Good points yet how others view the art doesn't affect my enjoyment nor practice of it. Like music, others can enjoy listening to a CD or play their own instrument; I don't care. Why allow others' style and practice influence how we enjoy programming?
I don't understand what's difficult about enjoying programming now that LLMs are everywhere. It's akin to musicians who still play their instruments despite having the ability to stream any music they'd like. Nothing's stopping them from playing their instrument. Why is programming any different?
I always wait one year, upgrading to major release N-1 in August before N comes out in September. I made an exception last year and stayed on Sequoia. It will be August of next year before I consider Golden Gate.
It's not the despair, it's the turnabout. Reading proofs containing the language that I mentioned seemed to suggest that the ideas were trivial to the author in a way that implied their superior intelligence. Now AI has come along and has, by way of counterexamples, shown theorems to be incorrect in devastating (maybe "trivial") ways. The shoe is on the other foot.
I can’t help but confess some sense of satisfaction with the upheaval described in the post. Many proofs and textbooks laden with statements like “without loss of generality”, “immediately”, or “obviously” are followed by anything but. AI now counters that streak of smug by toppling some long held theorems and it’s fun to watch.
There are so many neat use cases like this one that I'm skeptical of the AI-is-a-dot-com-bubble naysayers. Not to mention that, unlike in 2000, technical-adjacent people can now get a reasonable approximation of their ideas running quickly.
I've never had a problem with any CDs, even my old Quake CD from about 30 years ago. Probably there's an issue with your drive or the disc wasn't stored well.
Indeed. Things are looking very bleak for software engineering as a specialization. It's been clear for years that Capital has been desperate to crack the software development nut, so to speak. Starting about 15 years ago, the intensity of Capital to destroy software engineering as a lucrative discipline really began in earnest: bootcamps, special certificate programs, the "learn to code" movement, and now AI. For at least 20 years I've heard Capital banging on the door to invade and drive wages down and now they've finally won.
The PS5 will be my last Sony console. The PS4 probably should've been my last, but I got caught up in the new generation hype cycle. The PS5 has, practically speaking, no games. It hosts a lot of ports from other systems, but the number of unique, new, and interesting games is near zero. Just rehashes from the PS4 era in the form of DLC, remasters, etc.
I don’t understand the bipolar nature on hacker news towards LLMs. On the one hand, they’re destroying the art of software development and we shouldn’t use them. But on the other hand, there’s a lot of excitement around running them locally.
I understand that multiple things can be true at the same time. Is the concern for centralized AI monopolization? Or is the concern for the art of software engineering?
If we’re just another animal that can program computers, then I don’t feel bad about the take over of AI and LLMs as we’re nothing special in the evolutionary climb upwards.
Are you running Apple Silicon now? I’m still on an intel machine with Sequoia. I doubt that I’ll upgrade it to Tahoe this fall and stick with it until Sequoia stops receiving security updates. Then I’ll have to upgrade hardware I guess… hoping have things sorted by then.
Sometime around High Sierra, I changed my habit such that I don't upgrade to the next major release until August. By then, it's been patched a half dozen times or so. Yes, I'm basically a year behind all the time, but I don't need the new features.