4 ms·

But you also can't not swim with the tide. If you drove a horse-buggy 100 years ago, it was probably worth your while to keep your eye on whether motor-cars wen

But you also can't not swim with the tide. If you drove a horse-buggy 100 years ago, it was probably worth your while to keep your eye on whether motor-cars went anywhere. I was super skeptical about a year ago. Copilot was making nice predictions, that was it. This agent stuff is truly impressive.

rafaelmn 1y ago
More like people telling us there will be no more professional drivers on the road in 5-10 years 10 years ago. Agents are like lane assist, not even up to the current self driving levels.
- miltonlost 1y ago
  So many people are hyping AI like it's Musk's FSD, with the same fraudulance in overestimating its capabilities.
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    it's exactly like this. we're 3 years into being told all white collar jobs are going to be gone next year, just like we're ten years into being told we'll have self driving cars next year
    - johnnienaked 1y ago
      15 years into bitcoin replacing the USD too
- throw234234234 1y ago
  Not sure the analogy is the same. A driverless car if it does something wrong can cause death - the cost of failure is very high. If my code doesn't come out right, as other posts here have said, I can just "re-roll the slot machine" until it does come out as acceptable - the cost is extremely low. Most of the "reasoning" models just increase the probability that the "re-run" will more likely be to preference of most people with RL to make it viable - tools like new agents know how to run tools, etc to give more data for the probability to be viable within a good timeframe and not run into an endless loop most of the time. Software until it is running after all is just text on a page. Sure I have to be sure what I'm committing and running is good, especially in critical domains. The cheap cost of iteration before actual commit IMO is the one reason why LLM's are disruptive in software and other "generative" domains in the digital world. Conversely real-time requirements, software that needs to be relied on (e.g. a life support system?), things that post opinions in my name online etc will probably, even if written by a LLM, will need someone accountable and verifying the output. Again as per many other posts "I want to be wrong" given I'm a senior in my career and would find it hard to change now given age. I don't like how our career is concentrating to the big AI labs/companies rather than our own intelligence/creativity. But rationally its hard to see how software continues to be the same career going forward and if I don't adapt I might die. I will most likely going forward, similar to what I do with my current team, just define and verify.
mnky9800n 1y ago
I think the agent stuff is impressive because we are giving the AI scaffold and tools and things to do. And that is why it is impressive because it has some directive. But it is obvious if you don't give it good directives it doesn't know what to do. So for me, I think a lot of jobs will be making agents do things, but a lot won't. i think its really strange that people are all so against all this stuff. it's cool new computer tools, does nobody actually like computers anymore?
- oblio 1y ago
  People are afraid that instead of skilled craft guild members they will become assembly line workers like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. And in 10 years unemployed like people in the Rust Belt.
  - avidphantasm 1y ago
    This, and no one will understand the software that is created. Then you are beholden to AI companies who can charge you whatever they want to maintain the AI code. Will this be cheaper than paying software engineers? Maybe, but I could also see it costing much more.
  - lucumo 1y ago
    There's a kind of karmic comedy in this. Programmers' jobs has always been to automate other people's jobs. The panic of programmers about their own jobs now is immensely funny to me. As has been the case for all those jobs changed by programmers, the people who keep an open mind and are willing to learn new ways of working will be fine or even thrive. The people rusted to their seat, who are barely adding value as is, will be forced to choose between changing or struggling.
    - oblio 1y ago
      The problem is that these days we're talking about millions of people. Those kinds of masses of people don't pivot on a dime.
- 1y ago
bloppe 1y ago
An I the only one who has to constantly tell Claude and Gemini to stop making edits to my codebase because they keep messing things up and breaking the build like ten times in a row, duplicating logic everywhere, etc? I keep hearing about how impressive agents are. I wish they could automate me out of my job faster
- mbrumlow 1y ago
  Did you tell them to not duplicate code?
- Benjammer 1y ago
  Are you paying for the higher end models? Do you have proper system prompts and guidance in place for proper prompt engineering? Have you started to practice any auxiliary forms of context engineering? This isn't a magic code genie, it's a very complicated and very powerful new tool that you need to practice using over time in order to get good results from.
  - goalieca 1y ago
    It ain’t a magic code genie. And developers don’t spend most of their day typing lines of code. Lots of it is designing, figuring out what to build, understanding the code, maintenance considerations, and adhering to the style of whatever file you’re in. All these agents needing local context and still spit junk.
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    guy 1: I put money in the slot machine everyone says wins all the time and I lose you: HAVE YOU PUT MORE TOKENS IN???? ARE YOU PUTTING THEM IN THE EXPENSIVE MACHINES??? super compelling argument /s if you want to provide working examples of "prompt engineering" or "context engineering" please do but "just keep paying until the behavior is impressive" isn't winning me as a customer it's like putting out a demo program that absolutely sucks and promising that if I pay, it'll get good. why put out the shit demo and give me this impression, then, if it sucks?
    - 1y ago
kellyjprice 1y ago
I'm not trying to discount it the analogy, but I'd much rather live without cars (or a lot less).
verisimilidude 1y ago
AI's superpower is doing mediocre work at high speed. That's okay. Great, even. There's lots of mediocre work to do. And mediocre still clears below average. But! There's still room for expertise. And this is where I disagree about swimming with the tide. There will be those who are uninterested in using the AI. They will struggle. They will hone their craft. They will have muscle memory for the tasks everyone else forgot how to do. And they will be able to perform work that the AI users cannot. The future needs both types.
- jon-wood 1y ago
  My ongoing concern is that most of us probably got to being able to do good work via several years of doing mediocre work. We put in the hours and along the way learned what good looks like, and various patterns that allow us to see the path to solving a given problem. What does the next generation do when we’ve automated away that work? How do they learn to recognise what good looks like, and when their LLM has got stuck on a dead end and is just spewing out nonsense?
  - commakozzi 1y ago
    they will be judging the merit of work in much broader context.
  - hooverd 1y ago
    they don't!
beefnugs 1y ago
This doesn't make aaaaany sense: IF this actually worked, then why would all the biggest companies in the world be firing people? They would be forcing them all to DO THE TIDE and multiple their 10 billion dollar dominance to 100 billion dollar or more dominance. The truth is something like: for this to work, there is huge requirements in tooling/infrastructure/security/simulation/refinement/optimization/cost-saving that just could never be figured out by the big companies. So they are just like... well lets trick as many investors and plebs to try to use this as possible, maybe one of them will come up with some breakthrough we can steal
- fragmede 1y ago
  > why would all the biggest companies in the world be firing people Because of section 174, now hopefully repealed. Money makes the world go round, and the money people talk to the people with firing authority.
fzeroracer 1y ago
Sometimes it's a good thing to not swim with the tide. Enshittification comes from every single dipshit corporation racing to the bottom, and right now said tide is increasingly filling with sewage. There's a huge disconnect I notice where experienced software engineers rage about how shitty things are nowadays while diving directly into using AI garbage, where they cannot explain what their code is doing if their lives depended on it.

