to you or me, is good strategy to anyone trying to win [1]. In other words, FOMO was always the strategy.
This self-reinforcing loop is also not going away. There hasn't been any real evidence that any part of knowledge work, including coding, cannot be automated [2]. Even if human-level quality or cost-effectiveness takes 10 more years, all tasks are functionally solved or about to be. I don't like it, but it's true.
The big problem is that the people who are removed from this loop, who have the time to understand its effects and the power to make changes, are doing fuck-all.
So, whether the loop stops for a while or speeds up even more, we're fucked until we figure out how to detach full-time employment from survival.
[1] I believe this is called meta in PvP games; even if you want to subvert the meta, you gotta know it well first.
[2] Although it could just be my impression, and I'd be happy to be proven otherwise.
Managers at companies are just doing what they've optimized their careers for: maintaining some edge over some competition, at some cost. What is pure FOMO to you or me, is good strategy to anyone trying to win [1]. In other words, FOMO was always the strategy.
This self-reinforcing loop is also not going away. There hasn't been any real evidence that any part of knowledge work, including coding, cannot be automated [2]. Even if human-level quality or cost-effectiveness takes 10 more years, all tasks are functionally solved or about to be. I don't like it, but it's true.
The big problem is that the people who are removed from this loop, who have the time to understand its effects and the power to make changes, are doing fuck-all.
So, whether the loop stops for a while or speeds up even more, we're fucked until we figure out how to detach full-time employment from survival.
[1] I believe this is called meta in PvP games; even if you want to subvert the meta, you gotta know it well first.
[2] Although it could just be my impression, and I'd be happy to be proven otherwise.
The evidence that software development cannot be automated is we already tried to do it in the 90s with OOP, UML, and outsourcing. It didn’t work out for the same reasons vibe coding isn’t working out — because building the system is the same as specifying it, and that is a creative iterative process.
We are at the point where sure ai can write code, but we could always do that; lack of code writing ability was not what killed the OOP automation efforts. There was plenty ability to code back then as well. The distinction of whether it’s an offshore team in India or Claude writing the code doesn’t change things as far as the larger picture of building the software.
We are at the point where sure ai can write code, but we could always do that; lack of code writing ability was not what killed the OOP automation efforts. There was plenty ability to code back then as well. The distinction of whether it’s an offshore team in India or Claude writing the code doesn’t change things as far as the larger picture of building the software.
This may be evidence that it's more difficult than evangelists first imagine, but it's not evidence of a technical obstacle. Generally, "automation failed" does not imply that "automation is impossible".
To your individual points:
- OOP and UML are domain-specific abstractions. Aside from still being very much used in expanding niches [1], they have failed to automate much work because their proponents failed to cover enough cases to have a useful general-purpose abstraction.
- Outsourcing is a labor strategy. There's nothing technical that prevents another similarly capable person from doing your job, at least in the next town, if not another country. The obstacles were/are social and political, and the WFH movement shows that. Also, outsourcing is not going anywhere, it's just reduced and converted to nearsourcing due to backlash.
- By contrast, software is a general-purpose abstraction [2]. Databases are a type of software. You can see LLMs [3] as schema-less databases that contain millions of abstractions connected to each other. You can get a UML model or Python code or text by querying the LLM's query engine in a language much more flexible than SQL.
Vibe coding makes it seem like the funny intermediate bullshit is the end result of using LLMs, but it's not. Sure, I agree that LLMs don't make sense to use when a calculator is enough, but I don't see any functional limitations to improving LLMs. Maybe new algorithms or combinations are needed, but no matter how slowly, quality is expected to reach at least human level for the majority of current tasks (on which many jobs depend).
Which leads to my point: we need political, social, philosophical reasons to limit or integrate automation in our civilization, not just watch and hope there's a big enough technical obstacle so we can keep our current jobs.
[1] For example, model-based software engineering is still a growing; slowly, but growing.
[2] So is the organization of mechanical machines or analog computers, but it's faster to reorganize and orchestrate electrical signals.
[3] More precisely, foundation models, because it's far more than natural language processing.
To your individual points:
- OOP and UML are domain-specific abstractions. Aside from still being very much used in expanding niches [1], they have failed to automate much work because their proponents failed to cover enough cases to have a useful general-purpose abstraction.
- Outsourcing is a labor strategy. There's nothing technical that prevents another similarly capable person from doing your job, at least in the next town, if not another country. The obstacles were/are social and political, and the WFH movement shows that. Also, outsourcing is not going anywhere, it's just reduced and converted to nearsourcing due to backlash.
- By contrast, software is a general-purpose abstraction [2]. Databases are a type of software. You can see LLMs [3] as schema-less databases that contain millions of abstractions connected to each other. You can get a UML model or Python code or text by querying the LLM's query engine in a language much more flexible than SQL.
Vibe coding makes it seem like the funny intermediate bullshit is the end result of using LLMs, but it's not. Sure, I agree that LLMs don't make sense to use when a calculator is enough, but I don't see any functional limitations to improving LLMs. Maybe new algorithms or combinations are needed, but no matter how slowly, quality is expected to reach at least human level for the majority of current tasks (on which many jobs depend).
Which leads to my point: we need political, social, philosophical reasons to limit or integrate automation in our civilization, not just watch and hope there's a big enough technical obstacle so we can keep our current jobs.
[1] For example, model-based software engineering is still a growing; slowly, but growing.
[2] So is the organization of mechanical machines or analog computers, but it's faster to reorganize and orchestrate electrical signals.
[3] More precisely, foundation models, because it's far more than natural language processing.
I'm not saying there is a technical obstacle, I'm saying there's a practical obstacle that LLMs and vibecoding don't overcome.
The evidence isn't in that it failed but why it failed. It's not that the problem was more difficult than they anticipated, it's that they didn't comprehend the nature of the problem they were solving from the outset. Software development is an incremental creative activity that involves good taste, constantly shifting and vague requirements, and keen understanding of human factors and ergonomics. LLMs fail at all three. And in fact the shifting and ambiguous requirement element is fatal to the notion of automating the process.
Outsourcing and oop and uml and LLMs and vibecoding --- they're all the same futile attempt at the same thing: abstracting the human out of a loop built for the benefit of humans. It's nonsensical, and the only people who want to do it are capitalists, so it's doomed to fail yet again.
The evidence isn't in that it failed but why it failed. It's not that the problem was more difficult than they anticipated, it's that they didn't comprehend the nature of the problem they were solving from the outset. Software development is an incremental creative activity that involves good taste, constantly shifting and vague requirements, and keen understanding of human factors and ergonomics. LLMs fail at all three. And in fact the shifting and ambiguous requirement element is fatal to the notion of automating the process.
Outsourcing and oop and uml and LLMs and vibecoding --- they're all the same futile attempt at the same thing: abstracting the human out of a loop built for the benefit of humans. It's nonsensical, and the only people who want to do it are capitalists, so it's doomed to fail yet again.
Fair enough, I agree. The process of one or more people figuring out what is actually needed is a big part of the outcome, I'd consider an important social obstacle or limit to automation.
But here's what's important to my point:
So, rather than wait for a technical wall to save us, or legally protect functionally replaceable jobs, or wait until people's lives implode, we should pressure our respective governments to decouple [2] the person's ability to survive from the ability to hold uninterrupted full-time employment. That's the only collective way forward that I see.
[1] We can even constrain it to existing roles: if a team of one requirements engineer, one full-stack dev/architect and LLMs can do the same job as a bigger team of specialized roles and coders, why would anyone pick the latter? I'd be happy to hear a technical or economic reason.
[2] My order of preference, preferably multiple: UBI, UBS, increased part-time work options, conditional non-basic income, union contracts, automation pauses, retraining, severance, temporarily subsidized bullshit jobs.
But here's what's important to my point:
> abstracting the [worker] human out of a loop built for the benefit of [customer] humans
So, rather than wait for a technical wall to save us, or legally protect functionally replaceable jobs, or wait until people's lives implode, we should pressure our respective governments to decouple [2] the person's ability to survive from the ability to hold uninterrupted full-time employment. That's the only collective way forward that I see.
[1] We can even constrain it to existing roles: if a team of one requirements engineer, one full-stack dev/architect and LLMs can do the same job as a bigger team of specialized roles and coders, why would anyone pick the latter? I'd be happy to hear a technical or economic reason.
[2] My order of preference, preferably multiple: UBI, UBS, increased part-time work options, conditional non-basic income, union contracts, automation pauses, retraining, severance, temporarily subsidized bullshit jobs.
> Improving developer skills is not valuable to your company.
Yet every company does it, except the worst sweatshops.
Yet every company does it, except the worst sweatshops.
There's a catch. Do not break customer trust. Many people are just tinkering with solving the problem but the indirect effects have not been tackled either by the tool, processes or just some human thinking.
What about a company with high security reqs that do bot alloellms? Like gov type work.
Picking out my favorite idea out of many: we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Writing and publishing is a good one. I also recommend stimulating human conversations and long-form reading.
More and more the bar is being lowered. Don’t fall to brain rot. Don’t quite quit. Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.
More and more the bar is being lowered. Don’t fall to brain rot. Don’t quite quit. Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.
> we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI.
Here's my advice: if there's someone around you who can teach you, learn from them. But if there isn't anyone around you who can teach you, find someone around you who can learn from you and mentor them. You'll actually grow more from the latter than from the former, if you can believe that.
I think there's a broad blindness in industry to the benefits of mentorship for the mentors. Mentoring has sharpened my thinking and pushed me to articulate why things are true in a way I never would have gone to the effort of otherwise.
If there are no juniors around to teach, seniors will forever be less senior than they might have been had they been getting reps at mentorship along the way.
Here's my advice: if there's someone around you who can teach you, learn from them. But if there isn't anyone around you who can teach you, find someone around you who can learn from you and mentor them. You'll actually grow more from the latter than from the former, if you can believe that.
I think there's a broad blindness in industry to the benefits of mentorship for the mentors. Mentoring has sharpened my thinking and pushed me to articulate why things are true in a way I never would have gone to the effort of otherwise.
If there are no juniors around to teach, seniors will forever be less senior than they might have been had they been getting reps at mentorship along the way.
A long-standing truth in martial arts circles has been that you can't advance beyond a certain belt before you teach classes.
It's purely because of the fact that if you can't teach something, you really don't understand it.
And the act of having to simplify and break down a skill to explain it to others improves your knowledge of it.
It's purely because of the fact that if you can't teach something, you really don't understand it.
And the act of having to simplify and break down a skill to explain it to others improves your knowledge of it.
I haven't heard this benefit for mentors clearly articulated before (probably just missed it), but definitely felt it - I guess it's a deeper version of how writing/other communication forces clarity/organization of thoughts because mentorship conversations are so focused on extracting the why as well as the what.
See one, do one, teach one.
Yes—and the key is, you do not leave the category of "how to learn a thing" between steps 2 and 3.
I can confidently say that, yes, reading helps a lot. My mental model has shifted a bit that words are cheap (printing -> writing -> typing -> generating) and that we should accept there is something like high quality text.
I haven't really been a reader, but I can definitely notice when a book/text is "hard". I'm currently reading the old testament, and I understand very little (even the oxford one that has a lot of annotations is hard for me). I like this, because its a measurement of what I don't know (if that makes sense).
I haven't really been a reader, but I can definitely notice when a book/text is "hard". I'm currently reading the old testament, and I understand very little (even the oxford one that has a lot of annotations is hard for me). I like this, because its a measurement of what I don't know (if that makes sense).
For the first time in quite a while, I've started reading a challenging, non-computer book ("The New Testament in its World").
I'm trying to decide if my attention span has atrophied, or if I'm just more aware now of my ADD.
Either way, I'm hopeful that my attention span for this kind of reading will grow with practice.
I'm trying to decide if my attention span has atrophied, or if I'm just more aware now of my ADD.
Either way, I'm hopeful that my attention span for this kind of reading will grow with practice.
I too have noticed my attention span having atrophied. It was pre-AI, at least for me. Post-internet, though.
I think browser tabs and screen (the terminal multiplexer) did it for me.
If you you haven't read a book in a while, I noticed it's like a thing you need to practice.
I tried reading Proust's In Search Of Lost Time some time ago, in which the first 10-20 pages are about a guy lying in his bed at night and observing his own thoughts (roughly). And I quickly realised how I was reading the words and even sentences, but couldn't grasp the meaning of them - I couldn't produce a "mental model" or image of what it was about. It was a very humbling experience.
I used to be an avid reader as a child, even as a teenager. That was a long time ago. I'm looking forward to that time when I will have the mental capacity to read long prose again.
I used to be an avid reader as a child, even as a teenager. That was a long time ago. I'm looking forward to that time when I will have the mental capacity to read long prose again.
I'm pretty sure all this AI is built on top of Silicon valley's technobabble of "permanent underclass" which seems to have zero introspection as to why we're just going to accept the feudal overlords of technology.
But besides that, it's interesting so many people are willing to tailor their entire workflow and product to indeterminate machines and business culture.
I recommend everyone stop using these infernal cloud devices and start with a nice local model that doesn't instantly give you everything, but is quite capabable of removing a select amount of drudgery that is rather relaxing. And as soon as you get too lazy to do enough specifying or real coding, it fucks up your dev environment and you slap yuorself a hundred times wondering why you ever trusted someone else to properly build your artifaces.
There's definitely some philosophy being edged into our spaces that need to be combatted.
But besides that, it's interesting so many people are willing to tailor their entire workflow and product to indeterminate machines and business culture.
I recommend everyone stop using these infernal cloud devices and start with a nice local model that doesn't instantly give you everything, but is quite capabable of removing a select amount of drudgery that is rather relaxing. And as soon as you get too lazy to do enough specifying or real coding, it fucks up your dev environment and you slap yuorself a hundred times wondering why you ever trusted someone else to properly build your artifaces.
There's definitely some philosophy being edged into our spaces that need to be combatted.
I'm pretty sure the -as-a-service stage is only temporary.
The local models are only going to get better, and the improvement curve has to top out eventually. Maybe the cloud models will still give you a few extra percentage points of performance, especially if they're based on data sets that aren't available to the public, but it won't make much difference on most tasks and the local models will have a lot of advantages too.
The local models are only going to get better, and the improvement curve has to top out eventually. Maybe the cloud models will still give you a few extra percentage points of performance, especially if they're based on data sets that aren't available to the public, but it won't make much difference on most tasks and the local models will have a lot of advantages too.
I agree on the over-reliance part, but I don’t think it’s AI itself .It’s how people choose to use it.
Most people are outsourcing thinking instead of using it to go deeper. The tools aren’t the problem, the default behavior is.
Most people are outsourcing thinking instead of using it to go deeper. The tools aren’t the problem, the default behavior is.
True, but the tools make the default behavior so tempting.
I have a friend who uses Google Maps to find places, then memorizes the route there and closes the app to navigate because he wants to build a better mental map of our city. Meanwhile, I just check the app every five seconds like a dummy, and my hippocampus stays small.
I have a friend who uses Google Maps to find places, then memorizes the route there and closes the app to navigate because he wants to build a better mental map of our city. Meanwhile, I just check the app every five seconds like a dummy, and my hippocampus stays small.
This is a good parallel. In the 90s when I learned to drive I was quite good at navigating. Now google maps is on a screen in my car telling me where to go whenever I drive beyond my most common routes.
Really all the research telling us about AI skills atrophy.. We should have guessed from previous experience.
Really all the research telling us about AI skills atrophy.. We should have guessed from previous experience.
Old people my entire life have made fun of younger people for “not being able to read maps” or something.
But I’ve never seen anyone follow a GPS so religiously into so many obvious dead ends than elderly Uber drivers.
But I’ve never seen anyone follow a GPS so religiously into so many obvious dead ends than elderly Uber drivers.
Your friend use google maps, while google maps uses you.
