As a professional coder, I both agree and deeply hate this position.
And code indeed has its values. See all algorithms invented by Carmack like BSPs, z-fail, etc.
And code indeed has its values. See all algorithms invented by Carmack like BSPs, z-fail, etc.
I think he did come up with "Carmack's Reverse" (a dynamic lighting algorithm) independently. But not even the "fast inverse square root" was his; that, oddly enough, came from what is currently probably the premiere AI company: NVIDIA.
But his implementations of these algorithms were indeed beautiful. I suppose AI could do something similar today, because the likes of Carmack had come before. But using AI for code is hobbling the creation of new Carmacks; and humans have the remarkable property that they can learn from other humans and still push the boundaries forward. When AIs learn from other AIs, model collapse occurs.
I don't think is so. Models continuing to improve by learning from other models is a counterexample.
The problem is very few (none?) of them actually were. He was just a wizard at applying them. This furthers the utilitarian argument.