[HN Gopher] Yes, you should still learn to code
___________________________________________________________________
Yes, you should still learn to code
Author : japhyr
Score : 72 points
Date : 2023-03-18 00:33 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mostlypython.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mostlypython.substack.com)
| drvdevd wrote:
| As someone who is both a developer and currently occasionally
| uses GPT in the course of development, I skimmed this article
| looking for the one point I think there is to make on this
| subject.
|
| I think the opposite of what people are worrying about will
| happen here. AI will create a feedback loop for developers, where
| there just aren't enough humans to keep up with the work -
| exacerbating the existing problem of a shortage.
|
| For me, LLMs can essentially replace large portions of my
| workflow: stack overflow, googling for examples, finding some
| obscure syntax, getting started on a problem when I'm coming from
| a place of little understanding. Assuming I ask the right
| questions in the right order and get the output running, it can
| drastically reduce my time to a working solution.
|
| This is the same thing previous tools have done, but with a
| faster and tighter feedback loop. That will just amplify the
| primary pattern of software: with every solution we create new
| problems to solve. And every new abstraction has some hidden
| cost.
|
| Mark my words: our near future problem as engineers is not that
| we can't get jobs, it's that we can't fill them all. We will most
| likely find ourselves desperately chasing automation that never
| quite gets as automated as we need it to be.
|
| Of course this is both good and bad. But it means that like this
| author, we need to encourage everyone possible to "learn to code"
| in some sense.
| tobr wrote:
| On the other hand, if it replaces large parts of your workflow,
| that means your work is now very different. It will perhaps be
| more about making strategic decisions, less about implementing
| the details. So depending on what type of work you are good at
| and enjoy, it can be a good or a bad thing.
| mypastself wrote:
| I have a similar take. I suspect at some stage "software
| development" will mean feeding business requirements (with
| some degree of precision) into the algorithm and letting it
| handle logic, resource provisioning etc. The last traditional
| programming jobs to go will be legacy software for critical
| infrastructure, defense, and financial institutions.
|
| Communication skills and business domain knowledge will
| become far more important than what we consider "tech skills"
| today.
|
| I doubt the world's appetite for software will decline even
| when one person manages to develop in a day what used to take
| a team of people months. We'll have a lot more work to do,
| and a lot more people will join the field.
|
| However, on average, it might become a much less lucrative
| and prestigious profession.
| comfypotato wrote:
| I agree with the other comment responding to you. Consider
| SQL. A typical select statement with a join and a sort
| would have taken a team of people months to implement in an
| application-specific proprietary data-storage structure
| (perhaps a red black tree). Now it's a trivial line of SQL.
| Like the top comment said, this has not eliminated those
| teams' jobs.
| mypastself wrote:
| Interesting you should mention SQL, because a lot of non-
| tech business people I've met have rudimentary SQL skills
| nowadays. Database administration is a dying field.
| comfypotato wrote:
| I was speaking of the engineering teams that existed
| before database administration was formalized as a field
| at all. Mainframe, batch processing, and written in C:
| proprietary company-specific applications.
|
| Analogously, it may not be long before crud websites are
| created, end to end, by non-tech people with mostly
| natural language.
|
| That being said, today's crud web developers won't be out
| of work. Their experience writing/designing code will be
| put to use in more complex, potentially yet-unseen
| applications.
| ltrojanowski wrote:
| The one difference I see is that SQL is still predictable
| in it's output. I don't think feeding requirements into
| an AI is at that state yet
| yunohn wrote:
| +1 Predictability and rigour are crucial IMHO.
| yunohn wrote:
| > I suspect at some stage "software development" will mean
| feeding business requirements (with some degree of
| precision) into the algorithm and letting it handle
|
| That's just a higher level programming language... And we
| all know that it doesn't solve things.
| mypastself wrote:
| It actually does solve a lot things, in the sense that
| there's a lower barrier for entry. A lot of lower-level
| programming skills are being abstracted away and
| obsoleted. My prediction may be wrong, but it's based on
| the extrapolation of the trends you're referring to.
| yunohn wrote:
| High level languages like Python abstract away boring
| specifics like memory management and implantation data
| structures.
