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Leave Me Behind
- w4yai 6mo ago[flagged]
- Alex_L_Wood 6mo agoYou don't even know what "main character syndrome" is.
- 000ooo000 6mo agoDo you respond with 'main character syndrome' to everyone who shares an opinion?
- w4yai 6mo ago[flagged]
- tomhow 6mo agoCan you not post this style of sweeping rhetoric on HN? We're here for curious conversation, and comments like this are antithetical to that. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them when participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sillywabbit 6mo ago> AI doesn't exist to make extroverts feel better about themselves Then why are the extroverts trying to replace engineers with AI?
- w4yai 6mo agoBecause it seems to be economically the right thing to do.
- sillywabbit 6mo agoMaximizing shareholder value seems like a weird thing to hold as a moral imperative.
- w4yai 6mo ago[dead]
- NateEag 6mo ago> Because it seems to be economically the right thing to do^H^H^H^H^H optimal for a few billionaires. FTFY. ...though even the billionaires may regret it if the peasants wind up starving by the billions. Species don't do well with tiny populations. And before anyone says "UBI," give me a coherent explanation of: * who is going to fund UBI to the tune of fifty trillion dollars * why we're so confident they'll do that * why there are currently so many people starving and homeless in SF if if any tech billionaire feels the need to spend their money providing for other humans
- aaarrm 6mo agoThe quality of hacker news commenters has been steadily declining, yet I'm still constantly surprised by just how mentally shallow and lazy some can be
- wiseowise 6mo ago> Main character syndrome. Do you even know what that means or you just saw a phrase online and like how it sounds? There’s nothing about main character here, the author doesn’t even advocate for anything. > AI doesn't exist to make extroverts feel better about themselves. It's there to do the programming, no matter what humans feel about it. Please stop confusing your hobbies with the work needed to be done. Get help, even if it is from the AI, seriously.
- xantronix 6mo agoWhat makes an appeal to experience, subjective or otherwise, an expression of Main Character Syndrome? Just because somebody pushes back against the tides doesn't mean they fancy themself more important than others. Further, they're not saying "we should all stop using LLMs". The title of the article is literally "Leave Me Behind", an expressed desire to no longer participate in a system they believe to be harmful. They explicitly state a position they take for themself, whereas you make an implicit value judgement of all practitioners who feel similarly. This could be read in a way as an assumption that everyone else should be as miserable as you.
- h_i_vitale 6mo agoNot gonna pretend that this is anything other than the author's personal gripe with this whole thing, but this is really just the sunk cost fallacy with extra steps. Even by trying to reassure (the reader? Himself?) that LLMs are just a tool for humans, he asserts in the final paragraph that software is no longer made by humans. Something something linotype operators.
- ganSo 6mo agoWhat's your take on it?
- h_i_vitale 6mo agoYou mean on his writing? My take is that most of the text is him grandiosely talking about the skillset he built is... somehow nullified with the appearance of AI and is taking the path of graphic artists that are focusing their no-AI work as craft. He believes that AI is making him redundant and soul-less, and at the same time tries to minimize it by reminding everyone that LLMs are a tool - yet he argues that software can now be created without humans so his perception of AI is inconsistent at best. This is the writing of a person with an existential crisis, which will be obviously egocentric by nature, and I wish the author the best. His approach is not too different of Japanese woodcarvers, Linotype experts switching to computers... there is no real mention about "AI creep" so the extent of AI usage is inconsequential. He has realized he mastered a craft that, as all types of crafts, are subject to technological advancement. At a personal level, it's a hard pill to swallow
- furyman 6mo agoMario Savio said a few lines when the industrial revolution peaked: There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious Makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels Upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it That unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all Even then we have machines doing it all and yet we all function well. I think eventually this would be a tool usage which will take human intelligence to another pinnacle.
- i_love_retros 6mo agoHasn't all automation up to this point been same input equals same output though? Automation using LLMs feels different to anything before and I don't think there's a comparative time in history to point at and say "look it happened before and we are now better off"
- joe_mamba 6mo agoNo, because you still need a skilled human operator in the loop for clearly defining the input and to check the output. Machinists and lathe operators became CNC operators, they didn't lose their jobs, just that instead of turning the inputs by hand, they punch numbers in a machine, but the advent of CNC didn't mean anyone off the street can now punch numbers in the machine and replace the machinists since you still need the years of training and experience. SW devs will be the new CNC operators, about knowing what data to input and how to wrangle the slop machine to get the desired output faster and better than your competition.
- lelanthran 6mo ago> No because you still need a skilled human operator in the loop for clearly defining the input and to check the output. For now. Will that be true in 12 months? 4 years? If you're a programmer, your skills have been devalued significantly in the last 12 months. What makes you think the remaining value you offer will be required 12 months from now?
