5 ms·

I agree. However it will increase the bimodal distribution between normal developers and the extremely skilled developers. Salaries on the whole will drop, and

I agree. However it will increase the bimodal distribution between normal developers and the extremely skilled developers. Salaries on the whole will drop, and we likely see an increase in outsourcing. AI can reduce the barriers between languages and cultural customs as well.

jszymborski 3y ago
> AI can reduce the barriers between languages and cultural customs as well. Languages, maybe, but cultural customs? I highly doubt that. Perhaps the perfunctory sort (e.g.: "vous"-ing and "usted"-ing), but there are real differences between cultures in both the work place and and personally that AI can't help you with. Nothing but compassion and a willingness to learn will help you with that one.
- yamazakiwi 3y ago
  It won't remove ALL barriers obviously, but AI can explain quirks, significance, reference, and cultural trends in speech. An AI can dive deep to further comprehension, which will facilitate more cultural understanding through linguistic relativity.
  - jszymborski 3y ago
    I'm sorry, but I'm really not seeing anything here you can't get from a quick web search. LLMs are not a panacea, and there's no way for them to mainline a Comparative Cultures class into you in 5 minutes. There really is no shortcut to compassion and understanding... so much of it is simply taking the time to inform yourself. You can get an LLM to summarize a wiki page on some culture's customs, but there is better content written, edited, and curated by humans on the topic.
    - yamazakiwi 3y ago
      No one is claiming what you're arguing against. We're simply saying that AI can give you more cultural understanding through deep diving into language. Not that opening chatgpt makes you understand everything about a culture or a group of people. No one here was saying LLM's are a panacea for cultural misunderstanding and it's bizarre you think anyone on HN would believe that. You've created an imaginary argument for the sake of positing your opinion. You did however bring up willingness, which is an important consideration.
      - jszymborski 3y ago
        > You've created an imaginary argument for the sake of positing your opinion. You did however bring up willingness, which is an important consideration. This is getting rather pointed and I ask you to consider whether it's just to be questioning my motives for posting. It's clear you think I've not addressed your argument, the civil thing is to attribute that to a perceived misunderstanding and not some desire to speak past you with my own opinion.
        yamazakiwi 3y ago
        My civility seems to be struggling today, thanks for pointing this out!
- stuckinhell 3y ago
  You can doubt all you like, I'm seeing major gains in efficiency with our Vietnamese outsourced teams.
sangnoir 3y ago
I bet AI-reliant developers are going to be more reviled than PHP developers way back during peak PHP-hate times.
- jstx1 3y ago
  Maybe but only if you're imagining completely new and inexperienced people who wouldn't be able to get anything done without AI entering the field - I can see how that can cause an emotional reaction. But if you compare two experienced developers - one of them uses AI, the other doesn't - I don't see what's there to be reviled, one of them just found a tool that makes them more productive.
  - adventured 3y ago
    The reviled part of it is going to come from the bottom 2/3 of people writing code today getting brutalized economically (permanent job destruction and the lowering of income for those in that segment that manage to find jobs writing code and or managing AI that writes the code). The median software developer in the US is solidly earning six figures. That's going away, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to be angry about it. Their previously solid path up and out of the middle class is about to vanish. They were betting on that. A large number of people are in school today thinking that median software developer job, writing code, paying $110k per year + great benefits, is still going to be there in 2033.
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      Developers who'll use AI as a crutch will be no different to entry-level, PHP-only developers of yore who relied on StackOverflow and will be reviled for the same reason: their code will be buggy & inconsistent. I was an experienced polyglot developer and I occasionally used PHP for rapid prototyping, but the hate knew no nuance on HN and elsewhere.
      - adventured 3y ago
        It's not going to be a crutch. It's going to be a large segment of lower paid grunts, doing work that will be less difficult and more mind numbing. The requirements will still be modestly high, you'll need a degree, and you'll get paid less than today's software developers (in some cases far less). A software developer in the future will be someone who only interfaces with AI centric tools, with the AI writing essentially all the code. It'll be rare to directly tweak code for the typical software developer. It will no longer mean someone who writes code to develop software, it will mean someone who uses AI tools to develop software. What you think of as a software developer today, isn't what people will know them as in another 15 years. It'll happen fast. The code is going to get abstracted away. An 18 year old in 2040 that is looking to become a software developer will go to school for how to build software, which will mean using AI tools to do it; they won't go to school to learn how to program. In fact they won't know much about writing code at all. In several decades it will be a far more rare skill, that will be viewed as a bit archaic, to still directly write software code. Stories will abound about the old times when millions of people used to directly write code, and they got paid ridiculously well to do it. That problem got solved. One of the great benefits of AI will be abstracting away complexity (complexity as far as the human mind is concerned), and writing software code is a big juicy target that won't be difficult to abstract away (for something like GPT version 13).
zabzonk 3y ago
yeah, people seem to have forgotten all those derided developers that spent their time copy/pasting code from stack overflow into their project. which is basically what gpt is doing.

