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Comment by lumenwrites | Hacker News Reader

This comment doesn't deserve the downvotes its getting, the author is right, and I'm having the same experience.

LLM outputs aren't always perfect, but that doesn't stop them from being extremely helpful and massively increasing my productivity.

They help me to get things done with the tech I'm familiar with much faster, get things done with tech I'm unfamiliar with that I wouldn't be able to do before, and they are extremely helpful for learning as well.

Also, I've noticed that using them has made me much more curious. I'm asking so many new questions now, I've had no idea how many things I was casually curious about, but not curious enough to google.

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Good luck telling a bunch of programmers that their skills are legitimately under threat. No one wants to hear that. Especially when you are living a top 10% lifestyle on the back of being good at communicating to computers.

There is an old documentary of the final days of typesetters for newspapers. These were the (very skilled) people who rapidly put each individual carved steel character block into the printing frame in order print thousands of page copies. Many were incredulous that a machine could ever replicate their work.

I don't think programmers are going to go away, but I do think those juicy salaries and compensation packages will.

At least for now it seems more like a multiplier that wouldn't reduce the amount of work out there, possibly even increase demand in certain cases as digitisation becomes easier so projects that weren't worth to do before will be now and more complicated usecases will open up as well.

So same programmer with the same 8h of workday will be able to output more value.

The requirement for programmer’s is absolutely going to decline.

Some will undoubtably transition to broader based business consultancy services. For those unable or unwilling to do so the future is bleak.

> I do think those juicy salaries and compensation packages will.

I think that's inevitable with or without LLMs in the mix. I also think the industry as a whole will be better for it.

Horses before the automobile

What’s the title of the documentary?

ChatGPT says

The documentary he's referring to is likely "Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu," released in 1980. It chronicles the last day of hot metal typesetting at The New York Times before they transitioned to newer technology. The title comes from the nonsense phrase "etaoin shrdlu," which appeared frequently in Linotype machine errors due to the way the keys were arranged. The documentary provides a fascinating look at the end of an era in newspaper production.

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