- simianwords 6mo ago> These LLMs are prediction machines. They are text generators that are ultimately a bunch of fancy statistics, trained on the years and years of dedication by brave engineers willing to learn and build in the open. Building in the open meant we were not gatekeeping technology, but creating tangible examples for young engineers to explore, understand, and learn from. Another grief-post with people unable to cope with the fact that the whole structure of learning and work is going to change so they resort to pseudo nostalgia and romanticism. Not to mention that "They are text generators that are ultimately a bunch of fancy statistics" is basically incorrect and belongs in 2024.
- mplanchard 6mo agoThe lack of humanity or ability to empathize with someone else’s feelings displayed in these comments, instead labeling the author’s personal experience as “main character syndrome” or “cope” demonstrates to me that the author may be correct that AI usage degrades the human experience. It also is a great example of why AI has such a PR problem among normal people.
- cryo32 6mo agoExactly this. I’m forever getting asked for help by people who suddenly value the human experience when their machine god fails them. Sometimes fuck ‘em because they devalued me first.
- wiseowise 6mo ago> instead labeling the author’s personal experience as “main character syndrome” or “cope” demonstrates to me that the author may be correct that AI usage degrades the human experience. I’ll be the devil’s advocate and suggest that it might not be AI usage, but the technology attracting vilest scum of the Earth. It’s just they were staying mostly silent before, or wasted someone else’s time in different circles.
- jvanderbot 6mo agoOk you're doing exactly what GP said, but in the opposite direction
- stego-tech 6mo agoFrustratingly, these attitudes have been around long before LLMs, and they'll continue to exist long after. To those individuals who have staunchly refused to broaden their horizons or empathize with their fellow man, these posts are direct threats to the wagons they've hitched themselves to, a challenge to their own narrow passions because they exist in a zero-sum environment where if even one person doesn't think and act like them, then clearly they're in the obvious wrong. Conflating a preference for manual creation with opposition to the existence of a tool should be the single biggest signal flare that they are someone who will not argue with you in good faith. They're the ones who barnstorm every single one of these posts to denigrate the author rather than even attempt to empathize with their plight or evaluate the validity of their arguments. Surely the current cohort of HN commenters have seen this repeatedly in just the past five years as technical circles have jumped from cryptocurrency to blockchain to NFTs to LLMs to GenAI; every single one is a "must have", every single one something we "must learn or be left behind forever", and every single one refused to be evaluated on its merits in favor of simply embracing something new for its novelty. I have given up debating with these people, because they do not wish for debate, they wish for dominance. I have better things to do with my time - as do you, as do all of us - than to give a moment of consideration to a viewpoint that relies on pithy quotes out of context and a reductionist narrative of history to justify their own superiority over others, in lieu of nuanced discourse. Remember that it is not the obligation of the status quo to defend itself, rather the obligation belongs to those advocating changes to justify and defend their position and its benefits. In that regard, the pro-AI camp continues to come up hollow and empty.
- jvanderbot 6mo agoIts classic HN to dismiss the emotional cost of change as sunk cost stages of grief. A person is allowed to love their work and miss deep understanding, and allowed to be nostalgic for a preferred way of working. It's human and everything they have shared in this post is unequivocally true about software dev and moving into a career, arguably even before LLMs took over. What I mean is that the thrilling buddy system coding starts to happen less frequently over a career, and the time for deep exploring and side projects is organically maximized early and during school. While LLMs have forced that divide to be more stark, the human connection and sense of wonder has always required maintenance, and it's best to get into the habit of maintaining it before your 36th JIRA triage meeting in a week completely destroyed your love of the industry. Well before LLMs I went through exactly what TFA describes when I had to adapt from grad school labs to industrial labs, then to project management or task leadership (even just filling in for my boss), and each new job has required me to say goodbye to great friends and colleagues and make new ones. Its just inevitable to fall out of love of the craft, we all could probably write this post for our own reasons.
- JSR_FDED 6mo ago> Its just inevitable to fall out of love of the craft This is not some kind of universal truth. I can see how being stuck in an unfulfilling job could lead you to say this. But for the last 20+ years I love the craft of writing efficient, dependable, understandable code more with every new insight from every hard-won experience.
- yayitswei 6mo agoWhat if you could finish your passion project in an evening? Would that increase not the time, but capacity for deep exploring and side projects?
- jvanderbot 6mo agoOnly if having a set of competed projects is what makes you happy. Some love learning and overcoming challenges.
- latexr 6mo agoThis will inevitably lead to tired discussion of “there are two types of developers, those who care about the craft and those who want to get things” done. I believe that to be a false dichotomy, and will link to someone else’s comment in another thread who makes the argument that caring about the craft is part of caring about the product. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47591796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47591796 More specifically to the submission, I’ll say I agree with the author. This “being left behind” fear mongering is an exhausting uncritical talking point. Life isn’t about rushing through the end and killing yourself to be “productive”. “Being left behind” is only bad if what’s “ahead” is an improvement to your situation, and that’s not a given. Humans aren’t built to be pushed to 11 without rest. Stopping to smell the roses is good. Immediatelly thinking “how can I kill these to package the smell to sell to others at a profit” is not.
