LLMs should be used for their original purpose: Processing language, not used to generate code. Coding should stay a human activity.
That ability to see the patterns in language, particularly the ability to distill semantic meaning and make (reasonable, if imperfect) translations from one language to a variety of others, is incredibly useful in software development activities, which are basically the task of translating natural language requests into code - usually through a multi-step process of: requirements definition, design specification, application development, test development, and constant review to ensure that all those steps are in-sync, describing the same thing.
continuing to invest in humans
Always.
teaching the craft in ways that help get new programmers up to speed faster.
I’m tempted to make a “better buggy whip maker” crack here…
Anthropic literally trained on copyrighted material without permission and could be prompted to produce author’s material. It’s a bit different than a Student quoting an author.
Yeah, so Anthropic didn’t pay for legitimate textbooks when they went to school, they bought cheap, illegal, Asian photocopies instead… wrong, sure. How do you make it right now? Lobotomize the students who read illegally copied books? Fine their parents for everything they are worth? Or, hold the students liable and garnish their wages in perpetuity?
That ability to see the patterns in language, particularly the ability to distill semantic meaning and make (reasonable, if imperfect) translations from one language to a variety of others, is incredibly useful in software development activities, which are basically the task of translating natural language requests into code - usually through a multi-step process of: requirements definition, design specification, application development, test development, and constant review to ensure that all those steps are in-sync, describing the same thing.
It’s just being used out of scope and big corporations are trying to replace their entire staff with just LLMs, which cannot write code, maintain code, and update it properly without a person being involved to audit it. The Luddite in me screams for some sanity in the space. The least offensive use is finding bugs, but humans need to fully investigate and verify if the LLM detected an anomaly or not, publishing a fix based on human written code alone from there. The LLM cannot be involved further at that point, as deskilling is an ever-present danger with those things. As the only way for these things to actually create code is to be trained on the works of humans (which is often stolen without permission by scrapers or harvested because fools willingly use LLMs for some strange reason). As LLMs cannot think, feel, or have a spark of creativity. These are just programs that detect patterns can be made to spit them out. But CEOs have been brainwashed into believing that LLMs can be considered an “AI” and the big corpos have done a good job of deceiving these overcompensated idiots with window dressing, snake oil, smoke&mirrors. I think the root of my problems lay here and why I am so hostile to them. Perhaps, if humans used them sanely, it wouldn’t be so bad.
Always.
At least we can agree on that.
I’m tempted to make a “better buggy whip maker” crack here…
I think there were some strong efforts on the front of Python to make programming more accessible as they are one of the most detailed and documented langauges out there. While base C; hey expected people to create their own shit using the base principles of the C language to create their own custom modules and shit. Other modern derivatives of C have done a better job of making the language accessible to new learners, showing off the power of the language and what you can do when you learn the language that machines understand.
Yeah, so Anthropic didn’t pay for legitimate textbooks when they went to school, they bought cheap, illegal, Asian photocopies instead… wrong, sure. How do you make it right now? Lobotomize the students who read illegally copied books? Fine their parents for everything they are worth? Or, hold the students liable and garnish their wages in perpetuity?
The consequences have already been decided for Anthropic which is a profit motivated corporation that knowingly did a bad thing that they shouldn’t have done, if I remember right the fine was $1.5 billion dollars. That money would be distributed to the affected authors who filed the claim with the courts. People who share textbooks, buy cheap ones…These students aren’t a profit driven entity, they are people who are being nickled and dimed for a costly education that is likely to make their living conditions a lot better. Sure, pirated materials aren’t legal, but those materials being shared amongst groups of college students who are looking to get educated and elevate their minds, I feel this is a lesser evil. Plus, it would be absolutely eye-watering expensive to even begin to track and punish such a smaller offense among everyday citizens. It’s honestly easier to hold a corporation accountable in this instance.
