6 ms·

A.I. Is Coming for the Coders Who Made It

34 points by donohoe 1y ago

ReptileMan 1y ago
So far AI seems to better in generating technical debt than value. Not exactly worried - in 3-4 years there will be a lot of investment in clearing up the currently created vibe mess.
- ashoeafoot 1y ago
  Do we get a mass layoff of "nocode"-mbas? That would be a appropriate response to "i tanked the company to remove a dependency ".
  - msgodel 1y ago
    So far that's what most of the layoffs have been.
- sph 1y ago
  “Vibe cleaner”
czue 1y ago
https://archive.is/msi41 https://archive.is/msi41
alienbaby 1y ago
I gave co-pilot a shot this weekend. Building a toy app for doing a bunch of text processing. Last time I tried, when this stuff was 'new' , I was thoroughly unimpressed. This weekend, I did about 8 hours work in 2 hours. Copilot worked _almost flawlessly. I cam away very impressed. I still wonder how well it would work against a large established repository where it isn't free to re-invent the wheel and doesn't know about established architecture and methods etc.. But it did change my perception overalll. They are getting better, and fast...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  The tools have gotten a lot better for sure. Still not good at scale, but for narrow things that are well solved, they crank it out.
- lapcat 1y ago
  > This weekend, I did about 8 hours work in 2 hours. How long until managers expect employees to do 4x as much work per week in the same amount of time, for no additional compensation?
  - atonse 1y ago
    Are you trying to mix two payment models together though? To provide a counterpoint: With almost all traditional employment, people are paid for their time. Their output is more an expectation based on the time put in. So if you want to bill by output, that's always an option as a consultant (fixed price). But as a business owner, I would absolutely expect my employees (and vendors) to use these tools to go faster, just like laptops make them go faster than typewriters. It's not like it's causing the employee 4x more effort for that 4x output, is it? If you were digging ditches by hand, but now you have an excavator with you, are you expecting 10x payment just because you can now do it 10x faster? Nobody will pay for that. Instead, you would now charge by a different metric (say, length of the ditch, rather than hours). And you would now be able to handle more customers since you can provide the same outcome to more people in less time. I have no problem if someone wanted to charge by outcome. I think the concept of paying for "time" is going to go extinct in this new world. Think of lawyers who bill $500/hour. Now they can't say "I need 4 hours to have my team review this" and send you a $4k bill for their whole team to bill, because expectations have changed. But framing this as an "us vs. them" thing by comparing apples and oranges isn't going to get us anywhere.
    - tacitusarc 1y ago
      You’re going to pay almost 4x for an experienced excavator operator vs. a ditch digger. Not too unlikely the same thing happens with AI.
francisofascii 1y ago
I admit, have a negative feeling that if my Computer Science discipline is going down in the Titanic, then other disciplines should go down with me. I know its not a good attitude. It feels unfair that CS job will be the first to fall, but we have had it so good for so long, maybe it is fair. Our industry moves so fast. I suspect lawyers, doctors, other "white collar" jobs will take longer and be slower to disrupt due to societal delays and protections (unions, laws, etc.), even though AI could potentially affect these disciplines more down the road.
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  The number of jobs doing low-level code will likely increase even as AI reduces the premium for the skills.
- eyesofgod 1y ago
  Eh most of the jobs that will survive over time are already shit jobs. I cant wish too ill on people in those situations.
xianshou 1y ago
AI is, currently, coming not for the coders who made it but for the coders who didn't contribute to or ignored it. The foundation labs are all quite committed to recursive self-improvement of coding tools as a general research accelerant.
- iLoveOncall 1y ago
  When I see how unsupervised LLMs struggle with coding tasks (see public PRs from Copilot on Microsoft codebases) I don't see how recursive self-improvement can lead to any actual improvement rather than the total opposite.
bwfan123 1y ago
Can we have a rule which says - "those who have not coded for a living shall not make sweeping statements about the future of coding" ? All sorts of academic and management folks are coming out of the woodwork making predictions about the future of coding when they dont know what the hell it is ?
- eyesofgod 1y ago
  Academics are of no concern really. They aren't treated seriously, but I do care what management things. Even if they're blowhard retards with no idea what they're talking about, they're still calling the shots and still making the decisions
andrewstuart 1y ago
Far from the truth. If anything, more than ever you need to be a great programmer to know how to direct the process to a worthwhile outcome.

