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This is obviously controversial, since we are thinking about how this could displace a large portion of developers. How do you see Copilot being more augmentati

This is obviously controversial, since we are thinking about how this could displace a large portion of developers. How do you see Copilot being more augmentative than disruptive to the developer ecosystem? Also, how you see it different from regular code completion tools like tabnine.

tux1968 5y ago
How many jobs have developers helped displace in business and industry? I don't think it's controversial that we become fair game for that same automation process we've been leading.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Indeed. It should be the goal of society to automate away as much work as possible. If there are perverse incentives working against this then we should correct them.
  - gugagore 5y ago
    1. How do you define work differently from "that which should be automated"? 2. While I agree with your stance, it is not by itself sufficient. If you provide the automation but you do not correct the perverse incentives (or you worry about correcting them only later) that you mention, then you are contributing to widening the disparity between a category of workers (who have now lost their leverage) and those with assets and capital (who have a reduced need for workers).
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      I agree, the fact we're even talking about this is evidence that our society has the perverse incentive baked in and we should be aware of and seek to address that. Regardless, programmers would be hypocritical to decry having their jobs automated away.
    - mkr-hn 5y ago
      That's why it's best to get unions or support systems (like UBI) before they're needed. It's hard to organize and build systems when you have no leverage, influence, or power left.
    - literallycancer 5y ago
      Why is the disparity bad?
      - gugagore 5y ago
        What do you mean by "bad"? If you're asking why it makes sense to structure society with an eye toward avoiding disparity, then it's enough to just observe empirically that people have an aversion to unfair treatment. And not just people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_inequity_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_inequity_aversion If you're asking why do people respond the way they do to disparity, then I can only speculate that it has something to do with the meaning of life.
  - spec-obs 5y ago
    I would be up for that, if said society did not leave us destitute as a result
  - amw-zero 5y ago
    Human beings need something to do to have a fulfilling life. I do not agree at all that the ultimate goal of society is to automate everything that’s possible. I think that will be horrible overall for society.
    - kyawzazaw 5y ago
      I typically find other things fulfill my life more than work.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      My job is probably the least fulfilling activity in my life and I'm sure that goes for a lot of people. By your reasoning, maybe we don't need backhoes and should just hire a bunch of guys with spoons instead?
- serf 5y ago
  >How many jobs have developers helped displace in business and industry? I don't think it's controversial that we become fair game for that same automation process we've been leading. historically when has that sort of 'tit-for-tat' style of argument ever been helpful? the correct approach would be "we've observed first hand the problems that we've cause for society, how can we avoid creating such problems for any person in the future?" It might seem self-serving, and it is, but 'two wrongs don't make a right'. Let's try to fix such problems rather than serving our sentence as condemned individuals.
  - tux1968 5y ago
    > historically when has that sort of 'tit-for-tat' style of argument ever been helpful? It's not tit-for-tat, it's a wake up call. As in, what exactly do you think we've been doing with our skills and time? > ""we've observed first hand the problems that we've cause for society"... But not everyone agrees that this is actually a problem. There was a time when being a blacksmith or a weaver was a very highly paid profession, and as technology improved and the workforce became larger, large wages could no longer be commanded. Of course the exact same thing is going to happen to developers, at least to some extent.
- pizza234 5y ago
  > How many jobs have developers helped displace in business and industry? How many? > I don't think it's controversial that we become fair game for that same automation process we've been leading. This is not correct. A human (developer) displacing another human (business person) is entirely different than a tool (AI bot) replacing a human (developer). Regardless, this is the Lump of Labour fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy). In this case, it is assumed that the global amount of development work is fixed, so that, if AI takes a part of it, the equivalent workforce in terms of developers, will be out of job. Especially in the field of SWE, this is obviously false. It also needs to be seen what this technology will actually do. SWE is a complex field, way more than typing a few routines. In best case (technologically speaking) this will be an augmentation.
  - tux1968 5y ago
    > A human (developer) displacing another human (business person) is entirely different That's not what is happening though, a few developers replace thousands of business and industry people with automated tools. Say, automated route planning for package delivery, would take many thousands of humans if not for the AI bots that do the job instead. > SWE is a complex field, way more than typing a few routines. In best case (technologically speaking) this will be an augmentation. Of course there will always be some jobs for humans to do. Just like there are still jobs for humans loading thread into the automated looms and such. But your arguments against automation displacing programming jobs ring hollow. People said the same thing about chess playing programs, they would never be able to understand the subtlety or complexity like a human could.
