4 ms·
In 1989 or so the man who later became my programming teacher at community college night school was at a party and a man who he knew came up to him and told him
by wincy 8mo ago
In 1989 or so the man who later became my programming teacher at community college night school was at a party and a man who he knew came up to him and told him he was a programmer now too!
This confused my teacher as he knew this guy wasn’t super technical, and asked him more about it. I may have the details not exactly right but the man said something like “I use lotus notes every day!”
The word programmer had a very different meaning 40 years ago.
- voxl 8mo agoWhat makes you think that trend won't continue? In the Myspace era people constantly said "oh I know some html", now we will have people saying "oh I can make LLMs generate python" Writing software has always been a skill with no ceiling. Writing software can be literally equivalent to doing research level mathematics. It can also be changing colors on a webpage. This is why I have never been worried about LLMs taking software jobs, but it is possible they will require the level of skill to be employable to spike.
- Wobbles42 8mo agoPerhaps there will be a lot more people who can write software as well as I can weld metal. Welding is peculiar in that becoming a professional welder takes a great deal of time and effort (and probably some talent that I don't have), but becoming a terrible welder can be accomplished by anyone in a couple of weekends, and there is great utility in being a terrible welder. Well worth the investment of a couple hundred dollars and a couple weekends. With LLMs there is now much more utility in being a terrible programmer too. A couple of weekends yields real return on the effort now.