I keep seeing these articles and people confirming and re-enforcing as a fact that LLMs are practically replacing programmers. So I have a question, ruling out stupidity, what crack have these people smoked? I'm not talking designers and journalists and business school types who don't know any better and perceive programming pretty much as fairy tale magic: just get a "magic ring", rotate it on your finger and say you want "a castle" and poof there it is. Not even a "genie in a bottle", who are renown for their predisposition to misinterpret your wish (in fact they are closer to how programming really works when taking the customer's wish and turning it into code). So again, what sort of programming do these programmers program? The "ChatGPT is awesome cuz it writes code" type. Have they ever worked on a serious, large, enterprise code base? I get the feeling it's mainly fresh college grads who think "programming" is about writing sort algorithms. Here's a thing: the main problem in an existing, large code base is reasoning. 99% of the time in spent in prostration trying to figure out what the fuck are you even supposed to do, why the fuck the existing system where you have to plug your addition is working like that and how the fuck are you going to acomplish integrating new stuff it if it's even at all possible. So one word people: REASONING. It's ridiculous to even discuss ChatGPT "replacing" programmers or having anything but a minimal impact on the whole programming domain. Think of LLMs as a form of Google + Stack Overflow. Useful to fill some edge cases? Definitely? Replacing programmers? You'd have to be crazy to have claimed that about Stack Overflowback back in the day and yet it's exactly what people proclaim on ChatGPT. So lemme disambiguate how hopelessly retarded it sounds when you say "ChatGPT will soon replace programmers coze all it takes is some 'prompt engineer' telling it to build the castle". It's precisely what in the old days would be phrased as "Stack Overflow will soon replace programmers coze all it takes is some drooling idiot posting 'can I haz teh codez?' on it, then copy-paste the answer".
I agree with you on this one. LLM’s are capable writing ‘child-code’, and thus are used as a productivity enhancement, not replacement. Unless LLM’s will become a lot better, which they will, they can replace programmers. People always tend to extrapolate the latest (short) curve to infinitum, so they think in a few years LLM’s will get there. History and innovation occurs more in”bumps”, and I think it will take a lot more time then advertised by the media, who need to write “sensational “ to attract readers. At least this is how I see it, can be wrong ofcourse
Obviously, you are very angry. Were you fired from your programming job? Simply give up your Programming career and be a full-time Trader. What if ChatGPT can trade too ?!?!? Soon AI will not be created by humans but by AI itself.
The I in LLM stands for Intelligence. LLMs are not creative and cant really reason well enough. Programming aside, can LLMs write a book like Lord of Rings or Game of Thrones? Can LLMs even write a 90 minute movie script that people will really want to watch. Or even a 15 minute short that has an original plot twist not seen in any film or book before? All of the above are easier than Programming for a LLM to do, because they don't have to be 100% perfect, code has to be 100% perfect and coherent across 1 million lines of code. No plot holes or mistakes allowed. The complexity of programming also grows massively as the code base grows, it is not linear. The first 100 to 1000 lines are the easiest. Watch the first 15 minutes of this interview to understand the limits of LLMs. The current LLMs are nothing to worry about. This not to say there wont be breakthroughs in the coming years and decades where better approaches are found.
But did anyone really anticipate the advent of AI chatbots just 5 years ago? Weren't we still debating about Turing Test? We've come so far, so fast in the last 10 years, it's kinda scary where we will be in the next 10 years. I hope you will be around to witness it. LLMs might lack reasoning skills and not be able to program on an enterprise scale NOW, but I'm pretty damn sure it's only a matter of time before that happens, and likely more sooner than later IMO.
Over the last 10 years there was lots of sharing going on. I read researchers at Google came up with the breakthrough algos behind LLMs and openly published the results. Now everyone is going to be very secretive with major breakthroughs going forward. Too much money in AI now. LLMs may have already peaked, no one has been able to beat GPT 4.0 by a big margin. Will be interesting to see how much of an improvement GPT 5.0 is.
How many times have you been invited to a meeting where two managers and three sales wankers tell you that they "have decided to use an application"? And you have to code for it. You start coding for it and at the first chance you have you send your CV across the globe. You escape. The very same idiots will say "ChatGPT will replace you soon". You will never see a programmer saying "Man I worried that ChatGPT will replace me". Because we know that we are managed by wankers. And they don't have a clue of how to use it. You have to tell ChatGPT what you want, if you don't know what you want you won't be able to use it. Garbage in garbage out. Now, the minute that ChatGPT replaces a manager, then we will worry. Because then we will be replaced. As long as those managers are still doing the job there's nothing to worry about.
It technically could write larger applications but it doesn't have complete context so the holes in that code would be horrendous. I'm not sure how one would use it to write something that isn't plastered all over blogs and SO. It's great for smaller functions with simple io and learning new tools by example.
AI at the moment is super hyped up by startups. This is so the AI startups can literally milk $Trillions from investors and VC's. Got to give to it Sam Altman for saying he needs $7 Trillion from middle east investors. Lol, if you are going fleece dumb investors thats how you should do it. Go in big.. Ask for $7 Trillion so $700 Billion looks like peanuts.
I was talking to a CEO of a small company, he was basically a salesman bought in by the founders to sell the company. He was complaining that Programmers are annoying because they tell him it cant be done or take too long to do things. This company had a over 1 million+ lines of Spaghetti code developed by junior devs over the last 15 years. I said good luck finding anyone to fix that mess. Would take many $millions to fix it. He said he cant wait for AI to replace programmers. I told him, not going to happen in the next 15 years.