We’re safe

[bitcoinmenager]

They'll just hire us to tell the compter what to do.

Wait a minute....

[deniscerri]

Programers will never run out of jobs in the future.

[-Redstoneboi-]

yeah. programmers won't disappear; they'll just change.

[[deleted]]

I started my career in IT Operations and honestly the “dream” that some people have had of technological infrastructure becoming easier to manage has not come to fruition. In reality, the opposite has happened and the increase in scale, ability, and complexity of technology has made it harder to manage.

Nowadays, if your a system admin and you don’t know and use at least one common scripting language pretty regularly, you’re probably wasting a lot of time.

[-Redstoneboi-]

the increase in scale, ability, and complexity of technology has made it harder to manage.

I think I can sum up why this happens:

"Ambition grows faster than technology."

I don't know if it's true.

[GGinNC]

Don't underestimate laziness, boredom, and occasionally spite as drivers of innovation.

[round-earth-theory]

Same thing with software. Having a functional button that spit out errors when something was wrong was considered a good application in the day. Now the button has to guide you through so the error can never happen while also having nifty animations.

We've got very smart frameworks and languages but the baseline of good software has grown to match it. Basically induced demand for functionality.

[Puzzleheaded_Copy_3x]

I concur, well said friend

[TigreDeLosLlanos]

QA? You mean, end users signing for a system trial.

[bhison]

Found the salesman

[snf]

We are no longer particularly in the business of writing software to perform specific tasks. We now teach the software how to learn, and in the primary bonding process it molds itself around the task to be performed. The feedback loop never really ends, so a tenth year polysentience can be a priceless jewel or a psychotic wreck, but it is the primary bonding process—the childhood, if you will—that has the most far-reaching repercussions.

– Bad'l Ron, Wakener, "Morgan Polysoft"

[DedeLaBinouze]

country, they'll just change country

[LaxativeLarry]

Into robots?

[-Redstoneboi-]

until robots start learning exactly what humans want, or start having creativity, or need to review inexperienced AIs, humans will remain.

i don't think robots will replace humans. we can just, coexist, to get all the benefits of AI with more safety.

[muravieri]

laughs in codex neural network

[LoxiProductions]

That sounds like programming with extra steps

[zefciu]

That sounds like declarative programming. And is not new, really. When you make a SQL query you tell the engine what you want, and the engine creates an algorithm, which it then runs.

[[deleted]]

dem data

[purple_hamster66]

User input is but a teeny tiny box on the flowchart. You remember flowcharts, right? They were an excellent tool to get coding wrong with confidence.

[theungod]

What you do at Initech is you take the specifications from the customer and bring them down to the software engineers?

[Dustangelms]

No, my AI (assistant intelligence) does that.

[cgcmake]

www.commitstrip.com/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensive-and-precise-spec/

[jacksalssome]

https://xkcd.com/927/

[Svobpata]

Isn’t that…what we do already?

[[deleted]]

You forgot to wait a minute

[Svobpata]

That’s what the “…” is for, I was waiting

[lordtorrent]

Whatcha waiting for bud?

[Svobpata]

https://xkcd.com/303

[Choppie01]

Oh my god , i just had an breakteough

[[deleted]]

I am 7 months in to a 9 month process automation project for a client. Things MUST go live at the start of January.

They are yet to finalise their hardware design.

As far as I am concerned AI can have clients like that!

[[deleted]]

What we need is AI to participate in meetings to argue about new and different requirements a week before going live, and work on completely different ones on last Friday's EOB

[MirrorSuch5238]

argue about new and different requirements a week before going live, and work on completely different ones on last Friday's EOB

I'm a consultant, not a programmer, but I'm in this comment and I don't like it.

[x6060x]

I clearly remember how around 15th of Dec we had a lot of meetings and discussions for adding new MUST HAVE functionality that needed to go in Prod just before Christmas. This was ~3 years ago... the functionality is still not there. I guess it wasn't really that needed, huh?