- baddash 6mo agopeople need to reframe coding agent usage. i see a lot of framing in zero-sum terms where it's either all dev or all agent, and then people start dooming and glooming over the latter. in reality it's like that one post on here a few days ago about it being like an iron man suit. it is a glowing, bright white power that can be incredible when wielded properly. unfortunately, people characterize it as an adversarial power that can and will take over your soul. how about some true synergy instead of boring zero-sum people? smh. the true poetry here is that zero-sum thinking will become more of a thing of the past so there is some natural comedy with this title
- illithid0 6mo agoThis is some anecdata, but I'll share it nonetheless as I have a pretty wide network of software and security engineer friends from which I've heard the following. Almost no one I know wants agent usage to be a zero-sum activity. There are a few oddballs who obviously only got into software for the money, so any means to that end is acceptable. That does not stop those with say-so over things like employment (and, if you're in the USA, the associated healthcare), from treating it as a zero-sum activity. When engineers are being told to maximize token usage, are constantly being brought into meetings where they're expected to reveal their latest and greatest use of LLMs, and not using enough tokens in your role is seen as a negative, then the pressure starts to creep in. Yes, I know this is silly to most people who read this site, and I agree. It's bonkers. But there is certainly something to the idea of "AI psychosis" in upper management that is making agent use zero-sum company-wide.
- baddash 6mo agoThat's good to know, because all I really go off of is what I see posted online which is most likely skewed towards the polarizing takes (been unemployed for a while). Sounds like some positive news though, and I hope that these tools can help empower people to the point where they don't feel shackled by their jobs by doing something like lowering the barrier and manpower needed to succeed at entrepreneurship. That shit with upper management sounds stupid af and I've heard the same type of shit from people I know who are in other fields. I'm guessing it's happening from a combination of ignorance, FOMO, investment, etc etc. But that is more of a systemic issue than anything to do with these tools imo.
- paulinho1 6mo ago[dead]
- gordian-mind 6mo agoI don't think AI changed anything at all to the possibility of communicating between humans. This is a job that you've always been able to do alone in your cave.
- righthand 6mo agoReally? How do you learn how to code with out communicating with another human? Which man pages in a general Linux install will teach you all you need to know? Without communication you get no books, no StackOverflow, no-LLMs even. You were allowed to do it alone but we can't pretend humans communicating isn't how most of the available knowledge for your perusal came to be.
- gordian-mind 6mo agoOverly generalizing the notion of "communication" makes this whole exchange useless, pure noise. A LLM wouldn't have made that mistake.
- righthand 5mo agoWhat? No one over generalized communication you just got caught expressing something blatantly untrue.
- cryo32 6mo agoIt has. Some utter morons seem to run everything they receive and send through it at work. I have a spreadsheet now of people I can't be fucked with.
- righthand 6mo agoNice read, and agreed, leave me behind. I have been telling people that I am running a John Henry experiment with LLMs. I don't use them just so I can prove the human is better than the machine, even if it leaves me in the dirt like John.
- daishi55 6mo ago> These LLMs are prediction machines. They are text generators that are ultimately a bunch of fancy statistics Yeah yeah back to Reddit For real though: you can keep doing artisanal hand-written code as a hobby. Just like you can still write a web server in assembly if you really want to. But that’s just not how professional software development is done anymore. Just a new tool, I don’t think it’s as deep as the author is making it out to be.
- tharakam 6mo agoI can relate to this article. My reaction to what is happening is also: "Leave me behind". However, missing the joy of the old-school way of growing as a developer is not only the wrong reason, but also very dangerous according to Darwin. Our customers don't care about how it is made after all, but they do care about long-term support, costs, and predictability, etc. But I'm not sure whether we can say we made a real net positive progress in the industry. The whole thing is a big mess. In many cases, AI moves us in the same direction in turbo mode, making it not only messier and more expensive but also dangerous. I tell them, "Leave me alone", as I see this mess as an opportunity if you think the right way, starting from the first principles.
- GalaxyNova 6mo agoMaybe our customers do care about how it's made.
- dvt 6mo agoThe funniest thing about this post is that Java Android programming circa 2014 is somehow romanticized as "real programming." 2014 Android code has got to be peak corpo-slop with the most inane abstractions, unintuitive paradigms, and copy-paste boilerplate syndrome. Ironically, exactly why we need AI these days, since like 90% of the code you wrote didn't technically do anything.