|
| Natural language programming via GPT instead abstracts
| away the actual functioning.
|
| I've seen colleagues use snippets from chatGPT that are
| horrendously inefficient despite being "simple" prompts.
| They look fine at first glance, but work only 50% of the
| time.
| mypastself wrote:
| Oh, there's no doubt this particular AI software is
| flawed. But I don't think there's anything inherent to AI
| that renders it unable to master specific frameworks or
| algorithms in future iterations. The timeframe is up in
| the air, though.
| yunohn wrote:
| I'm not convinced it's an AI quality problem - rather,
| the difficulty of translating natural language into
| machine requirements. This is an age-old problem, not
| even restricted to Computer Science.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Don't forget that most companies want us to actually do more,
| there's pretty much infinite creativity available. Faster and
| cheaper code delivery will probably lead to more code , more
| moonshot ideas to be involved in, more scaling issues,
| security issues and on and on.
|
| There will now be more competition of course, more LLMs to
| build and maintain. More features to keep up with etc.
|
| Also AI safety jobs will become more of a thing, could just
| be getting started.
|
| ...or it's the end of all work!!!!!!
| 0xGod wrote:
| This assessment is correct. Many more engineers will be needed.
| Far more than exist right now. There is a lot of work to do.
| There could be innovation in products and services...more
| products, more services, more innovation, for another 1,000
| years.
| tpoacher wrote:
| The problem isn't how you, an engineer, perceives the tool
| could be useful.
|
| The problem is how your CEO, not an engineer, perceives the
| tool could be useful.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| If it's a real problem, it'll only be a temporary one that
| eventually self-corrects.
| elforce002 wrote:
| This. I asked a question regarding this on a forum and I got
| downvoted to oblivion just because I said a manager/CTO/CEO
| could see this as an opportunity to lay off people, cut
| salaries, etc...
| Teever wrote:
| Maybe those laid off people can start a business that
| replaces the CEO/CTO with an AI.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| I am skeptical that this will happen but if it does it
| seems to me it will still be a short term situation. I
| don't believe the world's need for software, especially
| high quality software, is anywhere near met. There are many
| problems waiting to be solved with software that just
| aren't due to cost or time of implementation. The outcome
| will be more software and more complex software, you may as
| an individual engineer be expected to manage and produce
| more software then before but the demand for software
| engineers will not be reduced because all of the sudden
| there is much more software in the world.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Alright, then I'll be the CEO.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Reality has a way to make itself perceived at some point.
| Madmallard wrote:
| Where's the shortage of engineering? Tech companies nearly
| universally (outside like Defense) are laying off huge swaths
| of developers.
| carlmr wrote:
| It's always been a shortage of firms willing to pay the
| appropriate amount.
|
| When you pay enough the talent pool is endless.
| drvdevd wrote:
| This is true but this doesn't imply those companies couldn't
| still use those engineers in _some_ capacity but rather they
| have decided to cut the cost of employing them.
|
| Universally, software is so flawed and yet so fundamental to
| modern life, there is certainly a possibility for everyone to
| contribute but not necessarily funding to pay them for their
| work.
| broast wrote:
| Learn to read code that you didn't write
| ojbyrne wrote:
| I found myself thinking that yes, you should still learn to code,
| but no you probably shouldn't bother to write blog posts about
| why you should still learn to code.
| politician wrote:
| That's right, use ChatGPT to write the blog posts.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Honesty I think tools like GPT are going to cause _more_ people
| to learn to code, not less.
|
| I've been using GPT to write very simple utilities in languages I
| am unfamiliar with, and for me, there's no faster way to pick up
| a language then to see an example program where you already know
| exactly what it does.
|
| (Or is supposed to do, finding the small mistakes that GPT
| sometimes makes also helps learn things, ironically.)
| famahar wrote:
| ChatGPT has made me enjoy making games again. Trying to do
| something specific in Unity usually meant having to sift
| through old outdated forums or long videos. Now I can prototype
| ideas just by asking. Can't wait until this is built into Unity
| so it can assist with more than just code. Something like
| RunwayML but for game engines.
