Could AI kill developer jobs?

[tcsenter]

He then asked me "is that good code?" and I said "I don't know, ask ChatGPT."

ftfy. Seriously though this AI shvit be coming for everyone sooner or later. Gonna be harder and harder for a lot of people to predict or know where to take refuge in learning new skills. I guess they could ask ChatGPT things like "What new skills or knowledge should I learn so that AI does not replace me in the next two years?"

 

[igor_kavinski]

I've read that prompting (getting the AI to understand you and deliver the results you really want) is the next big skill.

Learn Prompting: Your Guide to Communicating with AI

Learn Prompting is the largest and most comprehensive course in prompt engineering available on the internet, with over 60 content modules, translated into 9 languages, and a thriving community.

learnprompting.org

Oh, they made up a name for it: Prompt Engineer

 

[Ajay]

A lot of IDE's and CLI for frameworks write boilerplate code for you.

For instance, the angular CLI will write the boilerplate code for you for a new component if you do it from the command line.

And when I used to use Netbeans like 10 years ago writing Java code, it would create the POJO functions for you after you created the class members.

My one buddy who is an accountant was showing me ChatGPT around early February. He told it to write some javascript code and then we watched as it wrote some javascript code.

He then asked me "is that good code?" and I said "I don't know, you tell me."

People who are going to be using that code aren't going to be knowing WTF they are doing for the most part if it's people like him. Anyone who knows how to code won't need AI to do that for them.

Yeah, I used to get all the basic classes and function setup using plugins for Eclipse (when I was doing Java client code). I also had plugins for standard and custom UI development - it was pretty snazzy at the time.

 

[Ken g6]

I've read that prompting (getting the AI to understand you and deliver the results you really want) is the next big skill.

Learn Prompting: Your Guide to Communicating with AI

Learn Prompting is the largest and most comprehensive course in prompt engineering available on the internet, with over 60 content modules, translated into 9 languages, and a thriving community.

learnprompting.org

Oh, they made up a name for it: Prompt Engineer

When I was in high school, Science Olympiad had a skill called "Searching the Web". This was before or right around the time Google started. I used Metacrawler, but I wasn't very good with it.

Not long after that, Google got their algorithm really good, and searching the web became easy, instead of a job category. The same should happen to "Prompt Engineer".

 

[Red Squirrel]

I asked ChatGPT to make an illegal operation dialog box from windows 98, but in code that will run on Linux.

Close enough? lol.

I really don't think AI can replace devs as I don't imagine it will be able to make requests that are exact specifications, but it can be a tool. If I needed to make a dialog box the code it generated would get me started and save me hours of googling all the details, and how to setup the library etc, since it helped me do all of that too. Installing GTK3 and so on.

I didn't spend much time on this I was just messing around but I imagine I could coax it to get it closer. I was just curious how far it would get with very little prompting.

 

[FinMary]

The maximum where artificial intelligence helped me was to generate a review for a burger place where they don’t give a side dish to a burger.
I'm joking, but to be honest, I also think that AI will not change much in the next 10 years.

 

[igor_kavinski]

If I needed to make a dialog box the code it generated would get me started and save me hours of googling all the details, and how to setup the library etc, since it helped me do all of that too. Installing GTK3 and so on.

Imagine the time it would save us if it could DO things in the OS instead of telling us what to do. I think that's what Windows 12 will bring. Or should. I'm really tired of doing mundane tasks like installing software the older I get. Tell the AI, set up everything for Python development along with whatever custom packages are required and it does all of it in the background while I watch something nice in a browser

 

[purbeast0]

If I needed to make a dialog box the code it generated would get me started and save me hours of googling all the details, and how to setup the library etc, since it helped me do all of that too.

If you need to spend hours googling how to get started in making a dialog, then you aren't a developer that would have been hired in the first place, so therefore AI wouldn't be replacing your job.

 

[igor_kavinski]

If you need to spend hours googling how to get started in making a dialog, then you aren't a developer that would have been hired in the first place, so therefore AI wouldn't be replacing your job.

Interns and those just starting out in a junior developer position would do those things. AI won't replace their jobs but it would sure make it a hell of a lot easier for them. Saves their employers the training expense and time too.

 

[Ajay]

Interns and those just starting out in a junior developer position would do those things. AI won't replace their jobs but it would sure make it a hell of a lot easier for them. Saves their employers the training expense and time too.

What? As a junior engineer I produced my first deliverable in 3 weeks. It was a small project (obviously), but I did need to read API docs to implement the project. I already knew all the algorithms, etc. that were needed to get it done. Companies don’t hire programmers expecting to teach them the basics, only proprietary stuff.

I was given 4 weeks for the project - so when I finished it early I was confident that I wouldn’t get fired during my 90 days of probation.

When I was in charge of interns, I told them to ask for help whenever they needed it - I was training someone to work in the industry as part of my dedication to the industry - and if we found someone good, we wanted to Impress on them that we would do what we needed to be successful.

If you still needed to be asking a-lot of questions a year into being a J1 (or spending to much time ‘researching')- you’d probably be fired and not get a promotion to J2. It was a sign you weren’t cut out for this job.

 

[igor_kavinski]

What?