- oytis 6mo agoIt's apparently very funny though, cause the author was laughing a lot. Systems and embedded programmers like myself are grumpy af with or without AI
- foo-bar-baz529 6mo ago[flagged]
- lanfeust6 6mo agoPer learning from others after encountering an unfamiliar problem, I think there are rose-tinted glasses here. 90%+ of the time, either someone else had already provided the relevant answer at Stack Overflow or I could find it on a documentation page, a blog. There is no social engagement then. Just search. That also hasn't gone away, as LLMs can also provide sources to justify their answers. Per the human element, the author is in part relaying about formative experiences from youth that you won't easily repeat, and also experiences that are not decoupled from the work as it still exists, unless you are entirely remote, which is not a LLM-specific problem. All of which to say, the emotional element behind it is valid, but the diagnosis is off the mark. I think the human element, should it be jeopardized, is in part through the complacent convenience of remote work and disinterest in community participation. But, communities still exist, and tech communities historically were always niche. As it stands they're probably bigger now than they ever were. There are still new frontiers with software where LLMs will be less effective. Yes, there is less friction than before for learning technologies, but all this does is move the goalpost as we can accomplish more with our time. Instead of hacking things out through trial and error on mature stacks (with or without others), you'll be closer to the cutting edge and have different problems. Many of which will still be technological in nature.
- riebschlager 6mo agoI absolutely understand this sentiment. I've been working in tech since the late 90s and I have had MORE than my share of let-me-off-this-ride moments. But this post (and the many I see like it) feels like giving up. And now's not the time for empathetic people to give up. Technology is how we expand human capability. We are well within our rights to pick and choose how we interact with that capability. But it's starting to terrify me how it seems that the worst people in the world are more than willing to wield this power, while good people opt out. Billionaires are doing a remarkable job at making their vision of the future seem inevitable. Don't fall for it. If more people aren't willing to help us steer this capability towards a better future, then we all know how this ends.
- jcgrillo 6mo ago> it's starting to terrify me how it seems that the worst people in the world are more than willing to wield this power, while good people opt out Maybe it's just that the capability is bad. Adtech, for example, isn't something that anyone uses for good. They blow a lot of smoke about it--looking at you, Apple--but despite the "good-washing" it's all just the same extractive, invasive, dehumanizing business. Bad people will naturally concentrate around this capability. I know because I've worked with a few of them. AI coding tools seem like they're engineered to undermine cautious, rigorous, and pragmatic engineering discipline. Of course the bosses want that, they see a short term path to massive output increases and nothing sounds better. They'll be cashed out by the time the mess needs to be cleaned up, that's someone else's problem. People who are predisposed to this kind of antisocial behavior are the ones who concentrate around AI tools. Rigorous, careful engineers who care about building maintainable systems that will outlast their tenure find less value in them. I think it's more nuanced than > Technology is how we expand human capability. I think as a general statement about technology as a whole it's true. But do all technologies expand human capabilities? I don't think so.
- riebschlager 6mo agoIn my mind, I would separate technology from its application. Advertising tech and AI coding tools are applications of technology stacks that could have been used to create what you and I might agree to be "better" tools. I don't need to tell you why ad tech got created instead of something that is a net societal benefit. At the same time, I would say that, yes, those applications do indeed expand human capabilities. The important nuance here is whose capability, and to what end. All I am saying is that opting out of this, in whatever form that takes, hands your agency over to those who would use it to enrich themselves at the cost of others. I sincerely feel that decades of this type of capitulation is exactly how we got to where we are today.
- dcastonguay 6mo agoThis article was very eye-opening for me. I think I understand the author's pain and I could certainly feel it while reading the article. The fact that it was "the people" that made the difference kind of surprised me, and then I realized it was because I have seldom had the experiences he's had and that this might have a major impact on the way I (and others) view the technology. For me, building software has often been a solitary process in which I was far more obsessed with it than those around me. I'm not in a tech-heavy area and I don't have a ton of well-informed people to talk to about programming, software engineering, or AI. I have had experiences like the author in which I needed to learn a new technology or a new language but ended up doing so on my own at home, not with the assistance of a much more knowledgeable developer with significantly more experience. To me LLMs have left us in a situation where the following things are true and moving forward lies somewhere in figuring out how to reconcile / resolve these things: - You can use LLMs and learn things or not learn things; this is a result of the approach, desire, and willpower of the user. - There is a level of skill associated with using LLMs much like nearly everything else in existence. The user's skill level impacts their perception of the technology and also affects the way those around them view the technology. Unskilled users will generate more negative sentiment. - Some people love to do the things the machine is good at and do not want the machine to do them, while others hate to do the things the machine is good at and want the machine to do them. I realized at some point this year that I don't love programming anywhere near as much as I love building and designing systems and solving problems. - Software development is many things wrapped up in one and talking about it as a single thing makes it more confusing. Some people like to think through the logic of the application and have an LLM write the code while others want the LLM to think up the solution, implement it, and test it. These are two very different people with likely different goals and different desires. - When someone else looks at Claude or ChatGPT they might see something completely different than what you see. I hope some of this resonates with others.
- thunderbong 6mo agoVery well said. And I'm in the same camp. I've very rarely had someone with whom I could interact, bounce off ideas, brainstorm regarding the nitty gritty of code. Most of the time, I've had to dig through books, online articles and create my own mental framework of how things work. And this has held me up in good stead. Now with AI, I've found a tool from which I can learn, show me the right way to do things, and explain in detail what has been done. I can ask questions, point out mistakes, go back and forth on different implementations and at the end of it, come out a better programmer. As many commentators have mentioned, AI means different things to different people. For me, it has been empowering, enlightening, and humbling. There have always been so many things to learn, but never enough time. Now, it doesn't quite feel that way.
