So, Karl Marx predicted that the capitalism will eat itself because capitalists will value creating money itself (and money-making enterprises, such as asset bubbles) more than the actual production of goods. This was later elaborated by many people, but since I am not an expert in this, I'll just mention Hyman Minsky and Thomas Piketty.
The OP is essentially a (white collar) labor version of this. What is evidently valued is an appearance of expertise, rather than expertise itself. Just like the capitalists who want to make money, and skipping production of actual goods in order to accomplish that, "professionals" are going to skip actual learning in order to appear knowledgeable.
For 200 years, people have hoped that the "free market" will sort out the problem that Marx saw. It didn't happen - we still get financial bubbles that cause trouble for many people. So, I suspect it's a mistake to assume the learning problem will fix itself either. I suspect people (society at large) will have to consciously value the hard work of learning for this to be fixed.
throwawayoldie · 1h ago
> Maybe another industry of cleaning up vibe coded messes will be a thing?
I have seriously considered hanging out my shingle to do this freelance, I don't think the time is quite ripe yet but maybe in a few months.
burnt-resistor · 25m ago
Wherever there is pain impeding capital, there is opportunity. And there is always a set of current pain points. There can only be no pain in a fully-autonomous organization with autonomous investors and customers too.
It seems like the future is converging on there will 5 Matrix savant architects who make $1B/y who keep things operating while everyone else lives in a shanty or a pod.
throwawayoldie · 3m ago
...right, I see where you're going, and then we eat those five savants and everyone else is happy.
merksoftworks · 25m ago
My experience has been more like this:
- Write small library as contract work.
- Client vibe codes with it. Code doesn't work.
- End up doing good faith assurance work to fix the vibe coded bug in the client code, the issue was not in my small library.
People are programming out on a limb - and blame goes to the library maintainer if the user lacks the fundamental skills to do troubleshooting.
roxolotl · 49m ago
As someone who loves fixing weird bugs I kinda hope this becomes a thing. There’s nothing as satisfying as finding logic bugs.
throwawayoldie · 40m ago
Same, it's like solving puzzles, except with practical benefits including getting paid for it.
Yes, and I think we'll course correct, eventually.
There's a reason we still (generally) teach people how to do arithmetic with pencil and paper instead of jumping straight to calculators. Learning basic algorithms for performing the computations helps solidify the concepts and the rules of the game.
We'll need to do the same thing eventually with respect to LLMs and software engineering. People who skip the foundations or let their comprehension atrophy will eventually end up in a spot in which they need those skills. I basically never do arithmetic using pen and paper now, but I could if I had to, and, more importantly, the process ingrained some basic comprehension of how the integers relate under the group operations.
I totally agree, re: SQL specifically, by the way. SQL is basically already natural language. It's probably the last thing that I'd need to offload to some natural language prompt. I think it's a bit of a vicious circle problem. There's a lot of people who only need to engage with SQL from time to time, so working with it is a bit awkward each time for lack of practice. This incentivizes them to offload it to the LLM just to get it out of the way, which in turn further atrophies their skills with SQL.
throwawayoldie · 1h ago
> SQL is basically already natural language
This was actually the whole point of SQL in the first place: to be a query language close enough to natural language that non-specialists could easily learn to use it.
pbohun · 19m ago
This was also the point of COBOL. I think one thing we've learned is non-specialists don't like thinking/problem solving, and there's no meeting them halfway on that. Asking some people to think is asking too much.
The OP is essentially a (white collar) labor version of this. What is evidently valued is an appearance of expertise, rather than expertise itself. Just like the capitalists who want to make money, and skipping production of actual goods in order to accomplish that, "professionals" are going to skip actual learning in order to appear knowledgeable.
For 200 years, people have hoped that the "free market" will sort out the problem that Marx saw. It didn't happen - we still get financial bubbles that cause trouble for many people. So, I suspect it's a mistake to assume the learning problem will fix itself either. I suspect people (society at large) will have to consciously value the hard work of learning for this to be fixed.
I have seriously considered hanging out my shingle to do this freelance, I don't think the time is quite ripe yet but maybe in a few months.
It seems like the future is converging on there will 5 Matrix savant architects who make $1B/y who keep things operating while everyone else lives in a shanty or a pod.
People are programming out on a limb - and blame goes to the library maintainer if the user lacks the fundamental skills to do troubleshooting.
There's a reason we still (generally) teach people how to do arithmetic with pencil and paper instead of jumping straight to calculators. Learning basic algorithms for performing the computations helps solidify the concepts and the rules of the game.
We'll need to do the same thing eventually with respect to LLMs and software engineering. People who skip the foundations or let their comprehension atrophy will eventually end up in a spot in which they need those skills. I basically never do arithmetic using pen and paper now, but I could if I had to, and, more importantly, the process ingrained some basic comprehension of how the integers relate under the group operations.
I totally agree, re: SQL specifically, by the way. SQL is basically already natural language. It's probably the last thing that I'd need to offload to some natural language prompt. I think it's a bit of a vicious circle problem. There's a lot of people who only need to engage with SQL from time to time, so working with it is a bit awkward each time for lack of practice. This incentivizes them to offload it to the LLM just to get it out of the way, which in turn further atrophies their skills with SQL.
This was actually the whole point of SQL in the first place: to be a query language close enough to natural language that non-specialists could easily learn to use it.