text stringlengths 0 2.68k |
|---|
But then I thought, "I now have at my hand a code spewing -- a machine that can spit out code really fast. And if that code is a standalone project under a thousand lines, it will 99% of the time get it." So what I did was I put in the code -- don't do this at home, but I put in the code something like "If you are on T... |
And then I said "Amp, let's build something. Here's a folder full of data. What I want you to build is a data viewer. I want you to build a little web app in Go" - and I've never seen the insides of this code. Built me a Go web app that lists all of these files, it takes out these two fields, it syntax-highlights them,... |
\[01:30:22.19\] And I never would have built this on my own, because syntax highlighting - pain in the butt. The diff in the JavaScript, the three-pane layout... I would have given up. But the barrier to entry with the agents, or the AI in general, is so low that you can build stuff that you never would have attempted ... |
So now, come back to real software engineering - how many tests, and debug tools, and test suites, and like introspection tools or analysis tools have we not written because it would have been too much effort? And that's now affordable. We're starting to realize this, and the question is, when will we really leverage t... |
And to go one even further, back -- I've worked at Sourcegraph since 2019, with one year break... And a lot of large scale customers, they say "Can you make this work for our codebase? Can you make the tool that you have work for our large codebase?" What we're seeing now is that people change the codebase to leverage ... |
This is like our 20,000 lines. You're not gonna touch this." But now the levers changed, and the amount of leverage you get out of these tools changed. And now, suddenly, the codebase will adapt -- that's my bet. The codebase will adapt to these tools. |
And the really interesting bit for me is how will our engineering practices change? What code will we write by hand? What code will we generate? Thinking even further, will there be code that we won't check in, but instead we just check in the prompt or whatever it is, and just generate it on the fly? Or will all codes... |
**Jerod Santo:** \[01:33:45.08\] Yeah... This actually opens up a whole new line of thinking for me, which I haven't thought before... How does this impact open source? Because I was thinking through your situation, I was like "Well, in the past, that one-off tool to help me do something else--", it's like a side quest... |
But in a world where we can just ad hoc generate one-off tools, and check them into the codebase or not, keep the prompt or throw the prompt away, does the amount of open source diminish? Does my use of open source not matter as much because I can just generate anything I need? Have you thought through this? Because I ... |
**Thorsten Ball:** Yeah. Quinn and I talked about this in our podcast, that - let's be honest, the GitHub contribution graph is not worth as much as it was ten years ago, five years ago, two years ago. And it had a sharp drop, I think, in the last, whatever, year or something. And you also know Go, and you know that, s... |
Well, write me a program that generates all of the possible formats. So you see all of the possible formats and then write me a function to parse them." Even the act of code as a way to reduce duplication is not up for grabs, but it's kind of changing, because -- |
**Jerod Santo:** You start to question it, at least. |
**Thorsten Ball:** Dumb example, and somebody listening will say "Thorsten is an idiot", but just to illustrate the point... Say you have a function that validates something, and you want to make sure that it validates these 50 cases of whatever. Or say 150. It always was best practice to type out these 150 cases. You ... |
**Jerod Santo:** The DRY principle becomes Do Repeat Yourself. |
**Thorsten Ball:** Maybe, I don't know. A lot of code is based on the assumption -- or a lot of code and a lot of the way we write code is based on the assumption that writing code takes time, is hard, and we wanna avoid it as much as possible, you know? But now, will that change? Because I can generate your websites w... |
\[01:38:00.05\] And then coming back to the original question of open source - well, does it make sense to store pre-generated pieces of code, and build libraries that are available and configurable for 15 other use cases, when you could just say "Well, here's like one version of this", and then maybe you feed it into ... |
And one thing that -- to go one level higher even, and it's also one of why I think the business I'm in is so interesting, is Eric Meyer, ex director of engineering at Facebook, or one of the ex... He's a Haskell guy, really smart functional programmer, has done programming for 40 years... And he had a presentation two... |
It's the same as you're trying on new clothes, and it's like "Oh, I'm gonna try on the red shirt, and the blue shirt and whatnot", but instead you could have a photo taken of you and then say "Give me 15 variations where I wear the same shirt in 50 different colors." Stuff changes when you don't have to go look for it,... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, what you're saying is that the efficiencies or the perceived efficiencies we've done in the past have been based upon human efficiency. |
