Junior Dev VS Machine Learning

devilish666@lemmy.world to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 333 points –
71

With all the recent hype around AI, I feel that a lot of people don't understand how it works and how it is useful. AI is useful at solving certain types of problems that are really difficult using traditional programming, like finding patterns that aren't obvious to us.

For example, object recognition is about finding patterns in images. Our brains are great at this, but writing a computer program capable of taking pixels and figuring out if the pattern is there is very hard.

Even if AI is sometimes going to misclassify objects, it can still be useful. For example, in a factory you can use AI to find defects in the production line. Even if you don't get it perfect, going from 100 defects per 1M products to 10 per million is a huge difference and saves the factory a lot of money.

Agree, but the joke to me is business folks thinking AI is a miracle and they can just shove it everywhere to print money. Where us devs know what you mean, and would like to add it in where it makes sense. Business thinks it's ready to replace us.

The key to "AI" is having a human there to take algorithms and apply them to the right problems.

This is what most people don't understand because many of the demos are quite impressive and narrowly tailored to prevent the fact from being obvious unless you know what you're looking for.

Most useful application so far seems to have been to predict protein folding. Have to check up on that, it should allow to cure all sorts of bad things.

So are we not calculating the amount of training the junior dev took?

Junior dev just need to copy paste code from stackoverflow

So they do the exact sams thing as the LLM?

The LLM has read and copied every post on stack overflow, which is what separates the juniors from the seniors.

I don't think that not educating people is an option. Even in the highly unlikely case that every job is hypothetically taken over by "AI": humans like to learnand hone their skills.

Alternatively, I don’t think that not educating AI is an option.

Why? Deploying or not deploying so-called AI is a choice we, as a society can make. The only reason why LLMs are pushed so hard by the industry is because some corporate gouls think that they can save money on labour with it.

LLM costs $20 a month and needed only 60 hours of training, junior dev has been at it for years, costs as much for a half hour, and still needed me to repeatedly explain what a rectangle is

If you're paying someone $40 an hour who doesn't know what a rectangle is then I think you're the problem.

The problem is that he's paying $40 an hour and for that you only get someone who knows what a ਆਇਤਕਾਰ is.

I’ve just worked for agencies that hire juniors and outsource. If you’ve seen what I’ve seen you’d change your tune

One key point here is: While you actually can replace a bunch of junior developers with AI in some places, any replaced junior developer will never become a senior developer that cannot be replaced by the AI because he/she is basically experince on two legs.

So, corporations, don't complain about the lack of experienced, senior personnal because YOU have been the main reason they don't exist.

This comic makes no sense

I too am confused about the decaf part.

It's saying that instead of spending all the resources needed to gather all of the training data for the LLM, just give a junior dev some coffee as the input instead.

The direct comparison is input and output. Coffee/training data is the input and the code is the output.

that's because you're commenting on things you don't understand in a sub not meant for you

How is this sub not meant for me? lmao followed me from the other thread, cringe

it's for programmers, which you're obviously not if you think this makes no sense...
and guess what, troll, that's why you have a public comment history...
it's a primary function... which i used, as intended, to see how much of a troll you are...

To all the decaf haters: If you drink decaf, you actually like the taste of coffee without needing the caffeine. That's someone with taste, in my book.

There are many ways to decaffeinate a coffee bean... Some more gross than others... All of them blasphemy.

And yes most of them ruin the taste of coffee.

Also it's obvious you have seen this already. https://youtu.be/yYTSdlOdkn0?si=6Z1RlexQCt2I4OI9

Yeah, well for many of us it's decaf or no coffee due to health issues. You acting like it's a foolish, childish thing is just tribalism/elitism.

And for what it's worth, I'd put my decaf vs your coffee in a heartbeat. A good roaster with quality beans is great coffee, decaf or no. Just like Hoffman said.

That's some top shelf stretching there.

People needing to limit their caffeine intake because o health issues is a "stretch"? O.o

No no, that was the only reasonable part. Everything else wrapping that was absurd though.

You sincerely think you have a better grasp on coffee than James Hoffmann?

Much more likely you haven't tried good decaf from a good roaster, tried a blind tasting, or your preparation is seriously flawed.

I'm a huge fan of James Hoffman... I don't think anyone alive understands coffee better than he does.

I live in a US Coffee Capital...

I make brilliant decaf for my pregnant wife.

My preparation is flawless in drip and espresso

You guys really don't understand subjectivity or sarcasm and are filling in a ton of the blanks.

You say "no one knows coffee better than he does", while blatantly disagreeing with his entirely empirical points in his video on decaf, that it can be made by several processes, all of them are fairly good, and the result can be masterful?

I live in a hockey capitol. That makes me nothing like an expert. Same for you.

Okay, so you make brilliant decaf. That means your point in this thread is moot?

Funny thing on that "subjectivity" is when you disagree with other people in this thread, you've plainly said they're just entirely wrong.

When someone disagrees with you, you hide behind "subjectivity".

I encourage you to introspect.

Yikes this is getting drawn out and silly, eh. I'll save us some time.

You win.

But one thing that I couldn't help but chuckle at is your interpretation of the coffee capitol point.

You live in a hockey capitol. That doesn't make you an expert, but I bet if you wanted to buy a hockey stick you would have a number of stores carrying top gear... If you wanted to see a game you probably have a number of hockey teams from pro to amateur you could go watch live.

I have direct access to three of the top 20 roasters in the country. I'm fortunate to have access to some of the best coffee in the world regardless if I'm an expert or not.

And this is sort of the point overall... You added so much of your own arguments to my position that you aren't even arguing with me or the points that I'm making.

I'm not hiding behind subjectivity, I was the one who posted the video "negating" my so called "opinions". You still think I did that as a mistake. Which I think is the second example that shows you are coming to this discussion in bad faith.

It's no wonder you recommend introspection, given you have been arguing only with your interpretation of my opinion.

You guys really don't understand subjectivity or sarcasm and are filling in a ton of the blanks.

No, you're just clearly either a compulsive lair or a troll. Either way, your input is not appreciated

You guys really don’t understand subjectivity or sarcasm and are filling in a ton of the blanks.

"Coming up tonight: Sarcasm is hard to convey in text form, if not clearly signposted. More at eleven." /s

Like I said, you didn't watch the video. Hoffmann clearly stated that decaf coffee can be made well. It is a documented fact that he said that, no subjectivity required.

So how is the other person "stretching" when they claimed he said it?

It's funny, because you claim the opposite of what is said in the video.

That's the funny thing about subjectivity right?

"Blasphemy" is not really something I would consider a term that's commonly used to express subjective opinions.

That's because words on their own all have definitions. The subjectivity is created contextually. I swear it feels like I'm talking to a bot.

No need to get insulting, ma nude. Still not sure in what world your statement could be regarded as subjective in intend. Please, enlighten me.

Opinions, such as "all methods of decaffeinating coffee are blasphemy" are subjective in their very nature. What makes this more obvious is that the definition of blasphemy is entirely subjective and can't even begin to be assessed objectively until at very minimum a religious dogma is declared for the basis of evaluation.

the definition of blasphemy is entirely subjective

I disagree. IMHO, the accusation of blasphemy presupposes a dogma to actually make sense.

Okay... Which one? It's pretty clear that decaffeinated coffee violates no religions that I'm aware of... And in fact for some religions would be the only allowable way to drink coffee. And if you argue that I just meant in general that it is a slight on to any God then how would you interpret that as anything other than humor or sarcasm?

Do you always feel like a victim or is it just when you aren't caffeinated enough?

... Any dogma? It's like the claim "that's illegal" presupposes a body of law. No matter which one.

That's not how legal systems work... Plenty of things are legal in one place and illegal in another. No Christians are worried about blasphemy against Zeus or Jupiter. Like wise a Zoroastrian is only concerned about blasphemy against Ahura Mazda and not Allah.

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Dude, you clearly didn't even watch the first 30 seconds of the video because it contradicts what you say from the start

How do you gather? You think there isn't many ways to decaffeinate beans or that some of them aren't gross? Or that most ways used to decaffeinate beans doesn't make the coffee taste bad?

These are the very points James makes in the first 2/3rds of the video.

The only point that he and I might delaminate on was that all decaf is blasphemous, and that's a stretch because he never talks about the religious criminality of drinking coffee?

Why do you think I would offer a video to people about decaf that I didn't watch? Hint: I don't hate decaf coffee.

I don't hate decaf coffee.

all of them blasphemy

Dude, pick one and stick with it. None of this hypocrite crap

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I think it's stilly for anyone to impose there way of coffee consumption onto anyone

I like my caffeine, mainly because I have a literal caffeine addiction

But I also keep around some decaf in case I have a random coffee craving at like midnight

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You could say the same for a finite element model. A junior engineer with just 4 years of training can solve, explicitly, the deflection at the center of a slender, simple-simple beam of prismatic section and produce an exact (if slightly incorrect) answer. Building a FEM of the same can solve the problem and take longer (to make the model) with similar accuracy, both of which are good enough for design work.

Only a fool wouldn’t have a FEM around though, as it can solve problem that would take centuries for a human to solve. They may as well make a cartoon with the child digging a 3” hole in beach sand and then showing a backhoe making a jagged edged hole of the same size.

Part of the reason this is a great example is you can easily calculate the maximum stress of an I-beam IFF you know where to find the simple formula. Even a dense FEA mesh will always give an answer like 3x4=11.9974, it's worse. The education is how you know which formula to use.

This looks more like a floating point issue than a mistake an LLM would make

There are no LLMs involved in this picture, to train an llm you'd need 100x the training data. The panel is about a normal ML model.

But a floating point issue is the exact type of issue a LLM would make (it does not understand what a floating point number is and why you should treat them differently). To be fair, a junior developer would make the same type of mistake.

A junior developer is, hopefully, being mentored by more senior coworkers who are extra careful with code reviews and would spot the bug for the dev. Machine generated code needs an even higher level of scrutiny.

It is relatively easy to teach a junior developer to write code that is easy to read and conforms to the teams style guide.

COMPILE ERROR - LIBRARY CALCAREA.H DOES NOT EXIST

goddamnit you acid tripping LLM...

I feel this in AutoCAD (lack of) precision.