I always get upset when people write unclear lines.

I do a lot of code reviews, and it’s taking years to explain how to write code that makes sense. Some are better, some just write, or worse - copy, things that are ambiguous, or are made such by copying them with small changes.

It’s very difficult to specify bullet-proof rules for good code. And after every step devs find more ways to fuck it up.

Yeah, my current software project at work was basically half a year of feature development and since then, we’ve purely tried to get it into the real world, which meant evaluating use-cases to see where it falls flat and what needs stabilizing, as well as figuring out people’s needs and how our software can assist with that, then setting up a demo and hoping they find money somewhere…

There are more exceptions than just games. I know someone who made a good career writing statistical forecasting software. It was just himself and he had some large corporations as clients.

There a niches of expertise for which most businesses don’t need dedicated employees or even software licenses. But, you’re not going to write the software with AI because it takes domain experience and expertise that AI can’t emulate.

The democratisation effect is something I’ve been thinking about myself, as hiring developers or learning to code doesn’t come cheap.

It’s not really “democratizing” anything, since anything made that isn’t like a simple calendar or forum will come with more bugs than working features. Low and no-code development options have been available for ages, so “doesn’t know how to code” was never an actual barrier to making software. Not only that, learning to code could be done effectively for free for well over 15 years now, online resources have only gotten better. It was never about the (lack of) money, it was always about time needed. “I don’t want to/can’t learn this, yet I want the thing done” - that’s why we pay professionals.

However, if it allows non-profits to build ideas that can make our world a better place, then that is a good thing.

At best, they’ll get semi-working prototypes. At worst, they’ll try to sell said prototypes as end products. Besides, anything that is “a disposable utility, designed for the immediate “now” rather than the distant “later.”” is extremely unlikely to make the world a better place.

what a load of bull.

AI doesn't "democratise" coding. One still needs to understand the basics of computer science, as well as higher level software design, to make use of AI tools and get actually usable results.

LLMs can write good code but they require constant guidance to do so. This is something that people need to understand. AI in coding is like Photoshop to an "analog" artist - super useful IF you know what you're doing, but as a complete stranger to the topic, all you'll do is basic tinkering.

The bespoke short-lived solutions angle is an interesting one, to be sure.

I wonder how many orgs will back themselves into a corner thinking their product will be short lived but it ends up hanging out for a while, as you mentioned.

Honestly this feels like an extension of this Agile/Scrum madness we’ve been dealing with since the mid-2000’s. Instead of the next quarter, we’re only building things with a view of the next two weeks.

Now it’s measured in hours, and even then we can give a prompt to an LLM and have a half working thing to throw away after it converts that PDF to a CSV.

I worry about the craftsmanship leaving this field. Engineers used to push back and for good reason.

I think ignoring that a tool has valuable uses is cutting off the nose to spite the face in a way.

While LLMs are annoying as fuck to deal with and work with with corporate CEOs telling all of us to “Use them or face unemployment”; it cannot be ignored that they have valuable use cases.

This article tries to identify the real world use case for an AI/LLM, which is as an ephemeral problem solving machine, much like google or stack overflow has been in the past, just on steroids.

Once you’re done with the solution: throw it away.

LLMs are not to be trusted to write software, but they can generate code to solve mundane problems encountered during software development.

I am 100% with you. I am so sick of LLM shit clogging up the feed

Being able to use an LLM turns a layman into a coder no more than being able to use CAD turns them into an engineer.

Perfect analogy.

I can use CAD. I am an engineer.
But noone will ask me to draft a building design on AutoCAD, same as noone will ask me to do so with pencil and paper.
Because I don’t know buildings.

Sure, I might be asked to copy a pen-paper drawing onto CAD, but a Civil Engineer with CAD will do that better and a photo tracing software might do it as well as me.

So while a good enough LLM might code as well as a coder, Programming is more than just coding and making anything new, requires programming.

But at the same time everyone having a CAD machine (or 3D printer) allows a lot of people to solve engineering type problems they have without an engineer, which is the article’s point.

cd ~ && find Documents -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec sh -c 'for f; do cp "$1" "Documents/$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)_$(basename "$1")"; done' _ {} +

mkdir -p ~/backups && cd ~/Documents && find . -type f -exec sh -c 'mkdir -p "~/backups/$(dirname "$1")" && cp "$1" "~/backups/$2/$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)_$(basename "$1")"' _ {} "$(pwd)" \;

mkdir -p ~/backups && rsync -a --include='*/' --include='*.*' --exclude='*' --no-links ~/Documents/ ~/backups/"$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)"/

mkdir -p ~/backups && find ~/Documents -type f -exec sh -c 'dir="~ /backups/$(dirname "${1#"$2"}")"; mkdir -p "$dir"; cp "$1" "$dir/$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)_$(basename "$1")"' _ {} ~/Documents \;

Everyone could always learn woodworking, weaving, sewing, smithing, … that is not an argument. The point is that better tools make it easier to learn/perform/perfect these skills. Today anyone with a little torch and a hammer can play around with steel. 300 years ago you had to at least take on an apprenticeship to ever get to do that. Sewing with a sewing machine is so much faster, there is not much time to invest before you can make your own clothes.

Not everyone has 100s of hours free time to sink into this and that skill “the purist way”. Any tool that makes the learning curve more shallow and/or the process itself easier/cheaper/… helps democratizing these things.

You argue as if everyone needs to be a super duper software architect, while most people just want to create some tool or game or whatever they think of, just for themselves.