**Jerod Santo:** Exactly. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right? We thought it was efficient to write shared code, so that it was more efficient to stand up a new project, so that it was more efficient for teams to unify around codified ways, standards etc. Those were all the efficiencies. But if those efficiencies are under mute - or moot, sorry - is that... |
**Thorsten Ball:** Yeah. The analogy I used in the past was, you know, at the end of a book, you have an index with different words that you can look up quickly. And you have that index because it takes a long time to find that specific thing in the book. If you're able to read 1,000 pages per second, do you need an in... |
**Jerod Santo:** \[01:41:49.18\] The kids are gonna totally get this. The kids, the next generation, the AI natives, they're not gonna ask these questions, because they're gonna grow up in a world without that constraint, you know? They'd say, "Why would I share -- why do you have to have a shared library? Why would I ... |
When the cost of replacing -- maintain your car because it's expensive to replace it. But if the cost of replacing is approaching zero, why maintain? I don't know, you start to ask a lot of questions that we've assumed were fundamentally unaskable, right? ...because all the calculus changes. |
**Thorsten Ball:** I'll give you one funny example... I've started to build this because I posted it and people got riled up about it. It's a little bit philosophical, but basically, a lot of stuff we do when we work with computers is about putting things in a certain form, in a certain structure, so the computer can w... |
**Jerod Santo:** That is interesting. So what exactly are you building then? |
**Thorsten Ball:** I started to build a static site generator that at build time will just look through a folder called Posts and generate out of images and videos and audio files and screenshots an index of blog posts, and put them in a format. And the prompt is "For each blog post, modify the layout so it matches the... |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. So is it non-deterministic then? Or are you gonna have some sort of -- |
**Thorsten Ball:** Yeah, it's non-deterministic. |
**Jerod Santo:** How are you gonna have a reverse chronological listing of posts? Isn't that what a blog is? Or does that also have to be non-deterministic? |
**Thorsten Ball:** Okay, then the -- |
**Jerod Santo:** What is a blog...? |
**Thorsten Ball:** I mean, a blog is a dumb example. But it's like, then the file names have a timestamp in them, or whatever it is. But, I mean, still, right? Like, it's a large step up. |
**Jerod Santo:** Right, i'm with you, that's for sure. Because I don't like YAML front matter. I only do it because the computer likes it. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Me neither. |
**Thorsten Ball:** Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. |
**Jerod Santo:** Okay. |
**Thorsten Ball:** \[01:45:51.05\] And what I did was -- this was two months ago, or something. Somebody sent me an email, and they were like "Hey, on your personal website it still says you work at Zed, but I heard you're back at Sourcegraph." And I was like "Oh, you're right." And I opened my website with Amp, and I ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, back in the day it was a startup, right? |
**Thorsten Ball:** Exactly. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That was somebody with a pitch, and seeking funding. |
**Jerod Santo:** Yes. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Now it's "Yeah, whatever." We got here though specifically by, Jerod, you asking about open source. Like, this entire last 35 minutes-ish has been about the question of open source... |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah, more or less. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And at first, I almost said everything by default is open source now then. Because if you can generate every line of code, then the critical factor is not what the code that gets produced, it's the thought and the intellectual property, potentially, that makes it proprietary or not around that idea.... |
**Jerod Santo:** Because the value in the source -- I mean, where's value in the source anymore? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right, that's what I'm trying to really -- |
**Jerod Santo:** There has to be some source out there, because the robots need to learn more. |
**Thorsten Ball:** Yeah, well, that's a second-order effect. Like, if we all say there's no value in sharing stuff anymore, then the well dries up to make these models better. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I think we'll find value in sharing things though still yet. I think there will still be libraries and frameworks that will get made, and maybe at some point the source will be just a codified way of the LLMs using this stuff, and they'll be a user like we're a user, and we're only a user by proxy i... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.