| shaunkoh wrote:
| Yes exactly. I had a specific project in mind, and ChatGPT was
| able to give me step by step instructions how to build it. It's
| like having a private tutor. That's transformative for folks
| like me that struggle to get through generic 12 week courses,
| but want their learning experience scaffolded around a project
| they're already motivated to work on.
| HervalFreire wrote:
| I mean you're ignoring an obvious trend. These LLMs are
| improving rapidly.
|
| If the improvement continues, the LLMs can reach a point in
| skill where they can replace us. Your statement and this
| article is gambling on the status quo. That humans will always
| be better then AI.
|
| Why is this causing so much of a ruckus right now? Pretty much
| everyone knows chatGPT is pretty stupid when compared to a
| human.
|
| It's causing a ruckus because it's a herald for a possible
| future where the AI becomes superior to human problem solving.
|
| It's not a unrealistic proposition given that chess AI and go
| AI has already surpassed us.
| croes wrote:
| Do people learn more languages since translation tools exist?
| saurik wrote:
| I don't think that analogy works as it isn't about learning
| languages so much as knowing how to write (but I also can't
| quite fix the analogy, sadly).
|
| A better one (but one which doesn't leave software
| engineering): as programming languages have gotten easier to
| use and tooling has gotten better making programmers more
| effective, more programmers have been needed to write ever
| more code despite them all having to expend much less effort
| if they were to merely do the same things... because, and
| this is key, the tooling now allowance people to tackle ever
| more complicated problems leading to new things that can be
| achieved.
| croes wrote:
| I think it fits because ChatGPT writes code for you like
| DeepL and Google Translate translates for you.
|
| Easier tooling is more like programms like Duolingo and
| Babbel.
|
| If you totally trust the former you don't need to learn
| anything, the latter enforces to do something on your own.
| saurik wrote:
| Google Translate is translating for me, but it isn't
| reading for me. I think more people bother to both read
| and write more content of higher importance because of
| the existence of Google Translate, as it allows people of
| every language to have a wider audience and to waste less
| of their effort on translations of their content.
|
| And that's where it is a complex analogy for me to use
| and fix, because I get what you are wanting to point at,
| and yet it doesn't seem like the relevant thing to
| measure.
|
| I believe that large language models automatically
| writing code will result in many more programs existing
| of much higher complexity and I simply do not see how
| that is going to result in _fewer_ software developers.
|
| I do believe it will change how we do this job and the
| level of scale and abstraction we are dealing with, but
| if you think that the world of post-AI software is going
| to involve a bunch of people building stuff that looks as
| simple as it is today in 2023 just without software
| developers I think you are going to be surprised, as
| frankly you don't need a software developer at all to
| build most marketing websites people need--we solved that
| problem years ago with WYSIWYG tooling--and yet somehow
| every marketing website is now more complicated than ever
| before because the goalposts moved.
|
| Imagine when every single thing you interact with is
| going to be some crazy 3D environment with animated
| characters providing immersive abuse^Hengagement designed
| to close the deal. Sure, you could just generate a static
| website for your project but that's _so_ early 2020s it
| hurts, right?
|
| And yeah: the team that builds that might be doing a ton
| of development using AIs but it isn't going to be just
| "outsource it to the AI" until the AI gets smart enough
| to replace us entirely and at that point we probably only
| have a few more years of being alive anyway ;P.
| croes wrote:
| >I simply do not see how that is going to result in fewer
| software developers.
|
| One simple reason: demand. If software developing is more
| than a hobby you need to get paid, and ChatGPT will be
| cheaper than entry level programmers, so it will be hard
| to get entry level jobs and the experience to reach the
| next level while getting paid.
| kebsup wrote:
| Increased productivity of a single developer -> less demand for
| developers More AI based companies and products -> more demand
| for developers Not sure which force is stronger.
| gnicholas wrote:
| It's true that it would be helpful to be able to troubleshoot the
| code output of AI chatbots. What I've heard from friends is that
| ChatGPT is pretty good at troubleshooting itself -- not
| automatically, but if you re-enter buggy output, it can often
| correctly suggest how to fix the bug. This won't always be the
| case, but it does seem to undercut the argument that humans are
| always needed to fix bigs. There may be other reasons, like
| optimization, that are more compelling. Or it's possible that AI
| will be good at that as well!