jszymborski 3y ago

> AI can reduce the barriers between languages and cultural customs as well. Languages, maybe, but cultural customs? I highly doubt that. Perhaps the perfunctory sort (e.g.: "vous"-ing and "usted"-ing), but there are real differences between cultures in both the work place and and personally that AI can't help you with. Nothing but compassion and a willingness to learn will help you with that one.

yamazakiwi 3y ago
It won't remove ALL barriers obviously, but AI can explain quirks, significance, reference, and cultural trends in speech. An AI can dive deep to further comprehension, which will facilitate more cultural understanding through linguistic relativity.
- jszymborski 3y ago
  I'm sorry, but I'm really not seeing anything here you can't get from a quick web search. LLMs are not a panacea, and there's no way for them to mainline a Comparative Cultures class into you in 5 minutes. There really is no shortcut to compassion and understanding... so much of it is simply taking the time to inform yourself. You can get an LLM to summarize a wiki page on some culture's customs, but there is better content written, edited, and curated by humans on the topic.
  - yamazakiwi 3y ago
    No one is claiming what you're arguing against. We're simply saying that AI can give you more cultural understanding through deep diving into language. Not that opening chatgpt makes you understand everything about a culture or a group of people. No one here was saying LLM's are a panacea for cultural misunderstanding and it's bizarre you think anyone on HN would believe that. You've created an imaginary argument for the sake of positing your opinion. You did however bring up willingness, which is an important consideration.
    - jszymborski 3y ago
      > You've created an imaginary argument for the sake of positing your opinion. You did however bring up willingness, which is an important consideration. This is getting rather pointed and I ask you to consider whether it's just to be questioning my motives for posting. It's clear you think I've not addressed your argument, the civil thing is to attribute that to a perceived misunderstanding and not some desire to speak past you with my own opinion.
      - yamazakiwi 3y ago
        My civility seems to be struggling today, thanks for pointing this out!
stuckinhell 3y ago
You can doubt all you like, I'm seeing major gains in efficiency with our Vietnamese outsourced teams.

sangnoir 3y ago

I bet AI-reliant developers are going to be more reviled than PHP developers way back during peak PHP-hate times.

jstx1 3y ago
Maybe but only if you're imagining completely new and inexperienced people who wouldn't be able to get anything done without AI entering the field - I can see how that can cause an emotional reaction. But if you compare two experienced developers - one of them uses AI, the other doesn't - I don't see what's there to be reviled, one of them just found a tool that makes them more productive.
- adventured 3y ago
  The reviled part of it is going to come from the bottom 2/3 of people writing code today getting brutalized economically (permanent job destruction and the lowering of income for those in that segment that manage to find jobs writing code and or managing AI that writes the code). The median software developer in the US is solidly earning six figures. That's going away, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to be angry about it. Their previously solid path up and out of the middle class is about to vanish. They were betting on that. A large number of people are in school today thinking that median software developer job, writing code, paying $110k per year + great benefits, is still going to be there in 2033.
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    Developers who'll use AI as a crutch will be no different to entry-level, PHP-only developers of yore who relied on StackOverflow and will be reviled for the same reason: their code will be buggy & inconsistent. I was an experienced polyglot developer and I occasionally used PHP for rapid prototyping, but the hate knew no nuance on HN and elsewhere.
    - adventured 3y ago
      It's not going to be a crutch. It's going to be a large segment of lower paid grunts, doing work that will be less difficult and more mind numbing. The requirements will still be modestly high, you'll need a degree, and you'll get paid less than today's software developers (in some cases far less). A software developer in the future will be someone who only interfaces with AI centric tools, with the AI writing essentially all the code. It'll be rare to directly tweak code for the typical software developer. It will no longer mean someone who writes code to develop software, it will mean someone who uses AI tools to develop software. What you think of as a software developer today, isn't what people will know them as in another 15 years. It'll happen fast. The code is going to get abstracted away. An 18 year old in 2040 that is looking to become a software developer will go to school for how to build software, which will mean using AI tools to do it; they won't go to school to learn how to program. In fact they won't know much about writing code at all. In several decades it will be a far more rare skill, that will be viewed as a bit archaic, to still directly write software code. Stories will abound about the old times when millions of people used to directly write code, and they got paid ridiculously well to do it. That problem got solved. One of the great benefits of AI will be abstracting away complexity (complexity as far as the human mind is concerned), and writing software code is a big juicy target that won't be difficult to abstract away (for something like GPT version 13).

zabzonk 3y ago

yeah, people seem to have forgotten all those derided developers that spent their time copy/pasting code from stack overflow into their project. which is basically what gpt is doing.