Can you write assembly?

vivzkestrel 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

- wrong comparison

- ever heard the word called threshold? there is always a threshold for everything in this universe

- when you say i dont need to manually do math anymore because i use a calculator, the threshold for offloading your thinking is very very low

- when you say i dont need assembly language anymore because i learnt python, once again the threshold for offloading your thinking to an external source is very very slow because you are still thinking how that program works in python

- but now you are saying here is a document that describes how the system works and let the agent generate the code

- you are not thinking at all here are you?

- even if you were to claim that writing requirement documents is a form of thought, you are still offloading the parts of your brain that were capable of translating requirement documents to code

- i can still add and subtract 6 digit numbers effortlessly and rapidly without a calculator because i stopped using one long time back

- can you say the same about the current generation of engineers 10 yrs from now?

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jdjdkrjdjjdj 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It was a yes or no question. You didn't answer it.

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jdjdkrjdjjdj 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Look my point here is not to troll. My point here is to make you think. I learnt assembly and I never want to do it again, I learnt to code in many languages (compiled and interpreted) and you know what, there has not been an issue i found that required me to dig into the assembly of a compiled language (there are edge cases if there was a compiler bug, but I have not seen them myself).

Now the change from assembly to compiled languages was a step change. The same is true now. What was once hard is now easy. And again we must adapt.

For you I think your identity has been tied up in being good at what you do ... I was the same... The issue is now, that we need to find something harder to fill our minds...

Finally, I want to remind you that at one point in our history a computer was a job. I think programmer/software engineer is going the same way.

In 10 years I hope we are not doing the same mundane crap as what we were .. There are so many other interesting things we could be filling our brains with!!!

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discreteevent 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> there has not been an issue i found that required me to dig into the assembly of a compiled language (there are edge cases if there was a compiler bug, but I have not seen them myself).

The compiler did exactly what you said because the programming language forced you to be exact. There was no room for misunderstanding.

This will never be the case with an LLM even if it becomes infallible (it won't). It's you who is fallible and sloppy until you force yourself to be precise. A programming language can help with that.

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simianwords 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Eh this is also not true. Non determinism doesn’t disqualify something from being useful and necessary. If you are a manager, you employ people (who are non deterministic) to get stuff done.

In fact entirety of humanity has been delegating work to non deterministic specialists. Like how I delegate making food to non deterministic supply chains and capitalism. No one complains about skill atrophy here I’m sure.

“But humans can learn..” well sure agents can learn too, adapt the markdown files.

“But humans are accountable..” distinction without a difference

	▲	discreteevent an hour ago \| parent [-]
		My argument was not that LLMs aren't useful but that a compiler is a completely misleading anamlogy. You compared them to humans. Humans live in the world, have a world model, meet people for lunch and exchange ideas. Agents read markdown files and code. Simanwords, you spend a lot of time on HN promoting LLMs and being dismissive of humans in comparison. I have to ask: Whose side are you on?

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vivzkestrel 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

- to answer your question, i did not start with assembly

- i started in 2010s with c++ directly but I did go back and learn how to do 8086 opcodes and while i am not good at it, i am still learning it slowly

- mundane stuff? algorithms, business logic, critical thinking, architectural understanding is being outsourced to LLMs at an unprecedented rate and there is nothing mundane about any of this

- you can sit and talk about how 10 yrs down the line everyone has to sit and write english paragraphs of how they want their website to look like and nobody needs to write code but I am going to have to back out of this one

- Writing code from requirements is an art as much as a critical skill and bringing an LLM to do so doesnt bode well for the entire industry

- Remember that concept of smart terminals and dumb terminals that used to be discussed about long time back. How dumb terminals merely offloaded everything to the server while they did nothing.

- Frontier labs are turning humans into dumb terminals while they wield data, power and critical thinking from the masses at scale

- This kinda power and leverage should not be handed out especially to frontier labs controlled by a few people

- Even if you are one of those few insightful people out there who will sit and actually discuss what the function should do and then review the generated code, vast majority of programmers are literally copy pasting vibe coding stuff day in and day out now

- This ll create a special type of deficiency a few years down the line in every major corporation out there while concentrating even more power into the hands of a few frontier labs

- Remember that meme image of an ape slowly evolving into a human and the in the last step, it says "oops we need to turn back one step". This honestly is that one step. I think the software industry has taken a messy step here

	▲	simianwords 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Very respectfully this all sounds incoherent. You have also untastefully mixed in some concern over frontier labs having too much power - this is orthogonal to the discussion. Your reckoning for when we will look back to this time and regret using LLMs won’t happen, as much as you crave for it. - Here’s what will happen: agents allow you to understand less and less of the code (directionally) and allow you to focus on high level design. - this won’t make it such that no one will look at code, just like some still look at assembly - LLMs won’t allow you to never look at code (yet) but it pushes you in such a way that you may need to read less and less of your code Also the fact that you have written about how writing code from requirements is an art. This is just not gonna be true anymore with LLMs. Very few in enterprise is writing artful code - they are getting stuff done. The art part is understanding the requirements and high level design. If you’ve ever worked in enterprise, there’s always a few people who nitpick on code reviews to artify code - these sorts eventually learn and forget this tic.

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wonnage 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You created a throwaway to “not troll” and post the same three tired tropes every tokenmaxxing vibe coder trots out

	▲	simianwords 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They are right though. The entire history of human civilisation involves a thing called “specialisation”. The primary reason we were able to prosper as humans is because we all dont have to know how to procure our food. Did humanity lose the skills for making food as people specialised? No. same thing with memory management - as Java became popular, should the concern have been towards losing skills on memory management? That’s stupid. LLMs don’t allow you (yet) to not understand the code completely. But it allows you to understand less and less directionality. We are getting there. I don’t read all code anymore, just high level design. This kind of performative concern over skill atrophy is annoying.

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customguy 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Apples and oranges, since there is not determinism. That this argument gets trotted out so often is part of the dumbing down IMO.

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TiredOfLife an hour ago | parent | next [-]

FreeBSD took some 30 years to get deterministic builds

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simianwords 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Non determinism doesn’t discount something from still being useful. Companies outsource projects to consultancies all the time. Imagine you wanted to rebrand your logo - you hire a freelance guy to make it. He’s non deterministic. Does this stop you from hiring him? Why or why not?

	▲	customguy an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Would you call him or her "the next step in the evolution of the brush" or something like that? Would you call an assistant who reads from books to or for you the "next level of literacy"? Does objecting to such statements -- because they're false and insulting the intelligence of the reader on the surface, and outright sinister in their long term implications -- mean I am "anti" either of these or other things? No x3. It also doesn't mean that I think if you have taste, even maybe some artistic skill, you will instantly lose it all when you hire that one person for that one logo, and so on. It just means what it says, that this comparison is nonsense. I don't have to justify myself for recognizing that, it should be the other way around if anything.

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disgruntledphd2 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I actually ended up learning a little assembly (Knuth's new one MMIX) and it's actually been a really useful skill, as it gives me a (lot) more sympathy for the machine.