| HervalFreire wrote:
| This post is speculative. We're only 4 months into seeing the
| potential of LLMs with huge sets of training data.
|
| 4 months... that's it.
|
| Wait 5 years, and during that time we'll know whether or not it's
| worth it to know programming. Maybe not even 5 years, give it 2
| years.
| jcijcijc wrote:
| Maybe we're 2 months away from the singularity or 200 years.
| Who knows? Until then you should be paralyzed with fear. Don't
| get comfortable!
| HervalFreire wrote:
| [flagged]
| SanderNL wrote:
| GPT3 is from 2020. I know ChatGPT is slightly novel, but let's
| not exaggerate.
| HervalFreire wrote:
| I'm talking about the recent acceleration of changes,
| chatGPT, dall e, midjourney.
|
| chatGPT and dall-e put fuel on the fire. Interest has spiked
| and additionally the industry and academia is matching the
| trend with an equivalent refocus of research efforts.
|
| No exaggeration here to say "we don't know what will happen"
| SanderNL wrote:
| Dall-E was a few months later. I don't want to be obtuse,
| but I am into this topic for quite a while and progress is
| actually kind of slow to me. Society is still hung up on
| (to me) minor and extremely uninteresting issues.
|
| I'm getting tired of the "losing jobs" narrative. GPT4 is a
| worse coder than 3. What I'd like to see is some discussion
| about this tech disrupting the need for "leadership" and
| bullshit executives. IMO vast swaths of elites - GPTs
| tendency to hallucinate makes it the perfect politician -
| are becoming obsolete as their opinion and influence is no
| longer interesting / necessary. This, of course, will not
| happen. We will only replace workers, the rest will be
| fine. We won't even talk about it.
|
| Sorry for the detour and unsubstantiated rant. I deserve
| the downvotes. Taking the hit for the socialist team here.
| croes wrote:
| If ChatGPT had existed 20 years ago, things like React would
| never have been developed and all websites would still be using
| nested tables for layout.
| gumballindie wrote:
| > things like React would never have been developed
|
| Not entirely sure that would have been a negative outcome.
| React is horrible.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I don't particularly like React, but I don't think it's
| horrible either. I also think it has introduced a lot of
| important concepts to a space that wasn't particularly
| predisposed to them. It's an overall good, even if it's not
| my preference.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> Not entirely sure that would have been a negative outcome.
| React is horrible. _
|
| Oh sweet summer child. It's ancestors were so much worse.
| They had to deal with _Microsoft Internet Explorer_
|
| _jQuery_. _bootstrap_. And if that doesn 't strike fear in
| your heart, _ANGULAR!_
| mock-possum wrote:
| Aw come on jQuery was fun! Remember those big long chained
| commands? Remember how suddenly you could just select
| anything off the page, using cas selectors? Remember how
| much easier ajax and animation and dom manipulation and
| events were with jQuery?
| gumballindie wrote:
| These tools you mention are worse but that doesnt mean
| react is great. The two statements dont negate each other.
| chrischattin wrote:
| Hard disagree. Front end development was an order of
| magnitude easier better faster before FB pushed React into
| the dev mindspace.
| arrow7000 wrote:
| No one is stopping you from going back to jQuery. But
| there's a reason the world moved on to React and others
| chrischattin wrote:
| I _always_ use sprinkles of jQuery over React
| /Angular/Front End Framework de jour if given the choice.
| gumballindie wrote:
| The main reasons being facebook's popularity and herd
| mentality.
| arrow7000 wrote:
| You think that's the only reason React took off? Have you
| ever tried to build a complex web application using only
| jQuery?
| chrischattin wrote:
| Yeah, I've done it many times successfully, drag and drop
| interfaces, form builders, dynamic form inputs,
| animations, etc. It's 10x easier with vanilla JS and
| sprinklings of jQuery.
|
| Believe it or not, gmail was a much faster cleaner better
| interface before they switched to Angular, and FB worked
| much better and was way less buggy and slow before they
| switched to React. The reason the mega-caps pushed their
| use was to offload processing power to the client, which
| saves them server costs. Front end JS frameworks don't
| solve a problem almost every other company has, hence why
| they had to be pushed by FB/Google, and didn't grow
| organically from the open source community.
