4 ms·

It is absolutely the greatest golden age in programming ever - all these infinitely wealthy companies spending bajillions competing on who can make the best pro

It is absolutely the greatest golden age in programming ever - all these infinitely wealthy companies spending bajillions competing on who can make the best programming companion. Apart from the apologising. It's silly when the AI apologises with ever more sincere apologies. There should be no apologies from AIs.

thingsilearned 1y ago
companion or replacement?
- Terr_ 1y ago
  ... Or saboteur. :p
- tonyhart7 1y ago
  they would replace entire software department until AI make bug because endless changes into your javascript framework then they would hire human again to make fix we literally creating solution for our own problem
  - roflyear 1y ago
    Or, just let their users deal with the bugs b/c churn will be less than the cost of developers.
    - scottmf 1y ago
      Right. Look at Electron apps. They're ubiquitous despite the poorer performance and user experience because the benefits outweigh the negatives. Maintaining a codebase isn't going to be a thing in the future, at least not in the traditional/current sense.
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  They are a replacement if your job is only to write code. Especially if your code contains a few bugs, misconceptions, and is sometimes completely unable to fix mistakes, going back and forth into the same wrong solutions. This is not to say that AI assistants are useless. They are a good productivity tool, and I can output code much faster, especially for domains I am very familiar with. That said, these starry-eyed AI circlejerk threads are incredibly cringe.
yujzgzc 1y ago
You're absolutely right! My mistake. I'll be careful about apologizing too much in the future.
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  You sound like a Canadian LLM!
  - smoyer 1y ago
    Eh?
    - gregw2 1y ago
      It's only a Canadian LLM if you ask it what its favorite food is and it says "poutine".
      - smoyer 1y ago
        Or Tim Hortons?
- drpbl 1y ago
  Does the barber shave himself?
paganel 1y ago
> It is absolutely the greatest golden age in programming ever It depends, because you now have to pay in order to be able to compete against other programmers who're also using AI tools, it wasn't like that in what I'd call the true "golden age", basically the '90s - early part of the 2000s, when the internet was already a thing and one could put together something very cool with just a "basic" text editor.
- microtonal 1y ago
  One could put something cool together without internet using Delphi. The Borland IDEs were ahead of their time - built-in debugger, profiler, and pretty good documentation. My 'internet' was the SWAG Pascal snippet collection (which could be used fully offline). Someone converted it to HTML: http://www.retroarchive.org/swag/index.html http://www.retroarchive.org/swag/index.html
conartist6 1y ago
Wow yeah I'm old enough to remember when the focus wasn't on the programmers, but on the people the programs were written for. We used to serve others, but now people are so excited about serving themselves first that there's almost no talk of service to others at all anymore
theropost 1y ago
I wish my AI would tell me when I'm going in the wrong direction, instead of just placating my stupid request over and over until I realize.. even though it probably could have suggested a smarter direction, but instead just told me "Great idea! "
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  I don't know if you have used 2.5, but it is the first model to disagree with directions I have provided... "..the user suggests using XYZ to move forward, but that would be rather inefficient, perhaps the user is not totally aware of the characteristics of XYZ. We should suggest moving forward with ABC and explain why it is the better choice..."
  - redog 1y ago
    It really gave me a lot of push back once when I wanted to use a js library over a python one for a particular project. Like I gave it my demo code in js and it basically said, "meh, cute but use this python one because ...reasons..."
    - rad_gruchalski 1y ago
      Wow, you can now pay to have „engineers” being overruled by artificial „intelligence”? People who have no idea are now going to be corrected by an LLM which has no idea by design. Look, even if it gets a lot of things right it’s still trickery. I get popcorn and wait for more work coming my way 5 years down the road. Someone will have tidy this mess up and gen-covid will have lost all ability to think on their own by then.
  - gwern 1y ago
    Have you noticed the most recent one, gemini-2.5-pro-0506, suddenly being a lot more sycophantic than gemini-2.5-pro-0325? I was using it to beta-read and improve a story (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43998269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43998269), and when Google flipped the switch, suddenly 2.5 was burbling to me about how wonderful and rich it was and a smashing literary success and I could've sworn I was suddenly reading 4o output. Disconcerting. And the AI Studio web interface doesn't seem to let you switch back to -0325, either... (Admittedly, it's free.)

thingsilearned 1y ago

companion or replacement?