Yep…
Trump and Co are acting pretty nervous so I hope people show the fuck up and do what needs to be done, as it has to happen. Otherwise, I wonder about the future of America…
big corporations are trying to replace their entire staff with just LLMs, which cannot write code, maintain code, and update it properly without a person being involved to audit it.
As Forrest says: stupid is as stupid does.
humans need to fully investigate and verify if the LLM detected an anomaly or not
Yeah, and once detected bugs and vulnerabilities (especially those with proof of concept exploits) are really easy to verify - and people who skip that step deserve all the ridicule and disrespect they can get, because they’re ridiculously disrespecting the people they’re reporting supposed bugs and vulnerabilities to if they haven’t at least verified they’re actual and not hallucinated.
publishing a fix based on human written code alone from there. The LLM cannot be involved further at that point, as deskilling is an ever-present danger with those things.
Here I diverge from your thinking. Deskilling has been an ever-present danger since promotion to management was invented. Some managers retain their skills, others follow the Peter Principle ever upward until they’re beyond their actual abilities. The need for skills remains, and I doubt computer coding knowledge will be vanishing just because it’s gotten easier to do it faster and better than ever before. If anything, I’m learning from the LLMs what’s possible when you have so much extra time on your hands to write unit tests, document trace matricies, keep all the design documents in-sync with the actual state of the code, etc. All the things that we have been learning how to do minimally to avoid wasting time on them, now can be done maximally, and there are benefits - particularly when working with dim-witted LLM agents as front-line coders (who work really really fast.)
CEOs have been brainwashed into believing
many things over the years. Speaking of a role better suited to an LLM…
Perhaps, if humans used them sanely, it wouldn’t be so bad.
You could as easily apply that statement to automobiles, earth movers, concrete plants…
Regarding languages: they never mattered a whole lot - by the time I was out of school I had BASIC, Assembly (several kinds), Fortran, Pascal, C, C++, LISP, probably several more - and it’s all more or less the same, each with their own quirks and special supports. Mostly you just use what works in the environment you’re trying to develop for. Same for libraries and APIs… More recently, I did a fairly sizeable project in Python with Claude, but much more important than anything written in Python were the user-facing requirements. When I was tired of Python taking 2-3 seconds to render a page, I consulted with Claude and we settled on Go as the next logical target. Because the requirements and their tests were fully developed / properly exercised and maintained, the re-code from Python to Go was 100% automated, all done by Claude, and it came out flawlessly - every feature identically implemented, running from the same database, only pages rendered in 0.1 seconds max instead of 2-3. Claude assures me that the Python development went 2-3x faster than original development would have gone in Go… I wonder how true that was, or if Claude is just parroting what it read somewhere; actually, at this stage I’m 95% sure it was parroting, though the models are getting better about quoting actual estimates based on LLM assisted development.
People who share textbooks, buy cheap ones…These students aren’t a profit driven entity
Actually, they are. They are a teeming horde of individual profit driven entities who might not be able to afford an education otherwise. One might even extend that analogy to Anthropic and friends, where it was more realistic for them to ask forgiveness / restitution rather than permission. Illegal, yes. But would staying legal have been the right move?
I wonder about the future of America…
No matter what happens in November, I still wonder about the future of the US, and the world.
Which is why there needs to be a set of standards to prevent such lapses of judgement from ever being greenlight in the first place. As CEOs aren’t programmers, they aren’t really doing anything much beyond handling certain aspects of the business, certainly not producing the actual product.
many things over the years. Speaking of a role better suited to an LLM…
Meh, or just fire all the idiots and don’t let people fail upwards…LLMs aren’t sentient, they can’t take the role of a human nor accept responsibility when things go wrong.
Here I diverge from your thinking.
