zlacker

>>tablet+(OP)
I like Thomas, but I find his arguments include the same fundamental mistake I see made elsewhere. He acknowledged that the tools need an expert to use properly, and as he illustrated, he refined his expertise over many years. He is of the first and last generation of experienced programmers who learned without LLM assistance. How is someone just coming out of school going to get the encouragement and space to independently develop the experience they need to break out of the "vibe coding" phase? I can almost anticipate an interjection along the lines of "well we used to build everything with our hands and now we have tools etc, it's just different" but this is an order of magnitude different. This is asking a robot to design and assemble a shed for you, and you never even see the saw, nails, and hammer being used, let alone understand enough about how the different materials interact to get much more than a "vibe" for how much weight the roof might support.

>>parado+4u
> I like Thomas, but I find his arguments include the same fundamental mistake I see made elsewhere

Some of the arguments in the article are so bizarre that I can’t believe they’re anything other than engagement bait.

Claiming that IP rights shouldn’t matter because some developers pirate TV shows? Blaming LLM hallucinations on the programming language?

I agree with the general sentiment of the article, but it feels like the author decided to go full ragebait/engagement bait mode with the article instead of trying to have a real discussion. It’s weird to see this language on a company blog.

I think he knows that he’s ignoring the more complex and nuanced debates about LLMs because that’s not what the article is about. It’s written in inflammatory style that sets up straw man talking points and then sort of knocks them down while giving weird excuses for why certain arguments should be ignored.

>>Aurorn+fw
I am squarely in the bucket of AI skeptic—an old-school, code-craftsman type of personality, exactly the type of persona this article is framed again, and yet my read is nothing like yours. I believe he's hitting these talking points to be comprehensive, but with nothing approaching the importance and weightiness you are implying. For example:

> Claiming that IP rights shouldn’t matter because some developers pirate TV shows?

I didn't see him claiming that IP rights shouldn't matter, but rather that IP rights don't matter in the face of this type of progress, they never have since the industrial revolution. It's hypocritical (and ultimately ineffectual) for software people to get up on a high horse about that now just to protect their own jobs.

And lest you think he is an amoral capitalist, note the opening statement of the section: "Artificial intelligence is profoundly — and probably unfairly — threatening to visual artists in ways that might be hard to appreciate if you don’t work in the arts.", indicating that he does understand and empathize with the most material of harms that the AI revolution is bringing. Software engineers aren't on that same spectrum because the vast majority of programming is not artisinal creative work, it's about precise automation of something as cheaply as possible.

Or this one:

> Blaming LLM hallucinations on the programming language?

Was he "blaming"? Or was he just pointing out that LLMs are better at some languages than others? He even says:

> People say “LLMs can’t code” when what they really mean is “LLMs can’t write Rust”. Fair enough!

Which seems very truthy and in no way is blaming LLMs. Your interpretation is taking a some kind of logical / ethical leap that is not present in the text (as far as I can tell).