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> "it will be nearly impossible to learn them from scratch."

Aren't the tools supposed to get easier to use, not harder? As far as I can tell all the expertise in using LLMs comes from already having the underlying skill in the domain.

	▲	adampunk 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		>As far as I can tell all the expertise in using LLMs comes from already having the underlying skill in the domain. How is it that you came to that conclusion?

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SpicyLemonZest 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I decided 13 years ago that I don't want get into React, and continue to have a long and successful career in software development. A couple of times I've had to lean in and do some React work, so I learned the specific bits I needed for those projects, and I was slower and worse than an expert would be but got the job done. Perhaps I'm naive, but it doesn't seem like there was anything in React where I've been left behind and couldn't learn it now if I had a need to.

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lapcat 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> it will be nearly impossible to learn them from scratch.

Are you claiming that all future generations of would-be programmers are doomed?

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adampunk 3 days ago | parent [-]

I'm saying that there's a cost to waiting, just like there's a cost to jumping in early. The cost is SPECIFICALLY that it is harder to jump in to a mature field with its own jargon and concerns. The assumption I think folks are making is their engineering prowess will save them here: whatever complicated thing that matters in AI land will be easily visible to an rank outsider.

The whole premise of "imma wait" is not sober patience, it's the implied "imma wait until everything falls apart, then we'll go back to what I know how to do." that people don't like saying. It's an argument (often not even stated as such) that the people who don't jump in will be healthier and happier for just having ignored this wave.

I think that's baloney. It's not FOMO I'm arguing about but the idea that real practices and infrastructure are being built right now that people are internalizing. Folks who aren't a part of it just aren't internalizing any of that. As the tech gets better (and it will!), those practices and infrastructure get more complex, more specialized. The idea that I can just wait years and then "engineer harder" to undertand this from the outside while being competitive is fantasy. Maybe some subset of people can, bully for them. Most people won't be able to.

Future programmers aren't doomed. Future programmers who can't or won't adapt to the biggest change in computing since the slide rule are doomed.

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lapcat 3 days ago | parent [-]

> The cost is SPECIFICALLY that it is harder to jump in to a mature field with its own jargon and concerns.

Hasn't that been the case for decades? What specifically is different now, such that for some reason it's harder to jump in now than it was before?

If anything, LLMs are supposed to make things easier, aren't they?

> it's the implied "imma wait until everything falls apart, then we'll go back to what I know how to do." that people don't like saying.

You can read whatever assumption you want into the blog post, but it's not there in the words. You're dunking on a straw man.

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adampunk 3 days ago | parent [-]

>What specifically is different now, such that for some reason it's harder to jump in now than it was before?

Well, the obvious evidence that something is different now is all around us. It's been made with painful seriousness by people who thought they were making a different point, namely that LLMs represent an unreliable, poorly understood, and hazardous abstraction layer between coders and the machine. Specifically that this abstraction layer is DIFFERENT than others in the past. There are dozens and dozens of blog posts making this point (some written by machines) on HN. It would be hard to have not come across this point or miss the chorus of engineers agreeing with it. It's supposedly a cardinal reason why assembly -> C was a "good abstraction" and natural language -> slop is a "bad abstraction." If we take that argument seriously, it represents strong evidence that something new is happening, independent of anything I might say.

Why is it different? C'mon. COME ON. why can I find a post on the front page of HN when Claude is down for more than 10 minutes? Why can I find out that a new model has been released from the big 5 frontier labs, again on the front page, inside minutes? Why is it different? Did we build trillions of dollars of datacenters for NetBeans or SecondLife or whatever other cartoonish old fad I'm supposed to treat as analogous today? Are we just supposed to imagine that Microsoft, NVIDIA, Facebook, Google, Alibaba are all just staffed with idiots, or they're all caught up in irrational exuberance? Are we supposed to watch generation costs march down and outcomes improve and still think 'yeah, this is just like Pets.com? Are we supposed to yield to vague and suggestive motions toward e.g. the dot com boom as though working with agents were the same thing as investing in a specific internet company ca. 1998? Are we supposed to take from that analogy that an engineer who said "no thanks, I'll wait to see how this internet thing shakes out" in the 1990s was a real smarty to be emulated? Come on.

It's both categorically different and clearly has meaningful material force behind it.

This is a whole different interface to the computer and even if the eventual outcome is that real engineering work happens with tightly constrained and specialized harnesses around agents, understanding the actual interface is critical. Ironically, the meta-claim here is that good engineers will just be able to vibe out correct practice by engineering harder instead of understanding that core interface! Rather what will be needed is attention and orientation to concerns that people care about in the space.

I don't want to dunk on a strawman. I'd much rather not see a whole community of engineers loudly pat each other on the back for not learning about something.

	▲	lapcat 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> I don't want to dunk on a strawman. You said "it is harder to jump in to a mature field with its own jargon and concerns." I asked how it's harder than in the past. Your long reply did not appear to explain this at all. Rather, it seemed to be a series of red herrings and dunks, not directly addressing my question. > I'd much rather not see a whole community of engineers loudly pat each other on the back for not learning about something. The submitted article said, "I've tried a bunch of them. Some are good. Most are a bit shit. Few are useful to me as they are now."