- ianhxu 6mo agoLike the artisans/craftsmen in many places (especially Japan), hand craft will always carry enduring meaning — machines ultimately can't replace everything humans shape with their hands. But historically at least, they can replace over 99.9% of it.
- ninjagoo 6mo ago> machines ultimately can't replace everything humans shape with their hands. What about 'machines' with hands and human-level cognition?
- ianhxu 6mo agoI don't have a quantitative way to argue this, but my intuition says that for humans to build something that matches human capability across every dimension would require a breakthrough at the physical level — and such a breakthrough may itself be bounded by the limits of humans as observers. That said, this goal might itself be a non-goal. AI is going to be — or already is — more powerful than any individual human in many ways. But what my intuition points to is that humans will still have plenty of interesting work to do, like the author's example of handwriting code: it shifts from being scalable value creation into a form of craftsmanship.
- ismaelyws 6mo agoMost humans derive their purpose and meaning from their work. Has always been that way. What do you think happens when you remove meaning from people’s lives at scale? It won’t be pretty.
- samiv 6mo agoIt's not about removing meaning. A normal thoughtful person can surely come up with things to do and occopy their lives with. In fact for most of people work just gets in the way of that. What's it about is once you remove the paycheck that all proletariats need when things get "interesting".
- broof 6mo agoI hear this all the time but where is the explosion in people learning art, music, increased time with friends and family, etc… instead it’s all the opposite. We’re using all our extra free time to doomscroll.
- tavavex 6mo agoWhat extra free time? Have we gotten more of that in the last years? From what I can see, everyone is still working full time jobs, needing to make more money than ever in recent history to survive.
- jasonlotito 6mo ago> What do you think happens when you remove meaning from people’s lives at scale? You get some AI-slop like this: > Your AI email deliverability specialist that tests and fixes your emails — backed by a Top-Rated expert.
- enos_feedler 6mo agoThey shouldn't do this.
- Mikhail_Edoshin 6mo agoAI is repulsive. You either feel it, maybe not immediately, or don't. When you feel it, you'll rationalize it one way or another. The rationalization does not matter that much. It's essentially arbitrary and is a product of whatever experience you've accumulated so far. (E.g. could be a Communist rationalization of alienation under capitalism.) Yet the underlying feeling is true. Stick to it.
- rglover 6mo agoJust do it the way you want to do it and have fun [1] (I've recently started doing streams where I showcase a mix of AI + manual coding and why I think that's best). The "powers that be" would prefer if you sideline yourself. Instead, pop a bird and say "thank you kind sir, but no." [1] https://youtu.be/KqQpYgvrEqM?si=gfGCOqgmF4iy4077 https://youtu.be/KqQpYgvrEqM?si=gfGCOqgmF4iy4077
- cousin_it 6mo agoI think this post is either LLM-written, or written in a standard blogpost style of today which is increasingly becoming LLM-like. Sam Kriss had a good recent post pointing out some of the "tells": https://samkriss.substack.com/p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writing-i-will https://samkriss.substack.com/p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writin...
- beej71 6mo agoI definitely don't have time for AI-generated crap. I've got to get back to asking Claude to write code for me. ;)
- ripe 6mo agoThat Sam Kriss article is a wonderful read! "If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you" Thank you for posting.
- chipotle_coyote 6mo agoThere seems to be a "spot the LLM" game happening on HN in particular in which literally every damn linked post has a comment accusing it of being written by an AI. Do we not understand that definitionally every AI "tell" comes from humans? Hell, Sam Kriss's article complains about florid writing and then goes on to cite Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy as examples of writers who "pull the same cheap tricks" as AI and with all respect to Mr. Kriss I just can't even. The theme of this article veers dangerously close to "if you use a weird metaphor you're probably using an LLM because surely no human would ever write 'I'm literally the size of a dry martini.'" I'm sorry, Sam, but humans have written weird fucking shit for a very long time without LLMs. And what "tells" are in this article, anyway? It reads very straightforwardly; it does not, in fact, have any weird metaphors. Em dashes are not actually a tell, but using the wrong characters for em dashes (the article uses " - ", e.g., space hyphen space) seems pretty human. Last but, I would argue not least, I am willing to give the author of an article about not wanting to program with LLMs the benefit of the doubt here. "The orphan-punching machine fills me with existential angst and dread, and the only way for me to communicate this to the audience is to let it punch a few orphans for me." Now, if you'll excuse me, all this is making me need to be literally the size of a high-proof daiquiri.
- moralestapia 6mo ago“So leave me behind.” That’s easy to say for someone in their 50s who built wealth under favorable conditions. But it’s quite ignorant and inhumane to say that to someone in their 20s who is just starting their career. Too bad to see these boomer antics continue to be perpetuated.