> which seems to have zero introspection as to why we're just going to accept the feudal overlords of technology.
You’ve let them in and given them power in many aspects of your life without even a whimper of resistance. Of course you’ll accept them as your lords.
You’ve let them in and given them power in many aspects of your life without even a whimper of resistance. Of course you’ll accept them as your lords.
Do you want a Stairmaster with that elevator? Life is for living, ostensibly. This Inevitabilism drone choir[1] may be correct that it will take my current job and after that maybe there will nothing fruitful in that department left. But I can’t imagine a life situation where I’m both surviving and using thinking-with-my-brain as some retirement home pastime/ “brainrot”-preventer.
> Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.
Here’s how the rat race looks in the age of AI and how you can stay ahead.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487774
> Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.
Here’s how the rat race looks in the age of AI and how you can stay ahead.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487774
hoped for something useful in your link, found drivel.
Given your shattered hope and the fact that you came to it from the same author must have meant that something in this latest comment appealed to you. Sorry to disappoint! Can I interest you in some of my other musings instead? To salvage that hope of yours.
Oh absolutely, I'll have a poke around.
For the record I'm not an ai doomer, but I am pragmatic, and the lack of hope is merely a foundation.
For the record I'm not an ai doomer, but I am pragmatic, and the lack of hope is merely a foundation.
> need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Writing and publishing is a good one.
I have never typed and expressed myself so much before I started talking to clankers. Telling them what to do, teaching them skills, giving them architecture decisions and yanking their chain when they weer off course. I type in plain English maybe more than 60 hours a week now.
I have never typed and expressed myself so much before I started talking to clankers. Telling them what to do, teaching them skills, giving them architecture decisions and yanking their chain when they weer off course. I type in plain English maybe more than 60 hours a week now.
There are many things the AI can't do.
Another one is: Don't use GPS in your own city. Try to learn where you live. Read the map in advance if you are going somewhere new and memorise the turns.
A shocking number of my coworkers plot every single trip (even to work!) and claim this helps with traffic or undercover cameras or some other cope. But the traffic will be there regardless, and they shouldnt need Google Maps to remind them not to speed. They'd rather be glued to the screen than pay attention to their surroundings or learn any landmarks.
A shocking number of my coworkers plot every single trip (even to work!) and claim this helps with traffic or undercover cameras or some other cope. But the traffic will be there regardless, and they shouldnt need Google Maps to remind them not to speed. They'd rather be glued to the screen than pay attention to their surroundings or learn any landmarks.
> But the traffic will be there regardless
Isn't the point to use the GPS to avoid the traffic? In my experience, it's pretty effective a lot of times for that.
Isn't the point to use the GPS to avoid the traffic? In my experience, it's pretty effective a lot of times for that.
You are the traffic.
In my experience, if you are trying to dodge congestion at a peak time, so is everybody else. Excepting in the first 15-20 mins after a major incident, the alternate routes end up congested and settle to an equilbrium time because everyone is trying to do the same thing.
In my experience, if you are trying to dodge congestion at a peak time, so is everybody else. Excepting in the first 15-20 mins after a major incident, the alternate routes end up congested and settle to an equilbrium time because everyone is trying to do the same thing.
I love playing lost and found: get yourself lost and then find your way back home without GPS.
Couldn't tell if the first part was a sarcasm or not.
The second part gave it away though.
The second part gave it away though.
[deleted]
Or, you know, writing some code every day.
Funnily enough I saw this post as I was placing my HN account on hiatus, because I'm tired pretending that the quality of discourse is on par with what I've been used to read and participate in.
We're obviously in an era where "good enough" is taken so far that, what used to be the middle of the fictional line is not the middle point anymore but a new extreme. You're either someone who cares for the output or someone who cares how readable and easy to extend the code is.
I can only assume this is done on hopeful purpose, with the hope that the LLM's will "only keep improving linearly" to the point where readability and extendability is not my problem by it's "tomorrow's LLM" problem.
We're obviously in an era where "good enough" is taken so far that, what used to be the middle of the fictional line is not the middle point anymore but a new extreme. You're either someone who cares for the output or someone who cares how readable and easy to extend the code is.
I can only assume this is done on hopeful purpose, with the hope that the LLM's will "only keep improving linearly" to the point where readability and extendability is not my problem by it's "tomorrow's LLM" problem.
Ok but if you're a person that likes HN discourse but thinks "eternal september" has happened ... what's your plan?
You'll still come here, read the comments, see something engaging and want to reply and... feel sad because shakes fist at [datacenter] clouds it's all just bots talking to each other anyway.
Seems lame. Keep talking anyway.
You'll still come here, read the comments, see something engaging and want to reply and... feel sad because shakes fist at [datacenter] clouds it's all just bots talking to each other anyway.
Seems lame. Keep talking anyway.
You’re making a lot of assumptions. They could just stop visiting HN. They don’t even need a “plan” or an alternative, they can just stop.
Well. My assumptions are based on the that the alternative would never matter. He'd simply stop existing (in HN-space), and that's an overtly less-fun universe to live in.
We certainly do suddenly live in "interesting times".
We certainly do suddenly live in "interesting times".
I thought the same as the person you replied to. For me, the solution is to stop coming here as often and instead read traditional literature.
Soon to remove my access entirely to this website.
Soon to remove my access entirely to this website.
There is a lot more "yngmi" and "have fun being poor"-style attitude around here regarding LLM boosterism.
[deleted]
That attitude is particularly galling. Along with the "lock in now or become part of the permanent underclass".
The thing I can't stand is the absolute certainty of the boosters. It's almost religious.
AI is the future. AI will do this. AI will cause that. It is inevitable. Everything is obviously changing.
They leave no room left for debate. No openness to pushback. And no evidence or proof. It just is because it is, and if you don't believe it, you're simply wrong. We saw the same sort of attitudes with blockchain and NFTs.
AI is the future. AI will do this. AI will cause that. It is inevitable. Everything is obviously changing.
They leave no room left for debate. No openness to pushback. And no evidence or proof. It just is because it is, and if you don't believe it, you're simply wrong. We saw the same sort of attitudes with blockchain and NFTs.
Technojesus is going to save all the Claude Code users from never having learned how to invert a binary tree, amen64.
What would you take as evidence?
Any quality, useful (commercial) piece of software made with only AI code would suffice. Any successful AI-written indie game. Any successful AI-written library.
The proof should be in the pudding. Claude Code has been out for a year, and the boosters are saying they are orders of magnitude more productive, so we should have seen some kind of successful output within an order of magnitude of the time it would have taken to develop using traditional, non-LLM tools.
Where is the agent-coded Photoshop clone eating Adobe's lunch? Where is the agent-coded Quicken clone which puts the original out of business? Where is the agent-coded hit video game? All we are seeing so far are "Show HN" level projects.
The only thing LLMs seem to be speeding up is people's mouths.
Where is the agent-coded Photoshop clone eating Adobe's lunch? Where is the agent-coded Quicken clone which puts the original out of business? Where is the agent-coded hit video game? All we are seeing so far are "Show HN" level projects.
The only thing LLMs seem to be speeding up is people's mouths.
> You're either someone who cares for the output or someone who cares how readable and easy to extend the code is.
Which of course is a lie propagated by those who want to cast the disbelievers as mentally defective. Why the hell would you care how readable and easy to extend the code is if you weren’t interested in the result?
Which of course is a lie propagated by those who want to cast the disbelievers as mentally defective. Why the hell would you care how readable and easy to extend the code is if you weren’t interested in the result?
I do find it hard to tolerate the feeling of being watched online. The second-most trending dataset on huggingface right now is a snapshot of HN updating at a 5 minute interval. It makes me not want to really comment at all, just like how I don’t really publish any software I write anymore.
Turns out it sucks to produce original works when you know that, whereas previously a few people at best might see your work, now it’s a bunch of omniscient robots and maybe half of those original people are using the robots instead.
Turns out it sucks to produce original works when you know that, whereas previously a few people at best might see your work, now it’s a bunch of omniscient robots and maybe half of those original people are using the robots instead.
This is really interesting to me, because it never occurred to me to feel this way. Why would I care whether my comments are ending up in some dataset somewhere that's being used to train some model? My comments are boring and mostly uninformed. Have at it.
I'm curious: would you say the feeling of being watched online is making you afraid of some repercussion, or is it something else?
I'm curious: would you say the feeling of being watched online is making you afraid of some repercussion, or is it something else?
Dog in the Manger.
I get a feeling from overall anti-AI sentiment online that a lot of people feel they're entitled to 100% of value created by anything even tangentially related to their person, whether that's some intentional contribution or a random brain fart that happened in the vicinity of someone else doing something useful - and then become resentful they're not "getting their share".
There's hardly any other way to read all the proclamations of quitting to do anything because "cognitive dark forest" (itself a butchering of the original idea of "dark forest" across so many orthogonal dimensions in parallel, that it starts to look like a latent space of a transformer model).
I get a feeling from overall anti-AI sentiment online that a lot of people feel they're entitled to 100% of value created by anything even tangentially related to their person, whether that's some intentional contribution or a random brain fart that happened in the vicinity of someone else doing something useful - and then become resentful they're not "getting their share".
There's hardly any other way to read all the proclamations of quitting to do anything because "cognitive dark forest" (itself a butchering of the original idea of "dark forest" across so many orthogonal dimensions in parallel, that it starts to look like a latent space of a transformer model).
Conversely, some people feel entitled to 100% of the value created by others. Oh, you wrote a book? Too bad, it's a part of my training data set now.
Downloading public stuff off the internet with no regard for the creator's wishes or license is bad enough, but we have many people here who defended AI companies seeding models with pirated content.
The internet is a social contract. AI is not the first thing to try and erode it for profit, but it's by far the most aggressive one.
Downloading public stuff off the internet with no regard for the creator's wishes or license is bad enough, but we have many people here who defended AI companies seeding models with pirated content.
The internet is a social contract. AI is not the first thing to try and erode it for profit, but it's by far the most aggressive one.
Putting a book into a training data set does not take 100% of the value created by the author. You could make a convincing argument that since the LLM was never going to purchase the book, and the number of people who would have purchased the book but now won't because it's included in the training data is effectively zero, that no value was lost at all.
Licenses are legal documents and are usually treated as such, but "the creator's wishes" are irrelevant without case law, legislation, or licensing to back it up. And jurisdiction - show me a license that doesn't stand up in court in my home jurisdiction and I'll show you a license I won't care if I break or not.
Licenses are legal documents and are usually treated as such, but "the creator's wishes" are irrelevant without case law, legislation, or licensing to back it up. And jurisdiction - show me a license that doesn't stand up in court in my home jurisdiction and I'll show you a license I won't care if I break or not.
Let's not forget the basis here: To promote the progress of science and the useful arts.
Everything else is window dressing. The fact that licenses even exist to conditionalize use goes against this grain and creates far too much overreach that spoils the spirit of the basis of copyright law.
Everything else is window dressing. The fact that licenses even exist to conditionalize use goes against this grain and creates far too much overreach that spoils the spirit of the basis of copyright law.
I don't like the idea that I'm restrained by intellectual property laws, but that other powerful entities are not. That is fundamentally unfair.
> I get a feeling from overall anti-AI sentiment online that a lot of people feel they're entitled to 100% of value created by anything even tangentially related to their person
Rather, I don't like that the terms I released my work under aren't being respected. I believe LLMs are derivative works of the pieces they are trained on. I spent more than ten years working on open source code, and now the models that were trained on my GPL'd code are being used to make proprietary code against the terms of the license. I find this reprehensible.
While it wasn't an explicit term of release, generally I did not expect anyone to get any kind of financial value from the blog posts I wrote. I just wrote them for fun & maybe others would find them interesting. Now, LLMs have been trained on my blog posts and are generating financial value for some of the worst human beings on the planet who are using their money to murder, demean, and maim other humans.
I now know that blog posts I wrote for fun are putting money in some sociopath's bank account, and the GPL'd code I wrote is being used to create software to exploit me & other users. If I continue to create things publicly, it will be used against me and other people, and there's nothing I can do to stop it except to stop creating things. It's all very disrespectful & demoralizing.
Rather, I don't like that the terms I released my work under aren't being respected. I believe LLMs are derivative works of the pieces they are trained on. I spent more than ten years working on open source code, and now the models that were trained on my GPL'd code are being used to make proprietary code against the terms of the license. I find this reprehensible.
While it wasn't an explicit term of release, generally I did not expect anyone to get any kind of financial value from the blog posts I wrote. I just wrote them for fun & maybe others would find them interesting. Now, LLMs have been trained on my blog posts and are generating financial value for some of the worst human beings on the planet who are using their money to murder, demean, and maim other humans.
I now know that blog posts I wrote for fun are putting money in some sociopath's bank account, and the GPL'd code I wrote is being used to create software to exploit me & other users. If I continue to create things publicly, it will be used against me and other people, and there's nothing I can do to stop it except to stop creating things. It's all very disrespectful & demoralizing.
> I believe LLMs are derivative works of the pieces they are trained on
That's your opinion with 0 legal backing. IMO, calling them derivative is untenable logically for anyone with some understanding of LLM/transformer architecture.
That's your opinion with 0 legal backing. IMO, calling them derivative is untenable logically for anyone with some understanding of LLM/transformer architecture.
You desire a sharing community, but the takers/defectors are destroying that community.
Copyleft attempts to create a pool of code that forces sharing. But it broadly fails because you simply can't force antisocial people to be good sharers (plus source code usually isn't as valuable as we hope).
With any gifting/sharing, you have to accept that some of it will be abused. It is hard to filter for only community minded people who don't greedily abuse, and ideally who give freely.
I don't believe my circle of friends are becoming more selfish. I'm unsure what I would say about the rest of the world.
Copyleft attempts to create a pool of code that forces sharing. But it broadly fails because you simply can't force antisocial people to be good sharers (plus source code usually isn't as valuable as we hope).
With any gifting/sharing, you have to accept that some of it will be abused. It is hard to filter for only community minded people who don't greedily abuse, and ideally who give freely.
I don't believe my circle of friends are becoming more selfish. I'm unsure what I would say about the rest of the world.
I am in exactly the same boat, down to the ~10 years. Only difference is I ended up picking AGPL for my later works. Like it made a difference...
The whole situation disgusts me.
- They expect me to pay for access to my own stolen code.
- Arguing stealing should be legal because China does it and if US companies don't, they'll be left behind.
- People like the poster you're replying to who argue you're not entitled to 100% of the value you create - completely ignoring that the value will go to some-one and that some-one is already much richer than any of us and getting richer faster while providing less value, if any. Honestly, this makes me wanna track these people down just to find out if they're also in the owner class and are just secretly laughing at us while pretending "we're all equal" or if they're workers who genuinely don't understand how much they're being exploited and how much worse it's gonna get.
- People don't give a fuck. Colleagues happily using "AI" because it "saves time", not realizing if this continues, we'll all be without jobs and the only way this was possible was by stealing from each other and most of us being OK with it.
Honestly, I am hoping for a revolution. A proper one, with guns if need be, but most importantly, where people get what they deserve in full.
Last time this happened was during the second industrial revolution, so many people got fucked so hard, entire countries turned to communism. That was a bad idea but we can do better. It's not (just) about how owns the means of production but who owns the product. Even if "AI" turns into actual AI, as long as it's built on top of our work, we should own it - that means both controlling it and getting paid proportionally to our contribution.
The currently rich people can negotiate what fraction they get paid if they show us they're providing value. Of course, only after we get back what they stole and unless they end up executed. The value of a human life is apparently $7.5M so anybody who steals more than that should logically get a death sentence.
But none of this will happen, people are too stupid and will get manipulated by a charismatic liar like every single time before.
The whole situation disgusts me.
- They expect me to pay for access to my own stolen code.
- Arguing stealing should be legal because China does it and if US companies don't, they'll be left behind.