rafaelmn 1y ago

More like people telling us there will be no more professional drivers on the road in 5-10 years 10 years ago. Agents are like lane assist, not even up to the current self driving levels.

miltonlost 1y ago
So many people are hyping AI like it's Musk's FSD, with the same fraudulance in overestimating its capabilities.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  it's exactly like this. we're 3 years into being told all white collar jobs are going to be gone next year, just like we're ten years into being told we'll have self driving cars next year
  - johnnienaked 1y ago
    15 years into bitcoin replacing the USD too
throw234234234 1y ago
Not sure the analogy is the same. A driverless car if it does something wrong can cause death - the cost of failure is very high. If my code doesn't come out right, as other posts here have said, I can just "re-roll the slot machine" until it does come out as acceptable - the cost is extremely low. Most of the "reasoning" models just increase the probability that the "re-run" will more likely be to preference of most people with RL to make it viable - tools like new agents know how to run tools, etc to give more data for the probability to be viable within a good timeframe and not run into an endless loop most of the time. Software until it is running after all is just text on a page. Sure I have to be sure what I'm committing and running is good, especially in critical domains. The cheap cost of iteration before actual commit IMO is the one reason why LLM's are disruptive in software and other "generative" domains in the digital world. Conversely real-time requirements, software that needs to be relied on (e.g. a life support system?), things that post opinions in my name online etc will probably, even if written by a LLM, will need someone accountable and verifying the output. Again as per many other posts "I want to be wrong" given I'm a senior in my career and would find it hard to change now given age. I don't like how our career is concentrating to the big AI labs/companies rather than our own intelligence/creativity. But rationally its hard to see how software continues to be the same career going forward and if I don't adapt I might die. I will most likely going forward, similar to what I do with my current team, just define and verify.

mnky9800n 1y ago

I think the agent stuff is impressive because we are giving the AI scaffold and tools and things to do. And that is why it is impressive because it has some directive. But it is obvious if you don't give it good directives it doesn't know what to do. So for me, I think a lot of jobs will be making agents do things, but a lot won't. i think its really strange that people are all so against all this stuff. it's cool new computer tools, does nobody actually like computers anymore?

