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_Kinda sorta?_ There's actually two things going on when I'm coding at work: 1) I'm writing the business code my company needs to enable a feature/fix a bug/e

_Kinda sorta?_ There's actually two things going on when I'm coding at work: 1) I'm writing the business code my company needs to enable a feature/fix a bug/etc. 2) I'm getting better as a programmer and as someone who understands our system, so that #1 happens faster and is more reliable next time. Using AI codegen can (arguably, the jury is still out on this if we include total costs, not just the costs of this one PR) help with #1. But it _appreciably bad_ at #2. In fact, the closest parallel for #2 I can think of us plagiarism in an academic setting. You didn't do the work, which means you didn't actually learn the material, which means this isn't actually progress (assuming we continue to value #2, and, again, arguably #1 as well), it is just a problem in disguise.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
> In fact, the closest parallel for #2 I can think of us plagiarism in an academic setting. You didn't do the work, which means you didn't actually learn the material, which means this isn't actually progress (assuming we continue to value #2 (...) Plagiarism is a great analogy. It's great because what we call plagiarism in academic setting, in the real world work we call collaboration, cooperation, standing on the shoulders of giants, not reinventing the wheel, getting shit done, and such. So the question really is how much we value #2? Or, which aspects of it we value, because I see at least two: A) "I'm getting better as a programmer" B) "I'm getting better as a someone who understands our system" As much as I hate it, the brutal truth is, you and me are not being paid for A). The business doesn't care, and they only get so much value out of it anyway. As for B), it's tricky to say whether and when we should care - most software is throwaway, and the only thing that happens faster than that is programmers working on it changing jobs. Long-term, B) has very little value; short-term, it might benefit both business and the programmer (the latter by virtue of making the job more pleasant). I think the jury is still out on how LLMs affect A). I feel that it's not making me dumber as a programmer, but I'm from the cohort of people with more than a decade of programming experience before even touching a language model, so I have a different style of working with LLMs than people who started using them with less experience, or people who never learned to code without them.
- GoblinSlayer 2y ago
  >most software is throwaway That's only webdev and games.
  - miroljub 2y ago
    ... and that's already most software.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
    Which games? I'd argue this isn't true for AAA games, where you see major firms milking the big releases for a decade in some cases--3 versions of the Last of Us, GTA V just had a "enhanced" patch thing on PC etc.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      Most AAA games get thrown away. Only a minority are maintained and milked for years.
- c-linkage 2y ago
  The CTO asked the CEO what happens if we train these people and they decide to leave? The CEO asked in reply what happens if we don't train the people and they decide to stay? Any reasonably smart company will invest in its employees. They should absolutely be training you to be better programmers while you are on the job. Only shit companies would refuse to do so.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > Any reasonably smart company will invest in its employees. They should absolutely be training you to be better programmers while you are on the job. Only shit companies would refuse to do so. That's true, but by the same token, it's also true the world is mostly made of shit companies. Companies are just following local gradient they perceive. Some can afford to train people - mostly ones without much competition (and/or big enough to have a buffer against competitors and market fluctuations). Most can't (or at least think they can't), and so don't. There's a saying attributed to the late founder of an IT corporation in my country - "any specialist can be replaced by a finite amount of students". This may not be true in a useful fashion[0], but the sentiment feels accurate. The market seems to be showing that for most of the industry, fresh junior coders are at the equilibrium: skilled enough to do the job[1], plentiful enough to be cheap to hire - cheap enough that it makes more sense to push seniors away from coding and towards management (er, "mentoring new juniors"). In short, for the past decade or more, the market was strongly suggesting that it's cheaper to perpetually hire and replace juniors than to train up and retain expertise. -- [0] - However, with LLMs getting better than students, this has an interesting and more worrying corollary: "any specialist can be replaced by a finite amount of LLM spend". [1] - However shitty. But, as I said, most software is throwaway. Self-reinforcing loop? Probably. But it is what it is.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

> In fact, the closest parallel for #2 I can think of us plagiarism in an academic setting. You didn't do the work, which means you didn't actually learn the material, which means this isn't actually progress (assuming we continue to value #2 (...) Plagiarism is a great analogy. It's great because what we call plagiarism in academic setting, in the real world work we call collaboration, cooperation, standing on the shoulders of giants, not reinventing the wheel, getting shit done, and such. So the question really is how much we value #2? Or, which aspects of it we value, because I see at least two: A) "I'm getting better as a programmer" B) "I'm getting better as a someone who understands our system" As much as I hate it, the brutal truth is, you and me are not being paid for A). The business doesn't care, and they only get so much value out of it anyway. As for B), it's tricky to say whether and when we should care - most software is throwaway, and the only thing that happens faster than that is programmers working on it changing jobs. Long-term, B) has very little value; short-term, it might benefit both business and the programmer (the latter by virtue of making the job more pleasant). I think the jury is still out on how LLMs affect A). I feel that it's not making me dumber as a programmer, but I'm from the cohort of people with more than a decade of programming experience before even touching a language model, so I have a different style of working with LLMs than people who started using them with less experience, or people who never learned to code without them.

GoblinSlayer 2y ago
>most software is throwaway That's only webdev and games.
- miroljub 2y ago
  ... and that's already most software.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
  Which games? I'd argue this isn't true for AAA games, where you see major firms milking the big releases for a decade in some cases--3 versions of the Last of Us, GTA V just had a "enhanced" patch thing on PC etc.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Most AAA games get thrown away. Only a minority are maintained and milked for years.
c-linkage 2y ago
The CTO asked the CEO what happens if we train these people and they decide to leave? The CEO asked in reply what happens if we don't train the people and they decide to stay? Any reasonably smart company will invest in its employees. They should absolutely be training you to be better programmers while you are on the job. Only shit companies would refuse to do so.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > Any reasonably smart company will invest in its employees. They should absolutely be training you to be better programmers while you are on the job. Only shit companies would refuse to do so. That's true, but by the same token, it's also true the world is mostly made of shit companies. Companies are just following local gradient they perceive. Some can afford to train people - mostly ones without much competition (and/or big enough to have a buffer against competitors and market fluctuations). Most can't (or at least think they can't), and so don't. There's a saying attributed to the late founder of an IT corporation in my country - "any specialist can be replaced by a finite amount of students". This may not be true in a useful fashion[0], but the sentiment feels accurate. The market seems to be showing that for most of the industry, fresh junior coders are at the equilibrium: skilled enough to do the job[1], plentiful enough to be cheap to hire - cheap enough that it makes more sense to push seniors away from coding and towards management (er, "mentoring new juniors"). In short, for the past decade or more, the market was strongly suggesting that it's cheaper to perpetually hire and replace juniors than to train up and retain expertise. -- [0] - However, with LLMs getting better than students, this has an interesting and more worrying corollary: "any specialist can be replaced by a finite amount of LLM spend". [1] - However shitty. But, as I said, most software is throwaway. Self-reinforcing loop? Probably. But it is what it is.