- People like the poster you're replying to who argue you're not entitled to 100% of the value you create - completely ignoring that the value will go to some-one and that some-one is already much richer than any of us and getting richer faster while providing less value, if any. Honestly, this makes me wanna track these people down just to find out if they're also in the owner class and are just secretly laughing at us while pretending "we're all equal" or if they're workers who genuinely don't understand how much they're being exploited and how much worse it's gonna get.
- People don't give a fuck. Colleagues happily using "AI" because it "saves time", not realizing if this continues, we'll all be without jobs and the only way this was possible was by stealing from each other and most of us being OK with it.
Honestly, I am hoping for a revolution. A proper one, with guns if need be, but most importantly, where people get what they deserve in full.
Last time this happened was during the second industrial revolution, so many people got fucked so hard, entire countries turned to communism. That was a bad idea but we can do better. It's not (just) about how owns the means of production but who owns the product. Even if "AI" turns into actual AI, as long as it's built on top of our work, we should own it - that means both controlling it and getting paid proportionally to our contribution.
The currently rich people can negotiate what fraction they get paid if they show us they're providing value. Of course, only after we get back what they stole and unless they end up executed. The value of a human life is apparently $7.5M so anybody who steals more than that should logically get a death sentence.
But none of this will happen, people are too stupid and will get manipulated by a charismatic liar like every single time before.
How did they steal your code? Don't you have backups?
They used it against my consent. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=steal+meaning&ia=web
What do you think is the end state? What will society look like 5 or 15 years down the line if somebody creates actual AGI, according to you?
So who should the value go to?
Whoever can materialize it. That's how societies grow and thrive, how a civilization is built - people building things, and instead of capturing 100% of the value, creating a surplus for others to build on top.
It's not like any of us ever did anything completely new, isolated and unaffected by influences and contributions of those around us, and those who came before us. Trying to capture 100% of the value and getting up in arms about "freeloaders" is a deeply antisocial form of greed, and usually the thing people accuse companies of doing, claiming it's a hallmark of "late stage capitalism".
It's not like any of us ever did anything completely new, isolated and unaffected by influences and contributions of those around us, and those who came before us. Trying to capture 100% of the value and getting up in arms about "freeloaders" is a deeply antisocial form of greed, and usually the thing people accuse companies of doing, claiming it's a hallmark of "late stage capitalism".
So you're saying that the most advantaged people (who control the most money to use for advertising and who can buy companies and their network effects at will) should get the most benefit?
> how a civilization is built
No, civilization is built by people who do actual work. Some of that work is services/research and building/maintaining stuff, some of that work is connecting supply and demand. The reward should go to the people doing the work according to how much work they do and their skill level.
> late stage capitalism
Nah, that's the idea that money should be able to create more money without any input of work. And before you say they made that money through work, no they didn't, they either inherited it or got into a position of power from which they can take a disproportionate cut.
> how a civilization is built
No, civilization is built by people who do actual work. Some of that work is services/research and building/maintaining stuff, some of that work is connecting supply and demand. The reward should go to the people doing the work according to how much work they do and their skill level.
> late stage capitalism
Nah, that's the idea that money should be able to create more money without any input of work. And before you say they made that money through work, no they didn't, they either inherited it or got into a position of power from which they can take a disproportionate cut.
I see this take a lot and I think it's harmful in ways you might not realize.
Even if it's true and you genuinely have nothing to hide, have nothing to lose from being profiled, there are people who absolutely do.
Look at the radicalization happening in countries around the world, including the USA. It might be OK to be part of a minority or to have an uncommon opinion. A few years pass and suddenly the same person is considered an undesirable, a foreign agent, a terrorist or a deviant.
I've posted a lot of shit online which can be connected to my person and which could label me as any of the groups above. But that's a decision I make for myself. I would never dare make it for others or claim that they should not care about surveillance and take the same risks I do.
I know a guy from russia who lost his job because he expressed an antiwar opinion. The same thing can happen in the US or and other country you consider civilized. The US proto-dictator is already sending death-threats to people who only expressed the opinion that soldiers can refuse illegal orders. Neither you or me can know what will happen next.
Even if it's true and you genuinely have nothing to hide, have nothing to lose from being profiled, there are people who absolutely do.
Look at the radicalization happening in countries around the world, including the USA. It might be OK to be part of a minority or to have an uncommon opinion. A few years pass and suddenly the same person is considered an undesirable, a foreign agent, a terrorist or a deviant.
I've posted a lot of shit online which can be connected to my person and which could label me as any of the groups above. But that's a decision I make for myself. I would never dare make it for others or claim that they should not care about surveillance and take the same risks I do.
I know a guy from russia who lost his job because he expressed an antiwar opinion. The same thing can happen in the US or and other country you consider civilized. The US proto-dictator is already sending death-threats to people who only expressed the opinion that soldiers can refuse illegal orders. Neither you or me can know what will happen next.
There’s definitely a fear of repercussions (I’ve been commenting on this site for over a decade now! Who knows what’s in my history...) but importantly I actually take some pride in many of the comments I write. What drew me to this site originally was how high quality everyone’s perspectives and articulation was, and I suppose I view the writing voice I’ve nurtured here as unique and special to me. It’s not about compensation, I’d just hate to see some future chatbot sound 1/1,000,000th like me I guess? Hard feeling to describe, but I’d rather just not be globbed in and instead express myself in ways that aren’t profitable or feasible to copy.
HN always offered the data to anyone, what changes now? How does it matter if it is LLM's that is consuming your data. What a strange attitude.
HN comments have always been public, I don't really understand this thought process. The robots also aren't going to care about some individual user, it'd be more of an agglomeration of everyone's comments.
I've heard it phrased as: Would you rather LLM trained on your comments, or one trained on facebook comments.
Obviously that's a false dichotomy and a pretty defeatist attitude. But it does have a point.
Obviously that's a false dichotomy and a pretty defeatist attitude. But it does have a point.
I think the immediate term action is to viciously block all crawlers.
Writing a blog yes, feeding the beast no.
Writing a blog yes, feeding the beast no.
This sounds like a nice principled stance, but you won't get any traffic with this approach. That's demotivating - to me blogging is a tight balance of exploration, learning, improving and feedback. I'm not able to write without considering how this impacts the reader - removing all readers breaks the process for me.
> The AI industry is 99% hype; a billion dollar industrial complex to put a price tag on creation. At this point if you believe AI is ‘just a tool’ you’re wilfully ignoring the harm.
> (Regardless, why do I keep being told it’s an ‘extreme’ stance if I decide not to buy something?)
> The 1% utility AI has is overshadowed by the overwhelming mediocracy it regurgitates.
This sort of reasoning is why you might have been called extreme.
It's less extreme to say "many people see and/or get lots of benefit, but it's wrong to use the tool due to the harms it has".
There's nothing wrong with extreme, but since you asked.
> (Regardless, why do I keep being told it’s an ‘extreme’ stance if I decide not to buy something?)
> The 1% utility AI has is overshadowed by the overwhelming mediocracy it regurgitates.
This sort of reasoning is why you might have been called extreme.
It's less extreme to say "many people see and/or get lots of benefit, but it's wrong to use the tool due to the harms it has".
There's nothing wrong with extreme, but since you asked.
Yes, declaring AI to be 99% hype just turns away people like me from what the author has to say.
I was an AI sceptic for a long time until toward the end of last year when I seriously evaluated them, and came to realise it could add tremendous value.
When someone comes along and declares that it's all hype, it goes against my experience that it's getting things done.
I can also see the harm it does, and I hope the tooling improves to reduce that harm. For example, there's a significant lack of caching in the tooling. It's constantly re-reading the same files every day, and more harmfully, constantly fetching the same help pages and blog-posts from the web.
If it had a generous built in HTTP cache, and instruction to maximise use of the cache, then it could avoid a lot of re-fetching of content, which would help reduce the harms.
Declaring my experience to be invalid and based on nothing but hype doesn't engage people like me at all.
And it's the people like me, the middle-of-the-road developer working on enterprise software, that either need convincing to not use the tools, or for our habits to change to minimise the harm.
Because otherwise we're quietly getting on with using it, potentially destroying forests and lakes as we do.
I was an AI sceptic for a long time until toward the end of last year when I seriously evaluated them, and came to realise it could add tremendous value.
When someone comes along and declares that it's all hype, it goes against my experience that it's getting things done.
I can also see the harm it does, and I hope the tooling improves to reduce that harm. For example, there's a significant lack of caching in the tooling. It's constantly re-reading the same files every day, and more harmfully, constantly fetching the same help pages and blog-posts from the web.
If it had a generous built in HTTP cache, and instruction to maximise use of the cache, then it could avoid a lot of re-fetching of content, which would help reduce the harms.
Declaring my experience to be invalid and based on nothing but hype doesn't engage people like me at all.
And it's the people like me, the middle-of-the-road developer working on enterprise software, that either need convincing to not use the tools, or for our habits to change to minimise the harm.
Because otherwise we're quietly getting on with using it, potentially destroying forests and lakes as we do.
It’s worse than that, in the linked “I’ve done my research” they make the tired claim that ai hallucinates api calls. Which while true has not been a practical problem since tool calling was added.
I think the position that ai is morally troubling enough that the downsides out way the positives is perfectly defensible. But the entire argument becomes a joke when you can’t accurately catalog the positives.
I think the position that ai is morally troubling enough that the downsides out way the positives is perfectly defensible. But the entire argument becomes a joke when you can’t accurately catalog the positives.
At this point, I’m pretty sure saying “I’ve done my research” is more of an indicator that someone hasn’t done their research but would like to be taken seriously anyway by pretending they did. The kind of person who’s both smart enough to realize that an issue might be more nuanced than they present it, as well as intellectually dishonest enough to… not care.
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I think the fact you need tool calling to stop it doing that, shows the underlying issue with trusting it to do anything without a human
Amara’s law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
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>If it had a generous built in HTTP cache, and instruction to maximise use of the cache, then it could avoid a lot of re-fetching of content, which would help reduce the harms.
While this is a great idea, the harms are somewhat overblown. The big scare number for water consumption includes water used in power generation which itself includes evaporation from hydroelectric power.
While this is a great idea, the harms are somewhat overblown. The big scare number for water consumption includes water used in power generation which itself includes evaporation from hydroelectric power.
> The giant plagiarism machines have already stolen everything. Copyright is dead. Licenses are washed away in clean rooms.
Isn't this what the free software movement wanted? Code available to all?
Yes, code is cheap now. That's the new reality. Your value lies elsewhere.
You can lament the loss of your usefulness as a horse buggy mechanic, or you can adapt your knowledge and experience and use it towards those newfangled automobiles.
Isn't this what the free software movement wanted? Code available to all?
Yes, code is cheap now. That's the new reality. Your value lies elsewhere.
You can lament the loss of your usefulness as a horse buggy mechanic, or you can adapt your knowledge and experience and use it towards those newfangled automobiles.
> Isn't this what the free software movement wanted? Code available to all?
But this is not that. The current situations is closer to "what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine".
I have been releasing my writings under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license which requires attribution and that anything built upon the material to be distributed "under the same license as the original". And yet I have no access to OpenAI's built-upon material (I know for a fact they scrape my posts) while they get my data for free. This is so far legal, but it's probably not ethical and definitely not what the free software movement wanted.
But this is not that. The current situations is closer to "what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine".
I have been releasing my writings under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license which requires attribution and that anything built upon the material to be distributed "under the same license as the original". And yet I have no access to OpenAI's built-upon material (I know for a fact they scrape my posts) while they get my data for free. This is so far legal, but it's probably not ethical and definitely not what the free software movement wanted.
>not what the free software movement wanted
Sorry, you don't speak for the movement. Plenty of us want this world.
Sorry, you don't speak for the movement. Plenty of us want this world.
No one speaks for everyone, but when TiVo used the GNU license in a similar one-sided way the free software movement reacted by creating a new GNU preventing exactly that. And, again, the Creative Commons license I'm using was designed (perhaps ineffectively) to prevent precisely this situation. So I feel confident saying that the past actions of the main referents of the free software movement support my view.
Sorry I was being polite. I'm part of the free software world, and you don't speak for me. And I like the new freedoms that I have to make more free software and free existing proprietary software by remaking them as free.
What should be the maximum allowable cyclomatic complexity of license conditions?
You can download Qwen 3.5 under Apache 2.0
> Isn't this what the free software movement wanted? Code available to all?
Available to all yes. Not available to the giant corpos while the lone hobbyist still fears getting sued to oblivion. In fact that's pretty much the opposite of what the free software movement wanted.
Also the other thing the free software movement wanted was to be able to fix bugs in the code they had to use, which AI is pulling us further and further away from.
Available to all yes. Not available to the giant corpos while the lone hobbyist still fears getting sued to oblivion. In fact that's pretty much the opposite of what the free software movement wanted.
Also the other thing the free software movement wanted was to be able to fix bugs in the code they had to use, which AI is pulling us further and further away from.
What is the FUD? Which hobbyist is fearing being sued? Any credible citations?
No, the free software movement wants that the source code of the software you use be available to you to modify it if you wish. AI does not necessarily do that.
AI makes the entirety of the software engineering profession available to you. All you have to do is ask the right way, and you can build in days what once took months or years.
Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied.
Closed source is no longer the moat it was, and so keeping the source code to yourself is only going to hurt you as people pass you over for companies who realize this, and strive to make it easier for your LLM to figure their systems out.
Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied.
Closed source is no longer the moat it was, and so keeping the source code to yourself is only going to hurt you as people pass you over for companies who realize this, and strive to make it easier for your LLM to figure their systems out.
> Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied.
We've always been able to do that, but that's not the point. There's a reason free software licenses require the "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" to be opened.
One of the core tenets is that any user should have the exact same access as the original developers.
We've always been able to do that, but that's not the point. There's a reason free software licenses require the "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" to be opened.
One of the core tenets is that any user should have the exact same access as the original developers.
But I can't have the weights of the LLM model I'm using for this.
Open weight models exist.
> Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied.
Jesus christ.
"The people who wanted everyone to have a home should be happy with the invention of the lockpick. You can just find a nice house and open the lock and move in. Ignore the lockpick company charging essentially whatver they want for lockpicks or how they got accesss to everyones keyfob, or the danger of someone breaking into your house"
That is basically your argument. Like AI is a copyright theft machine, with companies owning the entire stack and being able to take away at will, and comitting crimes like decompiling source code instead of clean room is not a selling point either...
The open source community wants people to upskill, people become tech literate, free solutions that grow organically out of people who care, features the community needs and wants and people having the freedom to modify that code to solve their own circumstances.
Jesus christ.
"The people who wanted everyone to have a home should be happy with the invention of the lockpick. You can just find a nice house and open the lock and move in. Ignore the lockpick company charging essentially whatver they want for lockpicks or how they got accesss to everyones keyfob, or the danger of someone breaking into your house"
That is basically your argument. Like AI is a copyright theft machine, with companies owning the entire stack and being able to take away at will, and comitting crimes like decompiling source code instead of clean room is not a selling point either...
The open source community wants people to upskill, people become tech literate, free solutions that grow organically out of people who care, features the community needs and wants and people having the freedom to modify that code to solve their own circumstances.
> That is basically your argument. Like AI is a copyright theft machine, with companies owning the entire stack and being able to take away at will, and comitting crimes like decompiling source code instead of clean room is not a selling point either...
Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument. It's not an argument anymore. It's already happened.
How one might choose to characterize the reality, is irrelevant. A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open, for better or worse. Granted, this is to the chagrin of subgroups that had been pushing different strategies.
Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument. It's not an argument anymore. It's already happened.
How one might choose to characterize the reality, is irrelevant. A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open, for better or worse. Granted, this is to the chagrin of subgroups that had been pushing different strategies.
> It's already happened.
Agreed.
> Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument.
As you mentioned, it's not an abstract argument. It's statements of fact.
