4 ms·

What alternative are you suggesting? Things turned out pretty great economy-wise for people in the UK. So that's a poor example even if Luddites didn't hate te

by dmix 4y ago

What alternative are you suggesting? Things turned out pretty great economy-wise for people in the UK. So that's a poor example even if Luddites didn't hate technology. Not working on the technology wouldn't have done the world any favours (nor the millions of people who wore the more affordable clothes it produced). I personally think it'd be rewarding to make developers lives easier, essentially just saving the countless hours we spend googling + copy/pasting Stackoverflow answers. Co-pilot is merely just one project in this technological development, even if a mega-corp like Microsoft doesn't do it ML is here to stay. If you're concerned that software developers job security is at all at risk from co-pilot than you greatly misunderstand how software engineering works. Auto-completing a few functions you'd copy/paste otherwise (or rewrite for the hundredth time) is a small part of building a piece of software. If they struggle with self-driving cars, I think you'll be alright. At the end-of-the-day there's a big incentive for Github et al to solve this problem, a class action lawsuit is always an overhanging threat. Even if co-pilot doesn't make sense as a business and these pushback shut it down I doubt it will go away. I'm personally confident the industry will eventually figure out the licensing issues. The industry will develop better automated detection systems and if it requires more explicit flagging, no-one is better positioned to apply that technologically than Github.

krageon 4y ago
The luddites were right. Everything is worse because they did not win, which is obvious if you spend a second thinking about what them not winning means: more concentrated wealth, more disenfranchised workers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Yet the public narrative centers around perceived anti-technologism and implied anti-comfortism, wholly ignoring the societal underpinnings of the issue: an increase in power and income inequality amounting to disenfranchisement.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Who wrote and popularized that narrative? The industrialists with printing presses.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Tax is supposed to deal with this to some extent but the rich have the resources to avoid it!
  - Jochim 4y ago
    We've also steadily lowered tax rates over the last 50 years. Many countries are at historically low tax burdens despite rising inequality and no evidence of this improving economic growth.
- cdogl 4y ago
  It’s difficult for me to see how 2022 is worse than 1816 all things considered.
  - Moissanite 4y ago
    Everything is worse than it could have been now, not directly compared to 200 years ago. I find it very hard to believe you didn't understand the suggestion.
    - abduhl 4y ago
      >> Everything is worse than it could have been now Prove it.
  - aziaziazi 4y ago
    Durability, quality and reparability. Most fabrics build today are so fragile and needs to be replaced soon, despite the advance in material and weaving. Most highly qualified workers loves what they do and would stand for keeping they’re output quality up. On the contrary interchangeable cheap workers have no real incentive to that. The factory’s manager is left alone in charge to balance quality versus cheapness, and the last comes with obsolescence (planned or not), which is good for business.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      > Most fabrics build today are so fragile and needs to be replaced soon Because that's what people want. You can get high quality clothes for much cheaper than you could in 1816, but people prefer disposable clothes so they can change their look more often. This is just producers responding to demand.
      - aziaziazi 4y ago
        “People want so producers responds” is a nice but candide eco theory, 2022 looks more like “producers pay for marketing that makes people want” oh and by the way, who’s really paying for the marketing at the end ?
yywwbbn 4y ago
The first few decades of the 19th century were exceptionally grim in the UK though. Poverty and inequality both increased and a reactionary government enacted draconian policies curtailing freedom of speech as Britain was probably closest to the brink of a social revolution as it ever was. It took several decades for things to actually start improving for most common people and most of the actual progress in that area only occurred in the 1940s and 50s. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre for example
tluyben2 4y ago
> If you're concerned that software developers job security is at all at risk from co-pilot than you greatly misunderstand how software engineering works. I think you are vastly underestimating how many professionally employed software developers are replaceable by copilot at this very moment. The managers are not caught up yet and you seem to be lucky not having to work with this type of dev, but I have had 1000s of people I interacted with in a professional capacity over the decades who can be replaced today. Some of those realised this and moved to different positions (for instance, advising how to use ML to replace them: if you cannot beat them…). I mean of course you are right in general but there are millions of ‘developers’ who just look everything up with Google/SO, copy paste and change until it works. You are saying this will make their lives better, I say it will terminate their employment. Anecdote: I know a guy who makes a boatload of money in London programming but has no understanding of things like classes, functional constructs, functions, iterators (he kind of, sometimes, understands loops) etc. He simply copies things and changes them until it works: he moved to frontend (react) as there he is almost not distinguishable from his more capable colleagues because they are all in a ‘put code and see the result’ type of mode anyway and all structures look the same in that framework, so the skeleton function, useXXX etc is all copy paste mostly anyway.
- thdespou 4y ago
  So are you going to report him or you are just whining about why life is unfair? What he does in order to do his job is none of your business as you don't know how his life is behind the scenes.
  - spockz 4y ago
    I read the gp comment as an example of the type of engineer that can be replaced by copilot. Nothing more.
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      Which doesn’t actually seem like a great loss imho… I will admit I’m kind of a “throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks” kind of coder but nobody is paying me boatloads of money to poke at some program until it stops segfaulting, would be nice though.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
andrepd 4y ago
> Not working on the technology wouldn't have done the world any favours (nor the millions of people who wore the more affordable clothes it produced). Did you read the comment you're replying to at all? It says >The Luddites were happy to operate the new looms, they just wanted to realize some of the profit from the savings in labor along with the factory owners. Now maybe you agree maybe you disagree. But if you're just talking past the person you're replying to... what's the point?