LLMs are just a faster way of being deskilled as by design, the corporations have designed them to be relied upon and utilized by people. To act like a crutch, I seem to remember Sam Altman wanting to make intelligence like any other utility like power and water that you pay for. This is baked into the chatbot aspect of LLMs that are pushed to everyday users and corporate facing ones as well. If one gets a promotion and isn’t involved in the work as much, but still needs to be aware of the trends in the field, they can still get educated in current changes and recertified in the field. Keeping in touch with that knowledge base, or even better trust your fucking experts and ask them for their opinions. Verify what they say against what you know and what the current tendency or SOP is.
The need for skills remains, and I doubt computer coding knowledge will be vanishing just because it’s gotten easier to do it faster and better than ever before
Once again, the problem is that things like Claude and ChatGPT aren’t simple tools, it is also a political narrative as well, designed to enable mass disenfranchisement of skilled people. To channel skill into the hands of the wealthy and wealth out of the hands of the skilled. More now that ever, it is important to learn, remain hand-coding as much as humanly possible, to not give into the use of said creations by the Nerd Reich. It is good that they forgot that documentation exists and can be preserved for people that are against their works.
More recently, I did a fairly sizeable project in Python with Claude
There is so much in the following paragraphs that not only caused me to be unimpressed, but also deeply disappointed, I can’t address all of that.
Actually, they are. They are a teeming horde of individual profit driven entities who might not be able to afford an education otherwise. One might even extend that analogy to Anthropic and friends, where it was more realistic for them to ask forgiveness / restitution rather than permission. Illegal, yes. But would staying legal have been the right move?
I will never give a corporation an inch, as they will steal a mile. Staying legal would’ve been the best thing, it would’ve made the optics a lot better for Anthropic. Corporations are regulated for a reason because they can LITERALLY throw their weight around and it matters that they stay above board as much as possible. Giving them even the smallest room or benefit of the doubt to act illegally is an insane take. I am glad they got punished at least. That is a rare thing these days, as so many corpos and CEOs dodge responsibility. I still think students are never going to approach the absolute spending power and influence that a corporation can reach; that is a scale that an individual might never reach in their lifetime unless they are born into wealth. Or get lucky in the financial rat race.
No matter what happens in November, I still wonder about the future of the US, and the world.
I can certainly agree with you on that because everything is looking so shaky because we haven’t rioted like the French do, on a scale that can absolutely terrify ever single politician in power. To make them get on their fucking knees and beg for mercy.
As CEOs aren’t programmers, they aren’t really doing anything much beyond
playing God, master and commander of their own little universe - having the final say in every single aspect of the company. The good ones delegate. Not all CEOs are good.
LLMs aren’t sentient, they can’t take the role of a human nor accept responsibility when things go wrong.
No, but they can weigh alternatives and make psychopathically insensitive decisions to maximize profits - which is the implicit job description of CEO.
LLMs are just a faster way of being deskilled as by design,
In the 1990s compilers de-skilled my assembly programming. I’m O.K. with that, I’m sure I could pick it back up if it were necessary, better than I did before for my diverse experience outside assembly programming since then, but it doesn’t seem likely I’ll ever need to.
Google and the other search engines deskilled my library navigation abilities. I used to know how to whiz from card catalog to microfiche to the stacks to requesting an inter-library loan in a half dozen local libraries. If I ever need to go back to doing those things, first I’ll have to learn how they’ve changed in the last 25 years, but meanwhile - search engines are 1000x faster and more efficient. I can’t remember the last time I drove 30 miles, parked downtown and walked in the rain to use a search engine, but I do remember doing that and more to use libraries.
I think it’s time to crack that deskilled buggy whip maker joke now…
even better trust your fucking experts and ask them for their opinions
Self touted experts full of misinformation are nothing new. People have been selling stale and hallucinated “business intelligence” since forever.
a political narrative as well, designed to enable mass disenfranchisement of skilled people.
Like the cotton gin, the spinning Jenny, the power loom, etc. People could and still can pick seeds, spin thread, weave by hand - but why would they pursue that as a career anymore?
I will never give a corporation an inch, as they will steal a mile.
