6 ms·

I agree but it's important to know that AI is a tool that devs need to understand and incorporate into their daily work life.

skeptrune 2y ago
100%, but my mental exhaustion grows every time I see a post claiming Claude or some other LLM can build your whole company
mattl 2y ago
Nobody needs to incorporate AI into their daily work life.
al_borland 2y ago
Is a statement like this any different than someone saying developers needed modern IDEs 20 years ago? Yet we still have people in the industry using vim or emacs, and are successful. I will occasionally ask Copilot for something when I’m in a hurry, and the there is some minor thing I don’t care about that someone is telling me needs to get done. The other 99% of the time, I’m doing it myself. Any time I reach for AI instead of doing it myself, I’m learning less, growing less, and understanding my code less. Why would anyone want this?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- lz400 2y ago
  I think it's more like the move to cloud. It didn't make developers obsolete but it DID make some types of jobs semi-obsolete like sysadmins and dbas. It also created new jobs like DevOps.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    People are still being sysadmins and dbas, with new titles. It's just the MBAs that think they're gone.
    - majormajor 2y ago
      Now you get to pay a team of system engineers AND you get to pay Amazon crazy monthly bills! But you get multiple availability zones and regions with much lower capital cost! (But do you need them?)
  - gregjor 2y ago
    No. Moving to cloud computing only obsoleted managing physical hardware. System admins and DBAs just as necessary as before. In my experience even more necessary because managers and programmers think they don’t need sysadmins or DBAs until they have messed things up so bad they have to call in an expert.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    > but it DID make some types of jobs semi-obsolete like sysadmins and dbas. It also created new jobs like DevOps. Er, that's the same thing. The only change is that HR thinks my position is labeled "devops engineer" now instead of "sysadmin", but it's the same job.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  once you realize you are 30-40-50..% slower than your peers you will not only want it but need it to keep being employed. saying “i am learning less, growing less…” is just so amazingly shortsighted, like farmers when first tractors arrived going “fuck this, imma walk this field in 100 degree weather - doing it myself”(sound familiar?).
  - grayhatter 2y ago
    I reject the assertion that it's slower. But even if I didn't, I'd still choose the team that delivers 1 month later with high quality code, over the team that cranks out dozens of half broken features they have no idea how to support. Mandating I spend the same amount on a team able to barely maintain that team's mistakes. I know I'm just making the "buy once, cry once" argument, and I understand that's "not how business works" but I'm an engineer, not a manager trading company interest for a promo.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      sounds fun but your days are numbered, much like the farmer I mentioned in the previous comment were when the first tractors rolled into town…
      - aspenmayer 2y ago
        To extend the analogy, I'm reminded of the pets vs cattle debate in the context of managing computer systems, and how that distinction continues to shake out. I suspect that as personal computing moves toward cloud computing, following businesses, we will see tension between local-first AI solutions and cloud AI products. Seeing as how the same megacorps that build personal computer pets and pet products are building cloud computing AI cattle products with AI that gives the benefits of pets with some of the upsides of cattle as well. Local compute vs cloud compute is not the same distinction as that between pets vs cattle, but it has many of the same market participants, and with both Microsoft and Apple making moves to bundle AI capabilities with other cloud products for free with subscription value-add-on features is interesting. These features entice users into the vendor walled gardens, nudging users subtly away from local-first pets. https://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/ https://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of...
- greenhat76 2y ago
  I still use vim, has all the features "modern ides" use. It just isn't a gui.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Well, it's actually different. The impact of the "modern" IDEs of 20 years ago was distinctly measurable, and sensibly perceptible by anyone that tried them. At the same time, it's not even clear if the gain from LLMs is even positive. But if your claim was that neither was relevant enough to change the overall noisy productivity of developers, than yeah. At least not positively.
  - beeflet 2y ago
    modern IDEs are nice on operating systems like windows because they bundle the compiler and text editor and debugger together, and installing and configuring anything on windows is a pain of wizards and menus, especially if you want those programs to talk to each other correctly. I've had jobs where we have spent entire days configuring and installing visual studio and related software and activating all of the licenses and connecting all the databases. But on linux you can just can just figure it out once and "su install compiler-version text-editor-version debugger-version && cp dotfiles ~/.config"
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      > modern IDEs are nice on operating systems like windows Nah, the turn of the century IDEs were better enough that almost all the text editors adopted the relevant feature. We mostly do not have pure text editors like there were back then. There's nano, and notepad++, but on the traditional holdouts, vi became an IDE, and emacs, that was already an IDE turned into a multi-language one too. That said, those features were compelling enough for every editor to adopt, but didn't change the picture enough so that people had no choice but to use them. It is still perfectly viable to not use the IDE features of your favorite editor.
grayhatter 2y ago
funny, I recently switched back to vim, and delayed enabling many IDE features such that I don't even use tab complete anymore. I'm actually enjoying writing code again. It's easier to get into the flow state, and generally I find the code I do write to be a higher quality. While the last bit might be completely subjective, and likely a bit of not just sample, but also confirmation bias. I have no interest in any flavor of code complete, or other advanced IDE features. For me, it's seems to be a net loss. I understand how generative AI works better than most of the SWEs I work with, but I have absolutely no desire to incorporate it into my workflow. I like that I understand how the code I wrote works, but even if I didn't, I wouldn't trade this rediscovered enjoyment for anything, including the "promised" career velocity.
- dboreham 2y ago
  vim would be a luxury for the likes of me. Still using ed here...
add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
Not for writing code, no. If you're experienced enough it's going to slow you down.
the_gorilla 2y ago
It's important for low skill developers. I never understood why everyone was afraid of the shit chatgpt output, until I finally realized it actually surpassed many "software engineers" in skill. Sobering!
gerdesj 2y ago
Your comment is rather prescriptive without any working. Why do I need to ... ? So far, I have managed to work out how to spot a hallucinating ChatGPT derived "organic blog post" but it is bloody annoying. Back in the day, Linux related queries would generally end up in Gentoo, Arch, Ubuntu, Mint (int al) forums or wikis or perhaps Reddit and co, sometimes it would end up in TLDP by accident. Now we have a plethora of wankery "blogs" that clog up the search returns. Mostly very pretty and mostly following the same old pattern and mostly correctish and wrong at some crucial point. I have to deal with a lot of pretty complicated and quite niche stuff, for example HA Proxy, Apache Guacamole, on Linux which itself (despite running mostly everything on our lovely planet) is also considered niche. Windows related queries normally end up with a post on an MS site with a response that suggests that "SFC /SCANNOW" will fix everything from stiffness in the joints to cancer. That has always been the way since around the late noughties, thanks to a rather lax hiring policy becoming the norm in a large part of the world using internet points as a score for hiring. That is understandable and humans being lazy and abrogating responsibility is not a new thing. Now we have multi zillion <currency> things happening that claim intelligence and what looks suspiciously tulip flavoured. Oh dear!
bigstrat2003 2y ago
Only if it provides value, which at this point I wouldn't agree it does.
fzeroracer 2y ago
Honestly, when I see stuff like this I laugh all the way to the bank knowing how many developers and teams are opening themselves up to massive security holes and/or bugs by trying to incorporate LLMs into their toolsets. People are just willingly leaving massive landmines across their codebase waiting to blow their feet off and don't even have the experience to know when the code generated by the AI is bad or not.
rsynnott 2y ago
> need to understand To some extent. > and incorporate into their daily work life. No, not necessarily. Frankly it's of no use, or is actively counterproductive, in many fields.

