13:58 <isene> Some reflections on my intensive period of programming with OpenAI as my buddy: https://isene.org/2025/05/AI.html

15:14 <adam12> isene: Nice article. I am not as bullish as you are on the disappearance of professional programmers tho.

15:36 <o0x1eef> I agree with this, more or less :D In other words it's not the end of programming, but it will change programming as we know it https://www.oreilly.com/radar/the-end-of-programming-as-we-know-it/

15:39 <isene> Most craftsmen would choose the option of believing that their craft will not die.

15:41 <o0x1eef> I don't believe it will, not in the foreseeable future. We will augment with AI instead. We will have agents that help our work. Things like that. It also depends how you use AI as well. Do you use it to learn? To become better? Or do you use it to cheat so you do no work at all and come away with no understanding?

15:43 <adam12> I went through the RAD days and there's a lot of overlap

15:43 <o0x1eef> What's RAD? :)

15:43 <adam12> I can see it replacing a lot of the simple stuff tho.

15:44 <adam12> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_application_development

15:44 <adam12> Visual Basic / etc, when everyone was basically told you're going to be out of a job, because office staff can now build their own apps.

15:44 <adam12> Dot-com boom, etc.

15:45 <o0x1eef> Makes sense. I think AI is probably more impactful but we're nowhere near skynet yet.

15:47 <adam12> Who knows. Maybe I'm wrong.

15:50 <o0x1eef> It is near impossible to predict the future, especially something like that. Imagine what we thought the internet would be vs what it actually became.

15:52 <adam12> I think it will definitely cut into jobs, but more so just making everyone even that much more efficient.

15:52 <adam12> That said, I'm already seeing a bunch of negatives: OSS contributions that were clearly vibe-coded and then dumped on people for review/adoption.

15:54 <o0x1eef> I think it depends how you use it. I use AI for brain storming more so than anything else. A different perspective, a validation of own my ideas, etc. You could also just use it to generate random code with next to no thought.

15:55 <adam12> I'm definitely seeing value in pieces of work I don't care for - writing method docs, and writing stubs for test cases I should configure.

15:55 <adam12> s/configure/write.

15:55 <o0x1eef> Ditto

15:56 <adam12> I love MS's assertion that 30%+ of code at Microsoft is written by AI

15:57 <adam12> I'm not sure that is an accolade, from them at least. Every product they've built is absolute dog shit.

15:57 <o0x1eef> Lol :D

15:58 <o0x1eef> Yeah I'm not sure but kinda think the clock is ticking on how long before they ruin GitHub

16:09 <isene> I did an experiment. I pointed o4-mini-high to my rcurses and telescope repos and asked it to completely rewrite telescope using rcurses - without writing a single line of code and with 10 iterations of plain English, it actually did it.

16:13 <o0x1eef> So what does that prove?

16:19 <adam12> isene: That's pretty good. I haven't seen anything that spectacular.

16:21 <o0x1eef> I think it is debatable whether or not it is good. What did you learn from the experience ? Do you still understand the code ? Do you still agree with the code ? That's just producing spaghetti on mass, and while AI can do it, it's not going to help you improve as an individual.

16:29 <isene> It proves that with an infant AI, it can still do that. It couldn't only 3 months ago. And in another 3 months it will be markedly better. And in 6 months it will be a new level yet. In a year it will be a different ball game. In three years it will be... And, to answer, the code was good. Not spaghetti. Yup, programmers will be out of work. Much, much faster than nurses.

16:31 <o0x1eef> People will always try to take short cuts, and cheat their way to the finish line. They've been trying to do that long before AI. But I have no interest in that. I use AI to increase my own understanding and talents, not outsource my ability to think to a robot.

16:31 <isene> And there will be no need to improve as a programmer when AI can do it much, much better than a human ever could.

16:32 <isene> No corporation will pay a human to do a task that AI can do much better for a tiny fraction of the cost.

16:33 <o0x1eef> Strong disagree :) I don't program to be better than anybody, AI or otherwise. I do it because I like it, and AI is a tool that increase my understanding, brain storm ideas with me, and offer a different perspective. People will try to use it for what you're doing, but IMO that's a dystopia reality that will fail. Anyway, let the future talk and see you in 6 months ;)

16:34 <isene> Any comparison with past replacements (manufacturing industry, typesetting in newspapers, etc) will be truly slow compared to what we are witnessing now.

16:34 <isene> There will always be those who do things for the passion and the arts. Just don't expect anyone to pay you for doing it.

16:36 <o0x1eef> I don't know, no one does, but my feeling is that we will augment with AI first, it will increase our productivity, and if used correctly, it will help us improve. Maybe eventually it will replace programmers, or maybe the nature of programming will change instead (IMO the latter is more likely).

17:24 <isene> Fletchers improved. Some became gun makers.

17:29 <o0x1eef> :))