Seems to me LLMs have changed some things. I'm not sure how it's best put, but it used to be:

- Seeing code (or a blogpost or whatever) was a result from effort where thought had gone into it. The writer paid effort so the reader didn't have to.

- There'd be some level of attachment to what you've put effort into.

With LLMs, that's undermined: it's easy to produce thoughtless imitations. Code or comments where thought didn't go into it. So, seeing some result isn't an indication of skill, but also not even an indication thought went into it.

I guess there's still something lost if someone isn't going to share code they've put thought into. -- But on the other hand, if it's just for me & I don't have to share it with a wider audience, getting LLMs to write out code isn't so expensive.. so code itself isn't necessarily something to value so much.

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irdc 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But LLMs don’t seem particularly good at inventing new ways to code (or write, or…). It’s literally all derivative. So what happens in 10 years? Are we headed for a great stagnation?

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rgoulter 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> But LLMs don’t seem particularly good at inventing new ways to code (or write, or…). It’s literally all derivative.

I think the key part is how much thought goes into something.

Optimistically, LLMs are good at taking unstructured input, and (probably) producing the intended output from that. -- This allows for an interesting new way of coding: a set of instructions don't need to be as rigorous as a shell script, but can be natural language.

That part surely extends creativity. An LLM will be familiar with domain ideas I'm not, even if an LLM is completely disinterested in doing things.

Pessimistically, I think it's still not clear what the right way of interacting online with all of this is (other than clear expectations of "no AI")... in some sense LLM output is worthless to share, in the sense that I'm just as capable of asking the LLM to output something as anyone else is.

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dzhiurgis 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s like arguing that nobody is going to invent new ways to ride horses in the age to automobile.

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irdc 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If the way humanity advances were via new ways to ride horses, then yes.

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asibahi 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You made me curious. Has anyone invented new ways to ride horses in the age of the automobile?

	▲	VladVladikoff 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Best I could find: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1174605 There was a relatively big shift in riding style right around the same time of the first mass production of vehicles.

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f6v 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't know... I've been writing code for good twenty years (15 professionally).

First, I think it's the best time to write software since so much boring stuff can be automated. I can put my thoughts into what I'm trying to achieve instead of how. To put it otherwise, I think about big picture much more than about mundane details like dealing with particularities of a programming language.

Second, most people were using SO to solve just about any issue they had. The number of developers producing truly original code was minimal even 10 years ago.