I used to live with a guy who had completed his B.S. in computer science and got his first job as a web developer. He told me that he didn't have much experience with PHP but got the job coz the employer needed someone badly. Most of the tasks given to him were new to him so he would spend a lot of time on the web learning stuff. He told me that it was frustrating but also fun when things would finally get working. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who have such jobs. Not everyone is trained to a degree where they can tackle anything and everything.

 

[purbeast0]

I used to live with a guy who had completed his B.S. in computer science and got his first job as a web developer. He told me that he didn't have much experience with PHP but got the job coz the employer needed someone badly. Most of the tasks given to him were new to him so he would spend a lot of time on the web learning stuff. He told me that it was frustrating but also fun when things would finally get working. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who have such jobs. Not everyone is trained to a degree where they can tackle anything and everything.

And AI won't replace those people either, because if it did, there would be no senior/good developers since everyone starts out as a junior developer.

The stuff AI will help with as far as "programming" goes is it will be able to spit out boilerplate webpages and stuff for people who aren't developers. Like my buddy is a CPA and has very basic understanding of HTML and stuff, and has used ChatGPT to make some very basic static HTML pages.

 

[Red Squirrel]

If you need to spend hours googling how to get started in making a dialog, then you aren't a developer that would have been hired in the first place, so therefore AI wouldn't be replacing your job.

It was just an example. If it's something you never did before then you'd have to google it to know how. That's how you learn. My point is, AI can make this process easier by filtering out all the BS.

Also there is such thing as a back end developer, that never actually touches GUI stuff.

 

[purbeast0]

It was just an example. If it's something you never did before then you'd have to google it to know how. That's how you learn. My point is, AI can make this process easier by filtering out all the BS.

Also there is such thing as a back end developer, that never actually touches GUI stuff.

Yeah and there is no "right" way to write a backend. There is no "right" way to optimize it either. It completely depends on the task at hand.

There is also no "proper" way to architect software. You do what is best for the specific task at hand. AI won't be able to do that either.

AI is going to be super limited as far as what it does coding wise any time in the near future. It's going to be nothing more than a tool for people who don't know how to develop, to think they know hot to develop.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Nobody "knows how to develop" 100%. It's nearly impossible to remember every single library, class, function, etc about everything. You always need to lookup stuff as you're working. Whether it's google, AI, or internal documentation etc.

 

[purbeast0]

Nobody "knows how to develop" 100%. It's nearly impossible to remember every single library, class, function, etc about everything. You always need to lookup stuff as you're working. Whether it's google, AI, or internal documentation etc.

As a developer for 20 years now professionally, you are right.

But WTF is your point?

Nobody ever claimed to "know everything 100%" about developing.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Nobody ever claimed to "know everything 100%" about developing.

You actually did in post 33 by saying if you need to lookup something then you're not a developer. My point is tools like AI can help lookup things like that and skip BS of trying to sift through useless google results. Sometimes all you need to know is the name of class or function or the syntax or what library is needed etc and instead of getting hung up on that you can move on to the next thing.

At very least it will help for the initial development phase of a program as ideally the more complex stuff you just write a wrapper class for to make it easier to use that functionality throughout.

 

[purbeast0]

You actually did in post 33 by saying if you need to lookup something then you're not a developer.

That's not what I said at all.

 

[Ken g6]

The legal drama continues...

GitHub, Microsoft, OpenAI fail to wriggle out of Copilot copyright lawsuit

Judge won't toss out two key charges, software source slurping case still on

www.theregister.com

But I think Congress might modify copyright because AI is so momentous.

 

[Red Squirrel]

IMO copyright needs a HUGE overhaul, it's too abused now days. Copyright needs to go back to it's original intent of protecting individual creators against people ripping off their work and pretending it's their own, not be predatory like it is now, where you can be sued just because something you did is slightly similar to something a big company did. There was a case with Ed Sheeran recently, didn't really follow it but jist of it is one of his songs sounds somewhat like another song so they sued him. So dumb. He ended up winning, but really something like that needs to not even be a valid lawsuit from the beginning. It's near impossible to write code, or write a song or do any creative work and be 100% unique. There are only so many ways to do a certain thing.

 

[Ajay]

Nice advertisement 🙄

Spam removed. Don't quote it. Report it! -- Moderator Ken g6

 

[igor_kavinski]

Chinese Researchers Used AI to Design RISC-V CPU in Under 5 Hours

The chip ran Linux benchmarks at about i486 speeds.

www.tomshardware.com

That's gonna kill a few thousand jobs for sure.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Well, it is fine for someplace that has no concern of intellectual properties (like China), but I would suspect they get sued out of existance in the international market by Samsung and Oracle for IP theft/misappropriation and banned from importing into places like the US, EU, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, because they won't be able to prove they didn't use proprietary/copyrighted/patented data in the training sets for the AI or the resulting output.

 

[tcsenter]

I'm wondering though. Since courts (previously) upheld that one can reverse engineer via the Chinese Wall without infringing intellectual property, if there isn't some grey area here that could be exploited in saying in effect 'hey we didn't copy anything, this AI designed it' even though the AI was gleaning and learning from protected IP?

I don't think anyone could have a definitive answer, as this will be going into uncharted territory.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I don't think anyone could have a definitive answer, as this will be going into uncharted territory.

The judge will have to ask the AI, list the sources from where you learned these things and the things you learned on your own.