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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 dir

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.
prinny_ 1y ago
A lot of people join this profession because they like building stuff. They enjoy thinking about a problem and coming up with a solution and then implementing and testing it. Prompting is not the same thing and it doesn't scratch the same itch and at the end of the day it's important to enjoy your job, not only be efficient at it. I have heard the take that "writing code is not what makes you an engineer, solving problems and providing value is what makes you an engineer" and while that's cool and all and super important for advancing in your career and delivering results, I very much also like writing code. So there's that.
- closewith 1y ago
  Most people don't enjoy their jobs and go to work for one reason only - to support themselves and their families. The itch is to get paid. This is as true in software as it is in other fields. That's not to say there aren't vocations, or people in software who feel the way you do, but it's a tiny minority.
- theferret 1y ago
  That's an interesting take - that you like the act of writing code. I think a lot of builders across a variety of areas feel this way. I like writing code too. I've been experimenting with a toolchain in which I speak to text to agents, navigate the files with vim and autocomplete, and have Grok think through some math for me. It's pretty fun. I wonder if that will change to tuning agents to write code that go through that process in a semi-supervised manner will be fun? I don't know, but I'm open to the idea that as we progress I will find toolchains that bring me into flow as I build.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Rick Beato posted a video recently where he created a fictitious artist and a couple of songs based on a few prompts. The results were somewhat passable, generic indie/pop music but as he said (I'm paraphrasing) "I didn't create anything here. I prompted a computer to put together a bunch of words and melodies that it knew from what other people had written."
- johannes1234321 1y ago
majormajor 1y ago
> does nobody actually like computers anymore I think this is a really interesting question and an insight into part of the divide. Places like HN get a lot of attention from two distinct crowds: people who like computers and related tech and people who like to build. And the latter is split into "people who like to build software to help others get stuff done" and "people who like to build software for themselves" too. Even in the professional-developer-world that's a lot of the split between those with "cool" side projects and those with either only-day-job software or "boring" day-job-related side projects. I used to be in the first group, liking computer tech for its own sake. The longer I work in the profession of "using computer tools to build things for people" the less I like the computer industry, because of how much the marketing/press/hype/fandom elements go overboard. Building-for-money often exposes, very directly, the difference between "cool tools" and "useful and reliable tools" - all the bugs I have to work around, all the popular much-hyped projects that run into the wall in various places when thrown into production, all the times simple and boring beats cool when it comes to winning customers. So I understand when it makes others jaded about the hype too. Especially if you don't have the intrinsic "cool software is what I want to tinker with" drive. So the split in reactions to articles like this falls on those lines, I think. If you like cool computer stuff, it's a cool article, with someone doing something neat. If you are a dev enthusiast who likes side projects and such (regardless of if it's your day job too or not), it's a cool article, with someone doing something neat. If you are in the "I want to build stuff that helps other people get shit done" crowd then it's probably still cool - who doesn't like POCs and greenfield work? - but it also seems scary for your day to day work, if it promises a flood of "adequate", not-well-tested software that you're going to be expected to use and work with and integrate for less-technical people who don't understand what goes into reliable software quality. And that's not most people's favorite part of the job.) (Then there's a third crowd which is the "people who like making money" crowd, which loves LLMs because they look like "future lower costs of labor." But that's generally not what the split reaction to this particular sort of article is about, but is part of another common split between the "yay this will let me make more profit" and "oh no this will make people stop paying me" crowds in the biz-oriented articles.)
hooverd 1y ago
I like computers quite a lot and the direction of the tech industry has been to destroy every single think I like or thought would be good about them.

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.

prinny_ 1y ago

A lot of people join this profession because they like building stuff. They enjoy thinking about a problem and coming up with a solution and then implementing and testing it. Prompting is not the same thing and it doesn't scratch the same itch and at the end of the day it's important to enjoy your job, not only be efficient at it. I have heard the take that "writing code is not what makes you an engineer, solving problems and providing value is what makes you an engineer" and while that's cool and all and super important for advancing in your career and delivering results, I very much also like writing code. So there's that.

closewith 1y ago
Most people don't enjoy their jobs and go to work for one reason only - to support themselves and their families. The itch is to get paid. This is as true in software as it is in other fields. That's not to say there aren't vocations, or people in software who feel the way you do, but it's a tiny minority.
theferret 1y ago
That's an interesting take - that you like the act of writing code. I think a lot of builders across a variety of areas feel this way. I like writing code too. I've been experimenting with a toolchain in which I speak to text to agents, navigate the files with vim and autocomplete, and have Grok think through some math for me. It's pretty fun. I wonder if that will change to tuning agents to write code that go through that process in a semi-supervised manner will be fun? I don't know, but I'm open to the idea that as we progress I will find toolchains that bring me into flow as I build.
SoftTalker 1y ago
Rick Beato posted a video recently where he created a fictitious artist and a couple of songs based on a few prompts. The results were somewhat passable, generic indie/pop music but as he said (I'm paraphrasing) "I didn't create anything here. I prompted a computer to put together a bunch of words and melodies that it knew from what other people had written."
johannes1234321 1y ago

majormajor 1y ago

> does nobody actually like computers anymore I think this is a really interesting question and an insight into part of the divide. Places like HN get a lot of attention from two distinct crowds: people who like computers and related tech and people who like to build. And the latter is split into "people who like to build software to help others get stuff done" and "people who like to build software for themselves" too. Even in the professional-developer-world that's a lot of the split between those with "cool" side projects and those with either only-day-job software or "boring" day-job-related side projects. I used to be in the first group, liking computer tech for its own sake. The longer I work in the profession of "using computer tools to build things for people" the less I like the computer industry, because of how much the marketing/press/hype/fandom elements go overboard. Building-for-money often exposes, very directly, the difference between "cool tools" and "useful and reliable tools" - all the bugs I have to work around, all the popular much-hyped projects that run into the wall in various places when thrown into production, all the times simple and boring beats cool when it comes to winning customers. So I understand when it makes others jaded about the hype too. Especially if you don't have the intrinsic "cool software is what I want to tinker with" drive. So the split in reactions to articles like this falls on those lines, I think. If you like cool computer stuff, it's a cool article, with someone doing something neat. If you are a dev enthusiast who likes side projects and such (regardless of if it's your day job too or not), it's a cool article, with someone doing something neat. If you are in the "I want to build stuff that helps other people get shit done" crowd then it's probably still cool - who doesn't like POCs and greenfield work? - but it also seems scary for your day to day work, if it promises a flood of "adequate", not-well-tested software that you're going to be expected to use and work with and integrate for less-technical people who don't understand what goes into reliable software quality. And that's not most people's favorite part of the job.) (Then there's a third crowd which is the "people who like making money" crowd, which loves LLMs because they look like "future lower costs of labor." But that's generally not what the split reaction to this particular sort of article is about, but is part of another common split between the "yay this will let me make more profit" and "oh no this will make people stop paying me" crowds in the biz-oriented articles.)

hooverd 1y ago

I like computers quite a lot and the direction of the tech industry has been to destroy every single think I like or thought would be good about them.