Mine has been helpdesk>sysengineer>network engineer>hgv driver.
I still tinker for fun but I hate working with computers now

Trains are cool. I started woodworking because of the same thing happening to me.

Please share pics of trains

Same here. Specifically, I do still love technology and all sorts of STEM subjects, but I have no excitement for tech products.

Oh do I feel you. I've been into IT most of my life and using Linux for about 15 years now. Professional Sysadmin for ~10 years.

I loathed crypto but AI is really the Band oft my existance. While everyone around me (not in technical fields) has been toying/working with ChatGPT and the like I've never actually touched an LLM (except for automatically through Gemini and the like) but it's getting impossible to ignore.

My hope is that the AI bubble will eventually burst and while LLMs as tools (like assistant for writing documents/mails etc.) will probably be here to stay the "Now with AI" buzzword bingo will hopefully end?

As for keeping the Joy I am so lucky as to work in a Field where we still do most things manually and Provisioning Laptops or the Occasional server still is done free from any AI. For my own projects I also focus on what I need and can provide on my on infrastructure. I self host a Nextcloud and have a little Jellyfin Server which always are an opportunity for some improvements/maintenance which is after still a hobby of mine. But in the end they simply fulfill a function.

I'm 31, been a sysadmin for over 10 years and I've been enjoying work more than ever. I hate AI but it is very exciting at the same time.

Someone has clearly never created a temporary fix. That shit is eternal.

I think the current code I see being generated is generally “good enough”. I’m not comparing it to perfect: I’m comparing it to people.

If this were true, then open source projects would have much less of an issue with pull requests from sloperators.

Have you seen output in which satirical code is actually included?

I wouldn't expect to see it. Satirical code requires more thought than an LLM is capable of putting into its writing - you need to understand what is expected of whoever you're satirizing, and then you have to take that expectation and take it a step further into the absurd. Without having that context of something that is specifically being satirized, what you have instead is just incorrect code. And again, the LLM is incapable of valuing proper code over intentionally wrong code, so it's going to poison the database to some extent.

And LLMs don't drop big chunks of copy-pasted code from Stack Exchange like an intern would. They work one token at a time. (Which is why trying to get them to understand that quotations need to be all in one piece is a futile endeavor.)

Besides, 'satirical code' is just one example of the many things that can poison the training. I couldn't even begin to enumerate all the things that could mess with it, and honestly I'm surprised that LLMs do as well as they do considering they likely have all sorts of cross-language screwball connections (which may be why it has such a tendency to make up libraries; it doesn't necessarily understand that a common PHP library doesn't exist in Java).

do you not believe that either (a) these types of trivial issues would be caught by a person whose job was just to audit output or even (b) this type of issue could be caught by specially trained domain limited AIs designed to check output?

These issues could be caught by someone whose job it is to audit code, sure. The problem is that sloperators often don't audit their own stuff well enough. They leave it to the open source repo's admins. When pull requests from overeager noobs were infrequent, it wasn't the problem; they could gently correct them, the repo would stay high-quality, the noob would learn, everyone is fine. But now, sloperators are dumping low-quality pull requests on the repos faster than the admins can sort through them - because it now takes less time to produce slop code than it takes to determine whether or not the slop is worth including. The admins are swamped, because they can't sort the wheat from the chaff fast enough.

A domain-limited AI designed to check output would be useful - if it could be trusted. Open-source project admins are some of the best coders out there, and they vastly outstrip the capabilities of LLMs. You're suggesting that we replace THEM with an agent. They are in that position because they're right far more often than they're wrong when it comes to understanding the code as it exists, and how incoming code would impact it - or at least they're right often enough to keep the project alive. LLMs will be worse at that job, I guarantee it. They'd be fast, but they'd be wrong too often. This is the primary issue with LLM agents.

You’re suggesting that we replace THEM with an agent.

I am not suggesting we replace anyone, least of all the open source community, so let's not put words in my mouth

I think the current code I see being generated is generally “good enough”. I’m not comparing it to perfect: I’m comparing it to people.

If this were true, then open source projects would have much less of an issue with pull requests from sloperators.

This doesn't follow to me. A good tool in the hand of a crappy user doesn't suddenly make good output. I specifically said that LLMs write good code in a specific setting. Clearly random person generating thousands of lines at a time for a project they don't understand isn't that setting.

You seem to be very focused on crappy code generated by people that don't know what they're doing, the technology isn't good enough for that, so yes, it won't work in that setting, I agree.

Your use case is not the one that is making our lives more difficult. Using an LLM to do something for yourself, without passing it on to someone else as some sort of value add or using it as a way to get around having to think for yourself, is not the use case that we are against. Forcing a DEVELOPER to use it in their job for everything possible means that the developer does not learn, does not gain skills, and does not do the thing that they assumedly started learning how to code for. The only thing they learn is how to write a prompt (which isn't fun) and how to clean up after the AI (which is even less fun). Coding is fun! It's like a giant ever-changing puzzle! I don't want to hand all the fun parts of my job over to a plagiarism machine that is making life materially worse for a majority of the world!

If they didn't have a friend helping them they would ask AI when they had setup issues. Quite a few of them said they wouldn't have been able to do it without the LLM.

They probably could have but it can be hard to sift through forum posts if you're new at something.