| fulafel wrote:
| It seems to me that Facebook has put out many many open
| source libraries, but React is the only one that has
| taken off in a bigway outside FB. People generally
| scoffed at FB technically since they were built on PHP.
|
| I think bringing the functional programming approach and
| princinpled state management to frontend was just
| something that the time was ripe for.
|
| (Also React was much different back then, before hooks,
| etc).
| EamonnMR wrote:
| If ChatGPT existed 47 years ago programming as we know it never
| would have been invented, and we'd just ask our room sized
| tabulation machines to kindly do payroll.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I don't have a dog in the AI fight, but it seems pretty
| plausible that React's core concepts would have been part of a
| hypothetical 20 years ago training set. All of these were part
| of at least academic discourse:
|
| - Algebraic effects
|
| - DSLs designed to be expressive and statically analyzable
|
| - [Thing] as a function of state (I'm not sure how much this
| was applied to UI specifically, but if I had to take a wild
| guess, probably)
|
| - Abstraction of declarative definitions from computational
| instructions
|
| If anything, I think a declarative UI model could have come
| much sooner if there weren't such deep investment in other
| techniques. Not that a hypothetical AI of the time would have
| arrived at that, but I definitely think it had enough training
| material to go on.
| gnicholas wrote:
| ...or ChatGPT would have come up with something like/better
| than React, and we/it would be using that now.
| croes wrote:
| That's not what generative AI does because it produces test
| that most like fit the prompt.
|
| The probability for new concepts for any prompt is near zero.
| medellin wrote:
| Has AI produced any novel technology yet that it wasn't
| trained to do?
| LesZedCB wrote:
| I feel like the fact this question is being asked in plain
| seriousness _4 months_ after the technology was made
| publicly available /known to the general public sends a
| different message than you meant.
| [deleted]
| californical wrote:
| Pretty sure they were asking rhetorically, because the
| answer is obviously not, since that's not how LLMs work
| medellin wrote:
| Yes. Although over text it sometimes doesn't come
| through.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gnicholas wrote:
| GP's hypo said "20 years ago". I assume that in 20 years,
| AI will have created things more impressive than React.
| croes wrote:
| But ChatGPT doesn't create new texts it remixes pre
| existing ones.
|
| It reorders existing words but doesn't invent new ones
| quonn wrote:
| But that would be totally unrelated to ChatGPT or
| anything resembling it. Sure, there could be another
| advance in AI, probably using another approach, but how
| is that different from 5 years ago?
| recuter wrote:
| Lishten, money penny, just because we have face swapping
| technology and voice cloning technology and deep fakes does not
| mean I shouldn't practice my Sean Connery impression. I admit, I
| may be somewhat shaken by these recent developments but I'm not
| shttiered.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| Probably worth a disclaimer, somewhere:
|
| "I'm the author of Python Crash Course, which is published by No
| Starch Press: https://nostarch.com/pythoncrashcourse2e" - author
| and OP
| marchenko wrote:
| The Substack is called "mostly Python". I assumed the author is
| a programming educator or enthusiast of some sort.
| postsantum wrote:
| I wish HN had pinned comments to save others time
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I actually thought this might have been written by ChatGPT.
|
| Part of the answer is that "you should learn to code beyond
| basic syntax, so that you can be better than the computer".
|
| What it doesn't mention is that the state of AI is also going
| to continue improving, so you're possibly entering an arms
| race.
| ge96 wrote:
| It could be sad if one day AI can do anything. One of those
| cliche "what's the point". No joy anymore in building.
| speedgoose wrote:
| You don't always need to have a point for your artistic
| activities or your hobbies. For example , people still use
| oil paint while photography exists, people learn piano when
| a computer does it better.
|
| But professionally, we may have to find new activities.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > people still use oil paint while photography exists
|
| It's not at all the same medium. Unless you consider that
| the whole point of oil painting is to imitate realistic
| pictures...