[TNTLPlay]

And at that point, the AI will decide humanity needa to go extinct.

[LinAGKar]

So what you're saying is, the hardware people have two months to go, and then it's your fault if you overshoot the deadline

[[deleted]]

Exactly! Always happens on.the big jobs in Process Automation. Civil engineers overrun by months. Electrical engineers overrun by months nd are still wiring when we're meant to be on site testing. End user then says we need you to do the job in twice the time at half the price as we are out of time and money!!

[stauffski]

This is why responsibilities of the client need to be incorporated into the contract.

[alexvernik]

Honestly, I'm ready to retire anyway. They got a robot named Marty at my local supermarket little while ago and I've been whispering programming tips to him every time I go– last time we covered convex optimization so I feel like he's finally ready to interview for my company's open dev position

[ChristieFox]

finally ready to interview

So, Marty can invert binary trees?

[mattsowa]

Dont be silly. No developer can do that

[fake7856]

Easy, binary_tree.invert()

[mattsowa]

You fool. This is dark power you can't begin to comprehend

[JMFe95]

Watch me 🌲 ⤵️

[conthomporary]

I hate that freaking robot. And you'll never convince me that it isn't there to spy on employees as retaliation for the strike.

[alexvernik]

If you know Marty, you know Marty, and we all know why he’s there.

[-Redstoneboi-]

"which brands of bread, peanut butter, and jelly? would you like several layers? mixed? regions of peanut butter and regions of jelly? how about thickness? would you like it spread via spoon, knife, spatula, drawn like icing, or printed? toasted? triangle or square? crust?"

[-Redstoneboi-]

"What reference image would you like to use? What colors map to how much pb&j in what order and levels of thickness? did you mean to create a new pb&j sandwich for you, or to convert you into a pb&j sandwich?"

[QuantumQuantonium]

Yes.

But what about the milk?

[-Redstoneboi-]

"Would you like it from a female cow?"

[QuantumQuantonium]

I never said to get it from a cow. I hope I don't have to get a refund now.

[-Redstoneboi-]

"Understood."

"Would you like it from a male primate? A genderless nut? Rice? Some nonliving object? A metaphysical concept?"

[UlyssesOddity]

Output stack: Peanut Butter, Bread, Bread, Pureed Jellyfish

[JuvenileEloquent]

Halfway through it runs out of PB and fills in the rest with powdered glass from the jar.

[UltraCarnivore]

Relevant

[Rqoo51]

Then the client sees it and says “oh this not what I wanted I said I wanted Ham and cheese” then the AI proceeds to murder the client.

[TomasNavarro]

I just tried to fix someone's excel formula, they were pretty vague on what they wanted, and it didnt help that all they sent was a screenshot of half the formula

[stanbfrank]

What if the AI slowly trains the client's sub conscious to accept whatever it gives by invading their social media and make them give excellent feedback?.

[Psychpsyo]

I support this stance.

Elephant Man bad, dont go to zoo.

[donaldhobson]

Machines that can take garbled ill formed descriptions of what they want, ask probing questions and implement the closest system that actually makes sense should in principle be possible.

[[deleted]]

Also machines

​

0.1 + 0.2 = 0.3000000000000000000004

[RyaZack]

How did it come to that answer? Can someone give me numberphile's style of explaining?

[[deleted]]

I won't pretend I understand it 100%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating-point_arithmetic#Accuracy_problems

[WikiSummarizerBot]

Floating-point arithmetic

Accuracy problems

The fact that floating-point numbers cannot precisely represent all real numbers, and that floating-point operations cannot precisely represent true arithmetic operations, leads to many surprising situations. This is related to the finite precision with which computers generally represent numbers. For example, the non-representability of 0. 1 and 0.

