> Some not so good ones have even stopped using AI at all, arguing it 'just got confused'. Good ones on the other hand are embracing it
The behaviour of the good programmers is in my experience very "spread": some embrace strongly embrace LLMs for programming, some strongly reject LLMs for programming, with everything in-between.
The explanatory variables that I rather think are good predictors whether a good programmer will embrace or reject LLMs for coding are rather the following ones:
1. Is the programmer biased towards the "artisan" side of programming, or does he see the code as a means to an end?
2. Is the programmer either
- in love,
- interested in, or
- does the programmer have to work with
more obscure programming languages and/or the abstractions and mental models that these programming languages are based on? If this is the case, using an AI is often more of a hindrance than help because there exists much less training data, and/or the programmer will much more often be confronted with the observation that the AI model simply does not "get" what he wants, and will very often get annoyed by bad AI code hallucinations.
The best one I've seen aren't so interested in the "artisanal" part of the programming, but on the "practical engineering" part.
They constantly are poking at the requirements to understand what's the purpose and they find a better, simpler or sometimes hackier (for temporary stuff) solution, but they are on time, they solutions work and they get shit done.
I've seen some really crafty "artisanal" ones that debate for hours and rewrite 10 time the release scripts... Not the most efficient way to spend their time.
So, yes, purchasing code from Anthropic is going to McDonald's for dinner. It's not very good, but it gets the job done fast, so long as you don't care about cooking.
What other enjoyable things do you think we can automate, so that the people that hate doing them can cheaply replace the people who enjoy doing them?
Do you think we'll leave any work that people enjoy?
The purpose of software is to be useful to users, not provide a reason for you to get paid a salary to solve puzzles very slowly.
If that was the purpose, we wouldn't dimiss consumer sentiment of software getting constantly worse with a shrug.
We all know the real purpose of Big Tech.
And what's the point of spending most of your life doing work that sucks so that others can hate their job too? It seems like a bad idea to make everything worse so we can have more bad software.
And, yes, the resulting software also sucks, and I'd pay extra to avoid it. There's been a noticeable drop in software quality over the last year or two.
The point is to survive and care for your family.
In a free market economy, you get from the butcher the meat only if you can give the butcher something in return. It might be cleaning the store, or throwing out the smelly bloody stuff out.
It's not pretty, but life is not pretty.
It is great to find a way to swap for other's needs what you're good at and enjoy, and sometimes it's possible.
However, since you need to solve another's person problem to barter with from something, it's by default not something you like, but something the other person needs. And this frequently is not what you would like to do at the moment.
So basically, this is life, sometimes we can write beautiful code, sometimes we need to fix a messy code our client uses every day.
And sometime we don't have the pleasure to work on the computer at all, because AI took our job away, and we end up cleaning the store.
Cool, "Life is getting worse, shut up and deal. Altman needs his returns."
Got it.
Dude, it's not Altman, it's the real world.
If you can do something for your client, then you get to eat what you both voluntary agreed the deal is worth.
Does a plumber work for Altman, or for himself? Why this need to have a boss and not live by the direct fruits of your own labor?
Ah, my bad -- "Suck it up, shits getting worse for everyone because of what this industry is doing. The future sucks because of us, get used to it."
> And what's the point of spending most of your life doing work that sucks so that others can hate their job too?
I mean in my case i'd be absolutely fine doing work that sucks infinitely if that means that my users are happy. It really drives me crazy all the discourse I've seen over the years about devs that care about their own quality of life/job. Like, no, the only thing that should matter to you is your users, no matter the job. If what makes them genuinely happy is for you to take dirt out of a hole and put it back, and on top of this you get paid, we live in completely different planets if you don't rush to the nearest shovel.
It's okay if it did both. The pre-AI world was not some hellscape - people felt they had a purpose. Not so much now.
yeah, some people - wanting to derive some enjoyment and meaning from the work they spend most of their lives doing to further enrich someone who is already rich - like give the calvinism a break am i right folks?
Calvinist "work ethic" is a problematic doctrine, but it's still more moral than a structurally oppressive synecure.
You're comfortably ensconced within a powerful economic inequality machine, and you're fighting for your right... to party? It's a bit gauche.
At least I tell myself I'm keeping the lights on for many families.
yes i think happiness is meaningful and in a just world would be a non-negotiable part of participating in society (economically or otherwise)
You're right—happiness is meaningful, and the pursuit of eudaimonia may well be the most moral act.
Can you truly be happy while billions suffer unnecessarily?
By this logic, no one is ever allowed to ask for more except for the person who has the least. It is nonsense.
Can't we ask on behalf of one another?
Until half a year ago I used to agree with you, but nowadays Claude has gotten so good that I have to admit it's a better programmer than myself. Its coding style is excellent, it follows whatever conventions are used in the codebase, it has excellent suggestions for refactorings and it spots omissions or mistakes in the specifications I give it.
(I'm using mostly Scala as a language in a large microservices environment)
I dont know any worker that intentionally chooses a job they dislike unless they need a survival job, and people doing survival jobs generally put it low effort. Programming requires high levels of effort and concentration and it would'nt be my first choice of survival job. If ALL the interesting parts of a programmers job disappear, then I guess the job is over unless you like typing prompts all day.
With this answer, you rather have revealed which style of programming you are strongly biased to.
Yes, there is a genuine divide between people drawn to programming for the art and people drawn to it for the practical. AI has impacted the former much more intensely and negatively than the latter. It's really a bummer.
Funny how "maybe they work in different domain" doesn't come up here as well.
When y'all talk about these LLM programmers, what are they programming? The next startup Typescript website, a new OS, a C++ firmware for a fridge or a control system for cancer treatment machines?
> Funny how "maybe they work in different domain" doesn't come up here as well.
Good point. :-)