If you really want to change the state of things, there are more effective uses of your time to achieve that end than moaning about it on the internet. You might ask ChatGPT how you can achieve your goals more effectively. I wouldn’t take the responses as marching orders, but you might be surprised if you actually think about the effort vs efficacy ratio of your options.
on a scale that can absolutely terrify ever single politician in power
Do you remember Kent State? I’ll note that the draft has ended and not returned since.
If you really want to change the state of things, there are more effective uses of your time to achieve that end than moaning about it on the internet. You might ask ChatGPT how you can achieve your goals more effectively. I wouldn’t take the responses as marching orders, but you might be surprised if you actually think about the effort vs efficacy ratio of your options.
Yeah, no, I just collaborate with other people outside of this conversation and work towards properly making corporations less foul. I am not just idly complaining on the internet. ROFL Asking a fucking unintelligent thing on how to solve problems that humans can solve is INSANE. I won’t be doing that, I will be sticking to my collaborative efforts with groups that are working towards that end. This is a human problem with human solutions, thanks. I think you are a little too into the random outputs of programs to be trusted on anything, really.
and work towards properly making corporations less foul
Well, you and your “human solutions” have been banging that drum for 50 years (that I know of) and all I see is negative progress. The ChatGPT suggestion was meant as a barb, of course, but in a “try something different” kind of way, because 50 more years of the same old same old bitching about the evil corporations might get you one more AT&T breakup level event, if you’re lucky and the powerful people of the world want it broken up too…
I think you are a little too into the random outputs of programs to be trusted on anything, really.
That ability to see the patterns in language, particularly the ability to distill semantic meaning and make (reasonable, if imperfect) translations from one language to a variety of others, is incredibly useful in software development activities, which are basically the task of translating natural language requests into code - usually through a multi-step process of: requirements definition, design specification, application development, test development, and constant review to ensure that all those steps are in-sync, describing the same thing.
Always.
I’m tempted to make a “better buggy whip maker” crack here…
Yeah, so Anthropic didn’t pay for legitimate textbooks when they went to school, they bought cheap, illegal, Asian photocopies instead… wrong, sure. How do you make it right now? Lobotomize the students who read illegally copied books? Fine their parents for everything they are worth? Or, hold the students liable and garnish their wages in perpetuity?
Yep…
It’s just being used out of scope and big corporations are trying to replace their entire staff with just LLMs, which cannot write code, maintain code, and update it properly without a person being involved to audit it. The Luddite in me screams for some sanity in the space. The least offensive use is finding bugs, but humans need to fully investigate and verify if the LLM detected an anomaly or not, publishing a fix based on human written code alone from there. The LLM cannot be involved further at that point, as deskilling is an ever-present danger with those things. As the only way for these things to actually create code is to be trained on the works of humans (which is often stolen without permission by scrapers or harvested because fools willingly use LLMs for some strange reason). As LLMs cannot think, feel, or have a spark of creativity. These are just programs that detect patterns can be made to spit them out. But CEOs have been brainwashed into believing that LLMs can be considered an “AI” and the big corpos have done a good job of deceiving these overcompensated idiots with window dressing, snake oil, smoke&mirrors. I think the root of my problems lay here and why I am so hostile to them. Perhaps, if humans used them sanely, it wouldn’t be so bad.
At least we can agree on that.
I think there were some strong efforts on the front of Python to make programming more accessible as they are one of the most detailed and documented langauges out there. While base C; hey expected people to create their own shit using the base principles of the C language to create their own custom modules and shit. Other modern derivatives of C have done a better job of making the language accessible to new learners, showing off the power of the language and what you can do when you learn the language that machines understand.