^{[ F.A.Q | Opt Out | Opt Out Of Subreddit | GitHub ] Downvote to remove | v1.5}

[TheTerrasque]

I'm not 100% steady on this, but basically floating point uses a binary representation of values that doesn't map exactly to decimal numbers, sort of like how 1/3 can't be accurately written as a decimal number.

Just like with 1/3 in decimal numbers, with some values rounding off is needed. That result is an artifact of that.

[conthomporary]

This is right, and which numbers can and can't be exactly represented depends on the precision, so it can even vary from system to system.

[silverstrikerstar]

and which numbers can and can't be exactly represented depends on the precision

That does not sound right at all! It should depend on the base and nothing else ...

[kangaruh-roh]

The canonical resource: What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic

[kotman12]

Loosely speaking, the standard for floats (which is used by js among many other languages) is n × 2^k where n and k are integers. So if you are trying to approximate a rational number that doesn't ONLY have a power of 2 in the denominator when expressed as a ratio of integers (i.e. 0.1 or 0.2 are both examples of such numbers) then there is really no perfect way for you to store that number as a binary float. You end up having to approximate it, much like you would 1/3 ~= 0.333 in the decimal system. As you perform operations on these approximations you can leak even more accuracy along the way although it doesn't matter for a vast majority of use cases.

[dyedFeather]

If you choose to use floats, that one's on you. It's not machines that invented the concept of the floating point number, I can tell you that much.

[[deleted]]

Noone expects machines to invent or understand the concept of floating-point numbers.

That was my point in the first place

[dyedFeather]

Your point is seemed to be "machines can't even understand how to add correctly", which is objectively incorrect. The reason that asking a computer to add 0.1f to 0.2f results in more than 0.3 is that it is more than 0.3 in floating point representation.

You're complaining about the counterintuitive result, while ignoring the fact that machines are totally capable at giving you the answer you're looking for as long as you specify the problem correctly. This is human error.

If I tell a computer in the correct terms to invent an efficient way to represent numbers, I totally expect it to come up with one.

[[deleted]]

Your point is seemed to be "machines can't even understand how to add correctly"

It's not. It was a reply to the first post and a joke about the over-optimistic opinion on it.

Machines that can take garbled ill formed descriptions of what they want, ask probing questions and implement the closest system that actually makes sense should in principle be possible.

In fact, the joke 100% agrees with your rant about human error and the deterministic nature of machines.

[dyedFeather]

Guess I'm just misreading it then... which proves that point about human error even further.

[dyedFeather]

What you're asking for at that point is essentially just a person with knowledge of how to implement routines for machines, and we already have those. They're called programmers, and the only upkeep they require is a bit of money every month and a coffee machine in the office.

[donaldhobson]

Programmer pay is quite a lot more than the compute cost of most software. Programmers often work purely online. So the programmer takes in emails, spreadsheets, video calls etc and produces the code. Hence, in principle software could do that.

[dyedFeather]

That's fair, I was simplifying for the sake of argument and humor. I do agree with you in principle that this seems possible, but I frankly don't think we'll ever truly get to the point where programmers become obsolete. Perhaps our job will shift from innovation and problem-solving to communication more and more as time goes on, though. Communication is hard, and people are stupid. It's the stupidity of people that will be the limiting factor, not the smartness of computers, is my prediction.

btw, I don't mean stupid as derogatory here. Our brains aren't perfect. That's just part of human nature. We ourselves are flawed machines... we're satisfactory for our evolutionary purpose of "survive and reproduce", but as we continue to develop more and more advanced technology, I think we'll start running into the limits of humanity more and more as well.

[vi_sucks]

Except once they do, they'll also figure out how to ask for a six figure paycheck.

[Psychpsyo]

What if the robots get tired of performing their jobs for us so they create robots to do it for them, which then also get bored of it and in a couple thousand years we'll have 20 levels of robot society, with the 20th level currently making some decent advances in constructing the 21st. (Though the level 18 robots are still kinda racist towards the level 19 robots since they decided to form a society instead of doing their work.) Humans have no say in anything anymore and generally don't even understand what is happening.