by dmix 4y ago

krageon 4y ago

The luddites were right. Everything is worse because they did not win, which is obvious if you spend a second thinking about what them not winning means: more concentrated wealth, more disenfranchised workers.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
eurasiantiger 4y ago
Yet the public narrative centers around perceived anti-technologism and implied anti-comfortism, wholly ignoring the societal underpinnings of the issue: an increase in power and income inequality amounting to disenfranchisement.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Who wrote and popularized that narrative? The industrialists with printing presses.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Tax is supposed to deal with this to some extent but the rich have the resources to avoid it!
- Jochim 4y ago
  We've also steadily lowered tax rates over the last 50 years. Many countries are at historically low tax burdens despite rising inequality and no evidence of this improving economic growth.
cdogl 4y ago
It’s difficult for me to see how 2022 is worse than 1816 all things considered.
- Moissanite 4y ago
  Everything is worse than it could have been now, not directly compared to 200 years ago. I find it very hard to believe you didn't understand the suggestion.
  - abduhl 4y ago
    >> Everything is worse than it could have been now Prove it.
- aziaziazi 4y ago
  Durability, quality and reparability. Most fabrics build today are so fragile and needs to be replaced soon, despite the advance in material and weaving. Most highly qualified workers loves what they do and would stand for keeping they’re output quality up. On the contrary interchangeable cheap workers have no real incentive to that. The factory’s manager is left alone in charge to balance quality versus cheapness, and the last comes with obsolescence (planned or not), which is good for business.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    > Most fabrics build today are so fragile and needs to be replaced soon Because that's what people want. You can get high quality clothes for much cheaper than you could in 1816, but people prefer disposable clothes so they can change their look more often. This is just producers responding to demand.
    - aziaziazi 4y ago
      “People want so producers responds” is a nice but candide eco theory, 2022 looks more like “producers pay for marketing that makes people want” oh and by the way, who’s really paying for the marketing at the end ?

yywwbbn 4y ago

The first few decades of the 19th century were exceptionally grim in the UK though. Poverty and inequality both increased and a reactionary government enacted draconian policies curtailing freedom of speech as Britain was probably closest to the brink of a social revolution as it ever was. It took several decades for things to actually start improving for most common people and most of the actual progress in that area only occurred in the 1940s and 50s. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre for example

tluyben2 4y ago

> If you're concerned that software developers job security is at all at risk from co-pilot than you greatly misunderstand how software engineering works. I think you are vastly underestimating how many professionally employed software developers are replaceable by copilot at this very moment. The managers are not caught up yet and you seem to be lucky not having to work with this type of dev, but I have had 1000s of people I interacted with in a professional capacity over the decades who can be replaced today. Some of those realised this and moved to different positions (for instance, advising how to use ML to replace them: if you cannot beat them…). I mean of course you are right in general but there are millions of ‘developers’ who just look everything up with Google/SO, copy paste and change until it works. You are saying this will make their lives better, I say it will terminate their employment. Anecdote: I know a guy who makes a boatload of money in London programming but has no understanding of things like classes, functional constructs, functions, iterators (he kind of, sometimes, understands loops) etc. He simply copies things and changes them until it works: he moved to frontend (react) as there he is almost not distinguishable from his more capable colleagues because they are all in a ‘put code and see the result’ type of mode anyway and all structures look the same in that framework, so the skeleton function, useXXX etc is all copy paste mostly anyway.

thdespou 4y ago
So are you going to report him or you are just whining about why life is unfair? What he does in order to do his job is none of your business as you don't know how his life is behind the scenes.
- spockz 4y ago
  I read the gp comment as an example of the type of engineer that can be replaced by copilot. Nothing more.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    Which doesn’t actually seem like a great loss imho… I will admit I’m kind of a “throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks” kind of coder but nobody is paying me boatloads of money to poke at some program until it stops segfaulting, would be nice though.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

andrepd 4y ago

> Not working on the technology wouldn't have done the world any favours (nor the millions of people who wore the more affordable clothes it produced). Did you read the comment you're replying to at all? It says >The Luddites were happy to operate the new looms, they just wanted to realize some of the profit from the savings in labor along with the factory owners. Now maybe you agree maybe you disagree. But if you're just talking past the person you're replying to... what's the point?