Terr_ 1y ago
... Or saboteur. :p
tonyhart7 1y ago
they would replace entire software department until AI make bug because endless changes into your javascript framework then they would hire human again to make fix we literally creating solution for our own problem
- roflyear 1y ago
  Or, just let their users deal with the bugs b/c churn will be less than the cost of developers.
  - scottmf 1y ago
    Right. Look at Electron apps. They're ubiquitous despite the poorer performance and user experience because the benefits outweigh the negatives. Maintaining a codebase isn't going to be a thing in the future, at least not in the traditional/current sense.
surgical_fire 1y ago
They are a replacement if your job is only to write code. Especially if your code contains a few bugs, misconceptions, and is sometimes completely unable to fix mistakes, going back and forth into the same wrong solutions. This is not to say that AI assistants are useless. They are a good productivity tool, and I can output code much faster, especially for domains I am very familiar with. That said, these starry-eyed AI circlejerk threads are incredibly cringe.

yujzgzc 1y ago

You're absolutely right! My mistake. I'll be careful about apologizing too much in the future.

DonHopkins 1y ago
You sound like a Canadian LLM!
- smoyer 1y ago
  Eh?
  - gregw2 1y ago
    It's only a Canadian LLM if you ask it what its favorite food is and it says "poutine".
    - smoyer 1y ago
      Or Tim Hortons?
drpbl 1y ago
Does the barber shave himself?

paganel 1y ago

> It is absolutely the greatest golden age in programming ever It depends, because you now have to pay in order to be able to compete against other programmers who're also using AI tools, it wasn't like that in what I'd call the true "golden age", basically the '90s - early part of the 2000s, when the internet was already a thing and one could put together something very cool with just a "basic" text editor.

microtonal 1y ago
One could put something cool together without internet using Delphi. The Borland IDEs were ahead of their time - built-in debugger, profiler, and pretty good documentation. My 'internet' was the SWAG Pascal snippet collection (which could be used fully offline). Someone converted it to HTML: http://www.retroarchive.org/swag/index.html http://www.retroarchive.org/swag/index.html

conartist6 1y ago

Wow yeah I'm old enough to remember when the focus wasn't on the programmers, but on the people the programs were written for. We used to serve others, but now people are so excited about serving themselves first that there's almost no talk of service to others at all anymore

theropost 1y ago

I wish my AI would tell me when I'm going in the wrong direction, instead of just placating my stupid request over and over until I realize.. even though it probably could have suggested a smarter direction, but instead just told me "Great idea! "

Workaccount2 1y ago
I don't know if you have used 2.5, but it is the first model to disagree with directions I have provided... "..the user suggests using XYZ to move forward, but that would be rather inefficient, perhaps the user is not totally aware of the characteristics of XYZ. We should suggest moving forward with ABC and explain why it is the better choice..."
- redog 1y ago
  It really gave me a lot of push back once when I wanted to use a js library over a python one for a particular project. Like I gave it my demo code in js and it basically said, "meh, cute but use this python one because ...reasons..."
  - rad_gruchalski 1y ago
    Wow, you can now pay to have „engineers” being overruled by artificial „intelligence”? People who have no idea are now going to be corrected by an LLM which has no idea by design. Look, even if it gets a lot of things right it’s still trickery. I get popcorn and wait for more work coming my way 5 years down the road. Someone will have tidy this mess up and gen-covid will have lost all ability to think on their own by then.
- gwern 1y ago
  Have you noticed the most recent one, gemini-2.5-pro-0506, suddenly being a lot more sycophantic than gemini-2.5-pro-0325? I was using it to beta-read and improve a story (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43998269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43998269), and when Google flipped the switch, suddenly 2.5 was burbling to me about how wonderful and rich it was and a smashing literary success and I could've sworn I was suddenly reading 4o output. Disconcerting. And the AI Studio web interface doesn't seem to let you switch back to -0325, either... (Admittedly, it's free.)