    - pizza234 5y ago
      > That's not what is happening though, a few developers replace thousands of business and industry people with automated tools. Say, automated route planning for package delivery, would take many thousands of humans if not for the AI bots that do the job instead. Without reading and understanding the lump of labour fallacy, it can't be understood the relation between the fallacy and the displacement of jobs. In short, the fallacy is not incompatible with the displacement argument; the difference is in the implications. > But your arguments against automation displacing programming jobs ring hollow. People said the same thing about chess playing programs, they would never be able to understand the subtlety or complexity like a human could. Chess is a finite problem, SWE isn't, so they can't be compared.
- cnvm 5y ago
  Nothing is inevitable. Doctors and lawyers have protected their professions successfully for centuries. Only some software developers seem interested in replacing themselves in order to enrich their corporate masters (mains?) even further. Just don't use this tool!
  - tux1968 5y ago
    > Doctors and lawyers have protected their professions successfully for centuries. And one could argue that this means we all pay more for health and legal services than we otherwise would. You have to calculate both costs and benefits; what price does society pay for those few people having very high paying jobs?
  - mason55 5y ago
    This tool only replaces a small part of a good programmer and just further highlights the differences between people blindly writing code and people building actual systems. The challenge in software development is understanding the real world processes and constraints and turning them into a design for a functional & resilient system that doesn't collapse as people add every little idea that pops into their head. If the hard part was "typing in code" then programmers would have been replaced long ago. But most people can't even verbally explain what they do as a series of steps & decision points such that a coherent and robust process can be documented. Once you have that it's easy to turn into code.
  - literallycancer 5y ago
    This feels like people protesting against automation by not using the automated checkout machines at a store. Go ahead, faster queues for me.
natfriedman 5y ago
We think that software development is entering its third wave of productivity change. The first was the creation of tools like compilers, debuggers, garbage collectors, and languages that made developers more productive. The second was open source where a global community of developers came together to build on each other's work. The third revolution will be the use of AI in coding. The problems we spend our days solving may change. But there will always be problems for humans to solve.
- xna 5y ago
  Let's solve the problem of replacing CEOs next. The above paragraph could have been written by GPT-3 already.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    I think you’re looking at the problem the wrong way. This provides less strong engineering talent with more leverage. The CEO (which could be you!) gets closer to being a CTO with less experience and context necessary (recall businesses that run on old janky codebases or no code platforms; they don’t have to be elegant, they simply have to work). It all boils down to who is capturing the value for the effort and time expended. If a mediocre software engineer can compete against senior engineers with such augmentation, that seems like a win. Less time on learning language incantations, more time spent delivering value to those who will pay for it.
    - foobarbazetc 5y ago
      That's not really how it's going to go though. Just look at what your average person is able to accomplish with Excel. Your own example of the CEO becoming a CTO can be used in every level and part of the business. Now the receptionist is building office automation tools because they can describe what they want in plain English and have this thing spit out code.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
dragonwriter 5y ago
> This is obviously controversial, since we are thinking about how this could displace a large portion of developers. It... couldn't, in net. Tools which improve developer productivity increase the number of developers hired and the number of tasks for which it is worthwhile to employ them and the market clearing price for development work. See, for examples, the whole history of the computing industry as we’ve added more layers of automation between “conceptual design for software” and “bit patterns in hardware implementing that conceptual design as concrete software”. It might displace or disadvantage some developers in specific (though I doubt a large portion) by shifting the relative value of particular subskills within the set used in development, I suppose.
- dvaun 5y ago
  I agree with this viewpoint. A tool which increases how rapidly we can output code—correct code—would allow for more time spent on hard tasks. I can see the quality of some "commodity" software increasing as a result of tools in this realm.
mastax 5y ago
Intel put itself out of business since all the world's computing needs can now be done on one CPU. Or, perhaps, lower unit costs of computing lead to far far greater demand for computing since it became practical to apply to more domains.
Gronky 5y ago
In just 2-3 years time DL algorithms will have as many synapses (parameters) as the human brain. The only thing needed to teach such algorithm to program better than us it to say to it that program needs to be faster, more secure and more user friendly (it's not impossible to teach this to DL alg.). This "tool" will make our work 90% easier in the next few years, so unless we have much more work to do we will earn much less and juniors will most likely be not needed anymore...