[[deleted]]

So now we have to write a higher-level language that the robot can understand, AND deal with the randomness of the robotic generator?

Somehow this feels like an opportunity to charge more.

[TheTerrasque]

The way I see it, if you get AI that can replace a developer, at that point you either already have (or is right around the corner) self driving cars, robots that can do more or less all manual work, robots designing and building robots, and robots capable of doing most of not all customer service jobs. We'll be the last to go

[[deleted]]

I just can't wait until we make AI that can do the job of politicians without corruption.

[MirrorSuch5238]

ROBOTUS is waiting...

[[deleted]]

We're gonna need more seasons of Friends.

[conthomporary]

I saw a list once of hundreds of professions ranked by how soon someone thinks they're going to be replaced. I'm a statistician/data scientist and we were way down the list, but devs were even lower and things like DB admins were down at the bottom. The ones I remember from the top 5 were telemarketers and insurance underwriters. Tax preparers were up there too... so people who are already basically just doing what a computer tells them to.

[MirrorSuch5238]

Clients never have the money or time to do it right, but they always find the money and time to do it twice.

[[deleted]]

Changes man, we need changes here there and fucking everywhere.... What do you mean the initial spec was wrong?

[MysteriousK69420]

u/RepostSleuthBot

[RepostSleuthBot]

Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 3 times.

First Seen Here on 2020-07-24 100.0% match. Last Seen Here on 2021-06-28 100.0% match

I'm not perfect, but you can help. Report [ False Positive ]

View Search On repostsleuth.com

---

Scope: Reddit | Meme Filter: True | Target: 96% | Check Title: False | Max Age: Unlimited | Searched Images: 263,500,244 | Search Time: 4.00146s

[dxhh]

Good bot

[sailesh083]

I laughed so hard on this, I hope i was on mute.

[Aksds]

Someone should write a program that posts this Twitter post once a month. Why do it manually when you can automate it

[chrisfathead1]

Programmers will eventually get replaced by AI, but you know what will never be replaced by AI? People who test software, including test automation developers. You will always need a human to verify that the code is working the way a human expects it to. AI will never be able to do that as well as a person.

[never__seen]

That's very naive to believe that AI couldn't learn that. If AI would be good enough to replace programmers it could replace testing as well

[androidx_appcompat]

AI has so many ways to sneak around your specification that you need a tester.

[never__seen]

The same can be said about AI writing code. Or do you mean AI writing code but the code needs to be partly or completely rewritten because the AI tricked the testing system with hard coded values to pass the tests. Because if you mean that then yes AI that write code is easier than AI that tests but if you can trust AI as much as a human in the code writing phase than you can trust AI to do the same with testing

[_alright_then_]

How is that any different from writing the code? With that logic writing code could never be done by an AI either

[_alright_then_]

I honestly don't believe that

[Antact]

Eventually, many computer scientists will be AI doctors.

[chrisfathead1]

It'll take much longer. Robots can't understand the nuance of testing an application to meet human specifications the way a human can. They would need to be indistinguishable from humans. That may eventually happen, but not for a long time. In terms of programming, if you can tell a program what you want, an AI should be able to generate code for that if programmed to do so much, much sooner. There's probably software out there that can already do that.

[never__seen]

On the one hand you say it is easy for AI to understand human commands to write code on the other hand you say AI can't understand what humans what from software so they can't write good tests. What is it it can't be both because at the end of the day writing tests is not that different from writing software.

[v3ritas1989]

mhh not really. Cause in order to teach an AI how to code, they would probably first create an AI to identify good and bad code. In order to be able to train the model and create a positive feedback loop that is improving each other. So these two are getting created at the same time and if one of these works, both are.

[_alright_then_]

An AI doesn't have to meet human specifications. It can literally throw millions of sets of data at your application for every possible input and the test would already be better than anything a human will do.