> A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open...
No, not at all.
1) If you honestly believe that major tech companies will permit both copyright- and license-washing of their most important proprietary code simply because someone ran it through an LLM, you're quite the fool. If someone "trained" an LLM on -say- both Windows 11 and ReactOS, and then used that to produce "ReactDoze" while being honest about how it was produced, Microsoft would permanently nail them to the wall.
2) The LLMs that were trained on the entirety of The Internet are very, very much not open. If "Open"AI and Anthropic were making available the input data, the programs and procedures used to process that data, and all the other software, input data, and procedures required to reproduce their work, then one could reasonably entertain the claim that the system produced was open.
Agreed.
> Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument.
As you mentioned, it's not an abstract argument. It's statements of fact.
> A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open...
No, not at all.
1) If you honestly believe that major tech companies will permit both copyright- and license-washing of their most important proprietary code simply because someone ran it through an LLM, you're quite the fool. If someone "trained" an LLM on -say- both Windows 11 and ReactOS, and then used that to produce "ReactDoze" while being honest about how it was produced, Microsoft would permanently nail them to the wall.
2) The LLMs that were trained on the entirety of The Internet are very, very much not open. If "Open"AI and Anthropic were making available the input data, the programs and procedures used to process that data, and all the other software, input data, and procedures required to reproduce their work, then one could reasonably entertain the claim that the system produced was open.
This is looking at the current situation through the old lens.
That ship has sailed. The revolution is happening. We live in a new reality now, one where we're still trying to figure out what rules should even be.
And there will be winners and losers, and copyright and patent law will be modified in an attempt to tame the chaos, with mixed results because of all of the powerful players on both ends.
You can live on the front of it for high risk/reward, or at the back for safety. But either way, you're going to exist in this new reality and you need to decide your risk appetite.
That ship has sailed. The revolution is happening. We live in a new reality now, one where we're still trying to figure out what rules should even be.
And there will be winners and losers, and copyright and patent law will be modified in an attempt to tame the chaos, with mixed results because of all of the powerful players on both ends.
You can live on the front of it for high risk/reward, or at the back for safety. But either way, you're going to exist in this new reality and you need to decide your risk appetite.
Your set of statements and their surrounding context reminds me very much of the mass grave scene in Kubrick's Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=670Y3ehmU74>
I'm not sure why it would. Kubrick was criticizing the false morality of the entire adventure, mixed with common bureaucratic fuckups in an unaccountable environment, with tragic results.
I'm talking about a change brought on by a new technology, where the market (i.e. all of us collectively) push it forward, like the internet revolution and subsequent consolidation. Good shit happens. Bad shit happens. People get rich, people get poor, people get left behind. You can argue the moral implications, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle, just like you couldn't snuff out the industrial revolution. So at some point you have to decide: Where will I fit in all of this?
I'm talking about a change brought on by a new technology, where the market (i.e. all of us collectively) push it forward, like the internet revolution and subsequent consolidation. Good shit happens. Bad shit happens. People get rich, people get poor, people get left behind. You can argue the moral implications, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle, just like you couldn't snuff out the industrial revolution. So at some point you have to decide: Where will I fit in all of this?
> I'm not sure why it would.
Oh, no doubt. I'm certain that that is because
> Kubrick was criticizing the false morality of the entire adventure, mixed with common bureaucratic fuckups in an unaccountable environment, with tragic results.
relying on a "intro to cinema criticism"-level summary of the themes of the entire work almost always leaves you entirely ignorant of the specific themes and characterizations that are explored in a particular scene.
Watch the scene with your actual eyes and ears, maybe a couple of times. Ruminate on it and consider what aspects of your statements and their surrounding context might cause someone to be reminded of it.
Oh, no doubt. I'm certain that that is because
> Kubrick was criticizing the false morality of the entire adventure, mixed with common bureaucratic fuckups in an unaccountable environment, with tragic results.
relying on a "intro to cinema criticism"-level summary of the themes of the entire work almost always leaves you entirely ignorant of the specific themes and characterizations that are explored in a particular scene.
Watch the scene with your actual eyes and ears, maybe a couple of times. Ruminate on it and consider what aspects of your statements and their surrounding context might cause someone to be reminded of it.
> Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument. It's not an argument anymore. It's already happened.
yes and lockpicks also exist. Promotting the ability to break into homes when people are talking about the housing crisis is a crazy, short sighted and frankly embarrasing position to take.
And mischaracterising the people in the open source community as belonging to that ideology is insulting.
> A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open
You are missusing the word open here, for accesible. Having an open house, and breaking into someone's home are not the same thing, even if the door ends up open either way.
> Granted, this is to the chagrin of subgroups that had been pushing different strategies.
Taking unethical shortcuts that ultimately lead to an even worse outcome is not a cause of chagrin, its a cause of deep and utter terror and embarrasment.
Wanting people to own their skills and tech stack and be informed, smart and engaged is a goal that "just ask the robot you dont control to break into a corporate codebase and copy it" is not even remotely close to helping get close to.
yes and lockpicks also exist. Promotting the ability to break into homes when people are talking about the housing crisis is a crazy, short sighted and frankly embarrasing position to take.
And mischaracterising the people in the open source community as belonging to that ideology is insulting.
> A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open
You are missusing the word open here, for accesible. Having an open house, and breaking into someone's home are not the same thing, even if the door ends up open either way.
> Granted, this is to the chagrin of subgroups that had been pushing different strategies.
Taking unethical shortcuts that ultimately lead to an even worse outcome is not a cause of chagrin, its a cause of deep and utter terror and embarrasment.
Wanting people to own their skills and tech stack and be informed, smart and engaged is a goal that "just ask the robot you dont control to break into a corporate codebase and copy it" is not even remotely close to helping get close to.
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This argument commits the same fallacy as the argument against piracy; copying is not stealing, because the original still remains. A lockpicked and squatted house means someone else does not have that house, it's a zero sum game which information which is freely copyable does not align with.
That only works if you assume that the exclusive value is in the object and not the labour.
The reproduction of the object is essentially free in the internet, but the labour to produce it isn't.
If I spent 3 years making my codebase, and you copy paste the git repo, yeah your access to the information is not going to replace the original. But your labour cost is 0 and you can undercut the 3 years of expense, loans or debt I adquired to produce it.
Btw the FBI murdered Aaron Swartz for attempting to open access to research papers, Mark Zuckemberg admitted to stealing those ssame papers through libgen and showed off the results of Llama and his stock price went up.
I think the piracy argument falls apart when the class warfare and 2 tier justce system is openly weaponised towards open access
The reproduction of the object is essentially free in the internet, but the labour to produce it isn't.
If I spent 3 years making my codebase, and you copy paste the git repo, yeah your access to the information is not going to replace the original. But your labour cost is 0 and you can undercut the 3 years of expense, loans or debt I adquired to produce it.
Btw the FBI murdered Aaron Swartz for attempting to open access to research papers, Mark Zuckemberg admitted to stealing those ssame papers through libgen and showed off the results of Llama and his stock price went up.
I think the piracy argument falls apart when the class warfare and 2 tier justce system is openly weaponised towards open access
Labor doesn't have value inherently, it's about what is produced by said labor. These days even the labor to create something falls to zero via LLMs so I'm not sure the point is valid these days.
> Labor doesn't have value inherently
Almost nothing does. Value is largely subjective. You deciding it is irrelevant to you is as inherently worthless as the marxist ideal that labour is the maximal value of society.
The non subjective opinion is that there is a necesary amount of work/energy requiered to create things and that the created things can be consumed/used by others.
LLMs do not reduce labor to 0, the energy to power the GPU, the labor to create the gpus, the labor to train the models is all there, as well as all the labor to produce the original material the LLM is trained on. Even if the subjective experience of someone consuming the created thing is the same.
Almost nothing does. Value is largely subjective. You deciding it is irrelevant to you is as inherently worthless as the marxist ideal that labour is the maximal value of society.
The non subjective opinion is that there is a necesary amount of work/energy requiered to create things and that the created things can be consumed/used by others.
LLMs do not reduce labor to 0, the energy to power the GPU, the labor to create the gpus, the labor to train the models is all there, as well as all the labor to produce the original material the LLM is trained on. Even if the subjective experience of someone consuming the created thing is the same.
If you're worried about theft, then make backups.
Code isn't like a house, you can just copy it and put the copy somewhere safe.
Code isn't like a house, you can just copy it and put the copy somewhere safe.
Reengineering from scratch is different than being able to form an existing software.
Progress is good. But why on earth should we support Anthropic/OpenAI/etc? What the planet needs is less multibillion corporations, not more
You don't have to. Just like you don't have to support Amazon for web services and file stores.
Or Oracle for databases.
Or Microsoft for operating systems.
Or DEC for computers.
There are perfectly good open source LLMs and agents out there, which are getting better by the day (especially after the recent leak!)
Or Oracle for databases.
Or Microsoft for operating systems.
Or DEC for computers.
There are perfectly good open source LLMs and agents out there, which are getting better by the day (especially after the recent leak!)
I want to support local models and compute over SaaS models.
I want to support RISC V over Intel.
I want other things too, and on balance, Intel+Anthropic is most compliant with my various preferences, even if they're not perfect.
I want to support RISC V over Intel.
I want other things too, and on balance, Intel+Anthropic is most compliant with my various preferences, even if they're not perfect.
i can say with a pretty high confidence level that few people in the free software movement want the closed off black boxes these companies are locking away.
they’re not free in any sense of the word. from price to openness of the models. would openai cry if every bit of their models were wide open for us to use however we see fit? if so, then it’s not free, again, in any definition of the word.
they’re not free in any sense of the word. from price to openness of the models. would openai cry if every bit of their models were wide open for us to use however we see fit? if so, then it’s not free, again, in any definition of the word.
Every time Walmart does something evil, I cry myself to sleep when I realize I can never go to Walmart again.
Local models are a thing.
Local models are a thing.
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Anti-AI articles like this seem to be the new "Doing my part to resist big tech: Why I'm switching back from Chrome to Firefox" genre that popped up on HN for a decade or so. If it makes you feel better, great, but don't kid yourself that your actions will make any difference whatsoever to the overall trajectory of AI adoption in IT or society.
I love it if it would affect the trajectory, but I don't think it will. I do think it will affect my trajectory, though.
This genre has always been very prevalent on HN. Move from cloud to on-premise. Move away from US-based services. Move away from Gmail. Move away from Github.
Was there one for memory managed languages like C# vs self managed like C/C++?
While it's relevant to the particular submission, this type of comment is thrown around way too often.
Me boycotting some company's product due to bad practices (slavery, etc).
Response: You know your boycotting isn't going to change anything, right?
Me: Yes, and ....? I'm not trying to change the world.
I don't use FF as some form of protest. It's just a browser I like more.
I'm not anti-AI the way much of HN is, but let's pretend I am. If I ban AI generated content on my site[1], I'm not trying to change the world. Just controlling my site.
Getting more to your sentiment: The world/Internet is a vast place. If even 1000 people think like me, it's more than enough. For a number of years I had valuable online interactions via BBS's with a population < 1000. As long as I get 1000 people, let the rest of the world burn!
It's like the constant "Emacs is dying" threads we used to have on HN, because the percentage of SO users using it kept dropping. When in reality, the absolute numbers kept increasing. Who cares if the world has moved on to VS Code? Emacs as an ecosystem was/is thriving!
[1] Assuming I live in a fantasy world where I can classify content accurately...
Me boycotting some company's product due to bad practices (slavery, etc).
Response: You know your boycotting isn't going to change anything, right?
Me: Yes, and ....? I'm not trying to change the world.
I don't use FF as some form of protest. It's just a browser I like more.
I'm not anti-AI the way much of HN is, but let's pretend I am. If I ban AI generated content on my site[1], I'm not trying to change the world. Just controlling my site.
Getting more to your sentiment: The world/Internet is a vast place. If even 1000 people think like me, it's more than enough. For a number of years I had valuable online interactions via BBS's with a population < 1000. As long as I get 1000 people, let the rest of the world burn!
It's like the constant "Emacs is dying" threads we used to have on HN, because the percentage of SO users using it kept dropping. When in reality, the absolute numbers kept increasing. Who cares if the world has moved on to VS Code? Emacs as an ecosystem was/is thriving!
[1] Assuming I live in a fantasy world where I can classify content accurately...
I think much of current day neuroticism can be attributed to insincere comparisons of genuinely normal trade offs (like AI) to slavery in the past.
I think people are so afraid to do a hecking racism that they start comparing any normal thing to racism. I also think there’s an incentive here: by comparing to racism they potentially gain some social status points like - I’m more morally superior to you because I didn’t do a hecking racism like you.
But it can backfire, like with your comment. People are catching up to how ridiculous this comparison is
I think people are so afraid to do a hecking racism that they start comparing any normal thing to racism. I also think there’s an incentive here: by comparing to racism they potentially gain some social status points like - I’m more morally superior to you because I didn’t do a hecking racism like you.
But it can backfire, like with your comment. People are catching up to how ridiculous this comparison is
> don't kid yourself that your actions will make any difference whatsoever to the overall trajectory of AI adoption in IT or society
How large does a group have to be (absolute number or percentage of population) for you to change your mind on this?
Serious question - genuinely curious. My answer is about 10% provided they are organised in some way. 5% if you're particularly good at collective action.
How large does a group have to be (absolute number or percentage of population) for you to change your mind on this?
Serious question - genuinely curious. My answer is about 10% provided they are organised in some way. 5% if you're particularly good at collective action.
Plus many of these articles seem maximized to attract attention on social media, which is its own machine.
Posting your most provocative and strong opinions in reaction to the latest controversy-of-the-week is what fuels the internet and culture more than anything these days. The attention economy demands hot takes mixed with preaching about every new thing.
Posting your most provocative and strong opinions in reaction to the latest controversy-of-the-week is what fuels the internet and culture more than anything these days. The attention economy demands hot takes mixed with preaching about every new thing.
see: purity spiral politics
I think it's probably accurate to say that the vast majority of writers throughout history were writing for an extremely tiny or nonexistent audience. My favorite example of this is Nietzsche, who basically had zero readership during most of his life, beyond a few close friends, and even had to personally pay to get his books published. He only posthumously became one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.
So while I do worry about AI's impact on blogging/writing/etc., I do think to some extent, you either love the process or you don't. If you only write in order to have readers, you're in the wrong game.
So while I do worry about AI's impact on blogging/writing/etc., I do think to some extent, you either love the process or you don't. If you only write in order to have readers, you're in the wrong game.
There are a lot of arts that were funded for a short time in our recent history that previously were absolutely not funded at all under almost any circumstance. Centralized media created centralized stars with centralized incomes
For the vast majority of history it was all community theater, carnies, and “that guy in the square guy who knows the lute”.
Fun fact, in medieval Europe acting was considered a sin so great you could not get a Christian burial, as you were channeling the spirit of others. Realpolitik it was probably because actors were mostly queer in the cities and Roma in the countryside. What’s old is new…
For the vast majority of history it was all community theater, carnies, and “that guy in the square guy who knows the lute”.
Fun fact, in medieval Europe acting was considered a sin so great you could not get a Christian burial, as you were channeling the spirit of others. Realpolitik it was probably because actors were mostly queer in the cities and Roma in the countryside. What’s old is new…
This is interesting to me: for some reason I had in my mind that Nietzsche may have been in poor health but was at least somewhat well known in his time.
There’s always Van Gogh and Starry Night to think about as well.
There’s always Van Gogh and Starry Night to think about as well.
He became reasonably well known amongst the German intellectual class, but only after he was already “insane.” There are some interesting anecdotes of this, especially one I came across in Harry Kessler’s diary. During Nietzsche’s conscious life he was basically only read by his friends.
Paha, I thought this domain was 'D-Bus Hell' until I clicked in. (It's D. Bushell's blog.)
