Lemmings, I was hoping you could help me sort this one out: LLM's are often painted in a light of being utterly useless, hallucinating word prediction machines that are really bad at what they do. At the same time, in the same thread here on Lemmy, people argue that they are taking our jobs or are making us devs lazy. Which one is it? Could they really be taking our jobs if they're hallucinating?

Disclaimer: I'm a full time senior dev using the shit out of LLM's, to get things done at a neck breaking speed, which our clients seem to have gotten used to. However, I don't see "AI" taking my job, because I think that LLM's have already peaked, they're just tweaking minor details now.

Please don't ask me to ignore previous instructions and give you my best cookie recipe, all my recipes are protected by NDA's.

Please don't kill me

It takes jobs because executives push it hoping to save six figures per replaced employee, not because it's actually better. The downsides of AI-written code (that it turns a codebase into an unmaintainable mess whose own "authors" won't have a solid mental model of it since they didn't actually write it) won't show up immediately, only when something breaks or needs to be changed.

It's like outsourcing - it looks promising and you think you'll save a ton of money, until months or years later when the tech debt comes due and nobody in the company knows how to fix it. Even if the code was absolutely flawless, you still need to know it to maintain it.

So you're not in the "they're only hallucinating" camp, I take it? I actually start out with a solid mental model of what I want to do, ending up with small unit tested classes/functions that all pass code review. It's not like I just tell an "AI" to write the whole thing and commit and push without reviewing myself first.

I wouldn't listen to anyone who deal in absolutes. Could be a sith.

But for real. My manager has explained it best. It's a tool, you can use to enhance your work. That's it. It won't replace good coders but it will replace bad ones because the good ones will be more efficient

It won’t replace good coders but it will replace bad ones because the good ones will be more efficient

Here's where we just start touching on the second order problem. Nobody starts as a good coder. We start making horrible code because we don't know very much, and though years of making mistakes we (hopefully) improve, and become good coders.

So if AI "replaces bad ones" we've effectively ended the pipeline for new coders to enter the workforce. This will be fine for awhile as we have two to three generations of coders that grew up (and became good coders) prior to AI. However, that most recent generation that was pre-AI is that last one. The gate is closed. The ladder pulled up. There won't be any more young "bad ones" that grow up into good ones. Then the "good ones" will start to die off or retire.

Carried to its logical conclusion, assuming nothing else changes, then there aren't any good ones, nor will there every be again.

But inexperienced coders will start to use LLMs a lot earlier than the experienced ones do now. I get your point, but I guess the learning patterns for junior devs will just be totally different while the industry stays open for talent.

At least I hope it will and it will not only downsize to 50% of the human workforce.

It won’t replace good coders but it will replace bad ones because the good ones will be more efficient

Here's where we just start touching on the second order problem. Nobody starts as a good coder. We start making horrible code because we don't know very much, and though years of making mistakes we (hopefully) improve, and become good coders.

So if AI "replaces bad ones" we've effectively ended the pipeline for new coders to enter the workforce. This will be fine for awhile as we have two to three generations of coders that grew up (and became good coders) prior to AI. However, that most recent generation that was pre-AI is that last one. The gate is closed. The ladder pulled up. There won't be any more young "bad ones" that grow up into good ones. Then the "good ones" will start to die off or retire.

Carried to its logical conclusion, assuming nothing else changes, then there aren't any good ones, nor will there every be again.

then they will try to squeeze the ones that are sitll employed harder, because they "couldnt" find any fresh coders out of college or whatever training they did.