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| ▲ | hnuser123456 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I mean, I spent years learning to code in school and at home, but never managed to get a job doing it, so I just do what I can in my spare time, and LLMs help me feel like I haven't completely fallen off. I can still hack together cool stuff and keep learning. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I actually meant it as a good thing! Our industry plays very loose with terms like "developer" and "engineer". We never really defined them well and its always felt more like gate keeping. IMO if someone uses what tools they have, whether thats an LLM or vim, and is able to ship software they're a developer in my book. |
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| ▲ | rvnx 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Probably. There is a similar question: if you ask ChatGPT / Midjourney to generate a drawing, are you an artist ? (to me yes, which would mean that AI "vibe coders" are actual developers in their own way) | | |
| ▲ | dimitri-vs 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | If my 5 yo daughter draws a square with a triangle on top is she an architect? | | |
| ▲ | guappa 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, most architects can't really do the structure calculations themselves. | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's quite a straw man example though. If your daughter could draw a house with enough detail that someone could take it and actually build it then you'd be more along the lines of the GP's LLM artist question. | | |
| ▲ | dimitri-vs 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Not really, the point was contrasting sentimental labels with professionally defined titles, which seems precisely the distinction needed here. It's easy enough to look up on the agreed upon term for software engineer / developer and agree that it's more than someone that copy pastes code until it just barely runs. EDIT: To clarify I was only talking about vibe coder = developer. In this case the LLM is more of the developer and they are the product manager. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Do we have professionally defined titles for developer or software engineer? I've never seen it clarified so I tend to default to the lowest common denominator - if you're making software in some way you're a developer. The tools someone uses doesn't really factor into it for me (even if that is copy/pasting from stackoverflow). |
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| ▲ | toofy 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | nope. if i ask an llm to give me a detailed schematic to build a bridge, im not magically * poof * a structural engineer. | | |
| ▲ | rvnx 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't know, if you actually design in some way and deliver the solution for the structure of the bridge, aren't you THE structural engineer for that project ? Credentials don't define capability, execution does. | | |
| ▲ | bluefirebrand 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Credentials don't define capability, execution does. All the same, if my city starts to hire un-credentialed "engineers" to vibe-design bridges, I'm not going to drive on them | |
| ▲ | toofy 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | again, it doesn’t make me a structural engineer—it’s the outcome of hiring someone else to do it. it really isn’t complicated. i’m not suddenly somehow a structural engineer. even worse, i would have no way to know when its full of dangerous hallucinations. |
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| ▲ | _heimdall 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | This argument runs squarely into the problems of whether credentials or outcomes are what's important, and whether the LLM is considered a tool or the one actually responsible doing the work. | | |
| ▲ | toofy 4 days ago | parent [-] | | it’s not that deep. *if* it were a structurally sound bridge, it means i outsourced it. it’s that simple. it doesn’t magically make me a structural engineer, it means it was designed elsewhere. if i hire someone to paint a picture it doesn’t magically somehow make me an artist. |
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| ▲ | danudey 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If I tell a human artist to draw me something, am I an artist? No. Neither are people who ask AI to draw them something. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 6 days ago | parent [-] | | That probably depends on whether you consider LLMs, or human artists, as tools. If someone uses an LLM to make code, is consider the LLM to be a tool that will only be as good as the person prompting it. The person, then, is the developer while the LLM is a tool they're using. I don't consider auto complete, IDEs, or LSPs to take away from my being a developer. This distinction likely goes out the window entirely if you consider an LLM to actually be intelligent, sentient, or conscious though. |
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