- gausswho 6mo agoThe second sentence of TFA: "I learned to build Android applications in 2014. I was in college taking a Java programming class". So this person's twelve years out of college. You may want to train your fire elsewhere.
- moralestapia 6mo ago??? But that's exactly my point. He got twelve good years out of it.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoPeople in their 50s are not boomers.
- moralestapia 6mo ago>[...] these boomer antics continue to be perpetuated. >continue to be perpetuated
- innodendo 6mo agoMy experience programming is so much different than theirs makes me wonder what I missed out on. I have always programmed on my own, and I can't even think about a single time I have talked to a person in depth about programming (both online and in person). It sounds fun and exciting, but unfortunately I have simply never had the opportunities in life to do so. For me, AI is the first time I have ever been able to get something resembling an opinion on specific problems/situations that I encounter. I can ask it a very specific question about what the best approach is for what I am working on and it can give me an answer that I read over and consider before deciding on what approach to take. I still frequently get answers that are nonsense, but even then it helps me think deeper on how I should approach the problem because I can ask myself "Are the statements made by the AI true?".
- nzealand 6mo agoAI is your Google and your yellow rubber ducky (rubber duck debugging) all rolled into one.
- shermantanktop 6mo agoAbsolutely. It can also be your brain if you let it, so…don’t let it. It’s an absolutely fantastic educational tool if you choose to use it that way.
- ctoth 6mo agoSo are you saying we should ... ... Put down the duckie[0]? [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acBixR_JRuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acBixR_JRuM
- gaudystead 6mo agoCurse you for this ear worm of a song, but also my brain keeps wanting to interpret this as "duck... You're bad at your job and will never amount to anything. Your mother is ashamed of you and you're the reason your father is an alcoholic." hahaha
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- bbor 6mo agoThese LLMs are prediction machines. They are text generators that are ultimately a bunch of fancy statistics, Always a shame to see good meaning, smart humans let their anxieties and fears drive them into empirical falsehoods. Anyone still have some hope for humanity? Or yourselves as a person? Asking for a friend who thinks that the dark horizon has already swallowed all but our eyes, leaving us the brief observers of our oblivion
- huqedato 6mo agoWe we all be left behind my friend. Soon enough.
- amelius 6mo agoSummarize this text into one or two paragraphs. Oops, wrong input field.
- ary 6mo agoThere are a number of comments here where people open up about their contrasting experiences of not being a part of a programming community. Those are well addressed, I think, but there is another point to consider. We need to remember the people, that we may never talk to, that are downstream of all of this software. Not necessarily “the users” as there are many pieces of software meant for other devs, but I think the users deserve consideration nonetheless. Handing over software quality to the stochastic code extruder is causing a sharp drop in the quality of software put out into the world. This is on top of all of the problems that existed before LLMs, like human error and perverse financial incentives. Shipping poor quality and user hostile software actually hurts people. Real people. Harm is caused in both big and little ways to living, breathing actual people. This “inevitable” slide into generative AI harms every single person it comes into contact with. The devs, the users, the investors, everyone. Those harms may happen at different times and in different ways and the creeping nature of it all might make it easier to ignore, but it’s happening. “AI” is a blight. You can leave me behind as well.
- aspenmartin 6mo ago> Handing over software quality to the stochastic code extruder is causing a sharp drop in the quality of software put out into the world. Well, first of all you and the author point to the same derisive comment of these models being, in your words "stochastic code extruder" or the one I have heard a lot "next-token predictors", and the connotation I read from these being that this makes them inherently dumb or unintelligent and I don't understand that. The fact that these "stochastic code extruders" can solve Erdos problems is sort of the proof in the pudding. Next token prediction is profound in that it is _a very simple objective_ yet it is _enough_ to take you to extraordinary heights. Also I wonder how many folks honestly look in the mirror and think: how does the median programmer differ from an LLM. Do you really think humans are universally better and produce universally higher quality code? Not even universally, I would say _typically_. I would trust an LLM to not write a buffer overflow far more than a junior or a mediocre senior engineer. LLMs have built things in my domain that are non-trivial and impressive and correct. Not to mention, these systems are following a predictable trend in performance improvement so these worries about quality just won't age well, and it seems to be a head-in-the-sand attitude that pretends like quality and reliability are not getting very very good _already_. > Shipping poor quality and user hostile software actually hurts people. Could not agree more. So why do you think humans are inherently better at this? > This “inevitable” slide into generative AI harms every single person it comes into contact with. I just don't quite understand this, is it that: (1) agentic code is inherently inferior to human code and thus (2) shipping agentic code is actively harmful?
- Pfhortune 6mo agoThis really resonates with me, and reminds me of all that I've missed in the years since COVID and going full remote. There's magic in a room when a mob programming session results in a breakthrough that just can't ever be replicated remotely. Not sure I'd jump to sign up for a daily commute again, especially where I live now, an hour away from a major city without traffic, but I do miss that.