34 points by donohoe 1y ago

So far AI seems to better in generating technical debt than value. Not exactly worried - in 3-4 years there will be a lot of investment in clearing up the currently created vibe mess.

ashoeafoot 1y ago
Do we get a mass layoff of "nocode"-mbas? That would be a appropriate response to "i tanked the company to remove a dependency ".
- msgodel 1y ago
  So far that's what most of the layoffs have been.
sph 1y ago
“Vibe cleaner”

czue 1y ago

https://archive.is/msi41 https://archive.is/msi41

alienbaby 1y ago

I gave co-pilot a shot this weekend. Building a toy app for doing a bunch of text processing. Last time I tried, when this stuff was 'new' , I was thoroughly unimpressed. This weekend, I did about 8 hours work in 2 hours. Copilot worked _almost flawlessly. I cam away very impressed. I still wonder how well it would work against a large established repository where it isn't free to re-invent the wheel and doesn't know about established architecture and methods etc.. But it did change my perception overalll. They are getting better, and fast...

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
datadrivenangel 1y ago
The tools have gotten a lot better for sure. Still not good at scale, but for narrow things that are well solved, they crank it out.
lapcat 1y ago
> This weekend, I did about 8 hours work in 2 hours. How long until managers expect employees to do 4x as much work per week in the same amount of time, for no additional compensation?
- atonse 1y ago
  Are you trying to mix two payment models together though? To provide a counterpoint: With almost all traditional employment, people are paid for their time. Their output is more an expectation based on the time put in. So if you want to bill by output, that's always an option as a consultant (fixed price). But as a business owner, I would absolutely expect my employees (and vendors) to use these tools to go faster, just like laptops make them go faster than typewriters. It's not like it's causing the employee 4x more effort for that 4x output, is it? If you were digging ditches by hand, but now you have an excavator with you, are you expecting 10x payment just because you can now do it 10x faster? Nobody will pay for that. Instead, you would now charge by a different metric (say, length of the ditch, rather than hours). And you would now be able to handle more customers since you can provide the same outcome to more people in less time. I have no problem if someone wanted to charge by outcome. I think the concept of paying for "time" is going to go extinct in this new world. Think of lawyers who bill $500/hour. Now they can't say "I need 4 hours to have my team review this" and send you a $4k bill for their whole team to bill, because expectations have changed. But framing this as an "us vs. them" thing by comparing apples and oranges isn't going to get us anywhere.
  - tacitusarc 1y ago
    You’re going to pay almost 4x for an experienced excavator operator vs. a ditch digger. Not too unlikely the same thing happens with AI.

francisofascii 1y ago

I admit, have a negative feeling that if my Computer Science discipline is going down in the Titanic, then other disciplines should go down with me. I know its not a good attitude. It feels unfair that CS job will be the first to fall, but we have had it so good for so long, maybe it is fair. Our industry moves so fast. I suspect lawyers, doctors, other "white collar" jobs will take longer and be slower to disrupt due to societal delays and protections (unions, laws, etc.), even though AI could potentially affect these disciplines more down the road.

datadrivenangel 1y ago
The number of jobs doing low-level code will likely increase even as AI reduces the premium for the skills.
eyesofgod 1y ago
Eh most of the jobs that will survive over time are already shit jobs. I cant wish too ill on people in those situations.

xianshou 1y ago

AI is, currently, coming not for the coders who made it but for the coders who didn't contribute to or ignored it. The foundation labs are all quite committed to recursive self-improvement of coding tools as a general research accelerant.

iLoveOncall 1y ago
When I see how unsupervised LLMs struggle with coding tasks (see public PRs from Copilot on Microsoft codebases) I don't see how recursive self-improvement can lead to any actual improvement rather than the total opposite.

bwfan123 1y ago

Can we have a rule which says - "those who have not coded for a living shall not make sweeping statements about the future of coding" ? All sorts of academic and management folks are coming out of the woodwork making predictions about the future of coding when they dont know what the hell it is ?

eyesofgod 1y ago
Academics are of no concern really. They aren't treated seriously, but I do care what management things. Even if they're blowhard retards with no idea what they're talking about, they're still calling the shots and still making the decisions

andrewstuart 1y ago

Far from the truth. If anything, more than ever you need to be a great programmer to know how to direct the process to a worthwhile outcome.