skeptrune 2y ago

100%, but my mental exhaustion grows every time I see a post claiming Claude or some other LLM can build your whole company

mattl 2y ago

Nobody needs to incorporate AI into their daily work life.

al_borland 2y ago

Is a statement like this any different than someone saying developers needed modern IDEs 20 years ago? Yet we still have people in the industry using vim or emacs, and are successful. I will occasionally ask Copilot for something when I’m in a hurry, and the there is some minor thing I don’t care about that someone is telling me needs to get done. The other 99% of the time, I’m doing it myself. Any time I reach for AI instead of doing it myself, I’m learning less, growing less, and understanding my code less. Why would anyone want this?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lz400 2y ago
I think it's more like the move to cloud. It didn't make developers obsolete but it DID make some types of jobs semi-obsolete like sysadmins and dbas. It also created new jobs like DevOps.
- dboreham 2y ago
  People are still being sysadmins and dbas, with new titles. It's just the MBAs that think they're gone.
  - majormajor 2y ago
    Now you get to pay a team of system engineers AND you get to pay Amazon crazy monthly bills! But you get multiple availability zones and regions with much lower capital cost! (But do you need them?)
- gregjor 2y ago
  No. Moving to cloud computing only obsoleted managing physical hardware. System admins and DBAs just as necessary as before. In my experience even more necessary because managers and programmers think they don’t need sysadmins or DBAs until they have messed things up so bad they have to call in an expert.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  > but it DID make some types of jobs semi-obsolete like sysadmins and dbas. It also created new jobs like DevOps. Er, that's the same thing. The only change is that HR thinks my position is labeled "devops engineer" now instead of "sysadmin", but it's the same job.
bdangubic 2y ago
once you realize you are 30-40-50..% slower than your peers you will not only want it but need it to keep being employed. saying “i am learning less, growing less…” is just so amazingly shortsighted, like farmers when first tractors arrived going “fuck this, imma walk this field in 100 degree weather - doing it myself”(sound familiar?).
- grayhatter 2y ago
  I reject the assertion that it's slower. But even if I didn't, I'd still choose the team that delivers 1 month later with high quality code, over the team that cranks out dozens of half broken features they have no idea how to support. Mandating I spend the same amount on a team able to barely maintain that team's mistakes. I know I'm just making the "buy once, cry once" argument, and I understand that's "not how business works" but I'm an engineer, not a manager trading company interest for a promo.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    sounds fun but your days are numbered, much like the farmer I mentioned in the previous comment were when the first tractors rolled into town…
    - aspenmayer 2y ago
      To extend the analogy, I'm reminded of the pets vs cattle debate in the context of managing computer systems, and how that distinction continues to shake out. I suspect that as personal computing moves toward cloud computing, following businesses, we will see tension between local-first AI solutions and cloud AI products. Seeing as how the same megacorps that build personal computer pets and pet products are building cloud computing AI cattle products with AI that gives the benefits of pets with some of the upsides of cattle as well. Local compute vs cloud compute is not the same distinction as that between pets vs cattle, but it has many of the same market participants, and with both Microsoft and Apple making moves to bundle AI capabilities with other cloud products for free with subscription value-add-on features is interesting. These features entice users into the vendor walled gardens, nudging users subtly away from local-first pets. https://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/ https://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of...
greenhat76 2y ago
I still use vim, has all the features "modern ides" use. It just isn't a gui.
marcosdumay 2y ago
Well, it's actually different. The impact of the "modern" IDEs of 20 years ago was distinctly measurable, and sensibly perceptible by anyone that tried them. At the same time, it's not even clear if the gain from LLMs is even positive. But if your claim was that neither was relevant enough to change the overall noisy productivity of developers, than yeah. At least not positively.
- beeflet 2y ago
  modern IDEs are nice on operating systems like windows because they bundle the compiler and text editor and debugger together, and installing and configuring anything on windows is a pain of wizards and menus, especially if you want those programs to talk to each other correctly. I've had jobs where we have spent entire days configuring and installing visual studio and related software and activating all of the licenses and connecting all the databases. But on linux you can just can just figure it out once and "su install compiler-version text-editor-version debugger-version && cp dotfiles ~/.config"
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > modern IDEs are nice on operating systems like windows Nah, the turn of the century IDEs were better enough that almost all the text editors adopted the relevant feature. We mostly do not have pure text editors like there were back then. There's nano, and notepad++, but on the traditional holdouts, vi became an IDE, and emacs, that was already an IDE turned into a multi-language one too. That said, those features were compelling enough for every editor to adopt, but didn't change the picture enough so that people had no choice but to use them. It is still perfectly viable to not use the IDE features of your favorite editor.