> First let’s accept the realities. The giant plagiarism machines have already stolen everything. Copyright is dead. Licenses are washed away in clean rooms. Mass surveillance and tracking are a feature, privacy is a bug. Everything is an “algorithm” optimised to exploit.
Suppose that I have discovered a novel algorithm that solves an important basic problem much more efficiently than current techniques do. How do I hide it from the web scrapers that will steal it if I put it on GitHub or elsewhere? Should I just write it up as a paper and be content with citations and minor glory? Or should I capture AI search results today for "write me code that does X", put my new code up under a restrictive license, capture search results a day later, demonstrate that an AI scraper has acquired the algorithm in violation of the license, and seek damages?
Suppose that I have discovered a novel algorithm that solves an important basic problem much more efficiently than current techniques do. How do I hide it from the web scrapers that will steal it if I put it on GitHub or elsewhere? Should I just write it up as a paper and be content with citations and minor glory? Or should I capture AI search results today for "write me code that does X", put my new code up under a restrictive license, capture search results a day later, demonstrate that an AI scraper has acquired the algorithm in violation of the license, and seek damages?
Isaac Newton tried to keep his Calculus secret and almost got scooped by Leibniz. IMO trying to hoard knowledge is not a great look; we all (mostly) have a sense that knowledge belongs to humanity as a whole.
I think what you're looking for is patents. I've said it before, but I think patents are the only protection left for innovative software and "the little guy." It always was, really, but it's blindingly apparent today.
Unfortunately, that would be considered heresy on forums like HN, and people will continue to rail against AI and whatever it's causing and patents, instead of realizing that one is the only available leverage against the other.
Unfortunately, that would be considered heresy on forums like HN, and people will continue to rail against AI and whatever it's causing and patents, instead of realizing that one is the only available leverage against the other.
I have a few patents, including one for a novel machine instruction, and I recall the attorney telling me that one cannot patent mathematics, only methods and systems.
That's true but generally that applies to purely abstract mathematics. If the mathematics is truly abstract, no form of IP anywhere would protect it. That has always been (rightfully IMO) the realm of scientific publications.
Otherwise it's straightforward to say that the mathematics is being applied to achieve a practical goal via execution on a computer. (You'll see the term non-transitory computer-readable media" a lot in claims.) You now have a method and system. Now, caselaw frequently changes things, like the "Alice" decision in the US made it much harder to just patent things done "on a computer" but the underlying principle holds.
I'd also guess if your approach makes something faster or cheaper, it should be possible to show it is non-abstract, because resources like time and costs are not abstract quantities.
Standard disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer! I've just worked with patents extensively.
Otherwise it's straightforward to say that the mathematics is being applied to achieve a practical goal via execution on a computer. (You'll see the term non-transitory computer-readable media" a lot in claims.) You now have a method and system. Now, caselaw frequently changes things, like the "Alice" decision in the US made it much harder to just patent things done "on a computer" but the underlying principle holds.
I'd also guess if your approach makes something faster or cheaper, it should be possible to show it is non-abstract, because resources like time and costs are not abstract quantities.
Standard disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer! I've just worked with patents extensively.
One problem writing does have: we grew up in a massive changing and progressing software writing area. A golden area.
Now i still show clean code videos from bob and other old things to new hires and young collegues.
Java got more features, given but the golden area of discovery is over.
The new big thing is ai and i'm curious to see how it will feel to write real agents for my company specific use cases.
But i'm also seeing people so bad in their daily jobs, that I wish to get their salary as tokens to use. It will change and it changes our field.
Btw. "Is there anything, in the entire recorded history of human creation, that could have possibly mattered less than the flatulence Sora produced? NFTs had more value." i disagree, video generation has a massive impact on the industry for a lot of people. Don't down play this. NFTs btw. never had any impact besides moving money from a to b
Now i still show clean code videos from bob and other old things to new hires and young collegues.
Java got more features, given but the golden area of discovery is over.
The new big thing is ai and i'm curious to see how it will feel to write real agents for my company specific use cases.
But i'm also seeing people so bad in their daily jobs, that I wish to get their salary as tokens to use. It will change and it changes our field.
Btw. "Is there anything, in the entire recorded history of human creation, that could have possibly mattered less than the flatulence Sora produced? NFTs had more value." i disagree, video generation has a massive impact on the industry for a lot of people. Don't down play this. NFTs btw. never had any impact besides moving money from a to b
> But i'm also seeing people so bad in their daily jobs, that I wish to get their salary as tokens to use.
Oof. The modern "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script"
Oof. The modern "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script"
At least have the grace to show new hires Rich Hickey lectures or something. Uncle bob is nonsense.
I'm giving them a lot more but I assumed people know uncle bob. Like the Open Source Architecture Books, Googles SRE Books, 1:1 mentoring every week.
But yeah there is one person made of teflon. Nothing sticks. And i could tell you that teflon person in every company i worked so far.
But yeah there is one person made of teflon. Nothing sticks. And i could tell you that teflon person in every company i worked so far.
I know what you mean. Tbh I just think this isn’t for everyone. I’ve been in your position before, you can try everything but some people just can’t get it. And maybe they do and they become a little more productive, but they can’t produce production quality stuff that isn’t brittle.
I’ve never found a way around it, and I don’t want to believe that some people can’t grok this field, but that is what I’ve experienced. Maybe other people can educate better.
I’ve just found that at some point you have to limit the blast radius and move onto more productive uses of your own time.
I’ve never found a way around it, and I don’t want to believe that some people can’t grok this field, but that is what I’ve experienced. Maybe other people can educate better.
I’ve just found that at some point you have to limit the blast radius and move onto more productive uses of your own time.
I quit. The clankers won.
I don't see any proof that software development is not dead. Software engineering is not, and it's much more than writing code, and it can be fun. But writing code is dead, there is no point of doing it if an LLM can output the same code 100x faster. Of course, architecture and operations stays in our hands (for now?).
Initially I was very sceptic, first versions of ChatGPT or Claude were rather bad. I kept holding to a thought that it cannot get good. Then I've spend a few months evaluating them, if you know how to code, there is no point of coding anymore, just instruct an LLM to do something, verify, merge, repeat. It's an editor of some sorts, an editor where you enter a thought and get code as an output. Changes the whole scene.
I don't see any proof that software development is not dead. Software engineering is not, and it's much more than writing code, and it can be fun. But writing code is dead, there is no point of doing it if an LLM can output the same code 100x faster. Of course, architecture and operations stays in our hands (for now?).
Initially I was very sceptic, first versions of ChatGPT or Claude were rather bad. I kept holding to a thought that it cannot get good. Then I've spend a few months evaluating them, if you know how to code, there is no point of coding anymore, just instruct an LLM to do something, verify, merge, repeat. It's an editor of some sorts, an editor where you enter a thought and get code as an output. Changes the whole scene.
I think it’s really context dependent. I haven’t found LLMs to increase my productivity in coding in my field because the quality of the output matters much more than the quantity. I don’t think it’s the same across the board though, and there are plenty of domains where code generation is a force multiplier. Sometimes you need a chainsaw and sometimes you need a scalpel and in my own experience I have found that using coding agents as scalpels is not a very efficient use of my time. shrug
i think these are great for people who already are senior developers with years of coding experience. I can use claudecode and then walk through the output and spot fix small mistakes or notice when it's going in the wrong direction and prompt it to fix. I think people without years of development experience using these tools can really screw themselves. The problem is every new grad is going to use claudecode right from the start without a decade of hand coding to develop that wisdom.
on the other hand, i can't help but think about ASM coders lamenting C and especially C++. Also, god help you if you tell an embedded developer you use micropython instead of C. Maybe a current chapter is closing and a new one is beginning and my part was in the last chapter just like them.
i'll end with saying i really like using AI for code, it's got me excited about technology again. So many projects that were out of reach due to time ( i have a family + stressful career ) are now back on the table like when i was in college with nothing but time on my hands.
on the other hand, i can't help but think about ASM coders lamenting C and especially C++. Also, god help you if you tell an embedded developer you use micropython instead of C. Maybe a current chapter is closing and a new one is beginning and my part was in the last chapter just like them.
i'll end with saying i really like using AI for code, it's got me excited about technology again. So many projects that were out of reach due to time ( i have a family + stressful career ) are now back on the table like when i was in college with nothing but time on my hands.
>Also, god help you if you tell an embedded developer you use micropython instead of C.
I will never not hate on Micropython.
This doesn't come from a position of gatekeeping embedded software engineering.
I just hate Python.
I will never not hate on Micropython.
This doesn't come from a position of gatekeeping embedded software engineering.
I just hate Python.
LLM's don't really output the same code quality as a human, even on the smallest scale. It's not even close. Maybe you can guide them to refactor their slop up to human-written quality, but then you're still coding. You're just doing it by asking the computer to write something, instead of physically typing the whole thing out with a keyboard.
Yeah I also keep thinking this. I don't see LLMs reliably producing code that is up to my standards. Granted I have high standards because I do take pride in producing high quality code (in all manner of metrics). A lot of the time the code works, unfortunately only for the most naive, mechanical definition of "works".
This just isn’t true at all, with guidance and guard rails they produce much better code than the average developer does. They are only going to get better.
That is completely false in my experience. I have never once seen an LLM produce code that would be acceptable. It certainly is worse than what a human can do.
Have you seen the kind of code an average developer writes?
I agree that LLMs produce code that is less good than what a good developer could write, but most developers are not good developers, and even the good developer gets tired and must sleep eventually.
Arguments against LLMs are like the old arguments against high level languages like C. People argued that the compiler wrote trash code, that humans could do better, that the costs weren't worth it. None of that mattered and it's the same story here.
I agree that LLMs produce code that is less good than what a good developer could write, but most developers are not good developers, and even the good developer gets tired and must sleep eventually.
Arguments against LLMs are like the old arguments against high level languages like C. People argued that the compiler wrote trash code, that humans could do better, that the costs weren't worth it. None of that mattered and it's the same story here.
I don't know what model you're using or how you're prompting it, but for me some 60-80% of the time the results require only a little bit of steering to be 'acceptable' (like at least what I would expect from a junior engineer and I'll approve the PR even though it's not quite how I would do it), some 30% of the time the results are pretty much what I would do, and some 10% of the time the results are better than what I would do ("huh, good idea, okay let's do it that way").
They're not perfect by any stretch but if they're being likened to slot machines for code, I'll take those odds almost every day.
They're not perfect by any stretch but if they're being likened to slot machines for code, I'll take those odds almost every day.
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Useful tool, and if you're just scratching a small itch it's great.
For any serious system you still need to understand and guide the code, and unless you do some of the coding.. You won't. It's just novelty right now is skewing our reasoning.
For any serious system you still need to understand and guide the code, and unless you do some of the coding.. You won't. It's just novelty right now is skewing our reasoning.
It’s still faster to use AI to generate code while reading and guiding the code. Hell even long before LLms I would write python scripts to generate boilerplate code etc. LLM can be used similarly as a productivity boost in serious systems.
If you're not just working on throw-away tools, revisit this sentiment every few months.
Verifying generated code and writing code are not equivalent at all. You're replacing a builder's mindset with a supervisor's mindset, and the supervisor's workers are dumb. You're bound to end up with the same class of problems we always had when programmers were reviewing their own code or testing their own features. Blind spots.
Fine for personal hobby tools or quick scripts. Not acceptable for business-critical software.
The LLM hype seems to have made an entire profession forget the painfully learned lessons of the last 70 years.
Verifying generated code and writing code are not equivalent at all. You're replacing a builder's mindset with a supervisor's mindset, and the supervisor's workers are dumb. You're bound to end up with the same class of problems we always had when programmers were reviewing their own code or testing their own features. Blind spots.
Fine for personal hobby tools or quick scripts. Not acceptable for business-critical software.
The LLM hype seems to have made an entire profession forget the painfully learned lessons of the last 70 years.
LLMs can produce text information but they cannot have experiences. Writing about authentic experience is still a worth while endeavor. Expression of a preference is also an experience when framed correctly.
I think about Irish and British writing of dialogue, where is is extremely common for characters to only just now realize the importance of something their interlocutor said, and backtrack the conversation. Often this is done for humor. (Think about characters correcting each other with the use of “exacerbate” in Shaun of the Dead)
The only way to write like that is to have a real theory of mind for the two characters and understand that they are four processing speeds: that of both speakers, that of the narrator, and that of the reader.
The only way to write like that is to have a real theory of mind for the two characters and understand that they are four processing speeds: that of both speakers, that of the narrator, and that of the reader.
I find it funny how clanker took off and everyone uses it. It was edited in a video where someone was otherwise saying something extremely racist (the more offensive version of the n-word). For those curious it involves a burger king hat, schizophrenia and an airplane, someone edited the n-word out and put clanker with AI (because why not insult AI by using AI?). I do wonder if the AI uprising will involve robots killing anyone who used clanker in a derogatory way and sparing everyone else.
Also, yes, I know the origin is Star Wars, but it went viral recently a very specific way.
The power of edgelord memes.
Also, yes, I know the origin is Star Wars, but it went viral recently a very specific way.
The power of edgelord memes.
Years until we are forbidden from writing Clanker and have to write C***r: 3
I had Claude write me some lyrics about Clankers after that one guy had an AI write a hit piece about him over denying his PR.
Man I love the design of your site, and that goldfish made my day.
For the article it was nice, but the font is really what got me.
For the article it was nice, but the font is really what got me.
If writing code was the only value your employer ever saw in you, it's for the best that you're forced to find a better job now. You would have eventually hit this point in your career anyway regardless of "AI".
The broader corporate world has never wanted code monkeys. They want "boring" reliability and pay a reasonable wage for it. On the other hand, they also won't tolerate contrarians who can't deliver, so maybe some of the fear from people posting this sort of thing really is justified.
The broader corporate world has never wanted code monkeys. They want "boring" reliability and pay a reasonable wage for it. On the other hand, they also won't tolerate contrarians who can't deliver, so maybe some of the fear from people posting this sort of thing really is justified.
Just because they invented cars doesn't mean you stop jogging.
When they invented cars (and cars became popular and affordable), people did stop walking everywhere. Jogging wasn’t popularized until the 1970s, when we all realized we needed to be intentional with fitness in our car-based society.
This is a US-centric take, in Europe, particularly in cities, we walk everywhere.
There is perhaps some relevance to the analogy however, because the US is designed in such a way that makes walking difficult to impossible. I am already seeing this pattern in vibe-coded areas where engineers will just use AI because it's too difficult to parse and edit by hand.
There is perhaps some relevance to the analogy however, because the US is designed in such a way that makes walking difficult to impossible. I am already seeing this pattern in vibe-coded areas where engineers will just use AI because it's too difficult to parse and edit by hand.
> people did stop walking everywhere.
I didn't. Yesterday I walked 11 km for errands. Today I took a detour when walking to work, a more scenic route with less traffic.
For me walking is not much slower than using public transport (you need to get to it, then from it to the point of your destination), and not much slower than a car (stuck in traffic, finding parking, not to mention the road rage). I'd be faster on a bicycle but I'm not in a hurry and enjoy my walks.
I didn't. Yesterday I walked 11 km for errands. Today I took a detour when walking to work, a more scenic route with less traffic.
For me walking is not much slower than using public transport (you need to get to it, then from it to the point of your destination), and not much slower than a car (stuck in traffic, finding parking, not to mention the road rage). I'd be faster on a bicycle but I'm not in a hurry and enjoy my walks.
> Just because they invented cars doesn't mean you stop jogging.
They literally made it a crime to walk down the street.
They literally made it a crime to walk down the street.
across the street, no?
It's also a crime to jog on the railroad tracks.
It's also a crime to jog on the railroad tracks.
Prior to cars walking anywhere in any street was completely normal. You can watch movies filmed before the 1920s and city streets are full of people walking around or congregating.
