February 8, 2025 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item No End to Programmers
February 8, 2025 at 10:12 am
We must differentiate this statement a bit. What are we speaking about? The short-term impacts—10, 20, 50 years—or the longer-term ones? And another difference: do you talk about the enterprise sector programmers or the millions of "programmers" in developing countries?
Yes, the short-term effect in the enterprise sector is a booming demand for programmers with this new skill; let's name them "neoprogrammers". However, the long-term impact will be the decreasing request of such programmers as AI will take over that field. But let's assume that it will not happen within the next 50 years, so it will be the next generation's problem.
However, the short- or not-so-long-term effect on cheap programmers in developing countries will be devastating. These countries are poor, have high unemployment rates, and have an out-of-date school system. They saw an opportunity in programming as a way of rising out of that state. It was cheap, quick, and solved the problems of many. These programmers work for minimal payment, but this little money significantly impacts their quality of life. However, their work quality is not much better than today's AI abilities.
Still, I can read slogans like "There is no need for heavy industry or factories in this country. Let's reeducate the workers to be programmers because this is the future." But this is false. This concept leads to the hoards of the abovementioned cheap programmers.
First, as you and Tim O'Reilly wrote, these neoprogrammers will need special knowledge, which is special because not everyone will be able to master it.
Second, I think that the use of the Internet will change drastically within a mid-term period. The Internet is a new experience for humanity; people want to show themselves on it. The magic of novelty. This is a bit of an exhibitionist generation, but this will swing back in the opposite direction with time.
Let's consider a solution to the long-term effects of AI and robotics. We are always thinking within the circle of work and payment for it. Let's think about life without work. How will humanity solve this problem? However, this is far from the original question.
February 8, 2025 at 5:25 pm
Reflecting on the whole IA thing in software development reminds me of the following wisdom:
Matthew 7:24-29 Good News Translation : The Two House Builders
24 “So then, anyone who hears these words of mine and obeys them is like a wise man who built his house on rock. 25 The rain poured down, the rivers flooded over, and the wind blew hard against that house. But it did not fall, because it was built on rock.
26 “But anyone who hears these words of mine and does not obey them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain poured down, the rivers flooded over, the wind blew hard against that house, and it fell. And what a terrible fall that was!”
In current relative terms, what is the foundation you are using for your software 'house' being built? Do you know?
And if your 'foundation' fails, who is going to be blamed?
When you go to your doctor, do you want him focused on massive data collected and analyzed by some magical mystical AI system or do you want him looking at YOUR information?
I recently received a recall notice for our sole source of transportation which we are scheduled to drive over 2k miles late this month. So I called to schedule the fix, only to be told the computer calendar said it could not be scheduled for about eight weeks. Then I asked to talk to a mechanic who does the work, and asked him if it was safe for us to drive that much further before the fix. His response was that it wasn't, and he put our service in a cancelled slot on their schedule.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
February 9, 2025 at 3:21 pm
I see this as a change in the type of programming that will take place. In a sense such a change is inevitable. In this case it was brought about by AI/LLMs, but even if that had never occurred, a change in how programming is done would have happened eventually, anyway. I work with some developers who aren't 10X developers; they're average. I'm not saying they're bad people; they're good people doing good things in life, but they'll never work for FAANG. However, they resist anything new being introduced to how programming is done. They're not interested in learning anything new. They rather software development remains static. This situation may last a long time, because management is also not interested in anything new, so things like AI and LLMs are not permitted at work. Yes, I know that some people will get around it (like myself), but officially AI/LLMs aren't in our environment. In the long run, I wonder what will become of people who don't want to change or adopt anything new.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
February 10, 2025 at 2:25 pm
Interesting timing for this article. My calendar at work has a meeting today title "Introduction - GitHub Copilot". I believe some companies will jump on this sooner than others. I've found AI helpful to create small pieces of code to help me get going on a project. But I know that I can't take what it spits out verbatim. It needs to be examined closely and iterated over with some refining prompts to get something useful. That's where our experience come in to play. It's going to be a while before we see AI that can take a prompt and build a fully functional app with error handling and testing included. I'm sure in 5 or so years some company will claim they can do that and have their AI create a small app that works and all the C levels will get excited about that. Then when they try and create a larger app it will need actual developers to fix up bad assumptions on the AI's part. Perhaps 10 or 15 years down the line AI might actually be able to generate a robust, reasonable sized application. Who knows. But if you're a developer / software engineer at that time, you had better be keeping up with technology and ready to pivot. Either you continue to learn or you go the way of the people who made buggy whips.
February 10, 2025 at 5:51 pm
Interesting perspectives. I'd urge you to think about a couple things as you try to decide how AI fits in the world.
Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply