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I feel like we'll be having the same arguments forever. Sure LLMs bring some issues but programmers will always find ways to write bad code no matter what tooli

by s_dev 2y ago

I feel like we'll be having the same arguments forever. Sure LLMs bring some issues but programmers will always find ways to write bad code no matter what tooling or techniques we have available. His critique is basically the same as 'calculators' will make us poorer at mathematics -- at lest in Europe PISA Maths skills have been steadily increasing since the introduction of calculators to school syllabi.

patrickmay 2y ago
The analogy to calculators isn't particularly close. A calculator will help with the mechanics of arithmetic or even graphing but it won't help a student who doesn't understand when and why to multiply, add, or subtract. Copilot will generate working code (for some definition of "working") that the programmer might not understand at all.
- rincebrain 2y ago
  Graphing calculators, with applications that you can black box pattern match and plug into, might be argued to have done so, since you don't need to understand the machinery, just pattern match on the problem type.
darby_nine 2y ago
> His critique is basically the same as 'calculators' will make us poorer at mathematics Calculators did make us bad at arithmetic. It's just that people stopped caring. I don't think this is bad, though, anything to avoid typing repetitive boilerplate, which is pretty miserable regardless of your skill level.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  Writing made us bad at remembering. Socrates was famously a critic of writing for this reason[1]. If we can say anything about the effectiveness of the argument, it's that it's completely impotent against new technology and tools. 1. https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/ https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/
  - coldtea 2y ago
    Well, Socrates was right. Writing did make us bad at remembering.
    - pdabbadabba 2y ago
      Perhaps worse at remembering, but many orders of magnitude better at preserving, accessing, and learning from information about the past.
      - darby_nine 2y ago
        > and learning from information about the past. You'd assume so based on the prevalence of information, but I'm not sure there's any evidence of this. Hell from my own interactions about the past with others, you might as well have completely wiped everything before WWII from cultural consciousness and pretended like the last 80 years are the only ones that matter. Some days it's feeling more like the last 40 years represent the only world people can even imagine, let alone have an opinion on.
        pdabbadabba 2y ago
        It's a mixed bag, of course. But it really makes me wonder: before the advent of writing, what would it have been like to think about an event that happened 80 years ago--outside just about everyone's living memory? It seems like those events would already have begun to recede into the age of myth! You might not even have a great sense of exactly how long ago it was. On the other hand, thanks to the invention of writing, we have a chance at having at least some reliable knowledge about how people lived thousands of years ago, across the world. (I assume your comment is at least partially tongue in cheek. But I take your point that, just because writing gives us incredible ability to make records and to learn about the past does not mean people will use it.)
      - coldtea 2y ago
        In stored form, sure. Otherwise the information the average person knows about the past is probably even worse, pop memes aside ("Cleopatra's nose", "Egyptians worshipped cats"). Even the immediate past - like 10-20 years before people were born, would be a foreign concept, if it weren't for the ocassional period movie and tv series reference.
- Alupis 2y ago
  Until someone opens a 487 line PR, with a near-zero understanding of what the changes actually do. It's one thing to use LLM's to assist you in understanding the codebase, and even helping to write some of the changes. It's another thing entirely to blindly trust the LLM - which is what ~90% of LLM users are going to do, especially given enough time. We've all heard the tall-tales about people crafting prompts and getting complete video games as output, etc. They're nearly entirely BS, but people believe in that type of result and therefore will believe their results are just as good. We see this now - the stories of non-programmers using ChatGPT to hallucinate-up poorly understood/written scripts/webpages and then getting really upset at their IT team for refusing to use it. "They're just afraid AI will steal their jobs!"...
lainga 2y ago
Sure! sqrt(-1) is actually (-1/12), as proved by Ramanujan summation.
Etheryte 2y ago
A more apt comparison would be someone always telling you how to solve a maths problem without you trying to figure it out yourself. I think it's pretty clear how that would be detrimental to skill progression.
coldtea 2y ago
>at lest in Europe PISA Maths skills have been steadily increasing since the introduction of calculators to school syllabi. Has it really? https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D5612AQG5D1oqhEfgnQ/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1702460105588?e=1731542400&v=beta&t=nC5hZv8QudVAC4QxrwDhD6afJ7eWImUnYn04ix1AeLk https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D5612AQG5D1oqhEfgnQ/art... And calculators are mere helper tools, they don't take over the solving/thinking part.
knallfrosch 2y ago
I was surprised to see the author didn't provide a single source to support his ramblings. Without any data to support our arguments, I doubt we'll settle these questions, ever.