tux1968 5y ago

How many jobs have developers helped displace in business and industry? I don't think it's controversial that we become fair game for that same automation process we've been leading.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Indeed. It should be the goal of society to automate away as much work as possible. If there are perverse incentives working against this then we should correct them.
- gugagore 5y ago
  1. How do you define work differently from "that which should be automated"? 2. While I agree with your stance, it is not by itself sufficient. If you provide the automation but you do not correct the perverse incentives (or you worry about correcting them only later) that you mention, then you are contributing to widening the disparity between a category of workers (who have now lost their leverage) and those with assets and capital (who have a reduced need for workers).
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    I agree, the fact we're even talking about this is evidence that our society has the perverse incentive baked in and we should be aware of and seek to address that. Regardless, programmers would be hypocritical to decry having their jobs automated away.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    That's why it's best to get unions or support systems (like UBI) before they're needed. It's hard to organize and build systems when you have no leverage, influence, or power left.
  - literallycancer 5y ago
    Why is the disparity bad?
    - gugagore 5y ago
      What do you mean by "bad"? If you're asking why it makes sense to structure society with an eye toward avoiding disparity, then it's enough to just observe empirically that people have an aversion to unfair treatment. And not just people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_inequity_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_inequity_aversion If you're asking why do people respond the way they do to disparity, then I can only speculate that it has something to do with the meaning of life.
- spec-obs 5y ago
  I would be up for that, if said society did not leave us destitute as a result
- amw-zero 5y ago
  Human beings need something to do to have a fulfilling life. I do not agree at all that the ultimate goal of society is to automate everything that’s possible. I think that will be horrible overall for society.
  - kyawzazaw 5y ago
    I typically find other things fulfill my life more than work.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    My job is probably the least fulfilling activity in my life and I'm sure that goes for a lot of people. By your reasoning, maybe we don't need backhoes and should just hire a bunch of guys with spoons instead?
serf 5y ago
>How many jobs have developers helped displace in business and industry? I don't think it's controversial that we become fair game for that same automation process we've been leading. historically when has that sort of 'tit-for-tat' style of argument ever been helpful? the correct approach would be "we've observed first hand the problems that we've cause for society, how can we avoid creating such problems for any person in the future?" It might seem self-serving, and it is, but 'two wrongs don't make a right'. Let's try to fix such problems rather than serving our sentence as condemned individuals.
- tux1968 5y ago
  > historically when has that sort of 'tit-for-tat' style of argument ever been helpful? It's not tit-for-tat, it's a wake up call. As in, what exactly do you think we've been doing with our skills and time? > ""we've observed first hand the problems that we've cause for society"... But not everyone agrees that this is actually a problem. There was a time when being a blacksmith or a weaver was a very highly paid profession, and as technology improved and the workforce became larger, large wages could no longer be commanded. Of course the exact same thing is going to happen to developers, at least to some extent.
pizza234 5y ago
> How many jobs have developers helped displace in business and industry? How many? > I don't think it's controversial that we become fair game for that same automation process we've been leading. This is not correct. A human (developer) displacing another human (business person) is entirely different than a tool (AI bot) replacing a human (developer). Regardless, this is the Lump of Labour fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy). In this case, it is assumed that the global amount of development work is fixed, so that, if AI takes a part of it, the equivalent workforce in terms of developers, will be out of job. Especially in the field of SWE, this is obviously false. It also needs to be seen what this technology will actually do. SWE is a complex field, way more than typing a few routines. In best case (technologically speaking) this will be an augmentation.
- tux1968 5y ago
  > A human (developer) displacing another human (business person) is entirely different That's not what is happening though, a few developers replace thousands of business and industry people with automated tools. Say, automated route planning for package delivery, would take many thousands of humans if not for the AI bots that do the job instead. > SWE is a complex field, way more than typing a few routines. In best case (technologically speaking) this will be an augmentation. Of course there will always be some jobs for humans to do. Just like there are still jobs for humans loading thread into the automated looms and such. But your arguments against automation displacing programming jobs ring hollow. People said the same thing about chess playing programs, they would never be able to understand the subtlety or complexity like a human could.
  - pizza234 5y ago
    > That's not what is happening though, a few developers replace thousands of business and industry people with automated tools. Say, automated route planning for package delivery, would take many thousands of humans if not for the AI bots that do the job instead. Without reading and understanding the lump of labour fallacy, it can't be understood the relation between the fallacy and the displacement of jobs. In short, the fallacy is not incompatible with the displacement argument; the difference is in the implications. > But your arguments against automation displacing programming jobs ring hollow. People said the same thing about chess playing programs, they would never be able to understand the subtlety or complexity like a human could. Chess is a finite problem, SWE isn't, so they can't be compared.
cnvm 5y ago
Nothing is inevitable. Doctors and lawyers have protected their professions successfully for centuries. Only some software developers seem interested in replacing themselves in order to enrich their corporate masters (mains?) even further. Just don't use this tool!
- tux1968 5y ago
  > Doctors and lawyers have protected their professions successfully for centuries. And one could argue that this means we all pay more for health and legal services than we otherwise would. You have to calculate both costs and benefits; what price does society pay for those few people having very high paying jobs?
- mason55 5y ago
  This tool only replaces a small part of a good programmer and just further highlights the differences between people blindly writing code and people building actual systems. The challenge in software development is understanding the real world processes and constraints and turning them into a design for a functional & resilient system that doesn't collapse as people add every little idea that pops into their head. If the hard part was "typing in code" then programmers would have been replaced long ago. But most people can't even verbally explain what they do as a series of steps & decision points such that a coherent and robust process can be documented. Once you have that it's easy to turn into code.
- literallycancer 5y ago
  This feels like people protesting against automation by not using the automated checkout machines at a store. Go ahead, faster queues for me.

