It is perhaps confirmation bias, but I feel like I see fewer and fewer of these posts on HN. All respect to the author, life is too short to force yourself to do something you don’t like. But, these post seem more like a goodbye to the train that has already pulled out of the station.

The quibble I would make is with the “code is not that good” and the implication that they are so much better at coding while those who have adopted AI are “mediocre”. It’s certainly possible this is right. I would be the first to call myself a middling programmer. I am still waiting to be inducted into the Real Developer (TM) society. (Is it a card? Or does someone teach you a handshake?). But my question is, why, if you’re an ace programmer, can you not get good results out of an LLM? These things are endlessly configurable. They are begging to be tested and, dare I say, engineered to your system and way of doing things. So, why are your results still bad?

The author's not wrong that left completely to their own devices, and especially if your working on something that's not well represented in their training data, LLMs will make a mess of things. But a Real Programmer (TM) isn't doing that. (Or so I assume. like I said, I haven't gotten the pin. Or is it a medal? A certificate perhaps?).

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archagon 5 hours ago | parent [-]

One reason is that there is zero point in posting this type of article to HN anymore. The replies are always the same and nothing is gained.

Rest assured, though, that the sentiment grows ever stronger.

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springtimesun 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Not to be a jerk, but what if I told you there was a raging debate about widgets vs wodgets in the last 6 months and, although it seems pretty clear that widgets were being adopted across the industry at large, there was an ever growing sentiment that wodgets were actually preferred and the market was going to reverse itself, any day now?

I can’t really point to any evidence of this because the wodget people have stopped posting about it and every month the cost of widgets keeps going down while they simultaneously get better and there’s so much capital and talent being thrown at widgets that it’s impossible to think a wholesale reversal could even be possible. Would you tell me that, “trust me, bro” is not really an argument?

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archagon 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Who said anything about a wholesale reversal?

All these things can be true simultaneously:

* AI has wholly taken over the corporate world

* Programmers can now generate (and are expected to generate) massive amounts of code

* This massive productivity boost is, oddly enough, not reflected in consumer products at all

* In fact, most of this productivity seems to be aimed at making AI widgets or infrastructure for maintaining AI widgets

* LLM use may very well get software development stuck at its current level of complexity (because AI is incapable of independent abstraction and simplification)

* Programmers are deskilling en masse and turning into managers (without admitting it to themselves)

* Technical programming discussions have become incredibly boring for people actually interested in the craft; care, curiosity, and understanding have been jettisoned

* The externalities of LLM use remain the same (and, to an extent, can’t actually be fixed)

* Most of the benefits of LLM use are going to management; programmers now have to do a lot more for the same pay

* There will always be programmers who code by hand, even in a professional capacity — and it’s quite likely they’ll be the ones dragging the industry forward (up the ladder of abstraction)

And finally:

* People who voluntarily give up their craft and livelihood to proprietary black boxes are chumps

	▲	springtimesun 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe I misunderstood you. I thought that after the sentiment grew ever stronger that there was an “and then something happens” implied. I assumed you meant reversal.