alt Hacker NewsLLMs are the invention of the loom. Code is being industrialized.
Yes, there always will be artisanal weavers and a smaller number of them get paid a lot more money to do this by people who can afford it. Everyone else either started operating a loom or did something else.
Automated looms are now making mass amounts of textiles but the artisans are no longer doing the physical act of weaving. The artisans come up with cool designs, get feedback from customers, solve people's problems and outsource the rest (physical labor).
We are in the loom moment. Are you designing things people want? Are you doing the weaving? These two paths can coexist but they are diverging disciplines with diverging difficulties and diverging value.
Typing code into a computer is rapidly becoming physical labor now. The layer of creativity and problem solving is quickly rising to a level above the code since the code is a fluid now that comes and goes easily.
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What kind of systems do you work with where code is a fluid?
Art, Bespoke, Artisinal, Mass produced, Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Material Science.
Mass production is certainly here for the majority of programming jobs. The competition for the jobs that are left will be intense, but most simply won’t make the bar. Someone said elsewhere “It’s no different than ordering a pizza: I don’t do the work.” Yes. Pizza is automated now. But no pizza employees are coming for my job. When the AGI comes for my job, we will either have post-scarcity utopia or more likely we’ll all be dead.
Easy on the cocaine. There are no credible AI code bases on GitHub.