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OK - you and this other kind soul in the thread at 5 AM PST (my time) are very much helping me understand how much I suck because you're exactly saying my point

OK - you and this other kind soul in the thread at 5 AM PST (my time) are very much helping me understand how much I suck because you're exactly saying my point. People are looking at Devin and saying: "Gah, Parlor Trick!" GPT hasn't replaced the programmer! But what they're missing is that the bulk of what an experienced programmer does is search Google for Stack Overflow posts and use their extensive expertise to assemble together solutions. I am absolutely not saying that GPT has replaced the programmer--I'm saying people are too caught up in that to see what's really happened: My job, as a 24 year programmer, has been largely replaced. It hasn't been replaced, but it is largely automated freeing me to do other activities or more of the old activity at a new scale. What do you think now?

aurareturn 2y ago
The bulk of what an experienced programmer does is communicate with business leaders on project goals, align teams, clarify specs, suggest specs, test technologies that can accomplish said goals, create a plan to adopt that technology, improve the efficiency of the team, fix really hard bugs that just broke production while customers are angry and your boss wants to kill you. I don't do that much Googling. It's a small part of my job.
- johnwheeler 2y ago
  > I don't do that much Googling. If you're a software engineer and you're saying that, you're full of shit.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    Why would I be full of shit. I go into the office for 8 hours. How many of those 8 hours do you think I spend on Google as a senior programmer? Probably 30 mins on average at most is my guess.
    - verdverm 2y ago
      I concur, but would say the amount of search depends on the current task. Much of it is getting to the long-form content that LLMs would summarize, but you actually need to read the original source to get a complete understanding or find the quirks. I'm currently working on something that requires above average searching, but it is definitely something that an LLM fails hard at and requires pouring through copious numbers of content looking for the needle in the haystack. The current LLMs are ok at average or common tasks, but are miserable at anything uncommon, product of their architecture and training (currently trying to figure out how to get CentOS 7 -> Rocky 8 inplace upgrade with LUKS working, which is not supported in leapp...)

aurareturn 2y ago

The bulk of what an experienced programmer does is communicate with business leaders on project goals, align teams, clarify specs, suggest specs, test technologies that can accomplish said goals, create a plan to adopt that technology, improve the efficiency of the team, fix really hard bugs that just broke production while customers are angry and your boss wants to kill you. I don't do that much Googling. It's a small part of my job.

johnwheeler 2y ago
> I don't do that much Googling. If you're a software engineer and you're saying that, you're full of shit.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  Why would I be full of shit. I go into the office for 8 hours. How many of those 8 hours do you think I spend on Google as a senior programmer? Probably 30 mins on average at most is my guess.
  - verdverm 2y ago
    I concur, but would say the amount of search depends on the current task. Much of it is getting to the long-form content that LLMs would summarize, but you actually need to read the original source to get a complete understanding or find the quirks. I'm currently working on something that requires above average searching, but it is definitely something that an LLM fails hard at and requires pouring through copious numbers of content looking for the needle in the haystack. The current LLMs are ok at average or common tasks, but are miserable at anything uncommon, product of their architecture and training (currently trying to figure out how to get CentOS 7 -> Rocky 8 inplace upgrade with LUKS working, which is not supported in leapp...)