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The problem with this analogy is that the hard part of writing software isn’t about bulk jobs that are easily specified with cut and dried success criteria. It

The problem with this analogy is that the hard part of writing software isn’t about bulk jobs that are easily specified with cut and dried success criteria. It’s about designing and implementing things where many tiny details matter and are connected to real world outcomes in ways that can not be fully deduced from the symbols present in code. If you get these things subtly wrong than programming is net negative because you now have more mess to wade through than if you were starting from scratch. LLMs in the hands of weak engineers will actually be net negative. I do think jobs will be lost because there are currently a lot of net negative programmers out there simply because knowing syntax and algorithms has historically been enough to get a lot of jobs even if higher level systemic thinking and communication is lacking. That will cause a reduction in overall numbers, but I would argue that was already an existing inefficiency and it will be interesting to see how much it impacts the big picture as ultimately we still need people to understand and debug all the biz critical code out there.

CharlieDigital 2y ago
> LLMs in the hands of weak engineers... I think you're still thinking about it wrong. Once you have a hydraulic press that can stamp 600 copies of some die per hour, you are no longer hiring for blacksmiths. You're hiring for someone that knows how to operate the machine safely and maintain it as well as verify the quality of the output. If you have a press that can produce 600 copies of some die and you are hiring a blacksmith, you're probably not going to get good results.
- dasil003 2y ago
  I'm not "thinking about it wrong", I'm saying that I don't like the analogy. Of course all analogies are imperfect, and I get that LLMs greatly accelerate the production of code, but here's the gap: code is not the product. Code is the instruction for the actual machines, and crucially, code is already repeatable and replicable. In the software world a blacksmith is analogous someone crunching numbers in a spreadsheet. Programmers (combined with hardware engineers) are the ones that are creating the hydraulic presses. LLMs are analogous to CAD, a better tool-building tool to be sure, but at the end of the day if you're stamping out code in a way that an LLM can do it reliably, then you already have a problem that was automatable without an LLM, which code can already do.

CharlieDigital 2y ago

> LLMs in the hands of weak engineers... I think you're still thinking about it wrong. Once you have a hydraulic press that can stamp 600 copies of some die per hour, you are no longer hiring for blacksmiths. You're hiring for someone that knows how to operate the machine safely and maintain it as well as verify the quality of the output. If you have a press that can produce 600 copies of some die and you are hiring a blacksmith, you're probably not going to get good results.

dasil003 2y ago
I'm not "thinking about it wrong", I'm saying that I don't like the analogy. Of course all analogies are imperfect, and I get that LLMs greatly accelerate the production of code, but here's the gap: code is not the product. Code is the instruction for the actual machines, and crucially, code is already repeatable and replicable. In the software world a blacksmith is analogous someone crunching numbers in a spreadsheet. Programmers (combined with hardware engineers) are the ones that are creating the hydraulic presses. LLMs are analogous to CAD, a better tool-building tool to be sure, but at the end of the day if you're stamping out code in a way that an LLM can do it reliably, then you already have a problem that was automatable without an LLM, which code can already do.