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| OK, people attempt photorealistic art when of course, the
| best they can hope for is to look as realistic as a
| photograph would.
|
| As someone else mentioned, people play chess for fun.
| People do things that they will never be as good at as
| computers.
|
| I don't buy this idea that people need to be the "best"
| at something to enjoy it. Living that way dooms you to
| always being unhappy
| topper-123 wrote:
| I play chess and like it, even though the computer in my
| pocket can win every human player.
| jcijcijc wrote:
| If you said "hey I'm bored let's add more squares. Let's
| move some pieces around or maybe change their movement
| rules" or "let's play checkers instead" then a human
| could adapt to this situation pretty easily. A
| reinforcement learning model like AlphaZero would be like
| "Whoa whoa whoa not so fast. Let's fire up the GPU
| cluster." Maybe one day we won't need GPU clusters. But
| ultimately we're the ones who create all of these tools
| and decide how to use them.
| candiodari wrote:
| Why do you treat humans so very different from AlphaZero
| here? Alphazero could _badly_ play other games quickly,
| just like humans can. AlphaZero is just able to improve
| beyond what any human can ever achieve for a lot of types
| of games.
| nicbou wrote:
| People could retreat to the physical world where AI is
| useless.
|
| That being said, people still do things they're outclassed
| at. We still have blacksmiths.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| I honestly think a lot of people in their twenties
| already do this. They're not making much money but seem
| to be making enough to just have fun and pursue other
| things.
|
| My brother has figured he can make a great living out of
| gardening for people. Yes robots will probably do this
| one day, but will they to the same level ? Really who
| knows anymore?
|
| I'm actually sure a lot of the more wealthy people he
| works for kind of also just like him and his company too.
| He's a youthful fun guy with a lot of creative ideas.
|
| The silicone value push for eternal life via the
| singularity and trips to Mars seems to be mostly fuelled
| by cults and the need to keep shareholder happy / profits
| coming in.
|
| I don't know if anyone else cares that much, including
| the bots themselves. Time will tell.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Transformer models work on data. Text, images, and motor
| control can all be fed into the pit.
| japhyr wrote:
| I'm the author of the post. I didn't feel any need to add a
| disclaimer, because if my book faded to insignificance tomorrow
| I'd still argue the same points.
|
| It's really clear how useful these tools are to many
| experienced programmers, but I have no idea what impact they'll
| have on people who are new to programming. Most of the write-
| ups I've seen so far have been from people who already know how
| to code. I think it will be some time yet before we really see
| how effectively people who know nothing about programming are
| able to use these tools for learning.
| HervalFreire wrote:
| > I'm the author of the post. I didn't feel any need to add a
| disclaimer, because if my book faded to insignificance
| tomorrow I'd still argue the same points.
|
| You need the disclaimer. The reason why is because no one can
| read your intentions, they can only guess your intention from
| your actions.
|
| By waiting until a 3rd party disclosed this information a
| little bit of trust was automatically lost.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| This is not how a conflict of interest works.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| > I didn't feel any need to add a disclaimer, because if my
| book faded to insignificance tomorrow I'd still argue the
| same points.
|
| I believe you, but this _really_ isn 't how maintaining
| credibility with a conflict of interest works.
|
| You also don't have to add a "disclaimer". Just mention
| anywhere that you wrote a book on programming. You can say it
| abstractly like that if you don't want it to be an ad.
| Considering how much this experience informs your argument,
| it should be pretty easy to work in.
|
| And thank you for your book. I've recommended it to many
| people.
| textread wrote:
| No, you need not. Especially if you own a _time machine_. Its a
| matter of perspective, though.
|
| Analogy:-
|
| Because of a tool such as Grammarly, I no longer recommend my
| kids to bother when they lose marks due to minor grammatical
| mistakes on a handwritten test.
|
| They better put that 80-20 to practice and learn to recognize
| aggressively reducing their efforts/tasks/work to 20 wherever
| possible.
|
| Their English teacher disagrees with me.
|
| Maybe, we do have a horse in this race.
|
| This comment was edited in Grammarly, and it score a 67 out of
| 100 on readability.
| quonn wrote:
| Did you/Grammarly mean ,,scored"?
