1,107 karma · joined March 22, 2019
Possible (probable?) scenario:
- Marketing: "we found and fixed lots of bugs thanks to AI"
- Reality: the KPI is now to fix as many bugs as possible with the help of AI, so they used AI to search old and easy bugs in the backlog, and then fixed it manually
It's going to be 100% statically type-safe across the stack, SQL first for the DB layer(s), and with a minimal amount of boilerplate (just enough for a clean architecture without magic).
Daube is a slang word for something of low quality.
> it’s very likely you haven’t mastered all layers of the stack - you maybe have mastered the parts you’ve come across though.
I was meaning that in the context of web dev. There are certainly other areas I don't know much yet.
> Would you include Linux kernel development, program proofs, HPC , math-oriented software, compilers, firmwares, fpgas, database internals ( I mean, writing a full database engine ), big iron infrastructure , actual research etc in the list of things you’ve mastered?
Definitely not (except partially a database engine), but I'd definitely like to move down the stack. I like systems programming, low level stuff and optimization problems, so that's maybe the main area that I should explore (and also one of the reasons I like game dev). Translating that into an actual job might be harder thought.
I've had fairly positive successes in the past when being a contractor. I feel like it's easier for me to have legitimacy and influence over the project that I'm doing this way.
> Lastly, make sure whatever it is you work on truly matters to the business, and understand how it ties back to the business and your customers. It can be fun (or necessary at times) to be off in the weeds on something that is technically interesting, but really unimportant to the bottom line and ultimately to advancing your career.
That's something I have also learnt from experience, and I am more often than not the one pushing for boring tech against the last fancy trends. But I have difficulties with the fact that focusing on the business means most of the time being the fastest possible, to the point that businesses would rather save 2 hours of implementation time now, even if it costs weeks of technical debt down the road.
Also I care too deeply about the quality of the software being developed and am very much perfectionist, which usually translates into lots of frustration for both me and the team.
> Also I question that you've never seen anything new in the past 5-10 years (not being rude here, I understand that someone with 20years experience has seen plenty already but definitely not everything).
That comment was meant to be in the context of web dev, I'm not pretending to know everything about all areas.
> For example, how much do you know about deep learning ? Are you on track with the latest trends in our inudstry ? Can you make a list of best practices to follow when building AI systems ? Maybe try looking into new areas for growth. It will be uncomfortable but worth it I think.
I have studied deep learning and neural networks, and found-out that it's not something I'm interested to work with. I am more interested into moving down the stack. Maybe systems programming, but also video games, because it involves low level concerns, optimization problems and a huge creative/artistic part. But yeah, I know that working in video games might involve lots of other sacrifices I'm not willing to make.
IMO mixing a dynamically typed language, a framework based on magic conventions and vibe coding sounds like the perfect recipe for a disaster.
Why would anyone choose to awkwardly play using natural language rather than a reliable, fast and intuitive UI?
I'm precisely trying to criticize the claims of AGI and intelligence. English is not my native language, so nuances might be wrong.
I used the word "makes-up" in the sense of "builds" or "constructs" and did not mean any intelligence there.
Yes, we do have reliable datasets as in your example, but those are for specific topics and are not based on natural language. What I would call "classical" machine learning is already a useful technology where it's applied.
Jumping from separate datasets focused on specific topics to a single dataset describing "everything" at once is not something we are even close to doing, if it's even possible. Hence the claim of having a single AI able to answer anything is unreasonable.
The second issue is that even if we had such a hypothetical dataset, ultimately if you want a formal response from it, you need a formal question and a formal language (probably something between maths and programming?) in all the steps of the workflow.
LLMs are only statistical models about natural languages, so it's the antithesis of this very idea. To achieve that would have to be a completely different technology that has yet to even be theoretized.
The fundamental reason why it cannot be fixed is because the model does not know anything about the reality, there is simply no such concept here.
To make a "probability cutoff" you first need a probability about what the reality/facts/truth is, and we have no such reliable and absolute data (and probably never will).
Rot is directly proportional to the amount of dependencies. Software made responsibly with long term thinking in mind has dramatically less issues over time.
It will never be as intuitive or efficient, not even mentioning the reliability.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and no LLM is going to change that.
Machine learning has been there for quite a while and is a useful tool. But it's only a tool among many other ones, like programming languages and libraries. It's not a product. At most it can be the engine of a specific feature.