BennoFeb 24

Before: "Don't spend too long documenting things so people can know what's going on, write code."
After: "Don't spend too long writing code, document things so the agents know what's going on."

Before: "Don't spend too long trying to set up the culture and processes of the team so the develop/test/ship loop is smooth, write code."
After: "Don't spend too long writing code, make sure the agents are in a smooth develop/test/ship loop."

We weren't allowed to do it for humans, we _must_ do it for the robots.

Show threadMark DominusFeb 24
@benno @rjbs Last May I speculated: “If the criticism is ‘that LLM stuff doesn't work unless you keep the code extremely modular’ that's not much of a criticism. We all need more encouragement to keep the code modular.… What if writing closely-coupled modules had an immediate cost today, the cost being that the LLM would be less helpful and more likely to mess up today's code? Maybe programmers would be more careful about letting that happen!”
Show threadRicardo Signes Feb 24
@mjd @benno I've said many times in the last 1-2wk: "If a practice would help a junior dev, it would probably help an agent." And it's nice that this motivation exists. But it gives me feelings about how it's higher priority now for automata than it was for human apprentices. 🤷
Show threadDaniël Franke Feb 24
@rjbs @mjd @benno because if the LLM can do the work, they can get rid of the human, which bosses have been excited for since forever.
Show threadMark Dominus

@ainmosni @rjbs @benno Yes, and there used to be an army of guys (“longshoremen”) who made a living carrying cargo onto and off of ships down at the port. When cargo shipping was containerized starting in the 1960s, those guys were put out of work and now the profession barely exists. Bad for them in the short run, but in the longer run the whole world reaped the huge benefits of containerized shipping, even the families of the former longshoremen.

The problem that should be solved here is not container shipping, it's our social and economic system that allows managers to discard workers as trash if their skills become obsolete, and which don't provide any support to discarded workers.

The longshoremen got the shaft, and this is a real problem that caused real suffering. The right solution to this real problem would not have been to forego container shipping, which has brought wealth to literally billions of people. A good solution would have been to have better protections for displaced longshoremen.

Longshoremen were able to avoid some of the worst of the effects because they had a powerful union that had negotiated good contracts for them. Programmers haven't have so much foresight. But *if* programmers can be fired because the LLM can do their work, then everyone will reap the benefits, even programmers and their families. Again the proper solution isn't to forego the benefits of the new technology, it's to provide better support for the people with newly-obsolete skills.

Feb 24 at 3:29pmWeb
Show threadThomas SibleyFeb 25
@mjd @ainmosni @rjbs @benno that all might be true, but it seems most likely that we’ll keep the new technology without the new protections. (not to mention the other issues with LLMs besides worker displacement.)