"Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw. " - Simon Willison
Discussion
Not a great a analogy, except if the carpenter is Harry Potter and table saws are dancing to his will.
Simon says don’t quit.
A good friend of me is using his carpentry skills to make beautiful custom made stairs.
A better analogy would be
"It's like quiting the infantry after artillery and tanks were invented in WWI"
You could probably make more money today as a programmer just fixing bad AI generated code for people than you could working on your own projects I reckon, by a long shot.
So much AI slop code that needs fixing
Honestly someone COULD seriously make bank doing that
"I take your AI generated slop prototype code and turn it into a real application written by humans"
LLM’s are more like the low wage illegals in construction that will take your job.
Nah, wrong path man
I’m not even worried that LLMs will take my job, because they can’t. It’s the same silly hype like blockchain in 2017
I’m Curious,
how do you think that quote applies to artists and llms?
Does it?
Same thing. Do something incredible with the tools you never could before. Widen the scope of your vision.
Is it widening the scope or shifting the scope? For example friends who shoot and work creating films, vs using synthetic filmmaking.
very different industries and jobs expand depending precisely on those tools. Same for musicians, painters, etc…
Simply thinking about this a lot lately
Probably both!
Yup…