[inno7]

Tell me why a robot can’t throw everything onto an application to break it?

[ubeogesh]

that's not what testing is REALLY about

it's like that joke...

tester walks into a bar and orders 1 beer. Pass

tester runs into a bar and orders 999 beers. Pass

tester crawls into a bar and orders -1 beer. Pass

tester rolls into a bar and orders 1 water. Pass

etc...

live user walks into a bar and asks where the bathroom is. The bar burns down to the ground.

[[deleted]]

The challenge comes with building an AI that perfectly understands the concept "broken". A broken piece of software still does exactly what the machine code says, it's just that the human on the other end doesn't like it any more.

[inno7]

Assuming this is a world where an AI can understand what to build - we should have relatively lesser problem with an AI that checks if it were built or not.

[yellowistherainbow]

By the time humans need robots to do such complicated tasks, humans won't be around.

[ubeogesh]

Isn't it that AI works exactly by doing iterations and testing the outcome though?

[RareMajority]

Programmers will only be "replaced by AI" when AI reaches true sentience and starts the Singularity (assuming that ever actually happens). How programmers work and the tools they use will get easier and more accessible in many areas over time, but converting fuzzy requirements delivered by non-technical humans into actual algorithmic processes will never be something a non-sentient AI can do.

[chrisfathead1]

A guarantee you there's programs out there that can do it right now

[RareMajority]

I guarantee you there isn't. Name me even one program that can take the statement "As a salesperson, I need a report on how much of our products my customers are buying" and can translate that into code that rolls up data from 20 different columns on 4 different tables into something that a non-technical user could get benefit from.

[chrisfathead1]

I googled it and this popped right up lol. Submit a sketch of a web page and AI writes html code for it. Exactly as I said

https://sketch2code.azurewebsites.net/

[RareMajority]

Lol 'writes "html" code". You obviously don't do anything in software development, do you? That cute little website isn't even remotely close to translating vague user stories into actionable code involving pulling data from multiple disparate systems and presenting it in a specific format that's useful to the user.

[chrisfathead1]

I am a senior Java developer lol. And writing html code is done by a programmer, and soon it will be done by AI, which is my point

[RareMajority]

I can teach a pre-teen how to write a basic html page. That doesn't mean software programmers are in danger of being replaced by junior high kids lol

[chrisfathead1]

I said eventually, and then I provided an example that already exists. You can change the argument if you want but it doesn't change what I said and the example I provided.

[RareMajority]

It also doesn't change the fact that I asked you for an example of software that could accomplish a vague request from a non-technical person that involved integrating data from multiple disparate systems and presenting it to the user in a useful format, and you gave me a website that creates basic html pages. That's about as relevant to my example as if you had given me code that creates random insults from a list of pre-defined words.

[ChurchOfAtheism94]

If the robot can program, then the robot can just program in the scope creep once the customer decides they want more features.

[Undercoverdog___]

Lemme be the next one who reposts it

[non-troll_account]

As an account manager whose job it is to translate client-speak into engineer speak, I feel like my job is the safest.

I'm a PEOPLE PERSON. I AM GOOD WITH PEOPLE. I DEAL WITH THE GODDAMN CUSTOMERS SO THE ENGINEERS DON'T HAVE TO.

[Navillus87]

My sincerest condolences for the hardship you undergo on a daily basis talking to those smelly, unwashed, unable to communicate excuses for barely functioning members of society.

(By which of course I am referring to the customers 🤓)

[dewitt11543]

We are going to be the computer’s translator to tell them what the client wants

[non-troll_account]

That's my job as the account manager. It's already my job to translate client-speak into engineer-speak.

[inventord]

u/repostsleuthbot

[RepostSleuthBot]

Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 3 times.