natfriedman 5y ago

We think that software development is entering its third wave of productivity change. The first was the creation of tools like compilers, debuggers, garbage collectors, and languages that made developers more productive. The second was open source where a global community of developers came together to build on each other's work. The third revolution will be the use of AI in coding. The problems we spend our days solving may change. But there will always be problems for humans to solve.

xna 5y ago
Let's solve the problem of replacing CEOs next. The above paragraph could have been written by GPT-3 already.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  I think you’re looking at the problem the wrong way. This provides less strong engineering talent with more leverage. The CEO (which could be you!) gets closer to being a CTO with less experience and context necessary (recall businesses that run on old janky codebases or no code platforms; they don’t have to be elegant, they simply have to work). It all boils down to who is capturing the value for the effort and time expended. If a mediocre software engineer can compete against senior engineers with such augmentation, that seems like a win. Less time on learning language incantations, more time spent delivering value to those who will pay for it.
  - foobarbazetc 5y ago
    That's not really how it's going to go though. Just look at what your average person is able to accomplish with Excel. Your own example of the CEO becoming a CTO can be used in every level and part of the business. Now the receptionist is building office automation tools because they can describe what they want in plain English and have this thing spit out code.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago

dragonwriter 5y ago

> This is obviously controversial, since we are thinking about how this could displace a large portion of developers. It... couldn't, in net. Tools which improve developer productivity increase the number of developers hired and the number of tasks for which it is worthwhile to employ them and the market clearing price for development work. See, for examples, the whole history of the computing industry as we’ve added more layers of automation between “conceptual design for software” and “bit patterns in hardware implementing that conceptual design as concrete software”. It might displace or disadvantage some developers in specific (though I doubt a large portion) by shifting the relative value of particular subskills within the set used in development, I suppose.

dvaun 5y ago
I agree with this viewpoint. A tool which increases how rapidly we can output code—correct code—would allow for more time spent on hard tasks. I can see the quality of some "commodity" software increasing as a result of tools in this realm.

mastax 5y ago

Intel put itself out of business since all the world's computing needs can now be done on one CPU. Or, perhaps, lower unit costs of computing lead to far far greater demand for computing since it became practical to apply to more domains.

Gronky 5y ago

In just 2-3 years time DL algorithms will have as many synapses (parameters) as the human brain. The only thing needed to teach such algorithm to program better than us it to say to it that program needs to be faster, more secure and more user friendly (it's not impossible to teach this to DL alg.). This "tool" will make our work 90% easier in the next few years, so unless we have much more work to do we will earn much less and juniors will most likely be not needed anymore...