Comment by runarberg
13 hours ago
knitting machines don’t generate the design from a prompt, and neither does industrial knitwear production facilities. In fact, knitting machines have quite a lot of manual input that goes into the final product, including careful programming.
> In fact, knitting machines have quite a lot of manual input that goes into the final product, including careful programming.
Equally true for today's AI coding agents
Not equally true at all. Far from it. If you have ever seen people use knitting machine you would know the amount of skill required to operate one is far beyond creating a prompt. Same is true of looms, etc.
In fact this whole analogy makes no sense, a knitting machine is far closer to a compiler in this analogy then it is to a language model. Many would argue that automatic looms were the first compilers of the industrial age, and I would agree with that argument.
I was never talking about a knitting machine in the first place. Rather, I was referring to the old lady sitting on her sofa, knitting a sock she could also buy for a dollar, but decides to do it herself for the love of the game and nostalgia: a hobby.
The "art" of programming is going exactly that route, maybe with a little fewer ladies and more men.
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Not for long, presumably. Apparently the majority of marketable skills will come from a handful of capex heavy, trillion dollar corporations and you will like it.