The consequences have already been decided for Anthropic which is a profit motivated corporation that knowingly did a bad thing that they shouldn’t have done, if I remember right the fine was $1.5 billion dollars. That money would be distributed to the affected authors who filed the claim with the courts. People who share textbooks, buy cheap ones…These students aren’t a profit driven entity, they are people who are being nickled and dimed for a costly education that is likely to make their living conditions a lot better. Sure, pirated materials aren’t legal, but those materials being shared amongst groups of college students who are looking to get educated and elevate their minds, I feel this is a lesser evil. Plus, it would be absolutely eye-watering expensive to even begin to track and punish such a smaller offense among everyday citizens. It’s honestly easier to hold a corporation accountable in this instance.
Trump and Co are acting pretty nervous so I hope people show the fuck up and do what needs to be done, as it has to happen. Otherwise, I wonder about the future of America…
As Forrest says: stupid is as stupid does.
Yeah, and once detected bugs and vulnerabilities (especially those with proof of concept exploits) are really easy to verify - and people who skip that step deserve all the ridicule and disrespect they can get, because they’re ridiculously disrespecting the people they’re reporting supposed bugs and vulnerabilities to if they haven’t at least verified they’re actual and not hallucinated.
Here I diverge from your thinking. Deskilling has been an ever-present danger since promotion to management was invented. Some managers retain their skills, others follow the Peter Principle ever upward until they’re beyond their actual abilities. The need for skills remains, and I doubt computer coding knowledge will be vanishing just because it’s gotten easier to do it faster and better than ever before. If anything, I’m learning from the LLMs what’s possible when you have so much extra time on your hands to write unit tests, document trace matricies, keep all the design documents in-sync with the actual state of the code, etc. All the things that we have been learning how to do minimally to avoid wasting time on them, now can be done maximally, and there are benefits - particularly when working with dim-witted LLM agents as front-line coders (who work really really fast.)
many things over the years. Speaking of a role better suited to an LLM…
You could as easily apply that statement to automobiles, earth movers, concrete plants…
Regarding languages: they never mattered a whole lot - by the time I was out of school I had BASIC, Assembly (several kinds), Fortran, Pascal, C, C++, LISP, probably several more - and it’s all more or less the same, each with their own quirks and special supports. Mostly you just use what works in the environment you’re trying to develop for. Same for libraries and APIs… More recently, I did a fairly sizeable project in Python with Claude, but much more important than anything written in Python were the user-facing requirements. When I was tired of Python taking 2-3 seconds to render a page, I consulted with Claude and we settled on Go as the next logical target. Because the requirements and their tests were fully developed / properly exercised and maintained, the re-code from Python to Go was 100% automated, all done by Claude, and it came out flawlessly - every feature identically implemented, running from the same database, only pages rendered in 0.1 seconds max instead of 2-3. Claude assures me that the Python development went 2-3x faster than original development would have gone in Go… I wonder how true that was, or if Claude is just parroting what it read somewhere; actually, at this stage I’m 95% sure it was parroting, though the models are getting better about quoting actual estimates based on LLM assisted development.
Actually, they are. They are a teeming horde of individual profit driven entities who might not be able to afford an education otherwise. One might even extend that analogy to Anthropic and friends, where it was more realistic for them to ask forgiveness / restitution rather than permission. Illegal, yes. But would staying legal have been the right move?
No matter what happens in November, I still wonder about the future of the US, and the world.
Which is why there needs to be a set of standards to prevent such lapses of judgement from ever being greenlight in the first place. As CEOs aren’t programmers, they aren’t really doing anything much beyond handling certain aspects of the business, certainly not producing the actual product.
Meh, or just fire all the idiots and don’t let people fail upwards…LLMs aren’t sentient, they can’t take the role of a human nor accept responsibility when things go wrong.
LLMs are just a faster way of being deskilled as by design, the corporations have designed them to be relied upon and utilized by people. To act like a crutch, I seem to remember Sam Altman wanting to make intelligence like any other utility like power and water that you pay for. This is baked into the chatbot aspect of LLMs that are pushed to everyday users and corporate facing ones as well. If one gets a promotion and isn’t involved in the work as much, but still needs to be aware of the trends in the field, they can still get educated in current changes and recertified in the field. Keeping in touch with that knowledge base, or even better trust your fucking experts and ask them for their opinions. Verify what they say against what you know and what the current tendency or SOP is.