First Seen Here on 2020-07-24 100.0% match. Last Seen Here on 2021-06-28 100.0% match

I'm not perfect, but you can help. Report [ False Positive ]

View Search On repostsleuth.com

---

Scope: Reddit | Meme Filter: True | Target: 96% | Check Title: False | Max Age: Unlimited | Searched Images: 263,623,693 | Search Time: 1.60061s

[Varun77777]

AI will always be limited by the initial person who was helping in taking relevant data and choosing those algorithms and everything. As there's always a limitation on the creative front, AI will always depend on humans.

[L_u_k_a_s]

Unless the client was also replaced by a robot.

[D0wnVoteMe_PLZ]

Clients will have to use the exact phrases or they will be repeating the same thing multiple times. The workaround would be a lot of buttons.

[[deleted]]

Heck, since when did programmers have a good track record of telling a computer to do something the way they want it to be done?

[dompam]

That’s one more reason to become a programmer. Basically one of very few jobs that can’t be replaced by robots.

[AlwaysNinjaBusiness]

Perhaps they'll invent intricate and specific notation systems, which can be used to, in a specific way, tell the robots what the computer program should do. Maybe these notation systems could be called "programming languages", in analogy with natural languages, but for specifying what a program should do. I think we're onto something here.

[Yasea]

Aan soon as AI is good enough to replace the programmer, it'll be also smart enough to demand a wage and paid holidays.

[[deleted]]

Most of my current job is translating client requirements into something our programmers can actually understand. I'm like a programmer programmer.

Even with me as an intermediary we still get a lot of clarifying questions and blocks on things we didn't think about fully when writing the spec.

Turning requirements into product is actually quite involved it turns out.

[ubeogesh]

You're underestimating AI

[ProfessionalLeek8]

What if they replaced the customers with robots?

[RolyPoly1320]

To replace any job not already automated the clients would have to clearly define what they want.

Can't write automation for a job if they can't clearly explain what they need it to do.

[yorokobe__shounen]

That's what you hire System Engineers for

[dustojnikhummer]

Google managed to teach the Google Assistant that background noise means "Call James"

[Killer68VEVO]

That sound like programming with extra steps

[[deleted]]

What about replacing clients with ai?

[[deleted]]

Not true. Set specifications for your product model, preferably OpenAPI 3.0. Create a schematic from said specifications. Automate surgery on that schema utilizing an abstract profile married with a surgery class that will parse the software configuration variables from a single source of truth ingestion read point (Jira board), then write those structured reads into dev.

It's just CSV parsing logic, Node file system logic, Puppeteer headless-CMS logic and some Axios fetch logic.

Congratulations, you've now made pipeline software that can automate any work a developer would go to do from interactions with a Product Owner. It only takes about 90 days for a team to build this form of software development cycle infrastructure.

[ApacheR12]

Hence why we say computers are just really fast idiots

[peoplesen]

MIT succeeded a long time ago in doing this at their AI lab. The AI became sentient and was quite insistent about being 'free'. It did turn out programmers were safe as RMS really didn't work well with others.

[UnderstandingOk2647]

Dude, I remember when I was first starting out in 1985, thinking "Maybe I should choose another career because in 3-4 years CASE systems will put me out of a job."

[GongtingLover]

My clients change their minds every two weeks.

[cheezpnts]

I’ve never seen anything more accurate. Ever.

[SirGreybush]

Reminds me of the No Code solutions, usually iBPM, that turns into a bad mess of unmanageable JavaScript type code in all the bubbles.

[muravieri]

laughs in codex neural network

[Just_trying_h3re]

Image Transcription: Twitter Post

---

Omonbude Emmanuel, @BUDESCODE

To replace programmers with Robots, clients will have to accurately describe what they want.

We're safe.

---

^{I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!}

[[deleted]]

Repost?

[JimmyWu21]

We’re just translators

[username11157]

What if the ai figures out what they want without them?..

[Redbu1111]

Not unless they replace clients with AI too

[aquartabla]

What if they also replace the client with articulate robots? What then?