Today is the day you can't believe anything you read on the Internet.

Just like every other day.

#AprilFools #PerhapsIAmTheFool

Apparently everybody needs to have a take on AI and code, so here's mine.

First, background. I'm a software developer with over twenty years of experience. The vast majority of my work has been web development on the back-end.

I originally wrote this post on LinkedIn, where less than half of my connections are fellow programmers. I think I have a higher percentage on the Fediverse, so more of you will be familiar with these concepts.

Personally, I don't use any AI code generation tool in my work. Not because I think it's wrong, or anything like that. I've tried it a few times and haven't found it to be particularly useful for me personally. But if others find it useful, I think that's great.

So, the big question that everybody seems to have an opinion on is whether or not AI will replace programmers in the future (whether that's three months or thirty years).

One thing that's implied in this question, but nobody seems to be outright stating is whether or not AI will ever be able to program itself. Keep that in mind.

There's a concept in computer science known as "Garbage in, garbage out". What this means is that if you have a process or algorithm and you feed it garbage input, you're going to get garbage output. You can't expect a computer to give the right answers, if you give it the wrong information.

This is an important concept in generative AI. What something like a large language model does is it takes its input (which is a whole bunch of text), and matches it up, correlating words that are frequently found together, and then spitting them back out upon request.

So, if the underlying data is flawed, you're going to get bad results.

But generative AI actually amplifies this. Because it's not intelligent (the emphasis in "artificial intelligence" should always on the "artificial"), it doesn't actually reason about any of this. It's just matching patterns. So, with AI, instead of "garbage in, garbage out", it's more like "garbage in, really stinky garbage out").

But even with really good models, the results of generative AI are always going to be inferior to the dataset that their based on, because, despite how it might look, it's just matching patterns. It's not reasoning about anything. So, some patterns might be very relevant in some contexts, but completely irrelevant in others. And without the ability to reason about them, a computer can't make that determination.

So, when it comes to code generation, the first thing you have to consider is the source of the data, the code its trained on. As far as I can tell, these are trained on whatever code is on GitHub and StackOverflow. Some of this is wonderful. Some is horrible. So, the bad code is already mixed in with the good code.

This makes a really good coding model great at assisting code generation for common patterns. But it makes it useless when generating new algorithms. So, it's great at throwing together code quickly, even getting you to a fast MVP. But it doesn't help with more complex tasks let finding bugs, or even more, designing a new system architecture. It can only solve already-solved problems. And the very nature of it means that that is all it will ever be able to do. So, no, it can't replace programmers, and never will, but it can help them. Especially for basic tasks, and especially for programmers that are less experienced in their career.

I have a post-commit hook that I add to all my git repos that saves a record of every commit I make to a journal that I've been keeping for nearly a decade.

It's part of a very messy hacked together app I wrote a long time ago that keeps records of a bunch of stuff, and I get my own look into the past every day with a daily journal of entries from "on this day" that my computer emails to me. In addition to git commits, it has things like Fediverse posts (or in the past, tweets), Foursquare check-ins, TV shows and movies I watch, manual notes I write, etc.

Today, I saw a commit to a repo for a former job that had the commit message " ♪Clean up, clean up everybody, everywhere♪". The indicates the change was related to testing, but otherwise I have no idea what that meant. An hour later, I had another commit that said " Embiggen tests with more cromulent code".

I no longer have access to that repo, so I have no idea what actual changes I made in those two commits, and obviously, the commit message offers no insight into the actual changes, aside from being testing changes.

Anyway, let that be a lesson in how not to write good commit messages, as well as some little insight into how my mind works.

#HappyBirthdayToMe

Happy Birthday, Reba McEntire, who turns 70 today. Also me, who turns 43.

#HappyBirthdayToMe

Quoth the Raven, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos"

#Poe #EdgarAllenPoe #Raven #TeenTitans #Titans #DC #DCComics

My kid, coming out to me: Dad, I'm gay.

Me: Hi, gay, I'm Dad.

#DadJoke #DadJokes #BeAnAlly

Ever have one of those days, where life just beat you up, spat on you, and left you bleeding on the side of the road?

Well, around dinner time, my four-year-old came up to me and said, "Daddy, why are you being sad?"

So, yeah, one of those days, but at least it's nice to know my child has appropriate empathy for others, so that was nice.

I heard about the leaked live-action Powerpuff Girls trailer (a canceled series from The CW). The trailer is pretty bad. It looked like someone at CW was trying their formula of modernizing IPs and making them more adult/gritty (for example, Riverdale, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina [this was originally supposed to be CW], Nancy Drew, Tom Swift), but they made it really silly, because, it's the Powerpuff Girls.

Anyway, I heard about the trailer, but it took me a little bit of time to finally find it. I found it in a Reddit thread, but one of the top comments on the thread was something like "Looks like a DEI cast."

Yes, there are non-white actors in the cast. Two of the girls are played by Chloe Bennet and Yana Perrault, and Prof. Utonium was played by Donald Faison. I don't know have much to say about Chloe Bennet or Yana Perrault, but Donald Faison is a brilliant actor, and I can't imagine anybody actually complaining about him being cast in any comedic role.

But apparently if you take a cartoon character who originally appeared white, and cast anybody but a white actor, it's suddenly a DEI hire. Yeah, so, tell me you're a racist without telling me you're a racist.

I hate this world.

Five years ago today, I went to work like any other day. I arrived at the office at 8:30 AM. I got back home at 7pm.

If I slept for eight hours that day, that means I spent five and a half hours of my day for my own time (mostly family time).

Today, I sat down at my desk at 8am. I'll go downstairs for dinner at 5pm. Between those two times, I'll spend an hour having lunch with my wife and daughter, and a few five minute breaks here and there where I can chat with my wife, help around the house, and whatnot.

But, I'll also more work than I would have in the office (fewer people dropping by my desk), and I'll still spend some time collaborating with my colleagues (more effectively over Zoom, each at our own computers, than crowded around one person's).

This is why I work from home, and won't ever go back to an office.

#WFH #WorkFromHome #Telework #ReturnToOffice #RTO #Work