Once again, the problem is that things like Claude and ChatGPT aren’t simple tools, it is also a political narrative as well, designed to enable mass disenfranchisement of skilled people. To channel skill into the hands of the wealthy and wealth out of the hands of the skilled. More now that ever, it is important to learn, remain hand-coding as much as humanly possible, to not give into the use of said creations by the Nerd Reich. It is good that they forgot that documentation exists and can be preserved for people that are against their works.
There is so much in the following paragraphs that not only caused me to be unimpressed, but also deeply disappointed, I can’t address all of that.
I will never give a corporation an inch, as they will steal a mile. Staying legal would’ve been the best thing, it would’ve made the optics a lot better for Anthropic. Corporations are regulated for a reason because they can LITERALLY throw their weight around and it matters that they stay above board as much as possible. Giving them even the smallest room or benefit of the doubt to act illegally is an insane take. I am glad they got punished at least. That is a rare thing these days, as so many corpos and CEOs dodge responsibility. I still think students are never going to approach the absolute spending power and influence that a corporation can reach; that is a scale that an individual might never reach in their lifetime unless they are born into wealth. Or get lucky in the financial rat race.
I can certainly agree with you on that because everything is looking so shaky because we haven’t rioted like the French do, on a scale that can absolutely terrify ever single politician in power. To make them get on their fucking knees and beg for mercy.
playing God, master and commander of their own little universe - having the final say in every single aspect of the company. The good ones delegate. Not all CEOs are good.
No, but they can weigh alternatives and make psychopathically insensitive decisions to maximize profits - which is the implicit job description of CEO.
In the 1990s compilers de-skilled my assembly programming. I’m O.K. with that, I’m sure I could pick it back up if it were necessary, better than I did before for my diverse experience outside assembly programming since then, but it doesn’t seem likely I’ll ever need to.
Google and the other search engines deskilled my library navigation abilities. I used to know how to whiz from card catalog to microfiche to the stacks to requesting an inter-library loan in a half dozen local libraries. If I ever need to go back to doing those things, first I’ll have to learn how they’ve changed in the last 25 years, but meanwhile - search engines are 1000x faster and more efficient. I can’t remember the last time I drove 30 miles, parked downtown and walked in the rain to use a search engine, but I do remember doing that and more to use libraries.
I think it’s time to crack that deskilled buggy whip maker joke now…
Self touted experts full of misinformation are nothing new. People have been selling stale and hallucinated “business intelligence” since forever.
Like the cotton gin, the spinning Jenny, the power loom, etc. People could and still can pick seeds, spin thread, weave by hand - but why would they pursue that as a career anymore?
If you really want to change the state of things, there are more effective uses of your time to achieve that end than moaning about it on the internet. You might ask ChatGPT how you can achieve your goals more effectively. I wouldn’t take the responses as marching orders, but you might be surprised if you actually think about the effort vs efficacy ratio of your options.
Do you remember Kent State? I’ll note that the draft has ended and not returned since.
Yeah, no, I just collaborate with other people outside of this conversation and work towards properly making corporations less foul. I am not just idly complaining on the internet. ROFL Asking a fucking unintelligent thing on how to solve problems that humans can solve is INSANE. I won’t be doing that, I will be sticking to my collaborative efforts with groups that are working towards that end. This is a human problem with human solutions, thanks. I think you are a little too into the random outputs of programs to be trusted on anything, really.
That ends this conversation, have a good day.
Well, you and your “human solutions” have been banging that drum for 50 years (that I know of) and all I see is negative progress. The ChatGPT suggestion was meant as a barb, of course, but in a “try something different” kind of way, because 50 more years of the same old same old bitching about the evil corporations might get you one more AT&T breakup level event, if you’re lucky and the powerful people of the world want it broken up too…
On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog.