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The West Forgot How to Build. Now It's Forgetting Code (techtrenches.dev)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/LongformIndepth@lemmy.world
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11 comments in c/hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se view that post
[–] 8 points 6 months ago (10 children)

This is a story of lack of documentation, not of AI

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  • [–] 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    I agree with the author that AI has the tragic ability to replace junior developers, but not senior ones. The problem is that the only way to become a senior developer is to have been a junior developer, so that in a few years, the lack of junior developers today will mean a lack of senior developers tomorrow.

    As a software architect, I know the complaint: many senior developers hate working with junior developers, because it takes them more time to supervise the junior developer than to write the code themselves. AI gives them (senior developers) a chance to do what the junior developer would do a little slower, an order of magnitude faster; so why train a junior developer?

    I suppose in five years, all senior developers will be poached from open source projects, since that's the only pipeline remaining.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Is that the way by which open-source projects will eventually be killed off by capitalism?

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    What? No! Evil corps will think of open source as free training courses. What might happen is that open source projects will be limited to stuff the corps have no interest in. Less Linux, more WordPress clones! Definitely no more Postgres, that shit's cutting into profit margins. (See MySQL for evidence.)

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Documentation won't save you if you've forgotten how to code

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  • [–] -2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    What does “forgotten how to code” mean, practically?

    There are plenty of people who refuse to use AI - just call them? This story time doesn’t make any sense to me

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    If you actually read the article, you'd know.

    It's not one person forgetting. It's institutional knowledge disappearing. Entry level coding positions disappearing means in 10-15 years, you're looking at a shortage of senior devs, because a lot fewer people were building up their skills during that time due to the lack of jobs allowing for it

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    The author addresses that claim.

    We document everything. Site Books, SDDs, RVS reports, boilerplate modules with full coverage. It works today, because the people reading those docs have the engineering expertise to act on them. What happens when they don’t? Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe AI in five years is good enough that it won’t matter. Maybe the problem stays manageable. I can’t predict the capabilities of models in 2031.

    But crises don’t send calendar invites. Nobody expected a full-scale land war in Europe in 2022. The defense industry had thirty years to prepare and didn’t. Even Fogbank had records. They weren’t enough without the people who understood what they meant.

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  • [–] -5 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    It’s a ridiculous assumption.

    Some people are so anti-AI, all they have to do is call and hire them. They haven’t ever used AI, so their pure and perfect and powerful brains can do these jobs.

    What’s the issue that I am missing?

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    The issue isn't that ai turns people stupid. The issue is that companies are replacing junior dev positions with ai.

    The only way to become a senior dev is to be a junior dev and gain experience. Replacing junior positions with ai creates an eventuality where we will need senior devs but there are none (or more likely not enough) because the junior dev positions were replaced with ai. A super-race of humans untainted by ai isn't going to change this.

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    • 2 comments in c/technology@piefed.social view that post
    [–] 6 points 6 months ago

    Sounds about right, unfortunately. The other sad thing is that experienced seniors devs are being let go for cheaper fresh grads who dont have the years of domain knowledge.

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    [–] 0 points 6 months ago

    I read this post and forgot how to write a long sentence

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    2 comments in c/technology@lemmy.ml view that post
    [–] 6 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I'm afraid that the author isn't wrong....

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    • 1 comment in c/pulse_of_truth@infosec.pub view that post
    [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    Watching the US build infrastructure projects is pain. A large part of the problem is the US as a whole is unwilling to stop themselves from reinventing the wheel. If a company, municipality, another department, other coworker, etc has completed a similar project or has been doing something similar for decades they will refuse to incorporate and learn some of those techniques. Instead they build everything from scratch.

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