by adamredwoods
4 subcomments
- >> The computers will come for all of our jobs eventually, but those of us who refuse or decline to embrace the most powerful creative tools we’ve ever been given will be the first to fall.
It's being mandated by almost all companies. We're forced to use it, whether it produces good results or not. I can change a one-line code faster than Claude Code can, as long as I understand the code. Someday, I'll lose understanding of the code, because I didn't write it. What am I embracing?
by hyperhello
3 subcomments
- My feeling is that AI is not real coding; it is coding-adjacent. Project Management, Sales, Marketing, Writing Books About KanBan, AI Programming, User Interface Design, Installing Routers are coding-adjacent. AI is not real coding any more than The Sims is homemaking. You can use AI and hang with the tech guys and get your check but you are going to be treading water and trying to be liked personally to stay where you are. No question it's a job, but no, it's not coding.
by an0malous
2 subcomments
- > If you interpret these examples to mean that any person can write down any list of requirements along with any user interface specs, and the AI will consistently produce a satisfactory product, then I’d agree programmers are toast.
I think the road to this is pretty clear now. It’s all about building the harness now such that the AI can write something and get feedback from type checks, automated tests, runtime errors, logs, and other observability tools. The majority of software is fairly standardized UI forms running CRUD operations against some backend or data store and interacting with APIs.
- In chess, engines have long been stronger than humans, but for a long time a (super) grandmaster with an engine was still better than an engine alone.
by phyzix5761
1 subcomments
- > any person can write down any list of requirements along with any user interface specs
Isn't this just a new programming language? A higher level language which will require new experts to know how to get the best results out of it? I've seen non-technical people struggle with AI generated code because they don't understand all the little nuances that go into building a simple web app.
by auggierose
0 subcomment
- > The computers will come for all of our jobs eventually, but those of us who refuse or decline to embrace the most powerful creative tools we’ve ever been given will be the first to fall.
The most powerful creative tool I've ever been given is my body, including my brain. Yeah, AI is cool, too.
- > But people are less likely to share all the times the AI failed in some ridiculous way.
I have not noticed this: people love sharing AI failing in ridiculous ways.
by markus_zhang
1 subcomments
- For anyone who relies on their knowledge of business, of taking requirements, know that eventually your customers will be at least as good as you on this skill.
After all they are asking questions. And they are not dumb ass who don’t learn. They are also motivated to learn to adapt to AI.
IMO the best value of humans right now is to provide skills, as fuel of the future. Once we burn up then the new age shall come.
- ‘There is a confirmation bias at work here: every developer who has experienced such a remarkable outcome is delighted to share it. It helps to contribute to a mass (human) hallucination that computers really are capable of anything, and really are taking over the world.”
This is survivorship bias, a form of sample bias.
Confirmation bias is a form of motivated reasoning where you search for evidence that confirms your existing beliefs.
- I'm observing that there is some kind of status quo bias nearly uniformly being surfaced by the programming community right now.
I myself have feelings like this, as a software engineer by trade.
"We will forever be useful!" As a sounding cry against radical transformation. I hope that's the case, but some of these pieces just seem like copium.
by 11217mackem
0 subcomment
- logic, rigor, judgement and taste
- > The time may come, perhaps even soon, when AI takes over programming completely. But in the mean time, a programmer who embraces AI, yet is skeptical about everything it creates, is better-equipped than any comparably-skilled human in programming history.
The premise is flawed.
Your company has 3 layers: workers - managers - owners. When AI (actual AI, not "AI") takes over, that'll change into 2 layers: AI - owners.
How you're equipped doesn't matter because you're out of the picture. Not economically viable. Irrelevant.
- > Speaking of goodness, I share the majority opinion that AI is generally good
I would like to know how the author concluded that this is the majority opinion.
by trimethylpurine
0 subcomment
- Good read.
by anal_reactor
0 subcomment
- I have a friend. He's very passionate about trains, and he worked his entire career in and around them. Some time ago we had an incident where entire railway in the region had to be shut down for some time because the computer managing the traffic broke. Big fuckup because lots of people rely on railway. My friend instantly started complaining with visible satisfaction "See? Computers are shit! Back in my days everything was done manually and that was great! We never had such outages!". What my friend is incapable of understanding is that it's simply not possible to manage traffic at scale using humans, and it's much better and safer to do this using computers. When he was young, there was much less traffic, and delays were much more frequent.
The core issue is that he doesn't really understand computers, and because he's old, there's no chance he'll learn a new technology, so he's very distrustful towards computers. Not to mention that modern UX is about enshittification, so it does take some skill to navigate the technology, especially mobile - he trips over things that I consider extremely basic like "this is an ad, don't click this".
I have a similar feeling when reading discussions about AI on this website. Most people here refuse to appreciate AI because "back in my days...". Well, the future is here, old man, adapt or perish. Programming using AI is a completely new paradigm that requires completely new approach and new skills. Either you learn them or you'll be left behind, whether you like it or not - back in 2010's all you had to do to get a lucrative software job was to show that you knew how to use google because most people refused that. I suspect that when the dust settles, something similar will happen with AI, and people who know how to extract maximum value from it will be rewarded handsomely.
by julianlam
1 subcomments
- > Just a few years ago, AI essentially could not program at all. In the future, a given AI instance may “program better” than any single human in history. But for now, real programmers will always win.
For how long? Do I get to feel smug about this for 10 days, 10 weeks, or 10 years? That radically changes the planned trajectory of my life.
by chiengineer2
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
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