Armin was once one of the most prolific programmers in Python.
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@cwebber (this is actually my main concern about llms. i think people really underestimate how much llms reproduce the values and expectations in their corpus, their reinforcement learning tasks, their explicit engineering, and their product design. and they underestimate the effects that this will have on their understanding of code and the horizon of what's possible to do with code)
@aparrish i've probably said this before, but i have thought an awful lot about your "programming is forgetting" talk from OHS this last ~decade. feels more, uh, perilously relevant of late than ever.
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topicR relay@relay.publicsquare.global shared this topic
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@cwebber (this is actually my main concern about llms. i think people really underestimate how much llms reproduce the values and expectations in their corpus, their reinforcement learning tasks, their explicit engineering, and their product design. and they underestimate the effects that this will have on their understanding of code and the horizon of what's possible to do with code)
@aparrish @cwebber yeah, and I see a lot of people see that LLMs are capable of shortening a text and mistake it for summarizing a text (which cannot be done without the ability to understand which parts are important)
shortening and summarization look awfully similar for texts where the majority of the words are dedicated to the most important topics, but not all texts fit this category
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Feeling FOMO about AI? Well here's my advice!
Stay on top of what's happening. Which doesn't really require *using* the tools. Just see what people are doing.
Whether or not you do use it, stay a practitioner. And don't fall for the FOMO.
Your career won't end because you're not making the choice to use AI. (If your employer makes you use it, that's another thing.)
If you use AI, use it for "summarize and explore" tasks. DO NOT use it for *generate* tasks. That's a different thing.
If you want to differentiate yourself, *learning skills* is the differentiation space right now.
These things are easy to pick up. You can do it whenever. But keep learning.
If you see generated examples, don't paste or accept them. Type them in by hand! The hands on imperative: actually trying things congeals core ideas.
And if it doesn't help your career... well, your consolation prize is: you'll stay interesting.
@cwebber I think a lot of it is they are trying to build a personal brand of being an AI expert, because they fear the future is bleak for software engineers.
I think that's weak though personally. There's no evidence that software engineers are a dying breed. If anything I think "agentic programmers" or whatever the fuck they call themselves is just a temporary skill that will last no longer than "prompt engineer" - remember that one!?
Better to stick to what you enjoy (actually programming) and at least keep your brain engaged.
Otherwise 🧟
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Armin was once one of the most prolific programmers in Python. Says he never writes code anymore. Seeing more and more people like him write stuff like this on what are supposedly computer programming forums. https://lobste.rs/s/qmjejh/ai_is_slowly_munching_away_my_passion#c_jcgdju
Notably, once a person crosses this threshold, I see them still hang out on programming forums, but they never talk about any of the puzzles of programming anymore. Only about running agents. Which feels strange and sad. Why hang out on the forums at all then?
I see this as a motivation problem: being told you are no longer useful. Companies that are willing to lose talent this way do not appreciate their people. Equally, employees will need to stop accepting that AI code is inevitable. It won't write itself, or choose when to be written. It needs enablers, and that can be taken away.
Musicians still play instruments because they can. It's a choice to be happy doing it for your own reasons, including public good.
Coders can still code for the world they want to see and be part of. Resist being told otherwise.
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@cwebber i'm staying interesting and unemployed. woot.
I'm not a user of such tools but I am afraid that whatever AI auto summary is reading my resume is looking up my website and socials and not recommending me due to my stance on these issues.
@agentultra
+10
(Although I'm not a programmer, just an unemployed 1st-Level-Supporter, with absolutely zero interest in using any ai-tool.)
@cwebber -
@cwebber It is sad and I wonder why it is not more widely recognized in free software circles as going fundamentally against what brought us here: hacking the good hack and sharing knowledge.
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Armin was once one of the most prolific programmers in Python. Says he never writes code anymore. Seeing more and more people like him write stuff like this on what are supposedly computer programming forums. https://lobste.rs/s/qmjejh/ai_is_slowly_munching_away_my_passion#c_jcgdju
Notably, once a person crosses this threshold, I see them still hang out on programming forums, but they never talk about any of the puzzles of programming anymore. Only about running agents. Which feels strange and sad. Why hang out on the forums at all then?
