You can hardly get online these days without hearing some AI booster talk about how AI coding is going to replace human programmers. AI code is absolutely up to production quality! Also, you’re all…
In so many ways, LLMs are just the tip of the iceberg of bad ideology in software development. There have always been people that come into the field and develop heinously bad habits. Whether it’s the “this is just my job, the only thing I think about outside work is my family” types or the juniors who only know how to copy paste snippets from web forums.
And look, I get it. I don’t think 60-80 hour weeks are required to be successful. But I’m talking about people who are actively hostile to their own career paths, who seem to hate programming except that it pays good and let’s them raise families. Hot take: that sucks. People selfishly obsessed with their own lineage and utterly incurious about the world or the thing they spend 8 hours a day doing suck, and they’re bad for society.
The juniors are less of a drain on civilization because they at least can learn to do better. Or they used to could, because as another reply mentioned, there’s no path from LLM slop to being a good developer. Not without the intervention of a more experienced dev to tell them what’s wrong with the LLM output.
It takes all the joy out of the job too, something they’ve been working on for years. What makes this work interesting is understanding people’s problems, working out the best way to model them, and building towards solutions. What they want the job to be is a slop factory: same as the dream of every rich asshole who thinks having half an idea is the same as working for years to fully realize an idea in all it’s complexity and wonder.
They never have any respect for the work that takes because they’ve never done any work. And the next generation of implementers are being taught that there are no new ideas. You just ask the oracle to give you the answer.
In so many ways, LLMs are just the tip of the iceberg of bad ideology in software development. There have always been people that come into the field and develop heinously bad habits. Whether it’s the “this is just my job, the only thing I think about outside work is my family” types or the juniors who only know how to copy paste snippets from web forums.
And look, I get it. I don’t think 60-80 hour weeks are required to be successful. But I’m talking about people who are actively hostile to their own career paths, who seem to hate programming except that it pays good and let’s them raise families. Hot take: that sucks. People selfishly obsessed with their own lineage and utterly incurious about the world or the thing they spend 8 hours a day doing suck, and they’re bad for society.
The juniors are less of a drain on civilization because they at least can learn to do better. Or they used to could, because as another reply mentioned, there’s no path from LLM slop to being a good developer. Not without the intervention of a more experienced dev to tell them what’s wrong with the LLM output.
It takes all the joy out of the job too, something they’ve been working on for years. What makes this work interesting is understanding people’s problems, working out the best way to model them, and building towards solutions. What they want the job to be is a slop factory: same as the dream of every rich asshole who thinks having half an idea is the same as working for years to fully realize an idea in all it’s complexity and wonder.
They never have any respect for the work that takes because they’ve never done any work. And the next generation of implementers are being taught that there are no new ideas. You just ask the oracle to give you the answer.