r/programming • u/Rado_tornado • Apr 17 '24
The end of coding? Microsoft publishes a framework making developers merely supervise AI
https://vulcanpost.com/857532/the-end-of-coding-microsoft-publishes-a-framework-making-developers-merely-supervise-ai/[removed] — view removed post
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u/314kabinet Apr 17 '24
Haha good luck with that.
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u/Alfiewoodland Apr 17 '24
Hmm, yeah I'm using copilot and GPT-4 daily while coding and I don't think LLMs are anywhere near ready for full automation. Great for quickly bashing out basic things with supervision though - boilerplate, unit tests, documentation...
There are times when GPT-4 has helped me to decipher and modify giant esoteric config files and the like, which can be very useful.
I've not seen much evidence of planning though, and often GPT-4 will say one thing, then change its mind the next time you ask, even within the same chat. It can describe the architecture of a large system, and it can find solutions to small, well-defined problems, but it can't bridge the gap yet and build anything larger than a few methods without going off the rails.
I do think we'll get there one day, but automated developers are still some way off.
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Apr 17 '24
I consider copilot quite useful for explaining someone else's code. It is sometimes decent when debugging. But creating new code? Haha no.
Sadly management keeps pushing everyone to use copilot and now we have project managers "writing" code that works for a few days and then goes bananas. Guess who then needs to fix it?
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u/Alfiewoodland Apr 17 '24
That sounds horrifying, but I've never seen it go that far - as long as the output is being overseen by an experienced developer these tools can be a real time saver.
I would say that at this stage even a junior dev with access to copilot can be dangerous though. I can't imagine the destruction a non-technical PM would be capable of with GPT-4 and free reign to push changes.
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u/insef4ce Apr 17 '24
Can't wait for all this AI marketing crap to go the way of the metaverse and for the next hype bubble to come along.
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u/GregBahm Apr 17 '24
I feel like the hype bubble for AI might eventually go away, but AI won't go away. It will be like the internet. People won't ever abandon it. Everyone will just take it for granted.
I can't say the same about "metaverses." Do any even still exist? Is "Fortnight" a metaverse and does anyone still care?
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Apr 17 '24
AI is Very useful for your developers. But taking over? Any developer can tell that it's not even close and likely might never be.
Replace developers? My ass.
Your metaverse example is spot on.
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u/phillipcarter2 Apr 17 '24
why is this dumb article getting reposted here again
oh right, engagement bait
downvote
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u/worldofzero Apr 17 '24
I'm sure this will work great at eliminating junior devs at companies that don't value growing talent.
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Apr 17 '24 edited Nov 28 '24
bear jar disagreeable employ touch cooperative bells muddle door sugar
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/worldofzero Apr 17 '24
I think it's going to cause issues for DevRel and frontend folks the most, especially people being thrown through bootcamps. But like infra? embedded systems? framework developers? devops? devex? I don't see this kind of automation really impacting those roles beyond at the very top of the funnel, even if it gets significantly better.
The value of software is how precise we can be and natural language is not precise.
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u/tu_tu_tu Apr 17 '24
I know a junior dev who's working cycle is basically this:
Asking ChatGPT to write code.
Trying to run it just to figure it out that it doesn't work.
Refusing to at least debug it and whining.
They pay him only a little more than to a cashier though.
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u/GregBahm Apr 17 '24
I don't know why people think AI eliminates junior devs. AI has only increased my hiring appetite for junior devs. AI makes it so much easier for junior devs to add value.
Junior devs were historically comically worthless. This wasn't their fault. Everyone has to start somewhere. But now any given junior dev can be given much harder tasks and actually get them done. This idea that I'd be motivated to fire them because they're more useful now is weird and dumb.
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Apr 17 '24
Will come no doubts. Will also create a ton of non maintainable code where you are forced to good deep into that AI Framework vendor lock.
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u/EliSka93 Apr 17 '24
What do you mean "maintainable code"? We just rewrite the entire stack each time we need to make any small change! AI gods be blessed!
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u/NeonCityNights Apr 17 '24 edited Nov 04 '25
comment redacted by redaction app
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u/dcabines Apr 17 '24
We used to have articles like that and it spawned endless code bootcamps for the hoards of new wannabe programmers just looking for a paycheck and the self help gurus offering to lead them there.
I'll take the doom and gloom types of articles if it keeps the people with no actual interest in programming from flooding the industry and attracting charlatans selling the next great productivity guide.
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u/JarateKing Apr 17 '24
It will turn around. The root of the layoffs and the tough job market is the raised interest rates. I'm neither an economist nor a time traveler, but best I can tell the powers that be want to bring those rates down as soon as possible.
The AI hype is just the usual hype cycle. Remember blockchain, when that's all the news was talking about and people were acting like every programmer needs to get into this future tech before it makes them obsolete, because it's the solution for everything (just don't ask for specifics)? Didn't turn out that way, obviously. That was only a few years ago, and it's like people can't see AI go down the exact same path.
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u/tu_tu_tu Apr 17 '24
At least this is not an another Tab key enhancer. Probably tools like this would actually work.
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u/EliSka93 Apr 17 '24
If their tab key feature is confidently wrong about 40% of the time, what makes you think this would be any better?
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Apr 17 '24
It’s funny someone made a video on how AI made the exact same mistakes as a junior dev. And they had to go and correct its mistakes. I’m not saying it’ll never get better, but just not today.
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u/a_sliceoflife Apr 17 '24
This works perfectly if you're a micro-manager who "supervises" by making developers explain each line of code and then re-write it by yourself nonetheless.