by s_dev 2y ago

patrickmay 2y ago

The analogy to calculators isn't particularly close. A calculator will help with the mechanics of arithmetic or even graphing but it won't help a student who doesn't understand when and why to multiply, add, or subtract. Copilot will generate working code (for some definition of "working") that the programmer might not understand at all.

rincebrain 2y ago
Graphing calculators, with applications that you can black box pattern match and plug into, might be argued to have done so, since you don't need to understand the machinery, just pattern match on the problem type.

darby_nine 2y ago

> His critique is basically the same as 'calculators' will make us poorer at mathematics Calculators did make us bad at arithmetic. It's just that people stopped caring. I don't think this is bad, though, anything to avoid typing repetitive boilerplate, which is pretty miserable regardless of your skill level.

kelseyfrog 2y ago
Writing made us bad at remembering. Socrates was famously a critic of writing for this reason[1]. If we can say anything about the effectiveness of the argument, it's that it's completely impotent against new technology and tools. 1. https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/ https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/
- coldtea 2y ago
  Well, Socrates was right. Writing did make us bad at remembering.
  - pdabbadabba 2y ago
    Perhaps worse at remembering, but many orders of magnitude better at preserving, accessing, and learning from information about the past.
    - darby_nine 2y ago
      > and learning from information about the past. You'd assume so based on the prevalence of information, but I'm not sure there's any evidence of this. Hell from my own interactions about the past with others, you might as well have completely wiped everything before WWII from cultural consciousness and pretended like the last 80 years are the only ones that matter. Some days it's feeling more like the last 40 years represent the only world people can even imagine, let alone have an opinion on.
      - pdabbadabba 2y ago
        It's a mixed bag, of course. But it really makes me wonder: before the advent of writing, what would it have been like to think about an event that happened 80 years ago--outside just about everyone's living memory? It seems like those events would already have begun to recede into the age of myth! You might not even have a great sense of exactly how long ago it was. On the other hand, thanks to the invention of writing, we have a chance at having at least some reliable knowledge about how people lived thousands of years ago, across the world. (I assume your comment is at least partially tongue in cheek. But I take your point that, just because writing gives us incredible ability to make records and to learn about the past does not mean people will use it.)
    - coldtea 2y ago
      In stored form, sure. Otherwise the information the average person knows about the past is probably even worse, pop memes aside ("Cleopatra's nose", "Egyptians worshipped cats"). Even the immediate past - like 10-20 years before people were born, would be a foreign concept, if it weren't for the ocassional period movie and tv series reference.
Alupis 2y ago
Until someone opens a 487 line PR, with a near-zero understanding of what the changes actually do. It's one thing to use LLM's to assist you in understanding the codebase, and even helping to write some of the changes. It's another thing entirely to blindly trust the LLM - which is what ~90% of LLM users are going to do, especially given enough time. We've all heard the tall-tales about people crafting prompts and getting complete video games as output, etc. They're nearly entirely BS, but people believe in that type of result and therefore will believe their results are just as good. We see this now - the stories of non-programmers using ChatGPT to hallucinate-up poorly understood/written scripts/webpages and then getting really upset at their IT team for refusing to use it. "They're just afraid AI will steal their jobs!"...

lainga 2y ago

Sure! sqrt(-1) is actually (-1/12), as proved by Ramanujan summation.

Etheryte 2y ago

A more apt comparison would be someone always telling you how to solve a maths problem without you trying to figure it out yourself. I think it's pretty clear how that would be detrimental to skill progression.

coldtea 2y ago

>at lest in Europe PISA Maths skills have been steadily increasing since the introduction of calculators to school syllabi. Has it really? https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D5612AQG5D1oqhEfgnQ/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1702460105588?e=1731542400&v=beta&t=nC5hZv8QudVAC4QxrwDhD6afJ7eWImUnYn04ix1AeLk https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D5612AQG5D1oqhEfgnQ/art... And calculators are mere helper tools, they don't take over the solving/thinking part.

knallfrosch 2y ago

I was surprised to see the author didn't provide a single source to support his ramblings. Without any data to support our arguments, I doubt we'll settle these questions, ever.