- charles_f 6mo ago> “If you don’t learn how to use AI, you’re going to be left behind.” I don't subscribe to that even to begin with. Learning "how to use AI" in a a dev workflow takes less than a month, just by practice. Assuming "how to use AI" refers to using agents, rather than just a more advanced auto complete, once you've made the couple of mistakes you can make a couple of times (mainly, leave the coding agent to do something too big for too long), you're caught up. Maybe it take a little more time to get the habits into your workflow. Leveraging a LLM for coding is orders of magnitude simpler than the code it's writing, and the skills you need to review said code.
- dakiol 6mo agoThe problem with (propietary AI) is that they (anthropic/google/openai/etc) gain more from the usage of AI than you. Other tools like postgres, gcc, git, HTTP, emacs, etc. don't "gain" anything if you use them (well, they gain popularity and perhaps more contributions, but that's it). The more you use Claude, the richer anthropic gets and the easier for them to position themselves in a place of power, power to dominate the programming of the world. That's sad. So even we all like so much propiertary AIs, we should think twice what we are giving in exchange (and no, it's not just the $200/month what we are giving) I'm all for open models, open source agents, etc. I don't want to give more power to the big corps, though. Imagine what software engineering could become in 5 years if all thse big corporations gain even more power over us. It's a terrifying scenario (e.g., pay more so we don't show you ads in between claude code prompts; pay more so that the produced code doesn't incrust ads in your app...). Do you really want the same shitty experience we have now in the global internet, but deeply ingrained in your software engineering workflows?
- dmix 6mo agoThere were lots of proprietary database companies in the 70s-90s when they first came out (Oracle, IBM, Sybase, SQL Server), but these days open source databases are the default. Everyone's making so many wild predictions based off the current state of LLMs. We don't know how the market will unfold. Even in regards to programming competency and the culture of vibecoding, it's similar to the early stages of electric cars where they fill some roles better than ICE engines, but it's still a decade away from doing the same job. And the whole time there was people trashing electric cars as a novelty/impractical/expensive/dangerous/etc because the infrastructure wasn't there yet and the technology was immature. The only real moat pattern we see is datacenters being hotly in demand but even those will scale up and commoditize, RAM manufacturing will catch up etc.
- dakiol 6mo ago> Everyone's making so many wild predictions based off the current state of LLMs. We don't know how the market will unfold. So wouldn't it be wiser to err on the side of caution?
- aucisson_masque 6mo ago> but it is a necessity to maintain humanity in software development Seems like I'm reading the pope encyclical
- PyWoody 6mo ago[dead]
- lo_fye 6mo agoI am a senior php dev, and I was recently transferred to a Ruby on Rails project. It's completely foreign to me. Our client has advised us to use LLMs as much as possible. The problem is that it's virtually impossible to learn a codebase when you're using AI to do the coding. You never see more than a few lines of code at a time unless you purposefully dig in, but you might not have the time given velocity demands. And yes, it also results in nobody on the team really knowing any area of the code inside-out. It's very very different from my previous 25 years of coding, and I do enjoy it less, but... >>It (software development) is sincerely an art form; A craft that takes >>dedication, perseverance and especially, a strong community to endure. >>Software was built by humans, for humans. 100 years ago, you could only buy furniture made by crafts people. Real artisans. Now you have a choice: IKEA or hand made Most people choose IKEA because they don't care how it was made, as long as it does the job There are still those who prefer hand made furniture, and they pay a pretty penny for it. I think that's where this is heading, and I agree it's unfortunate. Software development will become a hobby (many people do wood working in their spare time). There will be a few real experts left, who largely do consulting. Maybe they create training data? Maybe they design frameworks for the AI to master. I don't know. But things sure are going to be different from here on out, and not entirely for the better. >>If it’s not built by humans, then who is it being built for? Right now it's built by AI for humans (and sometimes other AI). Very soon it'll be built by AI for other AI (and sometimes humans). Later it'll be built by AI primarily for AI (rarely humans).
- micromacrofoot 6mo agoI buy ikea because I can't afford to pay an artisan, there aren't enough left to produce enough to bring the price down
- puelocesar 6mo agoBy the way, where I live you can still buy furniture from crafts people. I bought by bed from a local shop, it was not expensive at all and I was pretty happy about it. Perhaps check in your country if that isn’t true as well, people automatically assume IKEA killed all local shops, but there are many out there if you search for them.
- Kuyawa 6mo agoFor me it's incomprehensible how a tool that allows you to be 100 times more productive is derided as something we should never use for the sake of craftmanship. Same as shoemakers or horseback messengers 100 years ago. Those who fund the next Nike or FedEx will be the winners of this new race. AI is a tool, an exceptional tool for providing solutions.
- smithcoin 6mo ago> how a tool that allows you to be 100 times more productive Because we don’t agree on this premise
- hootz 6mo agoBut what does "100x more productive" mean for code quality and employment? Are we all going to adopt it as just another tool? Are 99% of the engineers going to get fired? Do all engineers need to become managers now?