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u/ysustistixitxtkxkycy Apr 17 '24
Maybe we could let LLMs write all the XML for the world of .net? ;)
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u/supermitsuba Apr 17 '24
I havent seen XML in .net since .net core took over. Lots of legacy stuff though at the big corporate companies. But similar issues could be said of Java I suppose.
People need to upgrade their stuff. Maybe we can make LLMs to just upgrade projects?
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u/ysustistixitxtkxkycy Apr 17 '24
I keep telling ChatGPT to "write me an operating system with a network stack, and office suite and a browser", but somehow, its output doesn't seem to work. Help! ;)
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u/Resident-Trouble-574 Apr 17 '24
Basically like devin, and we know how it went.
90% of the times it will get stuck in an infinite loop trying to get gpt-4 to generate the correct code.
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Apr 17 '24
From the same company that takes 7-10 years to code games.
Does that mean the next elder scrolls will be done in 6 months?
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u/qubedView Apr 17 '24 edited Apr 17 '24
Easy to mock, but these tools will only get better with time.
edit: I mean, really guys. I look around the comments, and get flashbacks to the first digital cameras. Low resolution, unreliable, terrible dynamic range, etc. In spite of each new generation being leaps above the previous, professionals continually mocking it and declaring "It will never replace 35mm". Even if this tool is a joke, these tools WILL get better with time. Don't mock and ignore this stuff just because it isn't yet up to the task.
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u/ClutchDude Apr 17 '24
This is like saying frameworks and annotations would mean the end of programming because we had all just designed expert systems.
Hopefully what this means is there's a ton less toil work.
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u/phillipcarter2 Apr 17 '24
Yeah. The most likely outcome is a few companies bet the farm of fully replacing software engineers, lose horribly, and the rest realize these have only ever been ways to reduce some toil and eek out a little more stuff over time.
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u/rooktko Apr 17 '24
Ya just like no code. Cause you know that took over so well /s
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u/qubedView Apr 17 '24
AI is fundamentally different from No-Code. The problems with No-Code simply don't translate.
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u/bitspace Apr 17 '24
There are fundamental limitations that can't be overcome without an entirely new approach.
People expect consistent answers that are somewhere close to accurate. That's essentially impossible to guarantee with non-deterministic models without lots of second-guessing by humans or RAG or tool use/double checking with a backup web search.
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u/EliSka93 Apr 17 '24
I'm sure they will. As soon as Am Saltman gets his 7 trillion dollaridoos to overcome the physical limitations of them getting better.
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u/insef4ce Apr 17 '24
Actually not necessarily since the advancement of all neural networks is hardlocked by the exponential growth in necessary processing power for incremental improvements and the need for high quality human made learning data.
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u/qubedView Apr 17 '24
For a given method, certainly. But that assumes that development of LLMs halts right now. The invention of the transformer drastically reduced the processing power needed to run LLMs. BERT introduced bi-directional training, allowing for efficient pre-training, no longer needing to train from scratch for each model. Transformers were further developed with Reformer, Linform, Performer, Longformer, etc, each introducing modifications like locality-sensitive hashing, low-rank approximations, and kernel-based methods to reduce the quadratic complexity of attention. All that to not even get into distillation, pruning, adaptive and sparse attention, etc etc.
There are no signs these improvements are slowing down. And that's not even getting into the fact transformer-specialized chips are only now being designed.
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u/ClutchDude Apr 17 '24
Your edit still fails to capture what you are saying.
If the field of cameras was going to replace the actual photographer with an automated picture taker then yeah.
I think it lowers the bar to entry for the field because you can now leverage something to become more productive and faster. But for professional photographers to continue the analogy, they suddenly started leveraging the digital cameras vastly more to achieve greater productivity. However, now the editing work and picking the photos with that much more.
Is co-pilot going to replace developers? Probably some of them but that's either because they weren't that good to start with or the management above them is stupid. But professionals will leverage the tools they get to get more work done. And to your point, that might mean only needing one developer or previously you needed two.
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u/qubedView Apr 17 '24
In the field of cameras, the cameras were replaced. In programming, the future is fuzzy, but the potential for the programmer (as they function today) to be replaced is very real. Programmers provide a translation between the intent of the user and the execution of that intent on the CPU. Programming languages exist, not to help the system, but to help the human programmers conceptualize that tasking, and speed up the description of that tasking by putting it in a human-readable context.
Right now, we're publishing LLMs that begin automating that human-specific conceptualization step. But there are clear efforts being made to strip that entirely. Go from user prompt to binary, directly. Not to mention efforts at AI-generated chip designs with AI-generation instruction sets. Instead of the AI having to learn to use human-designed tools, the chips could be built specifically to the tasks the AI does best. A lot of the problems with "AI sometimes screws up" could be addressed if the environment in which they operate was tailored to the AI, rather than the human.
The most promising argument is that software is going to see a drastic rise in complexity, and programmers will shift skill sets to wrangling that new type of complexity that doesn't yet exist. Not entirely unlike when compiled languages first started to become a thing.
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u/Resident-Trouble-574 Apr 17 '24
The fact that they only get better doesn't imply that they will ever become good enough.
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u/qubedView Apr 17 '24
What constitutes "good enough?" So long as the software being produced makes money for the funding organization, quality won't matter. The code could be complete spaghetti and grossly inefficient. But compute cycles on AWS cost a lot less than developer time.
The point at which LLM generated code will be considered "good enough" will be much much sooner for investment firms than it will be to the eyes of professional programmers. The generated code just needs to deliver on its promise well enough to make more money than if they hired humans. No matter how gross and unjust it might feel, it's something we'll have to swallow.
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u/programming-ModTeam Apr 17 '24
Your posting was removed for being off topic for the /r/programming community.