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I'm an electrical engineer. One of my jobs is maintaining a couple racks of equipment and the scripts we use to test hardware. I've never been expected to be a

I'm an electrical engineer. One of my jobs is maintaining a couple racks of equipment and the scripts we use to test hardware. I've never been expected to be a programmer beyond things like Matlab but over the past several years, I've been maintaining a python project we use to run these tests. With equipment upgrades and my amateur python skills, we now have a fully automated test, plug in the hardware, hit the green button, and wait for tests to complete and data to be validated. Codesurf absolutely chokes when trying to work on my code, it's just too much of a mess to handle. But I have been using our in-house chatgpt to write some utilities that I've been procrastinating on for years. Like I needed a debug tool to view live telemetry and send commands as required and have been procrastinating for a long time to write this. My existing scripts aren't flexible, they are literally just a script for the test runner to follow. I have an old debug tool but it's not compatible with the existing workflow so it's a pain to run. I told chatgpt what I needed, gave it some specs on the functions it would need from libraries I've written (but didn't want it to see), and it cranked out a perfectly functional python script. I ended up doing a bit of work on the script it gave me since I didn't trust it completely or knew if I could even get it to expand on the work properly. It would have taken me much longer to write on my own so I'm very grateful I could save so much time. Just last week, I had another idea for a different debug tool and did the same process (here's my idea, here's the specs, go) and after a few rounds of "can you add this next?", I had another quality tool ready to go with absolutely no touch-up work needed on my end. I want my tools to have simple Tkinter GUIs but I hate writing GUIs so I'm absolutely thrilled chatgpt can handle that for me. I'm a bit of a luddite, I still just use notepad++ and a terminal window to develop my code. I don't want to get bogged down in using vscode so trusting AI to handle things beyond "can you make this email sound better?" has been a big leap for me.

jenkinomics 1y ago
In a few to several months you will learn the meaning of "big ball of mud". Then you will either speedrun the last 20-30 years of software development tooling evolution or crash out of your current modus operandi and help fuel future demand for actual software developers.
- cadamsdotcom 1y ago
  Do you have a definition of “actual software developers”? To me an “actual software developer” is always learning, always growing, always making mistakes, always looking back and blown away by how far they’ve come - and most importantly, is always willing to generously offer a hand up to anyone who cares enough to learn the craft. It’s ok to make a big ball of mud! You can deal with it later once you understand the problem v1 solves. Parallel rebuilds and migrations are part of software engineering. Or alternatively - maybe that big ball of mud does its job, has no new requirements, so can be left quietly chugging along - for potentially decades, never needing a v2.
  - ehnto 1y ago
    I think they just mean professional who's responsibility at the company is to code. There are a lot of professionals that do some coding on the side of their main role, but it's not their responsibility to look after the code for 8 hours a day.
- bsder 1y ago
  I disagree. The quoted scenario is the absolute best for LLMs. 1) An easily defined go/no-go task with defined end point which requires 2) A bunch of programming code that nobody gives a single shit about 3) With esoteric function calls that require staring at obscure documentation This is the LLM dream task. When the next person has to stare at this code, they will throw it out and rerun an LLM on it because the code is irrelevant and the end task is the only thing that matters.
  - citizenpaul 1y ago
    Here's the thing. Those first two things don't exist. I'm revisiting this comment a lot with LLM's. I don't think many HN readers run into real life mudball/spaghetti code. I think there is a SV bias here where posters think taking a shortcut a few times is what a mudball is. There will NEVER be a time in this business where the business is ok with simply scrapping these hundreds of inconsistent one off generations and be ok with something that sorta kinda worked like before. The very places that do this won't use consistent generation methods either. The next person to stare at it will not just rerun the LLM because at that time the ball will be so big not even the LLMs can fix it without breaking something else. Worse the new person won't even know what they don't know or even what to ask it to regenerate. Man I'm gonna buy stock in the big three as a stealth long term counter LLM play. I've seen outside of SV mudballs and they are messes that defy logical imagination. LLM's are only gonna make that worse. Its like giving children access to a functional tool shop. You are not gonna get a working product no matter how good the tools are.

jenkinomics 1y ago

In a few to several months you will learn the meaning of "big ball of mud". Then you will either speedrun the last 20-30 years of software development tooling evolution or crash out of your current modus operandi and help fuel future demand for actual software developers.

cadamsdotcom 1y ago
Do you have a definition of “actual software developers”? To me an “actual software developer” is always learning, always growing, always making mistakes, always looking back and blown away by how far they’ve come - and most importantly, is always willing to generously offer a hand up to anyone who cares enough to learn the craft. It’s ok to make a big ball of mud! You can deal with it later once you understand the problem v1 solves. Parallel rebuilds and migrations are part of software engineering. Or alternatively - maybe that big ball of mud does its job, has no new requirements, so can be left quietly chugging along - for potentially decades, never needing a v2.
- ehnto 1y ago
  I think they just mean professional who's responsibility at the company is to code. There are a lot of professionals that do some coding on the side of their main role, but it's not their responsibility to look after the code for 8 hours a day.
bsder 1y ago
I disagree. The quoted scenario is the absolute best for LLMs. 1) An easily defined go/no-go task with defined end point which requires 2) A bunch of programming code that nobody gives a single shit about 3) With esoteric function calls that require staring at obscure documentation This is the LLM dream task. When the next person has to stare at this code, they will throw it out and rerun an LLM on it because the code is irrelevant and the end task is the only thing that matters.
- citizenpaul 1y ago
  Here's the thing. Those first two things don't exist. I'm revisiting this comment a lot with LLM's. I don't think many HN readers run into real life mudball/spaghetti code. I think there is a SV bias here where posters think taking a shortcut a few times is what a mudball is. There will NEVER be a time in this business where the business is ok with simply scrapping these hundreds of inconsistent one off generations and be ok with something that sorta kinda worked like before. The very places that do this won't use consistent generation methods either. The next person to stare at it will not just rerun the LLM because at that time the ball will be so big not even the LLMs can fix it without breaking something else. Worse the new person won't even know what they don't know or even what to ask it to regenerate. Man I'm gonna buy stock in the big three as a stealth long term counter LLM play. I've seen outside of SV mudballs and they are messes that defy logical imagination. LLM's are only gonna make that worse. Its like giving children access to a functional tool shop. You are not gonna get a working product no matter how good the tools are.