| [deleted]
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| So you're the reason why the texts I receive from younger
| relatives are incomprehensible. You should listen to their
| English teacher. An adult using Grammarly to highlight their
| mistakes is different from a child relying on Grammarly because
| they haven't learned any better.
|
| > This comment was edited in Grammarly, and it score a 67 out
| of 100 on readability.
|
| I can see that. Your 80-20 sentence is poorly constructed, you
| used the wrong tense in "and it score a 67 out of 100". Other
| than highlighting the fact that Grammarly thinks you write
| poorly, what point are you making exactly?
| gumballindie wrote:
| The elephant in the room is that a lot of outsourcing jobs will
| get slashed first. Curious how this will affect the economy of
| countries such as india or other popular outsourcing
| destinations.
| bberrry wrote:
| What makes you so confident its the outsourced jobs that will
| get cut and not the domestic ones?
| quonn wrote:
| This should be obvious. Jobs outsourced to India are jobs
| that can be specified rather precisely and require less
| interaction/requirements engineering across timezones.
| badrabbit wrote:
| My view is that even if AI can program really well, it can't
| architect full solutions, you still need to tell it specifics and
| test/debug its output (at least for now). It's like if you're a
| farmer and you got tractors, you don't need to till and harvest
| anymore but you still gotta drive it and press buttons and even
| if tractors drove themselves and pressed their own buttons you
| gotta supervise them and maintain them.
|
| I think people being less eager to be programmers will only help
| with increasing wages lol
| whateveracct wrote:
| And you still need to run the software. ChatGPT isn't
| infallible and you will still push bugs or hit sudden scaling
| or perf issues. Maybe it can help debug at 2am but honestly I'd
| rather be debugging a system I built rather than one I
| partially copy-pasted in and didn't fully understand. The old
| fashioned way has the benefit of growing your own mind and
| making you "stronger and smarter"
| famahar wrote:
| A single crop harvester can replace 30 farm workers. If
| programming is going the same route as your farming example
| then we're in for a shock. The complexity and scale of software
| increases every year so I wonder if AI will be able to keep up
| or if there will always be a need for specialized roles.
| realusername wrote:
| Coding is a small percentage of a programming job, I don't
| write more than 100 lines / day, GPT tools are also very late
| to the party of code generation, it's been 40 years of
| development in this area.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Yeah but not everyone affords a crop harvester and even then
| you have less farm workers not no farm workers.
|
| I think there will be less demand for programmers and more
| demand at lesser pay for the top quintile of talented coders.
| There will also be ML managing/engineering/monitoring type
| jobs that will require you to know how to code. Various other
| disciplines will also have knowing python and shell scripting
| a requirement.
|
| The only thing that will get decimated is the need for a 10:1
| ratio (making that up for the record) between coders that
| stitch software and suck at debugging and coders that sre
| debugging ninjas that can identify issues GPT* hallucinates.
|
| The next stage of decimation is a long way off when GPT is
| able to be integrated into the production monitoring tooling,
| debug on it's own and answer questions like "why is your code
| slow under these circumstances? And why does it randomly
| crash?" Right now operations/sre/users ask that of the
| programmer. I don't believe GPT is anywhere near being able
| to reliably answer those questions because if it were, why
| emit such code to begin with? You would be able to prompt it
| to generate perfect code if it could do that, the code I have
| seen is impressive but full of flaws even a collegr freshman
| wouldn't make.
|
| To me the question is the same as dalle-e replacing artists.
| Even whe the drawing is not weird or just messed up it still
| does not "wow" you, i mean technically it qualifies and for a
| machine it is impressive but it just feels mediocre to the
| most part.
|
| I think in reality what you will see is GPT assisted IDEs
| giving new meaning to "code completion".
| badrabbit wrote:
| My view is that even if AI can program really well, it can't
| architect full solutions, you still need to tell it specifics and
| test/debug its output (at least for now). It's like if you're a
| farmer and you got tractors, you don't need to till and harvest
| anymore but you still gotta drive it and press buttons and even
| if tractors drove themselves and pressed their own buttons you
| gotta supervise them and maintain them.
|
| I think people being less eager to be programmers will only help
| with increasing wages lol
|
| But does this mean no more stackoverflow? Not cool.
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