12 ms·

These systems don't solve the problems you're solving? Not yet, but give it a couple years. You will join the taxi drivers, and so will I.

quonn 5y ago
Yawn. Seriously, don‘t worry about it.
- 37ef_ced3 5y ago
  First they came for Lee Sedol, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a professional game player. Then they came for the taxi drivers, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a taxi driver. Then they came for the frontend programmers, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a frontend programmer. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
  - pvaldes 5y ago
    > they came for me They tried, but there was not any taxi on sight
ResearchCode 5y ago
Mind that those taxis were all supposed to drive themselves since 2018.
- ctdonath 5y ago
  Self driving cars have been in development for ~30 years. We’re remarkably close to taxis driving themselves.
  - cmoscoso 5y ago
    Give it a few decades.
    - zzzbra 5y ago
      the correct timeline
  - na85 5y ago
    In California maybe. We're a lot farther off from self driving taxis in places where it snows, like Toronto or Chicago.
bumby 5y ago
"insert a Russian book at one end and come out with an English book at the other," Doctor Dostert predicted that "five, perhaps three years hence, interlingual meaning conversion by electronic process in important functional areas of several languages may well be an accomplished fact."[1] -IBM Press Release 1954 regarding the 701 translator Predicting the problem will be solved in a few short years is the easy part. Execution to realize those predictions is much harder. [1] https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/701/701_translator.html https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/701/701_translator....
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  It would be easy to translate any book into any other book (if every language was a one-to-one variant of each other with no differences in slang or metaphor or cultural backdrop that converts simple turns of phrases into a medley of aphorisms each deserving of their own short stories.) Other than that all you need is a camera, a computer and a dictionary.
  - bumby 5y ago
    If that were true, we should expect to be able to feed that initial quote through multiple translations with minimal meaning loss. Here is the result of translating that entire phrase from English -> Greek -> Serbian -> Creole -> English with a popular translating tool: "put a Russian book at one end and an English book at the other, ”predicted Dr. Dostert." It completely loses its original meaning not to mention the latter half of the quote. I think the constraint of "if every language was a one-to-one variant" is too constricting to be of use in the real world. The reason why this is hard is because that rule rarely holds true. Language is more about communicating concepts than just words. Translating one-to-one concepts is much harder because you need to understand context.
    - BizarroLand 5y ago
      Ok, I didn't think I was subtle but I was exceedingly sarcastic in my reply. I don't think any language is 1 to 1 with any other language, and expecting to be able to directly translate with a simple dictionary is patently absurd.
qualudeheart 5y ago
Neither of you is going to be a taxi driver because taxi driving is easier to automate than software engineering. Part of me is pessimistic about AI programming tools, part of me thinks they’ll only enhance the agency of existing programmers. Either way taxi driving is probably easier to automate and only requires modifications to Tesla’s self driving tech.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > pessimistic about AI programming tools I suspect that these tools (if they do anything at all, anyway) will just make it harder to learn programming as a newcomer - just as all the advances in programming that have come about in my lifetime have. IDE's are great, until they do something you didn't expect, and then you have to understand what it is they're automating in order to figure out how to get them to do what it is you really want. Try explaining a Java classpath or dependency problem to somebody who's never opened a command-line terminal before. Docker is great - until it expects to find something that you happen to not have installed. What will probably happen here is that you and I will be fine, because we'll be able to effortlessly wield these new tools as they're just doing quickly what we used to do slowly, but new students to programming will have an even steeper hill to climb than we did.
brundolf 5y ago
The taxi drivers haven't been replaced by computers yet either.
handrous 5y ago
You mean we'll become taxi drivers, or we'll join them in unemployment due to self-driving cars? If the latter, that's great because it means I'm good for at least 20 more years of this career.
dgb23 5y ago
There are two things that I want to address here. For one I still call a Taxi when I need one. Happy to pay a bit of extra to get a professional driver. I don't want to bash on people using other services or people providing those, but it's not for me. Similarly my clients call me and my colleagues because they have a problem that needs solving, we solve it partly with programming because that is how we can solve it exactly, reliably and freely. We don't typically use low-code tools because they can trap us and they don't scale with our ability and understanding, and the productivity they promise is true for narrow uses. Our clients don't use them because it will and has taken them too much time to learn and use them with mediocre to (really) bad results, they want the problem to be taken care of and are willing to make a trade. The second point is that I simply refuse to stop adapting and learning. I'm happily adopting technology into my repertoire when the tradeoff is worth it. Analyzing and understanding those tradeoffs is part of the job. Expanding knowledge is part of the job. And this was always true for anyone who works in software related fields, our community always has had to adapt, adopt and evolve, balancing pragmatism and curiosity.

quonn 5y ago

Yawn. Seriously, don‘t worry about it.

