So many bad takes in that article. It will be interesting to look back in 5+ years to see how things play out vs this unlimited optimism.
> "everyone is a programmer now"
I’ve heard this about so many things. Various tool they make everyone a programmer, or everyone a DBA. Nice dreams, that never seem to play out.
Being a programmer isn’t about the syntax, it’s about breaking problems down, so they can logically be built back up in code. I have yet to see anyone without an extensive background in programming write good spec for what they want code to do. How many assumptions are we comfortable having AI make?
On my last project I was given 1 sentence of direction, and the people giving the direction truly thought that’s all they needed to say… or it was the extent of their understanding of the topic. It took thousands of lines of code, backed by a bunch of testing and design decisions, informed by 15+ years with the company and the various personalities involved, to make that 1 sentence a reality in a way that would make sense for the organization. Call me a cynic, but I don’t see AI doing a good job with something like that in a world where “everyone is a programmer.”
I did try putting it in Copilot at the start, just to see what it dumped out. It gave me maybe 40 lines of broken code. It was the blog post version of how to do it, not an enterprise solution.
I think the enterprise stuff is programmers become more tool-assisted, so fewer programmers are needed. A team of two seniors and 6 juniors can just be two seniors. As you said, it's mostly breaking down a problem and knowing what's needed, then telling it what components are needed. 'Make me a function that does this and that' I use it all the time to make things I know I can make but it makes it, if it makes it a weird way I modify the prompt to tell it not to make it that way. Good for frameworks for skeleton code and simple hacking things together at sysadmin level and tinkering with things. Not sure about full fledged program projects though.
Helps devs get 'unstuck' if they get the writers block. It's absolutely changing the game for marketing, bizdev, and programmers now. Intel layoffs ~20,000, IBM ~24,000. Kind of scary.
Smart people with better tools can be a dominant force. So, yeah programmers might be looking for newer skillsets.
Operations and Sysadmins I don't forsee ever changing, especially with AI.
As you said, will be interesting to look back in five years and see.
I'll be afraid when AI takes a bug report with that typical one sentence problem description (like 'Paypal payments are not being processed, we loose 30k a day'), and fixes the problematic one line of code that the AI wrote before.
They despise dependencies so much. Half of there life is to get rid of them - declared as "risks" and "depending on some guy down the hall who codes really well" just makes them loose sleep at night.
And they put so much effort into this side-quest. No code, low code, everyone codes, simple languages, uml-programing,graph-based programing, so easy my intern can do it, outsourced programming, code by specs, all just to get rid of that dependency that can not be- and it never works out. The complexity was inside the company and its product all along.
Agreed. It's this kind of delusion that gets promoted to the top. Meanwhile talented persons capable of building SOTA solutions are let go in droves.
Amazon ain't it. "Democratizing AI" is a cover for the fact that Amazon has no models worthy of contention, so they have to save face by funding and serving up other company's models.
One could argue, "oh they have that guy from AllenAI." But where are AllenAI's code generation models? Where are AllenAI's LLMs? Nowhere.
Executives are the type of workers that have seen the increased productivity - it helps them write emails faster and summarize and digest long, mostly LLM-written, emails faster than before. Therefore, they think, it translates to everything else; writing code is just writing a foreign language for them, so, they figure, LLMs will do it, too.
They're extrapolating from their beliefs which they must hold given the investments they've already made in a fairly immature technology.
They have to believe that AI will lower their staffing costs and start generating serious revenues because to admit otherwise means they have failed to present an honest picture to their investors.
Depends on what you mean by significant. I’d say that at the very least I save 5-10min per hour using copilot when coding, and several times I’ve had tasks like “convert this untyped schema less json solution to a typed solution” which was basically solved immediately and entirely by copilot with one or two minor corrections. Also unit tests pretty much writes themselves these days.
Overall I would say that it’s not a revolution but definitely significant at this point. With and without copilot is as big a difference as coding in notepad vs an IDE when it comes to productivity gains for me.
I turned staff engineer a year and half ago, almost stopped developing, from time to time I have to, especially to take over tasks of people on summer vacation, having ChatGPT to help with small python scripts and GO apps was very helpful and time saving. I would not use it for full development tasks, but for small things is easy to understand what's wrong (and so far, there was always something wrong).
There are two sides to the story. Look at the unemployment rates or recent layoffs, a 2% difference is enough to disrupt a lot of things. You don't need a lot.
AI tools has made a significant impact already. But that significant number isn't '100%'.
On the main topic, of course you can't replace a team of 8 compromised of seniors, mids, and juniors with just 2 seniors. Nowhere near that.
Maybe they're extrapolating from people who did find a way to turn this new technology into a useful tool for themselves. That's the hacker way, after all.
yeah all I've seen so far is a very expensive but actually limited in features QoL upgrade that works for a very limited subset of the enterprise workforce.
I’m waiting for the story where a developer says that AI is equally able to replace senior managers; I can only imagine the blustering and outrage that would result!
AWS CEO is just catching up now. Most developers have stopped coding since several years now and have been dancing around with JSON, yaml, helm charts, terraform and docker files.
In the last 100 years, software adoption went from non-existant to being used everywhere, so even through programmer productivity was increasing, we stil always needed more programmers. But maybe the growth of programmer productivity will be higher than the growth of software demand at some point?
