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A better analogy is, now you have what seems like an increasingly intelligent personal assistant that can do any cognitive work that you ask it to do, to increasingly better result, has retrograde amnesia, no accountability, entirely middle of the road morality, access to the internet... eh this isn't really a good analogy either.
More people have the capability now, but not necessarily the experience or understanding.
Point is, if I give a person a calculator, it doesn't even make them the tiniest bit of a mathematician. Nor if I give them a pencil, either. The tool never, ever makes the tradesperson.
Whatever's happening with LLMs, it's not making people programmers. It's how you use the tool, which validates that.
(I mean, I guess as soon as you start whacking things together with a hammer, you technically sort of are being a carpenter, but that's not the point.)
They actually do all of that
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think it's pretty obvious what parent poster was implying. Pedantic nitpicks add nothing to the discussion.
edit: sigh, fucking rate limits are such a dumb mechanic if you want quality long-form discussion. By the time I can reply nobody will be looking at their replies.
anyways LLMs might displace "programmers" in the way that 3D CAD software replaced draftsmen, but software engineering, the actual design and architecture skill, isn't going anywhere. I can use carpentry tools to build a bridge over a creek but I'm not qualified to build a bridge carrying Interstate traffic.
These tool analogies are self-soothing for programmers who see agents is simple tools of their trade. But the point of articles like this is that AI agents are more like spreadsheets --- only more so. They're devices that allow normal people without training or aptitude to do things with computers that only programmers were doing before. They displace programmers.
In that sense, the closest physical analogy to a coding agent is probably a 3D printer. But: a really good 3D printer, into which hundreds of billions of dollars had been invested entirely for the purpose of making the printer work weirdly well even for people who have no interest in the different kidns of filament spools.
The claim I responded to was nothing but weak elitist gatekeeping. Such people should think really hard why they are how they are. It's ob obnoxious.
That usually requires a 3 to 5 year degree, and possibly professional exam.
Having the AI do the work doesn't make one an engineer.
Just like one doesn't become a writer by owning a typewriter or a word processor.
No? Then you are not qualified to say that other people are not qualified!
Do you see the absurdity of your position now?
The level of propaganda reaches Maoist proportions.
Some arguments about shadow development and IT are valid, like security and who takes ownership after the original developers leave, but they don't really account for the reality that organizations expand constantly, business needs are perpetually exploding and most development shops are so mired in business requirements and bureaucracy that there's genuinely no value involved with interacting with them.
But as I've used it, I've noticed that it overcomplicates everything and often even forgets what it previously said, and makes decisions that contradict it.
The AIs need a firm guiding hand, like a lead developer would give junior and mid-level programmers, and even occasionally to a senior developer that went off the rails for personal obsessions.
For instance, I was just trying to have it make a simple shopping list app. I had Claude take my old shopping info from the Google Keep list we use (it keeps the old checked-off items) and get the latest grocery ad, and produce a list of suggestions. It was amazing! I decided I want to send that info to a server, have a checklist there, and then keep the info for later so the AI could do it again.
After a lot of questioning (via Matt Pocock's skills, which are great) it was so complicated I finally yelled at it for overcomplicating everything, and told it how simple I wanted it to be, again.
It kept insisting on IDs for products, IDs for stores, IDs for store sections... Even after I told it no IDs. I finally said it a few more times in different ways.
It's finally getting back to the simple webapp that I imagined. It needed a lot of handholding to get it there.
And it's the kind of thing I would see from devs that were inflexible and had to see things a certain way.
I'm not ruling out that it could eventually get over this phase, but I have a feeling it'll always be something that needs handling.
My other project right now was naturally complex, and needed a lot of that stuff, and things have been going better, but I still correct it rather a lot, even on things I'd previously told it.
Visual Basic
Low-Code
Power Platform
Although AI substantially changes the situation the hard part of being an engineer was never the code.
A technician is defined by the tools they work with, an engineer is defined by the problems they can solve. Taking a dozen different business processes and stakeholders and figuring out how to actually solve the problems they have is engineering.
There's lots of caveats asterisks & limitations, sure sure sure: we hear you Technically Correct repliers, here to spread your Well Actually naysayings.
But at the end of the day: heck yes. So much heck yes. Even if you are not engineering well, just the ability to have your agent go in and do reconissance of systems. "Reverse engineer this Bluetooth protocol for my device" or what I'm doing now, "reverse engineer my epaper display controller"... People have an incredibly powerful tool for assessing the world, for finding out.
And I for one strongly believe that will beget the great virous circle of lovely lovely fucking around. A wheel that is humanity's best invention, best motivation, best traction, best side, and one that any self proclaimed Hacker if any spirit ought be out of their seats cheering raving with excitement happy for.