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It's not. And if your team is doing this you're not "advanced." Lots of people are outing themselves these days about the complexity of their jobs, or lack the
by whoknowsidont 10mo ago
It's not. And if your team is doing this you're not "advanced."
Lots of people are outing themselves these days about the complexity of their jobs, or lack thereof.
Which is great! But it's not a +1 for AI, it's a -1 for them.
- NewsaHackO 10mo agoPart of the issue is that I think you are underestimating the number of people not doing "advanced" programming. If it's around ~80-90%, then that's a lot of +1s for AI
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- whoknowsidont 10mo agoWhy do you feel like I'm underestimating the # of people not doing advanced programming?
- NewsaHackO 10mo agoTheoretically, if AI can do 80-90% of programming jobs (the ones not in the "advanced" group), that would be an unequivocal +1 for AI.
- whoknowsidont 10mo agoI think you're crossing some threads here.
- NewsaHackO 10mo ago"It's not. And if your team is doing this you're not "advanced." Lots of people are outing themselves these days about the complexity of their jobs, or lack thereof. Which is great! But it's not a +1 for AI, it's a -1 for them. " Is you, right?
- whoknowsidont 10mo agoYes. You can see my name on the post.
- NewsaHackO 10mo agoOK, just making sure. Have a blessed day :)
- friendzis 10mo agoWrong. 80% of code not being advanced is quite strictly not the same as 80% people not doing advanced programming.
- NewsaHackO 10mo agoI completely understand the difference, and I am standing by my statement that 80-90% of programmers are not doing advanced programming at all.
- 9rx 10mo agoIt's true for me. I type in what I want and then the AI system (compiler) generates the code. Doesn't everyone work that way?
- zahlman 10mo agoDescribing a compiler as "AI" is certainly a take.
- agumonkey 10mo agoit's something that crossed my mind too honestly. natural-language-to-code translation.
- skydhash 10mo agoYou can also do search query to code translation by using GitHub or StackOverflow.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- parliament32 10mo agoCompilers are probably closer to "intelligence" than LLMs.
- conradev 10mo agoI used to hand roll the assembly, but now I delegate that work to my agent, clang. I occasionally override clang or give it hints, but it usually gets it right most of the time. clang doesn't "understand" the hints because it doesn't "understand" anything, but it knows what to do with them! Just like codex.
- lm28469 10mo agoGiven an input clang will always give the same output, not quite the same for llms. Also nobody ever claimed compilers were intelligent or that they "understood" things
- XenophileJKO 10mo agoI beginning to think most "advanced" programmers are just poor communicators. It really comes mostly down to being able to concisely and eloquently define what you want done. It also is important to understand what the default tendencies and biases of the model are so you know where to lean in a little. Occasionally you need to provide reference material. The capabilities have grown dramatically in the last 6 months. I have an advantage because I have been building LLM powered products so I know mechanically what they are and are not good with. For example.. want it to wire up an API with 250+ endpoints with a harness? You better create (or have it create) a way to cluster and audit coverage. Generally the failures I hear often with "advanced" programmers are things like algorithmic complexity, concurrency, etc.. and these models can do this stuff given the right motivation/context. You just need to understand what "assumptions" the model it making and know when you need to be explicit. Actually one thing most people don't understand is they try to say "Do (A), Don't do (B)", etc. Defining granular behavior which is fundamentally a brittle way to interact with the models. Far more effective is defining the persona and motivation for the agent. This creates the baseline behavior profile for the model in that context. Not "don't make race conditions", more like "You value and appreciate elegant concurrent code."
- XenophileJKO 10mo agoOne added note. This rigidness of instruction is a real problem that the models themselves will magnify and you need to be aware of. For example if you ask a Claude family of models to write a sub-agent for you in Claude Code. 99% of the time it will define a rigid process with steps and conditions instead of creating a persona with motivations (and if you need it suggested courses of action).
- mjr00 10mo ago> It really comes mostly down to being able to concisely and eloquently define what you want done. We had a method for this before LLMs; it was called "Haskell".
- interstice 10mo ago> I beginning to think most "advanced" programmers are just poor communicators. This is a interesting take take considering that programmers are experts in communicating what someone has asked for (however vaguely) into code. I think you're referring to is the transition from 'write code that does X' which is very concrete to 'trick an AI into writing the code I would have written, only faster', which feels like work that's somewhere between an art form and asking a magic box to fix things over and over again until it stops being broken (in obvious ways, at least). Understandably people that prefer engineered solutions do not like the idea of working this way very much.