If "programmer productivity" increases then I'll spend 90% of my time thinking and talking to domain experts instead of 80%. Being able to write executable software is not and never has been the problem. But, sure, if it ever becomes easy to write working software then you can expect programmer salaries to fall precipitously, at least to the level of nurses or any other occupation that requires training but essentially anyone can do.
Thing is that the new crop of LLM AI systems are far more suited to replace the vagueries and multiway interpretable and broadly generic outputs of positions like sales and marketing, and yes, management, than they are at replacement in engineering based environments where output and performance is highly specific, knowledge very fractal and volatile, and unforgiving in the slightest.
I' productively using LLM coding assistants daily, but if I had to choose between having to go with the unmodified LLM output of codebase or a marketing plan, it would not even be a question.
I actually have a different hypothesis. The amount of professional developers is increasing exponentially since the invention of computers, at a pretty steady rate. It’s only possible because of increased tooling. I’m hoping that ai is powerful enough to keep this trend going
This is why 'leaders' should spend some time in the trenches, doing the job of those they 'lead', so that they have at least a basic understanding of the actual difficulties, limitations, possibilities, etc.
They have to say that to make the number go up. All these companies have heavily invested in AI.
AI is just another tool whose output depends on the skill of the user. You can't put people without domain knowledge in front of a LLM and get good results. It's very good at producing output that's looks good enough to convince non experts that it can do the job.
al_borland|1 year ago
> "everyone is a programmer now"
I’ve heard this about so many things. Various tool they make everyone a programmer, or everyone a DBA. Nice dreams, that never seem to play out.
Being a programmer isn’t about the syntax, it’s about breaking problems down, so they can logically be built back up in code. I have yet to see anyone without an extensive background in programming write good spec for what they want code to do. How many assumptions are we comfortable having AI make?
On my last project I was given 1 sentence of direction, and the people giving the direction truly thought that’s all they needed to say… or it was the extent of their understanding of the topic. It took thousands of lines of code, backed by a bunch of testing and design decisions, informed by 15+ years with the company and the various personalities involved, to make that 1 sentence a reality in a way that would make sense for the organization. Call me a cynic, but I don’t see AI doing a good job with something like that in a world where “everyone is a programmer.”
I did try putting it in Copilot at the start, just to see what it dumped out. It gave me maybe 40 lines of broken code. It was the blog post version of how to do it, not an enterprise solution.
mrinfinitiesx|1 year ago
Helps devs get 'unstuck' if they get the writers block. It's absolutely changing the game for marketing, bizdev, and programmers now. Intel layoffs ~20,000, IBM ~24,000. Kind of scary.
Smart people with better tools can be a dominant force. So, yeah programmers might be looking for newer skillsets.
Operations and Sysadmins I don't forsee ever changing, especially with AI.
As you said, will be interesting to look back in five years and see.
samsk|1 year ago
InDubioProRubio|1 year ago
And they put so much effort into this side-quest. No code, low code, everyone codes, simple languages, uml-programing,graph-based programing, so easy my intern can do it, outsourced programming, code by specs, all just to get rid of that dependency that can not be- and it never works out. The complexity was inside the company and its product all along.
copperroof|1 year ago
notinmykernel|1 year ago
Amazon ain't it. "Democratizing AI" is a cover for the fact that Amazon has no models worthy of contention, so they have to save face by funding and serving up other company's models.
One could argue, "oh they have that guy from AllenAI." But where are AllenAI's code generation models? Where are AllenAI's LLMs? Nowhere.
Amazon leadership is horribly incompetent.
raman325|1 year ago
djmips|1 year ago
pllbnk|1 year ago
01100011|1 year ago
They have to believe that AI will lower their staffing costs and start generating serious revenues because to admit otherwise means they have failed to present an honest picture to their investors.
suzzer99|1 year ago
gklitz|1 year ago
Overall I would say that it’s not a revolution but definitely significant at this point. With and without copilot is as big a difference as coding in notepad vs an IDE when it comes to productivity gains for me.
albertopv|1 year ago
hnthr_w_y|1 year ago
AI tools has made a significant impact already. But that significant number isn't '100%'.
On the main topic, of course you can't replace a team of 8 compromised of seniors, mids, and juniors with just 2 seniors. Nowhere near that.
zingababba|1 year ago
edanm|1 year ago
senectus1|1 year ago
(mostly copilot).
shrubble|1 year ago
rk06|1 year ago
I am happy to change my title from Software Engineer to AI Software Debugger if it means more money and prestige.
anynailsaround|1 year ago
xwolfi|1 year ago
edg5000|1 year ago
globular-toast|1 year ago
PeterStuer|1 year ago
I' productively using LLM coding assistants daily, but if I had to choose between having to go with the unmodified LLM output of codebase or a marketing plan, it would not even be a question.
smitty1e|1 year ago
alexnewman|1 year ago
jacknews|1 year ago
janalsncm|1 year ago
bee_rider|1 year ago
But, really, I do think I’m right and they are wrong…
ein0p|1 year ago
foobarkey|1 year ago
in_ab|1 year ago
AI is just another tool whose output depends on the skill of the user. You can't put people without domain knowledge in front of a LLM and get good results. It's very good at producing output that's looks good enough to convince non experts that it can do the job.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
t3rra|1 year ago
dandanua|1 year ago
Duanemclemore|1 year ago