@daringfireball The question is - will we still have “the best programmers” in a few decades if all new/upcoming coders are constantly using tools (that increasingly start training on code they generated themselves…)

There is a window now of “good programmer who learned without LLMs + LLMs trained on good output -> makes something new they wouldn’t have made.”

There’s a possible future of “far fewer good programmers, since most are relying on LLMs without understanding what it’s creating…. plus the models are worse because they are now training on mountains of LLM generated slop.”

@daringfireball

As someone who's trying to be a craftsperson, I believe that "creating something we feel proud of" and "the satisfaction of the artist’s signature at the bottom" are precisely what craft is about.

I also cannot buy the comparison with the transition from assembly code to higher-level programming languages, simply because compilers are deterministic machines.

I keep thinking about Bill Watterson’s resistance to licensing Calvin and Hobbes and how he takes pride in knowing every line, brush stroke, and letter was done by him. Licensing would turn him into a foreman reviewing other people’s work and he wasn’t interested in that. That’s how I feel. I admit this is strange and somewhat at odds with using libraries and frameworks, but that’s the best analogy I have.

I still use LLMs as a force multiplier, but I wouldn’t call it *satisfying*.