grayhatter 2y ago

funny, I recently switched back to vim, and delayed enabling many IDE features such that I don't even use tab complete anymore. I'm actually enjoying writing code again. It's easier to get into the flow state, and generally I find the code I do write to be a higher quality. While the last bit might be completely subjective, and likely a bit of not just sample, but also confirmation bias. I have no interest in any flavor of code complete, or other advanced IDE features. For me, it's seems to be a net loss. I understand how generative AI works better than most of the SWEs I work with, but I have absolutely no desire to incorporate it into my workflow. I like that I understand how the code I wrote works, but even if I didn't, I wouldn't trade this rediscovered enjoyment for anything, including the "promised" career velocity.

dboreham 2y ago
vim would be a luxury for the likes of me. Still using ed here...

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago

Not for writing code, no. If you're experienced enough it's going to slow you down.

the_gorilla 2y ago

It's important for low skill developers. I never understood why everyone was afraid of the shit chatgpt output, until I finally realized it actually surpassed many "software engineers" in skill. Sobering!

gerdesj 2y ago

Your comment is rather prescriptive without any working. Why do I need to ... ? So far, I have managed to work out how to spot a hallucinating ChatGPT derived "organic blog post" but it is bloody annoying. Back in the day, Linux related queries would generally end up in Gentoo, Arch, Ubuntu, Mint (int al) forums or wikis or perhaps Reddit and co, sometimes it would end up in TLDP by accident. Now we have a plethora of wankery "blogs" that clog up the search returns. Mostly very pretty and mostly following the same old pattern and mostly correctish and wrong at some crucial point. I have to deal with a lot of pretty complicated and quite niche stuff, for example HA Proxy, Apache Guacamole, on Linux which itself (despite running mostly everything on our lovely planet) is also considered niche. Windows related queries normally end up with a post on an MS site with a response that suggests that "SFC /SCANNOW" will fix everything from stiffness in the joints to cancer. That has always been the way since around the late noughties, thanks to a rather lax hiring policy becoming the norm in a large part of the world using internet points as a score for hiring. That is understandable and humans being lazy and abrogating responsibility is not a new thing. Now we have multi zillion <currency> things happening that claim intelligence and what looks suspiciously tulip flavoured. Oh dear!

bigstrat2003 2y ago

Only if it provides value, which at this point I wouldn't agree it does.

fzeroracer 2y ago

Honestly, when I see stuff like this I laugh all the way to the bank knowing how many developers and teams are opening themselves up to massive security holes and/or bugs by trying to incorporate LLMs into their toolsets. People are just willingly leaving massive landmines across their codebase waiting to blow their feet off and don't even have the experience to know when the code generated by the AI is bad or not.

rsynnott 2y ago

> need to understand To some extent. > and incorporate into their daily work life. No, not necessarily. Frankly it's of no use, or is actively counterproductive, in many fields.