I'm sure this exact topic has been argued hundreds of times already on HN, but I think I have a new "possibly agreeable to both sides" perspective on this after having lost man-years to retired corporate code aka "FAIAP, throwaway code"
Let LLMs write the corpo code, as it will be unlikely to still be running in 5-10 years. Frontier AI is already at the point where it writes fewer bugs per LOC than humans. By a lot.
Go ahead and do your bespoke coding on your side-project loves and core libraries... The stuff that will last, anyway.
But if you're working for a corpo and still doing bespoke... That's... not gonna last, I'm afraid. Well, either you remaining there, or that, as it were.
There's a whole spectrum of employment between faceless corporations and personal side projects. AI will replace humans because giant business believe they can do the same work, not because they will actually be able to.
The correctness of an application is limited by your ability to understand and describe what you need. We have a word for an application specification tool so detailed it eliminates all ambiguity. It's called a "programming language".
The mistakes are always in the transfer from human to machine. I still find a high-level programming language to be the best way to express my intent. Humans will make mistakes in the hand-off to AI just like they make mistakes in the hand-off to code, but at least code is deterministic.
It's still the same thing, you can ask it to do a full on report give explanation and details be thorough and then go do something else, another task a lunch break whatever and it will be done when you're back
This is like comparing a hammer to a screwdriver and feeling smug because you can hammer nails faster than someone else can drive screws.
These are fundamentally different tools for entirely different applications. They only look similar to people who don't understand the tools or their purpose.
I'm sure this exact topic has been argued hundreds of times already on HN, but I think I have a new "possibly agreeable to both sides" perspective on this after having lost man-years to retired corporate code aka "FAIAP, throwaway code"
Let LLMs write the corpo code, as it will be unlikely to still be running in 5-10 years. Frontier AI is already at the point where it writes fewer bugs per LOC than humans. By a lot.
Go ahead and do your bespoke coding on your side-project loves and core libraries... The stuff that will last, anyway.
But if you're working for a corpo and still doing bespoke... That's... not gonna last, I'm afraid. Well, either you remaining there, or that, as it were.
There's a whole spectrum of employment between faceless corporations and personal side projects. AI will replace humans because giant business believe they can do the same work, not because they will actually be able to.
The correctness of an application is limited by your ability to understand and describe what you need. We have a word for an application specification tool so detailed it eliminates all ambiguity. It's called a "programming language".
The mistakes are always in the transfer from human to machine. I still find a high-level programming language to be the best way to express my intent. Humans will make mistakes in the hand-off to AI just like they make mistakes in the hand-off to code, but at least code is deterministic.
It's still the same thing, you can ask it to do a full on report give explanation and details be thorough and then go do something else, another task a lunch break whatever and it will be done when you're back
> another task a lunch break whatever and it will be done when you're back
At 5 tokens per second and unknown prompt processing speed, you may need a very extra long lunch break depending on your codebase.
How do you maintain a flow state during a lunch break? I'm looping with Claude on a scale of minutes. While you're waiting, I'm iterating.
This is like comparing a hammer to a screwdriver and feeling smug because you can hammer nails faster than someone else can drive screws.
These are fundamentally different tools for entirely different applications. They only look similar to people who don't understand the tools or their purpose.
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You don't "maintain flow." You eat lunch.
I swear, tech culture has gotten people wanting to work for the machines, rather than the other way round.
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