@ajsadauskas @technology lol you don't need LLMs to end up in that mess ... seen it everywhere
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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NGL, was totally expecting a different last paragraph. π
One sentence a paragraph does not make.
@zenkat @technology Totally agree.
But.
It's a surefire way to get yourself in that mess in rapid time, when you otherwise wouldn't.
@ajsadauskas @technology I agree right up to the end. I think they'll conclude they need a more powerful LLM.
Good thing by then we'll have oracle LLM. You may only use it for writing software. But we'll definitely charge you for answering questions about life the universe and everything.
That'll be all your profit this year minus the C-level bonuses please.
Average CTO: what a steal!
And the Web interface will be that of PeopleSoft!
They will conclude that they did not actually save money by replacing human developers with LLMs.
The next CTO might realize that. If there hasn't been a change in upper-level management, they'll just double down and blame the few remaining human developers for the mess.
CTO's are incapable of self-reflection.
A fellow had just been hired as the new CEO of a large high tech corporation. The CEO who was stepping down met with him privately and presented him with three numbered envelopes. "Open these if you run up against a problem you don't think you can solve," he said.
Well, things went along pretty smoothly, but six months later, sales took a downturn and he was really catching a lot of heat. About at his wit's end, he remembered the envelopes. He went to his drawer and took out the first envelope. The message read, "Blame your predecessor."
The new CEO called a press conference and tactfully laid the blame at the feet of the previous CEO. Satisfied with his comments, the press -- and Wall Street - responded positively, sales began to pick up and the problem was soon behind him.
About a year later, the company was again experiencing a slight dip in sales, combined with serious product problems. Having learned from his previous experience, the CEO quickly opened the second envelope. The message read, "Reorganize." This he did, and the company quickly rebounded.
After several consecutive profitable quarters, the company once again fell on difficult times. The CEO went to his office, closed the door and opened the third envelope.
The message said, "Prepare three envelopes."
~Stolen~ ~from~ ~reddit~
@TootSweet @ajsadauskas They'll just completely rewrite it from scratch using a newer LLM and that will be considered normal. In those 5yrs the percentage of developers who remember the idea of code having longevity will be tiny.
I dunno, humans are more than capable of doing this already.
Outsourcing is such a mixed bag. I have 2 projects outsourced to a company in India: one is magnificent and well documented and the other looks like a crack fiend wrote it. Both work, but only one is sustainable
I donβt disagree, but Iβve heard this before. Assembly devs complaining about compiled languages. C/c++ devs complaining about every newer language. Traditional devs complaining about web developers. Backend web developers complaining about blogs/cms tools. Nearly everyone complaining about electron.
And honestly I think those folks had a point. The old stuff written when the tools were simple and memory scarce were almost works of art. The quality of software development (especially with regard to optimization) has been going downhill for decades. What ever the llms do will just be part of this trend.
The use of LLMs though is more similar to outsourcing than it is to a new technology. No one is talking a out changing how we program, we're talking about changing who does the programming.
While outsourcing has had its ups and downs, I think most companies have found that skilled technical people can't really be outsourced easily/cost money everywhere. I suspect we'll see a similar thing here with LLMs because the core compentcy that makes programmers/engineers expensive is knowing what to do, not how to do it.
Greatly put, offloading to llms is nothing like people choosing for "easier" high-level languages. They are not really easier as well, imo.
Yep. This is the old school way of thinking that leads to things being shitty and not improving. "Why change if it's not broke?" Cue Uber, Google, Netflix any tech company that replaced the old guards.
I think every CTO expects to inhereit technical debt, whether by overworked devs or overautomation
They'll outsource to cheaper offshore LLMs.
@ajsadauskas @technology I've been thinking for a while that I truly pity anyone who's going to have to maintain this AI-generated code.
I haven't seen any talk of wholesale replacement of developers with LLMs in my organisation. What has happened is that these tools have been made extensively available to developers. I think right now they are basically being assessed in terms of how much they help developer productivity. Not sure about other places though, I agree with the idea that it's not really feasible to just straight up replace devs with an LLM.
Yes, they aren't there... Yet.
@ajsadauskas @technology Here's some data to back it up too π
https://visualstudiomagazine.com/Articles/2024/01/25/copilot-research.aspx
@veronica @ajsadauskas @technology The hype around AI in software engineering seems to be that it is βprovenβ that devs produce code quicker. it is going to be interesting to see if the corporate world values code quality over development velocity. There seems to be a pervasive belief that βmove fast and break thingsβ is how the big guys do software engineering. A few points to note:
- this idiom only applies when you fail fast, realize it, and address the problem that has been introduced.
- Break things does not mean enshittify ie create tech debt by virtue of poor code
- It really only applies if you have enough development resources to do the rework. That is to say, can afford to get it wrong often.
#AI #copilot
Not five years, but this year itself
@ajsadauskas @technology A system that canβt balance brackets and is awful at math is gonna do great π
@ajsadauskas @technology β¦and theyβll find themselves lapped by those who didnβt drink the LLM Kool-Aid.
If quality trumped speed and convenience how does McDonald's stay in business?
@BrianTheeBiscuiteer McDonaldβs actually puts a burger on the bun. Not the best, but adequate for a quick bite. General LLMs put bullshit into the ether.
Yes, adequate is the word. The tipping point doesn't come when they're "good", it comes when they're "good enough".
@ajsadauskas @technology good prediction. This is basically what they always do with every overly-hyped technology.
That happens right now and usually it was the CTO that wrote that shit when the company was a startup.
In 5 years time? We may be having a war against "Skynet" in 5 years. The tech is advancing at a scary fast pace.
Tha Superior Tech β’β’β’ββ writes garbage code that a 15 year old can produce after years of data hawking and information stealing. Newer models in 5 years may get at a university junior level of coding.
AI bros are on more skooma than Crypto bros
I use AI to write mundan code and I always have to almost rewrite everything anyway