If a wagon or trolley hit someone that was considered the fault of the driver, every time.
When cars started arriving and being driven around by people who were wreckless and bad at it, you started getting manufacturers and "motorists" lobbying for the concept and laws around jay-walking. Even the word was a way to delegitimize what used to be normal. "Jay" was negative slang for country-person (think red-neck). The idea was "modern city people stay out of the streets!"
If a wagon or trolley hit someone that was considered the fault of the driver, every time.
When cars started arriving and being driven around by people who were wreckless and bad at it, you started getting manufacturers and "motorists" lobbying for the concept and laws around jay-walking. Even the word was a way to delegitimize what used to be normal. "Jay" was negative slang for country-person (think red-neck). The idea was "modern city people stay out of the streets!"
Down the street also.
"Fighting Traffic" by Peter D. Norton talks about this at length.
The suburbs didn't exist when automobiles hit the market. Most people lived in cities because that's where the jobs were and transportation (outside of whatever public transportation options the cities provided) was limited. Kids and adults used the streets freely (which were for horses, though they were widened as automobiles started growing in popularity).
This changed as cars killed kids (and adults) who didn't know that cars were much faster than cars and didn't react in time. Traffic deaths were so numerous, cities invested lots of money in "safety parades" that were kind of gruesome, actually (like showing tombstones of the future deceased). [^0] Jaywalking was a crime that was invented to deal with exactly this phenomenon.
People fought HARD to keep the streets free (where else are kids going to play). People lost that battle, as we know.
[^0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-06-10/how-citie...
"Fighting Traffic" by Peter D. Norton talks about this at length.
The suburbs didn't exist when automobiles hit the market. Most people lived in cities because that's where the jobs were and transportation (outside of whatever public transportation options the cities provided) was limited. Kids and adults used the streets freely (which were for horses, though they were widened as automobiles started growing in popularity).
This changed as cars killed kids (and adults) who didn't know that cars were much faster than cars and didn't react in time. Traffic deaths were so numerous, cities invested lots of money in "safety parades" that were kind of gruesome, actually (like showing tombstones of the future deceased). [^0] Jaywalking was a crime that was invented to deal with exactly this phenomenon.
People fought HARD to keep the streets free (where else are kids going to play). People lost that battle, as we know.
[^0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-06-10/how-citie...
If it's a crime to jog on railroad tracks, and the avalibility of rail makes it so that everything you need is only accessible by rail, I conclude that rail prevents you from jogging.
I'm sorry for all the people who lived in my original SimCity towns. They must have been nearly spherical.
No but everyone has gotten real fat since then.
The one I like better is: software is great at playing chess, doesn't mean you cannot play too
Read the post, it's a gotcha ;P I was scared too
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I really like the sentiment and will quote this in the future! My own thoughts line up a bit closer to the article though, with this quote being a good summary of it:
> The 1% utility AI has is overshadowed by the overwhelming mediocracy it regurgitates.
> The 1% utility AI has is overshadowed by the overwhelming mediocracy it regurgitates.
> The only winning move is not to play.
Alas I think tech crowd have collectively painted humanity into a corner where not playing is not an option anymore.
The combination of having subverted copyright and enabled cheap machine replication kills large swaths of creativity. At least as a viable living. One can still do many things on an artisanal level certainly and as excited as I am about AI it’s hard not to see it as a big L for humanity’s creative output
Alas I think tech crowd have collectively painted humanity into a corner where not playing is not an option anymore.
The combination of having subverted copyright and enabled cheap machine replication kills large swaths of creativity. At least as a viable living. One can still do many things on an artisanal level certainly and as excited as I am about AI it’s hard not to see it as a big L for humanity’s creative output
The problem is worse than that though, yes you can do most things on an artisanal level... But who is going to pay for that? What happens when head count drops, you get less capital in the hands of working class... And no matter your opinions on the wealthy, they don't have the need or desire for 5% of the population doing artisanal level work for them at a living wage.
>yes you can do most things on an artisanal level... But who is going to pay for that?
Nobody. When I said artisanal I meant that there is no mainstream market for it.
Nobody. When I said artisanal I meant that there is no mainstream market for it.
Interestingly, Ireland just launched a Basic Income for the Arts scheme. Many caveats (I think it's only like 300 euros a month, for a small group of people, etc.) but an interesting development nonetheless.
People don't care what bots have to say
Therefore, things like writing, film, sales, etc are less productively scalable by bots
And things like code, where people don't care how the sausage is made as long as it "works" are more productively scalable by bots
And even in the situation of code, the job description leans more on defining what "works" which requires the human touch
Therefore, things like writing, film, sales, etc are less productively scalable by bots
And things like code, where people don't care how the sausage is made as long as it "works" are more productively scalable by bots
And even in the situation of code, the job description leans more on defining what "works" which requires the human touch
Old web stuff is still around. RSS feeds are out there. Some parts of masto are generally chill and filled with people having interesting convos.
You don't have to give up on everything to participate, but it can be a space to go to if you're tired of every social interaction being mediated by (I'm being glib) hustlers
You don't have to give up on everything to participate, but it can be a space to go to if you're tired of every social interaction being mediated by (I'm being glib) hustlers
This person gives me the vibe that they are so attached to their craft that they can't seem to do anything about LLM's ubiquity rising but scold and vaguely sloganeer.
Was this how other professionals dealt with their grief? Like a translator in the advent of ML based translations? Like a lift man?
Was this how other professionals dealt with their grief? Like a translator in the advent of ML based translations? Like a lift man?
I’m reminded of the Douglas Adams quote
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
A lot of the dissonance on this forum is probably age based.
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
A lot of the dissonance on this forum is probably age based.
"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too."
- Abe Simpson
I think the "Leave them Behind" section at the end sort of ignores the whole "they will ruthlessly copy your material, and put aggressive extra load on your server while repeatedly stealing your work" dimension.
You can try to avoid consuming AI-generated material, but of course part-way through a lot of things you may wonder whether it is partly AI-generated, and we don't yet have a credible "human-authored" stamp. But you can't really keep them from using your work to make cheap copies of you, or at least reducing your audience by including information or insights from your work in the chat sessions of people who otherwise might have read your work.
You can try to avoid consuming AI-generated material, but of course part-way through a lot of things you may wonder whether it is partly AI-generated, and we don't yet have a credible "human-authored" stamp. But you can't really keep them from using your work to make cheap copies of you, or at least reducing your audience by including information or insights from your work in the chat sessions of people who otherwise might have read your work.
Love the one-armed code bandit on the home page of this blog!
Nice UX experience!
See: https://dbushell.com/
I’ve decided the only way I’ll adopt a full automated agentic AI workflow the way companies want, is if I am allowed to hold multiple jobs at multiple companies.
Imagine having 6 software engineering jobs, each paying maybe $150k a year, all being done by agents.
Hell, I might even do this secretly without their consent. If I can hold just 10 jobs for about 3 or 4 years, I can retire and leave the industry before it all comes crumbling down in 2030.
The problem of course, is securing that many jobs. But maybe agents can help with applying for jobs.
Imagine having 6 software engineering jobs, each paying maybe $150k a year, all being done by agents.
Hell, I might even do this secretly without their consent. If I can hold just 10 jobs for about 3 or 4 years, I can retire and leave the industry before it all comes crumbling down in 2030.
The problem of course, is securing that many jobs. But maybe agents can help with applying for jobs.
This might be the coolest personal website theme I've ever seen.
When will we understand that not everybody works in a FAANG?
Assuming that the way to put some food in the table for all software developers is always a matter of creating a new magical algor. in a mystical programming language deployed in an unicorn architecture is so childish.
99% of all software development today is simply creating a crud or refactoring a codebase because React guys decided to change everything again.
I'm building in the opposite direction. An AI that participates in group conversations but knows when to shut up. The hardest part is making it not talk when humans are handling it. Turns out coding social awareness into an AI is way harder than coding productivity. I get why people feel replaced by the productivity tools. The social side is nowhere close to replacing anyone.
Yeah well I just don’t care about „AI dark forest”
You seriously need to go outside and touch grass if you are so defeated by another chess winning machine
Nobody wants to Watch AI play chess, nobody wants to read ai blogposts
AI makes human writing more valuable, not less.
I will pay good money for pure human made books certified as made without a single word auto generated whether in original or during process of Translation.
You seriously need to go outside and touch grass if you are so defeated by another chess winning machine
Nobody wants to Watch AI play chess, nobody wants to read ai blogposts
AI makes human writing more valuable, not less.
I will pay good money for pure human made books certified as made without a single word auto generated whether in original or during process of Translation.
>One upside of this looming economic and intellectual depression is that the media is beginning to recognise gate keepers are no longer the hand that feeds them.
In what world is "the media" not an integral, tightly-bound part of the ratchet mechanism that seeks to suppress all distinction?
In what world is "the media" not an integral, tightly-bound part of the ratchet mechanism that seeks to suppress all distinction?
>It’s never been more important to blog. There has never been a better time to blog. I will tell you why. We’re being starved for human conversation and authentic voices
The supposedly starved don't seem to care much for such food. Blogs are kind of a wasteland.
The supposedly starved don't seem to care much for such food. Blogs are kind of a wasteland.
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So many insecure AI boosters in the comments slandering and mocking the author. And yet the upvotes clearly indicate that the sentiment in the article resonates widely with the community.
Well, there’s not much of a point leaving a comment saying “yes, this, exactly this,” so I’ll leave one here on behalf of my fellow lurkers.
The more AI gets shoved down my throat, the less I’m inclined to use it for anything, and the more I’m inspired to write my own writing, make my own art, and create my own code — with great creative joy and burning anger. Enjoy your 1000x productivity gains and your inevitable burnout as you downskill to a glorified inference loop.
Well, there’s not much of a point leaving a comment saying “yes, this, exactly this,” so I’ll leave one here on behalf of my fellow lurkers.
The more AI gets shoved down my throat, the less I’m inclined to use it for anything, and the more I’m inspired to write my own writing, make my own art, and create my own code — with great creative joy and burning anger. Enjoy your 1000x productivity gains and your inevitable burnout as you downskill to a glorified inference loop.
I work for a bank and Im basically just an ai user now. Honestly its like pulling teeth to get anyone to look at your code here. Im just on hackernews lol
Major or regional? This is alarming beyond words.
Major, big big major, not just me either. How is it alarming beyond words? If I said "Im an emt and I just ask the AI everything" now that would be alarming beyond words.
I have a buddy who is a cop and he tells me that they use AI to write reports and even to check if their reason for pulling someone over will hold up later. As annoying as it is in SW, people using AI outside of SW is much more alarming.
Now thats alarming!
Because it's a bank and apparently a big one.
do you think the other big banks arent doing this? Bank jobs are pretty broad, theres a ton of code getting written here.
I'm less concerned about the code and more concerned that you said there's no culture around reading it/reviewing it...at a bank.
If anything screws up, that's people's lives being messed with, potentially in a way none of the engineers on staff know how to fix. If I were an actuarial in that environment I'd blow a valve.
If anything screws up, that's people's lives being messed with, potentially in a way none of the engineers on staff know how to fix. If I were an actuarial in that environment I'd blow a valve.
Its a big bank, Im not working on anyones debit account. Me and everyone Ive ever seen here is working on internal tools, nothings going to wipe out anyones savings. Also, yeah, its a bank, I hit the "im going to blow a gasket" line so long okay I cant even remember what things are supposed to be like.
It's alarming because AI produces crappy software, and I would rather not lose money because banks are turning out slop with AI.
well I have bad news for you about probably every bank by now
I just chased a few interesting rabbit holes because of the links to other articles in this article. Thank you for that. ;-)
I just don't see it. What's truly sad is that a field allegedly filled with technically proficient people is filled with trend chasing and FOTM trends. To this day, people with nuanced takes are far and between and most people either go full force into LLM evangelism or LLM denial, the first more annoying, by far.
I'm really getting tired of the programming obituaries. As if LLMs didn't fail at any complex task, as if they didn't vomit shit code and as if they didn't just copy patterns surrounding the new code, and as if they didn't hallucinate and downright write wrong code or made up libraries. Yet for some reason, every time you bring it up, someone will come along and say "You're not using it right then.", Is it that, or is it just that they're only doing toy projects? I'm led to believe the latter.
At this point I don't know what's organic and what's not. Reddit is filled with astroturfing for big LLM. Maybe this place is too? Even if that was not the case, I'm led to believe that it isn't uncommon for people to swallow up all of the big LLM propaganda and fall into despair, or fall into unrealistic expectations, and just parrot it everywhere else. One thing is for certain, LLM evangelism has all the money of the world, and LLM denial doesn't. It's only natural to think that the balance is tilted in terms of media presence.
Even at the best, or worst, LLMs can't do anything you couldn't do yourself better with a scaffolding prompt + manual editing, and at the end of the day, you still need the cognitive energy to review, veto, come up with, the implementation. What does this exactly do anyways other than saving you a bunch of keypresses? I wonder if the people touting it to be all that really didn't think before LLMs, of just switched their brain off on them.
I used to really like this site, but I think that just consuming the RSS feed is enough for me. I think that lobster.rs has less "trend chasing" point of views these days, and I do wonder if it might be on here there's larger amounts of non technical people jumpy to call for the funeral of things.
I'm really getting tired of the programming obituaries. As if LLMs didn't fail at any complex task, as if they didn't vomit shit code and as if they didn't just copy patterns surrounding the new code, and as if they didn't hallucinate and downright write wrong code or made up libraries. Yet for some reason, every time you bring it up, someone will come along and say "You're not using it right then.", Is it that, or is it just that they're only doing toy projects? I'm led to believe the latter.
At this point I don't know what's organic and what's not. Reddit is filled with astroturfing for big LLM. Maybe this place is too? Even if that was not the case, I'm led to believe that it isn't uncommon for people to swallow up all of the big LLM propaganda and fall into despair, or fall into unrealistic expectations, and just parrot it everywhere else. One thing is for certain, LLM evangelism has all the money of the world, and LLM denial doesn't. It's only natural to think that the balance is tilted in terms of media presence.
Even at the best, or worst, LLMs can't do anything you couldn't do yourself better with a scaffolding prompt + manual editing, and at the end of the day, you still need the cognitive energy to review, veto, come up with, the implementation. What does this exactly do anyways other than saving you a bunch of keypresses? I wonder if the people touting it to be all that really didn't think before LLMs, of just switched their brain off on them.
I used to really like this site, but I think that just consuming the RSS feed is enough for me. I think that lobster.rs has less "trend chasing" point of views these days, and I do wonder if it might be on here there's larger amounts of non technical people jumpy to call for the funeral of things.
for those confused, lobster.rs is a Serbian language learning school, parent meant lobste.rs
Blog posts are an interesting case, they are a very good example of something where abundance of supply outstrips any demand so much that it cannot be realistic to expect a median level contribution to receive any significant attention.
Setting aside the self delusion that makes a considerable number to erroneously rate themselves above average, the reason you create blog posts should not be for the attention you might gain, there simply are not the eyeballs. You create as a form of self expression, to organise your thoughts, to create a record of them.
AI can never challenge in those areas because it is, as it has always been, the act of creation is the goal.
Setting aside the self delusion that makes a considerable number to erroneously rate themselves above average, the reason you create blog posts should not be for the attention you might gain, there simply are not the eyeballs. You create as a form of self expression, to organise your thoughts, to create a record of them.
AI can never challenge in those areas because it is, as it has always been, the act of creation is the goal.
"Generative AI is art. It’s irredeemably shit art; end of conversation."
I think most people cannot destinguish between "genuine" creativity and an artificial almalgamation of training data and human provided context. For one, I do not know what already exsists. Some work created by AI may be an obvious rip off of the style of a particular artist, but I wouldnt know. To me it might look awesome and fresh.
I think many of the more human centric thinkers will be disappointed at how many people just wont care.
I think most people cannot destinguish between "genuine" creativity and an artificial almalgamation of training data and human provided context. For one, I do not know what already exsists. Some work created by AI may be an obvious rip off of the style of a particular artist, but I wouldnt know. To me it might look awesome and fresh.
I think many of the more human centric thinkers will be disappointed at how many people just wont care.
Further I'd argue we KNOW people don't care if you look at the music industry.
Pop music is often composed by dozens of people who specialize in a thin sliver of the track - lyrics, vocals, drums, &c. - and then it's given a pretty face and makes the charts. That's really no different than something like Suno.
I think AI is forcing people who thought that THEIR thing was too nuanced or too complex to be replaced by technology to reckon with what makes them special.
Pop music is often composed by dozens of people who specialize in a thin sliver of the track - lyrics, vocals, drums, &c. - and then it's given a pretty face and makes the charts. That's really no different than something like Suno.
I think AI is forcing people who thought that THEIR thing was too nuanced or too complex to be replaced by technology to reckon with what makes them special.
The question is how subtle AI can be. I feel like art sometimes seems to communicate A, and the artist intended to communicate A and perhaps some B, but clearly, it also hints at another C (and maybe also D, E, ..), which was not intended by the artist or recognised by many viewers, while to some people it's clearly there. Now where did that come from?
And can or will AI create it?
And can or will AI create it?
People have been having this debate with popular art forever. Some people do not even believe in taste, and that everyone's artistic opinions have equal merit.
most people are just utilitarian and do not care for "art" (in the high art sense).
AI is perfect for that. It reveal, perhaps to the dismay of those who revel in high art, that it might be an illusion that art has genuine creativity, if most people find ai to produce acceptable output.
AI is perfect for that. It reveal, perhaps to the dismay of those who revel in high art, that it might be an illusion that art has genuine creativity, if most people find ai to produce acceptable output.
I laugh jollily in the face of AI. I know the coming shit pile, its nature isn't going to be surprising, only the speed and utter surrender of the vast majority of humanity to mediocrity.
What AI represents to me is a teacher! I have so long lacked a music teacher and musical tools. I spent my entire career doing invisible software at the lowest levels and now I can finally build cool tools that help me learn and practice and enjoy playing music! Screw all the haters; if you're curious about a wide range of topics and already have some knowledge, you can galavant across a vast space and learn a lot along the way.
AI is a bit of a bullshitter but don't take its bullshit as truth, like you should never take anything your teacher says as gospel. How do we know what's true? The truth of the universe and the world is that underneath it all, it is self consistent, and we keep making measurement errors. The AI is an enormous pot of magic that it's up to you to organize with...your own skills.
You have to actively resist deskilling by doing things. AI should challenge you and reward you, not make you passive.
Use AI to teach yourself by asking lots of questions and constantly testing the results against reality.
For me right now, that's the fretboard.
What AI represents to me is a teacher! I have so long lacked a music teacher and musical tools. I spent my entire career doing invisible software at the lowest levels and now I can finally build cool tools that help me learn and practice and enjoy playing music! Screw all the haters; if you're curious about a wide range of topics and already have some knowledge, you can galavant across a vast space and learn a lot along the way.
AI is a bit of a bullshitter but don't take its bullshit as truth, like you should never take anything your teacher says as gospel. How do we know what's true? The truth of the universe and the world is that underneath it all, it is self consistent, and we keep making measurement errors. The AI is an enormous pot of magic that it's up to you to organize with...your own skills.
You have to actively resist deskilling by doing things. AI should challenge you and reward you, not make you passive.
Use AI to teach yourself by asking lots of questions and constantly testing the results against reality.
For me right now, that's the fretboard.
A non-sequitur, but I really like the style of the blog. Good job.
Such a bizarre sentiment the web and internet as we know/knew them is some bastion of freedom and future for humanity.
According to the author AI is 99% hype.
That 1% of AI utility can unlock more for humanity than 99.999% of blogs; static text hosted from a laptop in a closet.
Odd ball position that cheap publishing via the web is a path to The Next Generation for humanity is 100% hype.
Other than feeding dopamine addiction humanity has not improved greatly since we read all those insipid posts on GeoCities no one remembers today.
It's all been 99%+ hype to feed Wall Street. Young GenX and older Millennials with tech jobs were temporary political pawns and gonna end up bag holders like may older GenXers and Boomers who lived through the car boom, the housing boom, the retail boom.
Same old human shit, different hype.
According to the author AI is 99% hype.
That 1% of AI utility can unlock more for humanity than 99.999% of blogs; static text hosted from a laptop in a closet.
Odd ball position that cheap publishing via the web is a path to The Next Generation for humanity is 100% hype.
Other than feeding dopamine addiction humanity has not improved greatly since we read all those insipid posts on GeoCities no one remembers today.
It's all been 99%+ hype to feed Wall Street. Young GenX and older Millennials with tech jobs were temporary political pawns and gonna end up bag holders like may older GenXers and Boomers who lived through the car boom, the housing boom, the retail boom.
Same old human shit, different hype.
On the copyright stuff, I say good riddance.
You have to write for yourself. People have said this for years, decades, millennia even - but nobody really believes that writing to an audience of zero (or one, if Mom is still around) is worth it.
Everyone wants to be a famous author, or at least a published/somewhat acknowledged one; few are willing to write their novel and be satisfied with zero or near-zero sales/readings.
But that is exactly what you need to do, especially in the age of AI. Everyone who was "in it to win it" (think linkedinslop which existed before AI) is going to certainly use AI - because they do not give a shit about the quality of themselves - they just want the result.
And you can only become a writer (unpublished, unread, or no) by doing the writing - it takes time (10,000 hours?) that cannot be replaced by AI, just like you can't have the body of a marathon runner without running (yes, yes, the joke). You may be able to get 26 miles and change away, even very fast, but unless you personally do the running of that distance without cheating, you will not get the inherent benefits.
And if you instruct an AI, or another human even, to write for you, you may get some of the results you want, but you won't have changed to become a writer.
We shouldn't celebrate the successful blogs; they're already rewarded enough. It's celebrating the unsuccessful blogs that is needed - even if, frankly, the vast majority of them are sub-AI levels of crap it is still a human changing and progressing behind them.
Babies fall over a lot but unless you take them out of the stroller and let them do so, they'll never progress to crawling, walking, running.
Everyone wants to be a famous author, or at least a published/somewhat acknowledged one; few are willing to write their novel and be satisfied with zero or near-zero sales/readings.
But that is exactly what you need to do, especially in the age of AI. Everyone who was "in it to win it" (think linkedinslop which existed before AI) is going to certainly use AI - because they do not give a shit about the quality of themselves - they just want the result.
And you can only become a writer (unpublished, unread, or no) by doing the writing - it takes time (10,000 hours?) that cannot be replaced by AI, just like you can't have the body of a marathon runner without running (yes, yes, the joke). You may be able to get 26 miles and change away, even very fast, but unless you personally do the running of that distance without cheating, you will not get the inherent benefits.
And if you instruct an AI, or another human even, to write for you, you may get some of the results you want, but you won't have changed to become a writer.
We shouldn't celebrate the successful blogs; they're already rewarded enough. It's celebrating the unsuccessful blogs that is needed - even if, frankly, the vast majority of them are sub-AI levels of crap it is still a human changing and progressing behind them.
Babies fall over a lot but unless you take them out of the stroller and let them do so, they'll never progress to crawling, walking, running.
Do people who journal exist in your world view?
This feels weird somehow. It feels like: Damn we can’t train our AI any better as everything regurgitated slop now.
How can we get people to create new content for us, hopefully with new ideas …
Might be just me though, but I definitely don’t get why blogging should be the solution.
Might be just me though, but I definitely don’t get why blogging should be the solution.
The footer rules
Considering that the rant is using photos from Star Trek and Oliver Twist to make their points, copyrighted material with no indication of permission, they're less "creative" than a stochastic parrot.
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the tools of today are pretty great!
I honestly don't get it - how isn't everyone having a blast with AI? Every one of those side projects you never had time for you can build in a weekend. You can explore five ideas at once. You can do big refactors/cleanups you'd never be able to dream of in the past. As a software engineer it's been fantastic.
I've been using Claude for a side project I've been trying to write for some time. Seeing it generate features at a much faster clip than I can (that actually compiles) has definitely been addictive. However, the joy I used to get from seeing something that I wrote work is all but gone, and it sucks big time to lose that.
The back and forth is more annoying now as well. Instead of trying different approaches to code to produce an outcome, I'm prompting "this is broken; can you fix it?" or "this almost works! can you do $x instead" and doing stuff in another window while Claude churns. This isn't fun or stimulating at all for me. It's like carrying a dog to a ball instead of making them run for it.
Using it also reminds me that a big part of the experience I've spent years accumulating is (or feels) no longer useful. That everyone can "write" (produce) code now is a good thing, but SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY was spent on putting writing and understanding code on a pedestal (especially on this site), and seeing that get torn down while gaslighting us into thinking that this never happened has been affecting my psyche for sure.
There's also the dirty feeling I get from abdicating more and more of my skills to a big company that is probably salivating at the idea of developers not being able to write code without Claude Code anymore.
I have a handful of projects I'd like to work on, but I'd rather leave them on the shelf until I can hand-write them than use agents to finish them and, in doing so, create a codebase that I'm less likely to be able to maintain without agents.
I guess I can turn the question back at you: how aren't you not losing your mind at becoming a glorified spec writer?
The back and forth is more annoying now as well. Instead of trying different approaches to code to produce an outcome, I'm prompting "this is broken; can you fix it?" or "this almost works! can you do $x instead" and doing stuff in another window while Claude churns. This isn't fun or stimulating at all for me. It's like carrying a dog to a ball instead of making them run for it.
Using it also reminds me that a big part of the experience I've spent years accumulating is (or feels) no longer useful. That everyone can "write" (produce) code now is a good thing, but SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY was spent on putting writing and understanding code on a pedestal (especially on this site), and seeing that get torn down while gaslighting us into thinking that this never happened has been affecting my psyche for sure.
There's also the dirty feeling I get from abdicating more and more of my skills to a big company that is probably salivating at the idea of developers not being able to write code without Claude Code anymore.
I have a handful of projects I'd like to work on, but I'd rather leave them on the shelf until I can hand-write them than use agents to finish them and, in doing so, create a codebase that I'm less likely to be able to maintain without agents.
I guess I can turn the question back at you: how aren't you not losing your mind at becoming a glorified spec writer?
I get to spend more time working on the things I enjoy. For example, data modeling and workflow orchestration, and building product to solve customer problems. And really, that comes down to spending a lot of my time just thinking really hard - because once I have a clear plan, it's actually not that hard to build it. Not only that, but I can build something, react to it, rebuild it, react to it, and come up with something I think is much better than I would have been able to build myself. Not to mention much faster.
Can't disagree that Claude ships much much faster. It is also nice to be able to type up a plan of what I'd like to build and have it go after verifying the plan it generates.
I guess it's iterating in plain English instead of iterating in code that I'm having trouble latching onto. It's a "left brain vs right brain" kind of situation for me (not sure how valid that trope is, but it best expresses what I'm feeling).
I'm pretty good at outlining what I want to accomplish and how to get there, but cracking open vim and getting into it is super duper exciting for me, and I'm pretty good at communicating what is and isn't working with the agent when I use it. Claude (or any agent, I suppose) takes that away and doesn't fill that gap.
It's also been harder for me to stay focused with Claude since I'm basically printing code and reading the results. Claude's changesets err towards being pretty large (though I have rules [^1] to try and keep that at bay). When I use it, my mind shifts from "writing code that others might (probably won't) maintain someday)" to "writing code that builds the thing". Given those heavy diffs, I'm less inclined to pore through them than I would be if I were actively writing the code. I fear that this will lead to having less understanding of what my code is doing over time, which is sweeping the bugs and tech debt under the rug (especially since Claude, atm, likes to solve bugs with adding more code). This is probably one of those things that will just take some adjustment.
Then again, maybe part of this has to do with me being a long-time a Vim user and not having used a proper IDE for everyday development in a long time...
Okay, I think I finally came up with a good anecdote for how I'm feeling. I wear Mexican huarache sandals [^0] pretty much exclusively when the weather's warm (which is almost all year round in Houston). They are so unique, and getting them to work perfectly with my feet has been a Linux-like experience (i.e. lots and lots and LOTS of experimentation).
I used to buy them from Luna, Xero and others at, like, $150/pair. However, they are INSANELY EASY to make at home for a fraction of the price. I made four pairs at home. They didn't fit quite right, so I'll need to make them again, but I take MASSIVE satisfaction in wearing what I made.
The journey is as exciting as the destination for me; more so, even!
(Selfishly, I took a lot of pride in being able to show others how to do damn nearly everything they do in VSCode in Vim, but that's another victim of the Era of AI.)
[^0] These bad boys: https://xeroshoes.com/pages/tarahumara-sandals
I guess it's iterating in plain English instead of iterating in code that I'm having trouble latching onto. It's a "left brain vs right brain" kind of situation for me (not sure how valid that trope is, but it best expresses what I'm feeling).
I'm pretty good at outlining what I want to accomplish and how to get there, but cracking open vim and getting into it is super duper exciting for me, and I'm pretty good at communicating what is and isn't working with the agent when I use it. Claude (or any agent, I suppose) takes that away and doesn't fill that gap.
It's also been harder for me to stay focused with Claude since I'm basically printing code and reading the results. Claude's changesets err towards being pretty large (though I have rules [^1] to try and keep that at bay). When I use it, my mind shifts from "writing code that others might (probably won't) maintain someday)" to "writing code that builds the thing". Given those heavy diffs, I'm less inclined to pore through them than I would be if I were actively writing the code. I fear that this will lead to having less understanding of what my code is doing over time, which is sweeping the bugs and tech debt under the rug (especially since Claude, atm, likes to solve bugs with adding more code). This is probably one of those things that will just take some adjustment.
Then again, maybe part of this has to do with me being a long-time a Vim user and not having used a proper IDE for everyday development in a long time...
Okay, I think I finally came up with a good anecdote for how I'm feeling. I wear Mexican huarache sandals [^0] pretty much exclusively when the weather's warm (which is almost all year round in Houston). They are so unique, and getting them to work perfectly with my feet has been a Linux-like experience (i.e. lots and lots and LOTS of experimentation).
I used to buy them from Luna, Xero and others at, like, $150/pair. However, they are INSANELY EASY to make at home for a fraction of the price. I made four pairs at home. They didn't fit quite right, so I'll need to make them again, but I take MASSIVE satisfaction in wearing what I made.
The journey is as exciting as the destination for me; more so, even!
(Selfishly, I took a lot of pride in being able to show others how to do damn nearly everything they do in VSCode in Vim, but that's another victim of the Era of AI.)
[^0] These bad boys: https://xeroshoes.com/pages/tarahumara-sandals
I'm also a lifelong vim user. I guess what I'm getting at is that I find the journey even more engaging now. I think I'm a good programmer. I've worked at great companies. I was competitive in ACM contests and Top Coder. But I find the journey even more engaging now because I can focus on really, really deeply understanding something, and less time on glue. Writing code by hand is still fun, don't get me wrong, but I'm also enjoying the step change in scale.
I don't think IDEs as they exist today are necessarily the right abstraction anymore anyway, to the extent they ever were. At least any more than a C++ IDE that was centered on assembly language as the main thing would be. I want data models, API contracts, and data flows. I don't know what the right answer is, but I think there's something coming.
I don't think IDEs as they exist today are necessarily the right abstraction anymore anyway, to the extent they ever were. At least any more than a C++ IDE that was centered on assembly language as the main thing would be. I want data models, API contracts, and data flows. I don't know what the right answer is, but I think there's something coming.
Thanks for your balanced perspective. It's great to hear another vim user's perspective. I'll keep giving Claude a chance!