- miyoji 6mo ago"100 times more productive" is such a wild exaggeration. Do you understand that productivity is not equal to lines of code written? Yeah, AI can write many lines of code very quickly. Productivity is about making something economically valuable. Are you producing 100 times more value with AI than you were without AI? Is your business making 100 times more money? Are you being paid 100 times as much? The factories that replaced shoemakers actually produced physical shoes that real humans wore. What is your AI producing, other than garbage bug-filled software that no one wants or needs? What real-life human problems is it solving?
- MyHonestOpinon 6mo agoI also think 100x is an exageration. May be 5x for producing coed ? And in terms of understanding, may be 2x.
- ethin 6mo agoSo so much this. Also: what does 100x even mean? What is the baseline? I can write a program in 5 minutes that will spit out 10 billion lines of code. As such, does that somehow mean I'm 1000000x more productive?
- roxolotl 6mo agoOne of the things I really don’t understand about the “learn or youll be left behind” sentiment is it also comes from people saying “we’re building PhDs in a box!” It cannot both be the case that AI is something challenging enough to use that a current software engineer can’t learn how to use it and that the promises of these tools are fulfilled.
- Philpax 6mo agoYou won't be left behind because you don't know how to use them - as you say, it doesn't take that much time to be at useful proficiency - but you will be left behind if you refuse to engage with them at all.
- mrenzo 6mo ago[dead]
- theturtle 6mo ago[dead]
- Curosinono 6mo agoIts a lot more fun when you start playing around with finetuning different models, learning basic differences in their architecture and co. You can experiment with different agent harnesses (pi, hermes, opencode, goose, ..) do experiemnets with gastown and paperclip ai. I also get a lot of fun at experimenting with ideas i have and had were the focus is not the pure programming language but the application. But i do think and we will see, as soon as there are clear winners of agentic platforms, we will finetune and adjust these agents.
- itsafarqueue 6mo agoThis ship has sailed.
- fasterik 6mo agoIt seems to me that the article is creating a false dichotomy where either you don't use AI at all, or you delegate every aspect of the work to AI. This simply isn't how it works in practice. You get to choose how much of the work you delegate to AI. There's still an enormous amount of space for human expertise, community, and enthusiasm for technology. The public debate around AI makes me think of the cognitive distortions discussed in cognitive behavioral therapy. In particular, all-or-nothing thinking and catastrophizing. These are often symptoms of anxiety or psychosis. I sometimes wonder whether entire societies can experience these symptoms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion#Decatastrophizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion#Decatastr...
- prerok 6mo agoExactly. To be fair, there would be people in both camps (all-in and no-go) and they would be the vocal ones. Those are the minority. The majority will find the middle ground.
- cautiouscat 6mo ago> This simply isn't how it works in practice. You get to choose how much of the work you delegate to AI. There's still an enormous amount of space for human expertise, community, and enthusiasm for technology. I agree, especially with my own projects. Except you don't always get to choose in the workplace. Now that teams are being measured by PR throughput and token usage, you will look "worse" next to the person who is totally vibecoding. My fear is that if I don't vibecode, I'll be passed up for promotion. The indicators that vibecoding may be bad, are lagging. What I mean is that issues that come up from vibecoding whether its performance, service degradation, massive data migrations etc. will always show up later.
- fasterik 6mo agoI agree that it's out of the developer's control in some organizations. I'm also skeptical the degree to which this is happening across the industry. If I were running a software team, I would give team members autonomy over how much they use AI. Some people will be more productive with it, and some will be more productive without it. What matters is delivering quality software. Long before vibe coding, it was well understood that output in terms of lines of code wasn't a good metric for quality or productivity. I'm predicting that the industry will come to the same understanding in terms of PRs and token usage. Eventually, those lagging indicators will catch up and teams will have to relearn the "No Silver Bullet" lesson.
- m463 6mo ago> working on the very dating app I would use to meet my wife. see! only the developers get the good matches.
- markhuang 6mo ago[dead]
- witx 6mo agoI'm on the same boat I'd rather be left behind than play this stupid game. It's specially hurtful to see open source developers and projects using and supporting the tools of companies which blatantly stole their work - and now profit from it - and that are actively against the open source ideals (Anthropic when trying to close github repos with their code) I've stopped all my monetary support for open source projects, and moved all my code to a self hosted instance. I'm not against AI tools I see where they can be useful, I'm just morally opposed to and disgusted of the ways these companies work.
- geekraver 5mo agoAI is a tool. You can use it to make better software, or worse. In an ideal world we would use it to make better software; there’s enough bad software out there already. Unfortunately, unfettered capitalism has few incentives to support that, and would rather we pushed out software faster with fewer people being paid less. Paying down tech debt has always been challenging. So is the problem AI, or capitalism?
- jaredcwhite 5mo agoSame. I've been a programmer for over 30 years. I'll be a programmer for another 30 years, sans the LLMs. There's nothing about the technology which appeals to me in the slightest.