The influence of powerful imagery and rhetorics in promotional material for computing is neither new nor surprising.
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The influence of powerful imagery and rhetorics in promotional material for computing is neither new nor surprising. There is a longstanding tradition of overselling the latest technology, claiming it to be the next (industrial) revolution or promising that it will outperform human beings. With the passage of time it may become difficult to recognize these invented ideas and images that have acquired a life of their own and have become integrated as part of a historical narrative. As modern, digital electronic computing is nearing its 100th anniversary, such recognition does not become easier, though we may be in need of it more than ever before.
From https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/the-myth-of-the-coder/
This particular case, where the praise of automatic programming implied the obsolescence of the coder, can be instructive for us today. There is a line that runs from Grace Hopper’s selling of “automatic coding” to today’s promises of large AI models such as Chat-GPT for revolutionizing computing by automating programming or even making human programmers obsolete.19,20 Then as now, it is certainly the case that the automation of some parts of programming is progressing, and it will upset or even redefine the division of labor. However, this is not a simple straightforward process that replaces the human element in one or more specific phases of programming by the computer itself. Rather, practice adopts new techniques to assist with existing tasks and jobs. Such changes do not generalize easily, and using titles as like “coders”—or today’s “prompt engineers,”—while memorable, does not do justice to the subtle process of changing practice.
#ComputerScience #computers #computing #programming #dev #tech #hype #GPT #ChatGPT #Copilot
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@[email protected] This one's worth a read I think.
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@abucci Thanks, I've now read it!
I was actually already aware that the distinction between "programmer" and "coder" was largely invented after the fact - back when I was a teacher, I'd have half of the first lesson in computer architectures & operating systems be history of computing, and that was a wonderful excuse to do some mythbusting.
I mean, it's possible (perhaps even likely) that "LLM + nontechnical person" never replaces professional developers. But...
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@abucci ...to me, it still sucks. It is an attempt to replace creative work with managerial work.
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