Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:
"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"
@ludicity Ask me how many times someone other than me has, in my presence, used or mentioned using a debugger (As contrary to inserting a bunch of debug prints in the code).
Zero. It’s zero times.
@ludicity I founded an entire subreddit on this topic which still considers me to be an absent god.
Truly. But its name cannot be spoken.
@ludicity For the record, I work at a software company that employs ~10k developers.
Before LLMs, I'd encounter such engineers a couple of times a month, but I interact with a lot of engineers, specifically the ones that need help or are new at the company or industry at large, so it's a selected sample. Even the most inexperienced ones are willing and able to learn with some guidance.
After LLMs, there's been a significant uptick, and these new ones are grossly incompetent, incurious, impatient, and behave like addicts if their supply of tokens is at all interrupted. If they run out of prompt credits, its an emergency because they claim they can't do any work at all. They can't even explain the architecture of what they are making anymore, and can't even file tickets or send emails without an LLM writing it for them, and they certainly lack in any kind of reading comprehension.
It's bleak and depressing, and makes me want to quit the industry altogether.
"they claim they can't do any work at all." Saying something like I can't do this terrifies me, as it says Im incompetent and should not be filling that position. Besides that this doesn't provide any information for others to give me help which I desperately need.
That's why I try to say what I want to acomplish, what I hove done, and what's the issue, and thanks to that half the time I get new ideas to check and maybe even I get to solve my problem.
@drikanis
Thanks for this comment. It made something click for me -- token limits for developers are probably a good thing. It's a built in signal to take a break and step back from their work for a minute. Do some planning, reading, or writing, or just go stretch your legs.
This problem is not specific to LLM-assisted programming. There's always a risk of tunnel vision in the desire to get more done, and failing to establish foundations and context for the product.
@jablkoziemne @drikanis @ludicity I claim that I "can't do any work at all" when a tool that I am *required* to use by my employer is broken (think source code control, the build system, whatever).
Some people might fall into this category if they work for one of those employers who *mandate* the use of LLMs to write code, and track usage, and penalise people who write code by hand.
In which case such a claim is fair enough.
(FTAOD: 🤣 😭 )
I remember those big binders for VMS and RSTS!
Nowadays you could memory leak a string big enough to hold the entire DCL manual and barely notice.
For me, documentation on the web has effectively replaced books — printed language/system manuals anyway, and StackOverflow has also taken the place of books like e.g. Tom Christiansen’s excellent Perl Cookbock. But I don't know if there is a really good online replacement for textbooks like W. R. Stevens’s excellent TCP/IP Illustrated or Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment.
(I have lots of that stuff. Any takers in Berlin?) (3/3)
@monospace do you mean after HP killed the hobbyist license?
There are… ways… to get around that. I won’t comment it in the open. Let’s say the PAK generation was cracked loooong ago.
@jguillaumes I did this years ago, and would love to revisit the topic.
@monospace hmmmm…
There is a little program around which allows PAKs to be GENerated. It’s written in .c, and all of it is in lowercase.
@jguillaumes @aachrisg @javerous @drikanis @ludicity Nope, EDT first, then EVE, later Emacs (yes, on VMS at the time), and Emacs *is* magic.
I think LSE was part of some software development tools package, together with a make-like program, a version control system, and some testing tool IIRC. As I would likely have been the only one to use it, my boss didn't want to shell out the rather significant money for it. (1/3)
Tangential, I have noticed a trend with customer emails (wide spread, many multiples companies) that makes me believe more people are using LLMs to write reply emails & not reading at all.
there's a 'jje ne sais quoi' to not just them not answering questions but *how* they're not answering questions.
I can't put my finger on it, but it's tripping my spidy-sense / pattern recognition.
@Patrickoldhiker @drikanis @ludicity Amen to that. The fact that I'm so close to retirement is a great source of comfort to me. Yeah, I enjoy my job, and I know I'm good at it. I do not need to use an LLM for anything.
But should I get that dreaded conversation tomorrow and a disappointing redundancy package, it would no longer be a cause for concern.
Ludic 🧛
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