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Not to be rude, but what about understanding the "transcendental nature" of LLMs allows people to build more, faster, or with better maintainability than a "har
by rafterydj 1y ago
Not to be rude, but what about understanding the "transcendental nature" of LLMs allows people to build more, faster, or with better maintainability than a "hardened industry titan"?
- Retr0id 1y agoNew generations are always leapfrogging those that came before them, so I don't find it too hard to believe even under more pessimistic opinions of LLM usefulness. They are young and inexperienced today, but won't stay that way for long. Learning new paradigms while your brain is still plastic is an advantage, and none of us can go back in time.
- alfalfasprout 1y ago> Learning new paradigms while your brain is still plastic is an advantage, and none of us can go back in time. You can absolutely learn new paradigms at any age. This idea that you can only do so as an 18-25 year old is ridiculous.
- fragmede 1y agoit's a lot of work and some of us are tired
- lagrange77 1y agoBut automating isn't a programming paradigm. > They are young and inexperienced today, but won't stay that way for long. I doubt that. For me this is the real dilemma with a generation of LLM-native developers. Does a worker in a fully automated watch factory become better at the craft of watchmaking with time?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- fragmede 1y agoBut do those watches tell time better? or harder? or louder? Once you have the quartz crystal and have digital watches, mechanical movements became obsolete. Rolex and Patek Philippe are still around, but it's more of a curiosity than anything.
- lagrange77 1y agoAbsolutely agree. The watches do tell time better. But the factory worker does not become better at the craft of watchmaking or EE.
- lubujackson 1y agoI think the idea that LLMs are just good at "automating" is the old curmudgeon idea that young people won't have. I think the fundamental shift is something like having ancillary awareness of code at all but high capability to architect and drill down into product details. In other words, fresh-faced LLM programmers will come out the gate looking like really good product managers. Similar to how C++ programmers looked down on web developers for not knowing all about malloc and pointers. Why dirty your mind with details that are abstracted away? Someone needs to know the underlying code at some point, but that may be reserved for the wizards making "core libraries" or something. But the real advancement will be not being restricted by what used to be impossible. Why not a UI that is generated on the fly on every page load? Or why even have a webform that people have to fill out, just have the website ask users for the info it needs?
- lagrange77 1y agoYeah i agree with most of what you say. > looking like really good product managers. Exactly and that's a different field with a different skillset than developer/programmer. And that's the purpose of technology in the first place tbh, to make the hard/tedious work easier.
- ppqqrr 1y agowe’ve been taught to think of programs as sculptures, shaped by the creator to a fixed purpose. with LLMs, the greatest advance isn’t in being able to make larger and more detailed sculptures more quickly; it’s that you can make the sculptures alive.
- rafterydj 1y agoBut who _wants_ a program to be alive? To be super clear, I love the tech behind LLMs and other transformers. But when discussing regular, run of the mill software projects that don't require AI capabilities - do you really need to have the understanding of the transcendental nature of LLMs to do that job well?
- ppqqrr 1y agousers.
- andrewflnr 1y agoUsers want programs to be predictable. Especially non-technical users.
- ppqqrr 1y agolaughs in clippy
- andrewflnr 1y agoI didn't realize I had to specify that "predictably useless" doesn't count.