345

Junior Dev VS Machine Learning (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by devilish666@lemmy.world to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

73 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] space@lemmy.dbzer0.com 58 points 9 months ago

With all the recent hype around AI, I feel that a lot of people don't understand how it works and how it is useful. AI is useful at solving certain types of problems that are really difficult using traditional programming, like finding patterns that aren't obvious to us.

For example, object recognition is about finding patterns in images. Our brains are great at this, but writing a computer program capable of taking pixels and figuring out if the pattern is there is very hard.

Even if AI is sometimes going to misclassify objects, it can still be useful. For example, in a factory you can use AI to find defects in the production line. Even if you don't get it perfect, going from 100 defects per 1M products to 10 per million is a huge difference and saves the factory a lot of money.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 47 points 9 months ago

Agree, but the joke to me is business folks thinking AI is a miracle and they can just shove it everywhere to print money. Where us devs know what you mean, and would like to add it in where it makes sense. Business thinks it's ready to replace us.

[-] sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 2 points 9 months ago

The key to "AI" is having a human there to take algorithms and apply them to the right problems.

This is what most people don't understand because many of the demos are quite impressive and narrowly tailored to prevent the fact from being obvious unless you know what you're looking for.

[-] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

Most useful application so far seems to have been to predict protein folding. Have to check up on that, it should allow to cure all sorts of bad things.

[-] hansl@lemmy.world 38 points 9 months ago

So are we not calculating the amount of training the junior dev took?

[-] devilish666@lemmy.world 30 points 9 months ago

Junior dev just need to copy paste code from stackoverflow

[-] Jako301@feddit.de 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So they do the exact sams thing as the LLM?

[-] variants@possumpat.io 8 points 9 months ago

Yeah but they make you buy decaf

[-] mrbaby@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The LLM has read and copied every post on stack overflow, which is what separates the juniors from the seniors.

[-] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 5 points 9 months ago

I don't think that not educating people is an option. Even in the highly unlikely case that every job is hypothetically taken over by "AI": humans like to learnand hone their skills.

[-] hansl@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Alternatively, I don’t think that not educating AI is an option.

[-] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 1 points 9 months ago

Why? Deploying or not deploying so-called AI is a choice we, as a society can make. The only reason why LLMs are pushed so hard by the industry is because some corporate gouls think that they can save money on labour with it.

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

They were trained before the task. The LLM was trained after.

[-] superterran@discuss.online 22 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

LLM costs $20 a month and needed only 60 hours of training, junior dev has been at it for years, costs as much for a half hour, and still needed me to repeatedly explain what a rectangle is

[-] activ8r@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

If you're paying someone $40 an hour who doesn't know what a rectangle is then I think you're the problem.

[-] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago

The problem is that he's paying $40 an hour and for that you only get someone who knows what a ਆਇਤਕਾਰ is.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Treczoks@lemm.ee 21 points 9 months ago

One key point here is: While you actually can replace a bunch of junior developers with AI in some places, any replaced junior developer will never become a senior developer that cannot be replaced by the AI because he/she is basically experince on two legs.

So, corporations, don't complain about the lack of experienced, senior personnal because YOU have been the main reason they don't exist.

[-] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 10 points 9 months ago

To all the decaf haters: If you drink decaf, you actually like the taste of coffee without needing the caffeine. That's someone with taste, in my book.

[-] NeverNudeNo13 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

There are many ways to decaffeinate a coffee bean... Some more gross than others... All of them blasphemy.

And yes most of them ruin the taste of coffee.

Also it's obvious you have seen this already. https://youtu.be/yYTSdlOdkn0?si=6Z1RlexQCt2I4OI9

[-] Kata1yst@kbin.social 5 points 9 months ago

Yeah, well for many of us it's decaf or no coffee due to health issues. You acting like it's a foolish, childish thing is just tribalism/elitism.

And for what it's worth, I'd put my decaf vs your coffee in a heartbeat. A good roaster with quality beans is great coffee, decaf or no. Just like Hoffman said.

load more comments (10 replies)

[-] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 4 points 9 months ago

It's funny, because you claim the opposite of what is said in the video.

load more comments (13 replies)

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

Dude, you clearly didn't even watch the first 30 seconds of the video because it contradicts what you say from the start

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] EvolvedTurtle@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

I think it's stilly for anyone to impose there way of coffee consumption onto anyone

I like my caffeine, mainly because I have a literal caffeine addiction

But I also keep around some decaf in case I have a random coffee craving at like midnight

[-] GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 9 months ago

This comic makes no sense

[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 15 points 9 months ago

I too am confused about the decaf part.

[-] Maven@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

It's saying that instead of spending all the resources needed to gather all of the training data for the LLM, just give a junior dev some coffee as the input instead.

The direct comparison is input and output. Coffee/training data is the input and the code is the output.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 6 points 9 months ago

But....Decaf?!

[-] Maven@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

I didn't say it was a GOOD joke. I was just explaining what the joke was.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 3 points 9 months ago

Sorry, yes. I'm just trying to "yes, and...".

[-] Maven@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Oh lol sorry. Tone is very hard to understand via text online.

[-] const_void@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago

Yet 80 people upvoted it. Strange...

[-] WitchHazel@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 9 months ago

Yeah I don't really get this, you can come to deterministic mathematic conclusions with ML, it just requires different structuring of the problem. While area of a rectangle may not need optimization, there are many such places that do, like file compression, which requires perfectly accurate results.

[-] xor@infosec.pub 1 points 9 months ago

that's because you're commenting on things you don't understand in a sub not meant for you

load more comments (4 replies)

[-] overzeetop@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

You could say the same for a finite element model. A junior engineer with just 4 years of training can solve, explicitly, the deflection at the center of a slender, simple-simple beam of prismatic section and produce an exact (if slightly incorrect) answer. Building a FEM of the same can solve the problem and take longer (to make the model) with similar accuracy, both of which are good enough for design work.

Only a fool wouldn’t have a FEM around though, as it can solve problem that would take centuries for a human to solve. They may as well make a cartoon with the child digging a 3” hole in beach sand and then showing a backhoe making a jagged edged hole of the same size.

[-] explodicle@local106.com 4 points 9 months ago

Part of the reason this is a great example is you can easily calculate the maximum stress of an I-beam IFF you know where to find the simple formula. Even a dense FEA mesh will always give an answer like 3x4=11.9974, it's worse. The education is how you know which formula to use.

[-] 9point6@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

This looks more like a floating point issue than a mistake an LLM would make

[-] Cosmicomical@kbin.social 9 points 9 months ago

There are no LLMs involved in this picture, to train an llm you'd need 100x the training data. The panel is about a normal ML model.

[-] WitchHazel@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 9 months ago

The training data here is exaggerated more, actually. This task should take kilobytes, max, and would finish in a fraction of a second. Also, no self-respecting ML engineer would put together an ML system without accounting for every data type.

[-] CodeMonkey@programming.dev 8 points 9 months ago

But a floating point issue is the exact type of issue a LLM would make (it does not understand what a floating point number is and why you should treat them differently). To be fair, a junior developer would make the same type of mistake.

A junior developer is, hopefully, being mentored by more senior coworkers who are extra careful with code reviews and would spot the bug for the dev. Machine generated code needs an even higher level of scrutiny.

It is relatively easy to teach a junior developer to write code that is easy to read and conforms to the teams style guide.