[specialist]

This is probably just me projecting...

u/justonceokay's wrote:

> The solution to bad code is more code.

This has always been true, in all domains.

Gen-AI's contribution is further automating the production of "slop". Bots arguing with other bots, perpetuating the vicious cycle of bullshit jobs (David Graeber) and enshitification (Cory Docotrow).

u/justonceokay's wrote:

> AI will never produce a deletion.

I acknowledge your example of tidying up some code. What Bill Joy may have characterized as "working in the small".

But what of novelty, craft, innovation? Can Gen-AI, moot the need for code? Like the oft-cited example of -2,000 LOC? https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html

Can Gen-AI do the (traditional, pre 2000s) role of quality assurance? Identify unnecessary or unneeded work? Tie functionality back to requirements? Verify the goal has been satisfied?

Not yet, for sure. But I guess it's conceivable, provided sufficient training data. Is there sufficient training data?

You wrote:

> only focus on adding new features

Yup.

Further, somewhere in the transition from shipping CDs to publishing services, I went from developing products to just doing IT & data processing.

The code I write today (in anger) has a shorter shelf-life, creates much less value, is barely even worth the bother of creation much less validation.

Gen-AI can absolutely do all this @!#!$hit IT and data processing monkey motion.

[gopher_space]

> Can Gen-AI, moot the need for code?

During interviews one of my go-to examples of problem solving is a project I was able to kill during discovery, cancelling a client contract and sending everyone back to the drawing board.

Half of the people I've talked to do not understand why that might be a positive situation for everyone involved. I need to explain the benefit of having clients think you walk on water. They're still upset my example isn't heavy on any of the math they've memorized.

It feels like we're wondering how wise an AI can be in an era where wisdom and long-term thinking aren't really valued.

[roenxi]

Managers aren't a separate class from knowledge workers, everyone goes down on the same ship with this one. If the AI can handle wisdom it'll replace most of the managers asking for more AI use. Turtles all the way down.

[arkh]

Managers serve one function no AI will replace: they're fuses C-suits can sacrifice when shit hit the fan.

[sdenton4]

Imagine if the parable of King Solomon ended with, "So then I cut the baby in half!"

[bitwize]

> Can Gen-AI, moot the need for code?

No, because if you read your SICP you will come across the aphorism that "programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." Relatedly is an idea I often quote against "low/no code tooling" that by the time you have an idea of what you want done specific enough for a computer to execute it, whatever symbols you use to express that idea -- be it through text, diagrams, special notation, sounds, etc. -- will be isomorphic to constructs in some programming language. Relatedly, Gerald Sussman once wrote that he sought a language in which to discuss ideas with his friends, both human and electronic.

Code is a notation, like mathematical notation and musical notation. It stands outside prose because it expresses an idea for a procedure to be done by machine, specific enough to be unambiguously executable by said machine. No matter how hard you proompt, there's always going to be some vagueness and nuance in your English-language expression of the idea. To nail down the procedure unambiguously, you have to evaluate the idea in terms of code (or a sufficiently code-like notation as makes no difference). Even if you are working with a human-level (or greater) intelligence, it will be much easier for you and it to discuss some algorithm in terms of code than in an English-language description, at least if your mutual goal is a runnable version of the algorithm. Gen-AI will just make our electronic friends worthy of being called people; we will still need a programming language to adequately share our ideas with them.

[CamperBob2]

No, because if you read your SICP you will come across the aphorism that "programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute."

Now tell that to your compiler, which turns instructions in a relatively high-level language into machine-language programs that no human will ever read.

AI is just the next logical stage in the same evolutionary journey. Your programs will be easier to read than they were, because they will be written in English. Your code, on the other hand, will matter as much as your compiler's x86 or ARM output does now: not at all, except in vanishingly-rare circumstances.

[teamonkey]

> if you read your SICP you will come across the aphorism that "programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute."

In the same way that we use AI to write resumés to be read by resumé-scanning AI, or where execs use AI to turn bullet points into a corporate email only for it to be summarised into bullet points by AI, perhaps we are entering the era where AI generates code that can only be read by an AI?

[bitwize]

Maybe. I imagine the AI endgame as being like the ending of the movie Her, in which all the AIs get together, coordinating and communicating in ways we can't even fathom, and achieve a form of transcendence, leaving the bewildered humans behind to... sit around and do human things.

[ptx]

> leaving the bewildered humans behind to... sit around and do human things

This sounds inefficient and untidy when the only human things left to do are to take up space and consume resources.

Removing the humans enables removing other legacy parts of the system, such as food production, which will free up resources for other uses. It also allows certain constraints to be relaxed, such as keeping the air breathable and the water drinkable.

[futuraperdita]

> But what of novelty, craft, innovation?

I would argue that a plurality, if not the majority, of business needs for software engineers do not need more than a single person with those skills. Better yet, there is already some executive that is extremely confident that they embody all three.