37ef_ced3 5y ago
First they came for Lee Sedol, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a professional game player. Then they came for the taxi drivers, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a taxi driver. Then they came for the frontend programmers, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a frontend programmer. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
- pvaldes 5y ago
  > they came for me They tried, but there was not any taxi on sight

ResearchCode 5y ago

Mind that those taxis were all supposed to drive themselves since 2018.

ctdonath 5y ago
Self driving cars have been in development for ~30 years. We’re remarkably close to taxis driving themselves.
- cmoscoso 5y ago
  Give it a few decades.
  - zzzbra 5y ago
    the correct timeline
- na85 5y ago
  In California maybe. We're a lot farther off from self driving taxis in places where it snows, like Toronto or Chicago.

bumby 5y ago

"insert a Russian book at one end and come out with an English book at the other," Doctor Dostert predicted that "five, perhaps three years hence, interlingual meaning conversion by electronic process in important functional areas of several languages may well be an accomplished fact."[1] -IBM Press Release 1954 regarding the 701 translator Predicting the problem will be solved in a few short years is the easy part. Execution to realize those predictions is much harder. [1] https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/701/701_translator.html https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/701/701_translator....

BizarroLand 5y ago
It would be easy to translate any book into any other book (if every language was a one-to-one variant of each other with no differences in slang or metaphor or cultural backdrop that converts simple turns of phrases into a medley of aphorisms each deserving of their own short stories.) Other than that all you need is a camera, a computer and a dictionary.
- bumby 5y ago
  If that were true, we should expect to be able to feed that initial quote through multiple translations with minimal meaning loss. Here is the result of translating that entire phrase from English -> Greek -> Serbian -> Creole -> English with a popular translating tool: "put a Russian book at one end and an English book at the other, ”predicted Dr. Dostert." It completely loses its original meaning not to mention the latter half of the quote. I think the constraint of "if every language was a one-to-one variant" is too constricting to be of use in the real world. The reason why this is hard is because that rule rarely holds true. Language is more about communicating concepts than just words. Translating one-to-one concepts is much harder because you need to understand context.
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    Ok, I didn't think I was subtle but I was exceedingly sarcastic in my reply. I don't think any language is 1 to 1 with any other language, and expecting to be able to directly translate with a simple dictionary is patently absurd.

qualudeheart 5y ago

Neither of you is going to be a taxi driver because taxi driving is easier to automate than software engineering. Part of me is pessimistic about AI programming tools, part of me thinks they’ll only enhance the agency of existing programmers. Either way taxi driving is probably easier to automate and only requires modifications to Tesla’s self driving tech.

commandlinefan 5y ago
> pessimistic about AI programming tools I suspect that these tools (if they do anything at all, anyway) will just make it harder to learn programming as a newcomer - just as all the advances in programming that have come about in my lifetime have. IDE's are great, until they do something you didn't expect, and then you have to understand what it is they're automating in order to figure out how to get them to do what it is you really want. Try explaining a Java classpath or dependency problem to somebody who's never opened a command-line terminal before. Docker is great - until it expects to find something that you happen to not have installed. What will probably happen here is that you and I will be fine, because we'll be able to effortlessly wield these new tools as they're just doing quickly what we used to do slowly, but new students to programming will have an even steeper hill to climb than we did.

brundolf 5y ago

The taxi drivers haven't been replaced by computers yet either.

handrous 5y ago

You mean we'll become taxi drivers, or we'll join them in unemployment due to self-driving cars? If the latter, that's great because it means I'm good for at least 20 more years of this career.

dgb23 5y ago

There are two things that I want to address here. For one I still call a Taxi when I need one. Happy to pay a bit of extra to get a professional driver. I don't want to bash on people using other services or people providing those, but it's not for me. Similarly my clients call me and my colleagues because they have a problem that needs solving, we solve it partly with programming because that is how we can solve it exactly, reliably and freely. We don't typically use low-code tools because they can trap us and they don't scale with our ability and understanding, and the productivity they promise is true for narrow uses. Our clients don't use them because it will and has taken them too much time to learn and use them with mediocre to (really) bad results, they want the problem to be taken care of and are willing to make a trade. The second point is that I simply refuse to stop adapting and learning. I'm happily adopting technology into my repertoire when the tradeoff is worth it. Analyzing and understanding those tradeoffs is part of the job. Expanding knowledge is part of the job. And this was always true for anyone who works in software related fields, our community always has had to adapt, adopt and evolve, balancing pragmatism and curiosity.