That has been my feeling too. I have completed soo many personal projects (or improvements) that were collecting dust on my 'mental shelf'.
Without AI I would probably never get to them because realistically, I do not have dozens, or hundreds of personal hours to devote to fun, but unnecessary projects.
Without AI I would probably never get to them because realistically, I do not have dozens, or hundreds of personal hours to devote to fun, but unnecessary projects.
Same reason I've passed along offers for management roles and continue to ignore "fiverr.com". It's less having done "The Thing" and more asking for it/a substitute. With an LLM/freelancers, the muscle memory, skills, or whatever I might develop (along with the thing) have been, well, outsourced.
What's more, I can already explore five ideas at once. There is no backlog formed by incapability, lol.
I don't understand the eagerness for "productivity as a service", celebrating quotas, and lot of other conjecture I could get twisted up with... but I'll skip it this time. Rarely pays off :)
What's more, I can already explore five ideas at once. There is no backlog formed by incapability, lol.
I don't understand the eagerness for "productivity as a service", celebrating quotas, and lot of other conjecture I could get twisted up with... but I'll skip it this time. Rarely pays off :)
Because some of us actually enjoy programming. For some people those side projects aren't about the destination, but the journey of learning how something works by making it with your bare hands.
but that is still possible, so what makes you sad? is it that others can build theirs without bare hands? or you are no longer rewarded for bare hand programming? if the latter was it really the "journey"?
Some of us work on critical systems
You do know that there's many different personalities that people can have right? A lot of people love writing code and don't care about those things at all.
misleading title. MODS?
> to put a price tag on creation.
I mean, to put a price tag on enabling vastly more creation than would otherwise have occurred!
I mean, to put a price tag on enabling vastly more creation than would otherwise have occurred!
> I’m not protective over the word “art”. Generative AI is art. It’s irredeemably shit art; end of conversation. A child’s crayon doodle is also lacking refined artistry but we hang it on our fridge because a human made it and that matters.
More pretentious gatekeeping from luddites who like to yell at clouds. This is someone who would love a piece of artwork created using ai tools right up until someone told them it was created using ai tools.
More pretentious gatekeeping from luddites who like to yell at clouds. This is someone who would love a piece of artwork created using ai tools right up until someone told them it was created using ai tools.
Or "someone who would read a news article and be shocked/excited/moved by it right up until someone told them it was fake GenAI slop."
Apart from the fact that, yes, GenAI art is overwhelmingly shit and by definition derivative, it's also not unreasonable to not want to be lied to. People look for human connection. They like being lied to about human expression in a piece of art about as much as they like being catfished.
Apart from the fact that, yes, GenAI art is overwhelmingly shit and by definition derivative, it's also not unreasonable to not want to be lied to. People look for human connection. They like being lied to about human expression in a piece of art about as much as they like being catfished.
Fucking hilarius domain name . David is unfortunately not announcing a rewrite of the Linux IPC stack!
Ha I read it as the DBU Shell but I guess dbus hell is more natural.
How did I miss DBUS Hell haha
Real PenIsland.com vibes.
poopwagon(2)
Good lord I’m going to have to figure out some way to filter Hacker News. I’m so tired of this same sort of article (and the opposite) being posted every day. AI isn’t going away. AI is better than you think it is. AI is probably also worse than you think it is. The world has nuance, so can we please all chill?
These conversations can add to the nuance. Anyway, you can just vibe code the filter you want and be done with it.
I disagree that this adds anything new to the conversation, but fair enough.
Sort of hard to do because AI it shoved down your throat in one form or another virtually everywhere you go. I also think a lot of us Hackers are mourning the fact we spent many years mastering machines and programming just to have the skill devalued (at least from the publics perspective) nearly over night. I personally think it is more important now more than ever to understand technology. To be able to write code, understand how a CPU works etc. Tech literacy will help prevent doom scenarios. A future where virtually everyone depends on AI and Computers but lacks people who actually understand them from a low level perspective seems bleak. I know thinking itself seems to have gone out of fashion and its given rise to misinformation and/or political nonsense like the rise of fascism etc... I think a lot of us just feel "empty" and are trying to express it.
I get it. I’ve been doing this for 11 years. I use agents everyday at work now and deal with all the benefits and problems of that. The craft is certainly changing and it will take years for everything to shake out and settle. I understand the desire to publicly wax poetic, but nobody actually knows shit about where we will land, so it gets a bit tiresome to see over and over.
I agree that humans should continue to value various forms of literacy even in the face of AIs that can do everything better than us. I too will continue to dig deeper into tech literacy. There was a Terence Tao paper recently that mentioned we are in a shift similar to the end of heliocentrism. It made clear that Earth is not the center of the universe, but Earth is still deeply valuable and important for humans. Much the same way that AI may supersede our understanding and intellect and make the are limitations more apparent, but our human intellect is still important to humans. Plus, what are you going to do when the price of LLM tokens are through the roof or you get messages like "burn an extra 1,000,000 tokens for a better implementation!".
I have some amount of hope that local open models with sufficient quantization are the future as hardware becomes more powerful and models become more optimized. I don’t think we will be living in thin client land forever. Human expertise and intelligence will continue to be important and anyone who says otherwise is being disingenuous.
Agreed. I am crossing my fingers that local open models can catch up in the future. Otherwise the big LLM companies will have everyone by the balls.
[deleted]
"No AI" right above a robot voice playback button.
Mixed messages fr
Hot take, folks packing it in because of AI probably were not difference makers before AI, and wouldn't be difference makers after it either.
I agree with the author, keep writing. It helps hone your ability to communicate effectively which we all need for some time to come (at least until we become batteries).
Mixed messages fr
Hot take, folks packing it in because of AI probably were not difference makers before AI, and wouldn't be difference makers after it either.
I agree with the author, keep writing. It helps hone your ability to communicate effectively which we all need for some time to come (at least until we become batteries).
> folks packing it in because of AI probably were not difference makers before AI
Anecdotal but I’ve been seeing a lot of the opposite. Some of those leaning in strongly are being propped up by the tools. Holding onto them like a lifeboat when they would have fallen off earlier.
Anecdotal but I’ve been seeing a lot of the opposite. Some of those leaning in strongly are being propped up by the tools. Holding onto them like a lifeboat when they would have fallen off earlier.
[deleted]
What does a synthesized audio playback button have to do with AI as commonly and hotly discussed?
> sythansized audio playback
Thats generated audio. It may not be LLM generated but it's not read by a human.
To draw an arbitrary line between _this kind_ of generated content but not _that kind_ is seemingly a matter of perspective and preferences.
Thats generated audio. It may not be LLM generated but it's not read by a human.
To draw an arbitrary line between _this kind_ of generated content but not _that kind_ is seemingly a matter of perspective and preferences.
Perspective and preferences are two out of N parts that make up a person’s opinion, which in turn is something that makes a judgement about distinguishing two things NOT arbitrary.
But partly overlapping with perspective is reasoning (subjective or objective), which is also something that makes a judgement not arbitrary. But your pre-judgement here tells me that that part is uninteresting to you.
But partly overlapping with perspective is reasoning (subjective or objective), which is also something that makes a judgement not arbitrary. But your pre-judgement here tells me that that part is uninteresting to you.
It's still arbitrary, even if you attempt to backfill reasoning and conflate opinion with fact.
The fact is, it's generated content, less sophisticated code was use to generate it, but it's still generated from text input.
The fact is, it's generated content, less sophisticated code was use to generate it, but it's still generated from text input.
> It's still arbitrary, even if you attempt to backfill reasoning and conflate opinion with fact.
Backill reasoning? Providing reasoning later is less legitimate? Why?
Some people state things without spelling out the reasoning because they assume it is common sense.
> The fact is, it's generated content, less sophisticated code was use to generate it, but it's still generated from text input.
Your opinions are fact. Counter-arguments are opinions masquerading as facts. Your comments here are textbook arbitrariness. ;)
To dig a little into it: it is generated content, but that’s not necessarily what their arguments hinge on at all. But there’s no point going further with this, clearly.
Backill reasoning? Providing reasoning later is less legitimate? Why?
Some people state things without spelling out the reasoning because they assume it is common sense.
> The fact is, it's generated content, less sophisticated code was use to generate it, but it's still generated from text input.
Your opinions are fact. Counter-arguments are opinions masquerading as facts. Your comments here are textbook arbitrariness. ;)
To dig a little into it: it is generated content, but that’s not necessarily what their arguments hinge on at all. But there’s no point going further with this, clearly.
I am going to assume that you're still speaking in good faith for now.
>Backill reasoning? Providing reasoning later is less legitimate? Why?
I think you might miss interpret the phrasing. To backfill reasoning means you reached your conclusion prior to reasoning about it, then attempt justification afterwards.
This is indeed significantly less legitimate.
>Some people state things without spelling out the reasoning because they assume it is common sense.
"Common sense isn't common" aka incredulous fallacy. It's up to you to clarify yourself. Not to expect others understand you immediately.
>Your opinions are fact.
They factually exist, but they are mutually exclusive from the definition of being a fact.
Opinions are not facts themselves.
>Your comments here are textbook arbitrariness.
Ok, let's look at a definition
>Arbitrary describes actions, decisions, or rules based on random choice, personal whim, or impulse rather than reason, system, or law.
Not sure how you could call a statement pointing out an issue with the authors position as claimed as not following any reason, or being based on whim. The reasoning was provided and referred to a specific system (synthetic vs non synthetic). Very much out of the bounds of a book definition of arbitrary.
I noticed you did not seem to provide a definition.
>To dig a little into it: it is generated content,
That's what I said...
>but that’s not necessarily what their arguments hinge on at all.
Based on what?
The author put multiple no-AI badges on the page. Infer what you wish, but it's clear the context given the broader palle of information avaible to anyone. The author drew an arbitrary line around the context to grant themselves the use of certain tools while avoiding a blow to their morals for the use of others.
They built up a dirt hill so they can feel like they are taller.
Don't support such delusions.
>Backill reasoning? Providing reasoning later is less legitimate? Why?
I think you might miss interpret the phrasing. To backfill reasoning means you reached your conclusion prior to reasoning about it, then attempt justification afterwards.
This is indeed significantly less legitimate.
>Some people state things without spelling out the reasoning because they assume it is common sense.
"Common sense isn't common" aka incredulous fallacy. It's up to you to clarify yourself. Not to expect others understand you immediately.
>Your opinions are fact.
They factually exist, but they are mutually exclusive from the definition of being a fact.
Opinions are not facts themselves.
>Your comments here are textbook arbitrariness.
Ok, let's look at a definition
>Arbitrary describes actions, decisions, or rules based on random choice, personal whim, or impulse rather than reason, system, or law.
Not sure how you could call a statement pointing out an issue with the authors position as claimed as not following any reason, or being based on whim. The reasoning was provided and referred to a specific system (synthetic vs non synthetic). Very much out of the bounds of a book definition of arbitrary.
I noticed you did not seem to provide a definition.
>To dig a little into it: it is generated content,
That's what I said...
>but that’s not necessarily what their arguments hinge on at all.
Based on what?
The author put multiple no-AI badges on the page. Infer what you wish, but it's clear the context given the broader palle of information avaible to anyone. The author drew an arbitrary line around the context to grant themselves the use of certain tools while avoiding a blow to their morals for the use of others.
They built up a dirt hill so they can feel like they are taller.
Don't support such delusions.
Can’t we just sabotage AI? We have the means for sure (speed light communication across the globe). Like, at least for once in the history of software engineering we should get together like other professionals do. Sadly our high salaries and perks won’t make the task easy for many
- spend tons of tokens on useless stuff at work (so your boss knows it’s not worth it)
- be very picky about AI generated PRs: add tons of comments, slow down the merge, etc.
- spend tons of tokens on useless stuff at work (so your boss knows it’s not worth it)
- be very picky about AI generated PRs: add tons of comments, slow down the merge, etc.
I think you should be very picky about generated PRs not as an act of sabotage but because very obviously generated ones tend to balloon complexity of the code in ways that makes it difficult for both humans and agents, and because superficial plausibility is really good at masking problems. It's a rational thing to do.
Eventually you are faced with company culture that sees review as a bottleneck stopping you from going 100x faster rather than a process of quality assurance and knowledge sharing, and I worry we'll just be mandated to stop doing them.
Eventually you are faced with company culture that sees review as a bottleneck stopping you from going 100x faster rather than a process of quality assurance and knowledge sharing, and I worry we'll just be mandated to stop doing them.
> be very picky about AI generated PRs: add tons of comments, slow down the merge, etc.
But that's the opposite of sabotage, you're actually helping your boss use AI effectively!
> spend tons of tokens on useless stuff at work (so your boss knows it’s not worth it)
Yes, but the "useless" stuff should be things like "carefully document how this codebase works" or "ruthlessly critique this 10k-lines AI slop pull request, and propose ways to improve it". So that you at least get something nice out of it long-term, even if it's "useless" to a clueless AI-pilled PHB.
But that's the opposite of sabotage, you're actually helping your boss use AI effectively!
> spend tons of tokens on useless stuff at work (so your boss knows it’s not worth it)
Yes, but the "useless" stuff should be things like "carefully document how this codebase works" or "ruthlessly critique this 10k-lines AI slop pull request, and propose ways to improve it". So that you at least get something nice out of it long-term, even if it's "useless" to a clueless AI-pilled PHB.
Generate hundreds repos of plain old spaghetti code and put it on github. Easiest thing you can do.
It really is the albatross around the neck of software and software adjacent professionals... How you don't see the value of collective action is wild to me. Most of you are still working class, you can't survive that many years unemployed...
But the Kool aid has been drunk, and the philosophy of silicon valley cemented in your field. It will take a lot of pain or work to get it to change.
But the Kool aid has been drunk, and the philosophy of silicon valley cemented in your field. It will take a lot of pain or work to get it to change.
rants about AI from people who have already decided up front to never actually attempt to use the tools (which seems to be the case here from the post and the other one it links) are not really providing any value to the discourse.
There is nothing new about using machinery to automate boring / repetitive tasks, including the wall of resistance that comes up. But it should be clear that genuinely useful tooling and automation tends to become a normal part of life, from the plow, to the printing press, to the dishwasher, to digital video editing, to autocorrect, and now to large language models.
There's a lot that has to be worked out with LLMs in particular as they are now encroaching heavily upon human creativity and thought. This is an extremely important topic. But rants like these with terms like "the plagarism machine" and "the solution is that we all must vow to never use AI in any shape or form" are not really contributing.
There is nothing new about using machinery to automate boring / repetitive tasks, including the wall of resistance that comes up. But it should be clear that genuinely useful tooling and automation tends to become a normal part of life, from the plow, to the printing press, to the dishwasher, to digital video editing, to autocorrect, and now to large language models.
There's a lot that has to be worked out with LLMs in particular as they are now encroaching heavily upon human creativity and thought. This is an extremely important topic. But rants like these with terms like "the plagarism machine" and "the solution is that we all must vow to never use AI in any shape or form" are not really contributing.
We're starting to rethink what an over reliance on plow based tilling has done for soil health. The point being that technologies are tradeoffs and it's helpful to understand the tradeoffs we are making.
that's the absolute truth here
Trying to understand why it would matter if their hosting provider used ai or not. Genuine question so I can understand your take.
You are a good employee! Python people always shill for their employer's opinions.
Adoption of AI at a FOMO corporate pace doesn't seem to include this consideration. They largely want your skills to atrophy as you instead beep boop the AI machine to do the job (arguably) faster. I think they're wrong and silly and any time they try to justify it, the words don't reconcile into a rational series of statements. But they're the boss and they can do the thing if they want to. At work I either do what they want in exchange for money or I say no thank you and walk away.
Which led me to the conclusion I'm currently at: I think I'm mostly just mourning the fact that I got to do my hobby as a career for the past 15 years, but that’s ending. I can still code at home.