There are two things you can get from a degree:
1. Knowledge and skills
2. A network and a reputation
While I don’t agree with “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” - both are critical and just having one without the other isn’t going to set you up for success - I think we don’t do enough to tell young people about item 2.
> In general, I have the feeling that we are hurtling towards a world with less intentionality behind all the things we experience. Everything becomes impersonal, more noisy, etc.
You’re right - but that world is not the end of the story. The intentionality matters. Human creations matter because they connect us. I don’t know how long it will take, but people will build judgement as to what makes for good use of these tools to make meaningful things and expand our creative horizons in deeply human ways. Mind you, there will always be shallow slop. It’ll just take time for creators to learn how to use these tools to make something that isn’t slop.
> those variables were likely not known nor knowable during the design stage.
But they could have included an error factor in the designing process. I thought this was standard for manufacturing. And they could have done more robust testing which, again, I thought was pretty standard for manufacturing.
But agents do keep task lists and check the tasks off as they go. Of course it’s not perfect either but it’s MUCH better than an LLM can offer on its own.
If you are seeing an agent missing tasks, work with it to write down the task list first and then hold it accountable to completing them all. A spec is not a plan.
My only real disappointment with Claude is its flakiness with scheduling tasks. I have several Slack related tasks that I’ve pretty much given up trying to automate - I’ve tried Cowork and Claude Code remote agents, only to find various bugs with working with plugins and connectors. I guess I’ll give this a try, but I don’t have high hopes.
>We can get far without worrying about the last 5-10%. The solutions for the last 5-10% could be fossil fuels in the short-term, long-duration storage as it matures, or easily storeable e-biofuels.
This article hits on an important point not easily discerned from the title:
Sometimes good software is good due to a long history of hard-earned wins.
AI can help you get to an implementation faster. But it cannot magically summon up a battle-hardened solution. That requires going through some battles.
For many, even cutting their budget isn’t enough to pursue what you’re describing. Modern careers in software are very hard to reach for people who can’t afford to wait for a real paycheck, and it drives away a massive group of potential talent.
You may be right if AI truly can never replace devs. But history shows many examples of inadequate technologies getting hammered on by industry until they work due to distorted perceptions of economic gain. I’ve heard stories like this regarding mechanical looms, CNC, and cloud services. My understanding is those all work (decently) now not because they were obviously better, but because economic pressure pushed innovation to make them work, for better or worse.
Software developers should be worried about their jobs, not because these tools are capable of replacing them or reducing a company’s need for human developers, but rather because the _perception_ that they can/will replace developers is causing a major disruption in hiring practices.
I truly don’t know how this is going to play out. Will the software industry just be a total mess until agents can actually replace developers? Or will companies come to their senses and learn that they still need to hire humans - just humans that know how to use agents to augment their work?
I agree that it was in her philosophical framework to accept social security - apologies if my comment seemed in bad faith due to that not being clearer. The irony does not lie with her, but rather those that use her philosophy to eliminate the safety net that she herself ended up using.
Sure, she could have used the money she had put into social security to invest, and maybe would have come out better off. But for those of us who see how public services can enrich an entire society, there is irony to how this all played out.
The hypocrisy lies in the fact that the philosophy of Ayn Rand - that an elite few held up society and the rest were pretty much just parasites - has been used at great length to justify the gutting of social programs.
I think of the foundational model like CPUs. They're the core of powerful, general-purpose computers, and will likely remain popular and common for most computing solutions. But we also have GPUs, microcontrollers, FPGAs, etc. that don't just act as the core of a wide variety of solutions, but are also paired alongside CPUs for specific use cases that need specialization.
Foundational models are not great for many specific tasks. Assuming that one architecture will eventually work for everything is like saying that x86/amd64/ARM will be all we ever need for processors.
Not to be too pedantic, but code is a kind of specification. I think making the blanket statement "Prompt is code" is inaccurate but there does exist a methodology of writing prompts as if they are specifications that can reliably converted to computational actions, and I believe we're heading toward that.
I’m all for this movement provided it’s actually focusing on the rights of individuals rather than empowering corporations to own and operate massive amounts of computing power unchecked. When I first read the article, I frankly assumed this was meant to limit regulation on AI. From what I’ve read in the law that doesn’t seem to explicitly be the case, but given the organizations involved, I fully expect to see more in that vein.
But this isn’t a suggestion to turn away from AI threats - it’s a matter of prioritization. There are more imminent threats that we know can turn apocalyptic that swaths of people in power are completely ignoring and instead fretting over AI.
Really appreciate the detailed article! I was on the team that shipped D3D11 and helped with the start of D3D12. I went off to other things and lost touch - the API has come a long way! So many of these features were just little whispers of ideas exchanged in the hallways. So cool to see them come to life!
Yes! I work with the Modos team. You’re exactly right - ideally we want region-based refresh hinting. The SDK supports some region based features - we’d like to extend that functionality.
Are there any orgs like this in the US?
0: https://immersivearts.uk/