@nopatience @apth Let's start from the position that I regard software development as a craft or trade, one that I've invested many years into mastering, and teaching others.

Let's also stipulate that there is no need for the massive scale of code output facilitated by language models; there is only desire for incessant production, useful or not.

Now imagine you are a journeyman bricklayer. There's a new machine that can lay bricks in a tenth the time it takes you. Except...about one in every twenty bricks, the bricklaying machine will compromise the integrity of the brick such that it will disintegrate under load. Only master bricklayers can detect the difference between good bricks and bad bricks, but it takes time and effort to do so.

So you're building walls, houses, bridges, stores, all over the map with this new bricklaying machine, all the while letting your bricklaying skills atrophy as the machine does the hard part for you. And you still can't tell good bricks from bad, since you aren't gaining the requisite experience to do so. Moreover, new "bricklayers" are picking up the trade every day, having gone through even less training than you.

Are there more structures around? Maybe. Is that a good thing, if they're all made with fatal flaws? Would you live in such a house?

It turns out that generative models have a much higher error rate than what I've just described, but the problems of skill atrophy remain.

So I think of the technology as poison to craftsmanship, and a liability in production.

Increasing power of different fireworks - visualized!

(by Reddit user: u/Closed_Aperture)
https://bit.ly/RedditFireworks