oblio 1y ago
People are afraid that instead of skilled craft guild members they will become assembly line workers like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. And in 10 years unemployed like people in the Rust Belt.
- avidphantasm 1y ago
  This, and no one will understand the software that is created. Then you are beholden to AI companies who can charge you whatever they want to maintain the AI code. Will this be cheaper than paying software engineers? Maybe, but I could also see it costing much more.
- lucumo 1y ago
  There's a kind of karmic comedy in this. Programmers' jobs has always been to automate other people's jobs. The panic of programmers about their own jobs now is immensely funny to me. As has been the case for all those jobs changed by programmers, the people who keep an open mind and are willing to learn new ways of working will be fine or even thrive. The people rusted to their seat, who are barely adding value as is, will be forced to choose between changing or struggling.
  - oblio 1y ago
    The problem is that these days we're talking about millions of people. Those kinds of masses of people don't pivot on a dime.
1y ago

bloppe 1y ago

An I the only one who has to constantly tell Claude and Gemini to stop making edits to my codebase because they keep messing things up and breaking the build like ten times in a row, duplicating logic everywhere, etc? I keep hearing about how impressive agents are. I wish they could automate me out of my job faster

mbrumlow 1y ago
Did you tell them to not duplicate code?
Benjammer 1y ago
Are you paying for the higher end models? Do you have proper system prompts and guidance in place for proper prompt engineering? Have you started to practice any auxiliary forms of context engineering? This isn't a magic code genie, it's a very complicated and very powerful new tool that you need to practice using over time in order to get good results from.
- goalieca 1y ago
  It ain’t a magic code genie. And developers don’t spend most of their day typing lines of code. Lots of it is designing, figuring out what to build, understanding the code, maintenance considerations, and adhering to the style of whatever file you’re in. All these agents needing local context and still spit junk.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  guy 1: I put money in the slot machine everyone says wins all the time and I lose you: HAVE YOU PUT MORE TOKENS IN???? ARE YOU PUTTING THEM IN THE EXPENSIVE MACHINES??? super compelling argument /s if you want to provide working examples of "prompt engineering" or "context engineering" please do but "just keep paying until the behavior is impressive" isn't winning me as a customer it's like putting out a demo program that absolutely sucks and promising that if I pay, it'll get good. why put out the shit demo and give me this impression, then, if it sucks?
  - 1y ago

kellyjprice 1y ago

I'm not trying to discount it the analogy, but I'd much rather live without cars (or a lot less).

verisimilidude 1y ago

AI's superpower is doing mediocre work at high speed. That's okay. Great, even. There's lots of mediocre work to do. And mediocre still clears below average. But! There's still room for expertise. And this is where I disagree about swimming with the tide. There will be those who are uninterested in using the AI. They will struggle. They will hone their craft. They will have muscle memory for the tasks everyone else forgot how to do. And they will be able to perform work that the AI users cannot. The future needs both types.

jon-wood 1y ago
My ongoing concern is that most of us probably got to being able to do good work via several years of doing mediocre work. We put in the hours and along the way learned what good looks like, and various patterns that allow us to see the path to solving a given problem. What does the next generation do when we’ve automated away that work? How do they learn to recognise what good looks like, and when their LLM has got stuck on a dead end and is just spewing out nonsense?
- commakozzi 1y ago
  they will be judging the merit of work in much broader context.
- hooverd 1y ago
  they don't!

beefnugs 1y ago

This doesn't make aaaaany sense: IF this actually worked, then why would all the biggest companies in the world be firing people? They would be forcing them all to DO THE TIDE and multiple their 10 billion dollar dominance to 100 billion dollar or more dominance. The truth is something like: for this to work, there is huge requirements in tooling/infrastructure/security/simulation/refinement/optimization/cost-saving that just could never be figured out by the big companies. So they are just like... well lets trick as many investors and plebs to try to use this as possible, maybe one of them will come up with some breakthrough we can steal

fragmede 1y ago
> why would all the biggest companies in the world be firing people Because of section 174, now hopefully repealed. Money makes the world go round, and the money people talk to the people with firing authority.

fzeroracer 1y ago

Sometimes it's a good thing to not swim with the tide. Enshittification comes from every single dipshit corporation racing to the bottom, and right now said tide is increasingly filling with sewage. There's a huge disconnect I notice where experienced software engineers rage about how shitty things are nowadays while diving directly into using AI garbage, where they cannot explain what their code is doing if their lives depended on it.