@cwebber pre llms I used to hear this kind of talk from people who ascended to Distinguished Engineer or Technical Fellow or something
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@cwebber I think I'm comfortable waiting til the economics sorts itself out (and fortunate to work a software engineering job where at the moment they don't really care which tools I use). Like, if it turns out Anthropic is making a profit off of their $20/mo plan and it is genuinely making developers 50% more productive then I get it. But, at the same time, it could absolutely turn out that I'd have to pay $500/mo to be 10% more effective and at that point I won't really care to jump on that.
Similarly, last week I was in a meeting for an hour to discuss the impacts of changing one line of code, so while there are parts of my job that are coding-heavy maybe my "software engineering" role as a whole isn't limited by how fast I can read/write code and I doubt an LLM would help me out in that situation.
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Feeling FOMO about AI? Well here's my advice!
Stay on top of what's happening. Which doesn't really require *using* the tools. Just see what people are doing.
Whether or not you do use it, stay a practitioner. And don't fall for the FOMO.
Your career won't end because you're not making the choice to use AI. (If your employer makes you use it, that's another thing.)
If you use AI, use it for "summarize and explore" tasks. DO NOT use it for *generate* tasks. That's a different thing.
If you want to differentiate yourself, *learning skills* is the differentiation space right now.
These things are easy to pick up. You can do it whenever. But keep learning.
If you see generated examples, don't paste or accept them. Type them in by hand! The hands on imperative: actually trying things congeals core ideas.
And if it doesn't help your career... well, your consolation prize is: you'll stay interesting.
@cwebber it’s a struggle for me to talk about using LLM tools as an accessibility tool that helped me start being able to program again because it helps me manage the brain fog and engage with my code and actually think again.
Versus this, where people who can code decide to stop? And give up on their craft?
How does someone talk about this nuance at all when any use is usually quite correctly pilloried?
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@cwebber it’s a struggle for me to talk about using LLM tools as an accessibility tool that helped me start being able to program again because it helps me manage the brain fog and engage with my code and actually think again.
Versus this, where people who can code decide to stop? And give up on their craft?
How does someone talk about this nuance at all when any use is usually quite correctly pilloried?
@aurynn @cwebber this and also engaging with the craft of making computers do things without having to deal with code all that much. I have drawn out my software since I can remember and didn’t realize that the coding part never really was what I enjoyed.
It’s liberating and I can finally really engage with the topics that I always pursued (language design, ui design, operating systems, distributed systems, embedded) without having to remember if it’s list.sort() or sort(list). Hearing over and over that I’m rotting cognitively is a bit dismaying when I am finally unshackled.
Being able to go back to all the creativity and inspired work of the 70-80ies when people didn’t settle on what we are still using now and be “let’s try that” imo is truly embracing the craft and history of computing.
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Armin was once one of the most prolific programmers in Python. Says he never writes code anymore. Seeing more and more people like him write stuff like this on what are supposedly computer programming forums. https://lobste.rs/s/qmjejh/ai_is_slowly_munching_away_my_passion#c_jcgdju
Notably, once a person crosses this threshold, I see them still hang out on programming forums, but they never talk about any of the puzzles of programming anymore. Only about running agents. Which feels strange and sad. Why hang out on the forums at all then?
@cwebber ai is the cure for curiosity. every impulse to learn now has an immediate, plausible sounding answer. is the answer correct? often not, but the impulse is immediately quelled. interesting enough to appear magical, but bland and tedious enough to trick you into thinking the real journey would have been bland and tedious.
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@cwebber ai is the cure for curiosity. every impulse to learn now has an immediate, plausible sounding answer. is the answer correct? often not, but the impulse is immediately quelled. interesting enough to appear magical, but bland and tedious enough to trick you into thinking the real journey would have been bland and tedious.
@aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place "AI is the cure for curiosity" is a powerful line, I'm gonna steal it forever
