Wagner

Software Engineer for both occupation and hobby. Currently working as Agile Consultant.

[François Chollet @fchollet]

Many people have been recognizing that AGI won't be coming from mere scaling of current tech, and that generative AI has been severely overhyped. This is all true. But those people often conclude, "therefore AI is not going to be transformative -- this is a nothingburger". Absolutely not.

AI (both current and near-future tech) *will* transform nearly every industry, and we're still only in the very first steps of that process. Generative AI may be a bubble, but AI is going to be bigger in the long run than what almost all observers currently anticipate.

[Wagner @leonardiwagner]

@Beverwaard_Nu @ZiggoWebcare Ik ook , even though they claim it's fijn 🫠

[Wagner @leonardiwagner]

@cs_loops @MewoMewoCS @GeriNault @leafica It's not working for AMD devices, most of AMD users have the same issue.

[Addy Osmani @addyosmani]

When you suffer from imposter syndrome, remember that everyone had to learn new things at some point.

e.g. Google’s Larry Page w/web dev:

[François Chollet @fchollet]

Beginners often believe that programming is about writing code -- specifying instructions to be executed by a computer. But this is about as accurate as believing the job of a novelist is to craft nice sentences.

In reality, programming is the design of mental models.

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

A concept that changed my life.

The Time Billionaire:

[Wagner @leonardiwagner]

@katieaclapper @Rainmaker1973 TBH it's just bad administration, not a rule:
You are supposed to get one with your passport, but most salespeople/companies only know to perform the default drill for locals.

At the airports, it should be easier.

[Venkat Subramaniam @venkat_s]

I love writing code for stuff I’ve never done before, to key it in, watch the whole damn thing go up in flames, then step back, tear it apart, get it working, refactor to simplify, with an ah-ah I now understand this, and then wonder if I really understand yet.

[Peter Nixey @peternixey]

I'm in the top 2% of users on StackOverflow. My content there has been viewed by over 1.7M people. And it's unlikely I'll ever write anything there again.

Which may be a much bigger problem than it seems. Because it may be the canary in the mine of our collective knowledge.

A canary that signals a change in the airflow of knowledge: from human-human via machine, to human-machine only. Don’t pass human, don’t collect 200 virtual internet points along the way.

StackOverflow is *the* repository for programming Q&A. It has 100M users & saves man-years of time & wig-factories-worth of grey hair every single day.

It is driven by people like me who ask questions that other developers answer. Or vice-versa. Over 10 years I've asked 217 questions & answered 77. Those questions have been read by millions of developers & had tens of millions of views.

But since GPT4 it looks less & less likely any of that will happen; at least for me. Which will be bad for StackOverflow. But if I'm representative of other knowledge-workers then it presents a larger & more alarming problem for us as humans.

What happens when we stop pooling our knowledge with each other & instead pour it straight into The Machine? Where will our libraries be? How can we avoid total dependency on The Machine? What content do we even feed the next version of The Machine to train on?

When it comes time to train GPTx it risks drinking from a dry riverbed. Because programmers won't be asking many questions on StackOverflow. GPT4 will have answered them in private. So while GPT4 was trained on all of the questions asked before 2021 what will GPT6 train on?

This raises a more profound question. If this pattern replicates elsewhere & the direction of our collective knowledge alters from outward to humanity to inward into the machine then we are dependent on it in a way that supercedes all of our prior machine-dependencies.

Whether or not it "wants" to take over, the change in the nature of where information goes will mean that it takes over by default.

Like a fast-growing Covid variant, AI will become the dominant source of knowledge simply by virtue of growth. If we take the example of StackOverflow, that pool of human knowledge that used to belong to us - may be reduced down to a mere weighting inside the transformer.

Or, perhaps even more alarmingly, if we trust that the current GPT doesn't learn from its inputs, it may be lost altogether. Because if it doesn't remember what we talk about & we don't share it then where does the knowledge even go?

We already have an irreversible dependency on machines to store our knowledge. But at least we control it. We can extract it, duplicate it, go & store it in a vault in the Arctic (as Github has done).

So what happens next? I don't know, I only have questions.

None of which you'll find on StackOverflow.

(I write on AI from a technical and product perspective. If you find that interesting then please do follow me for more)

[Wagner @leonardiwagner]

@DaviBelarmino2 @emilio_mark_ @joaovictor_ire @pedrocertezas https://t.co/vFjUeLPBdU

[Sergio Pereira @SergioRocks]

Before accepting a job offer, use this heuristic to find red flags on a company:

1. Search on Linkedin
2. Find people who left the company recently
3. Send them "Hey, I'm about to join company X. What's your experience?"

Companies check your references. You should do the same!

[Venkat Subramaniam @venkat_s]

Found a bug? Write a failing test first. Then apply the fix.

[Wagner @leonardiwagner]

@ManasRobot14 @prakhar77577029 @SunilVoice @ChatGPTBot Just cleaning the cookies wasn't enough for me. Running it from an incognito/anonymous browser window solved it though.

[gaut @0xgaut]

Google Calendar, but it shows the cost of the meeting

[Wagner @leonardiwagner]

@sofia_agomez gefeliciteerd 🥳

[Emma Bostian @EmmaBostian]

As someone who reviews hundreds of applications, here are my top tips to land an interview:
✨ If you don't meet all the technical requirements, still apply! But try and have a few projects that illustrate some of your coding skills. They don't have to be huge projects!

[Wagner @leonardiwagner]

@Prathkum 👋

[Existential Comics (find me on bluesky) @existentialcoms]

Why are ethics questions always like:
"is it ethical to steal bread to feed your starving family?"

And not:
"is it ethical to hoard bread when families are starving?"

[Years Progress @YearsProgress]

░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 0%

[Wagner @leonardiwagner]

@CamurcaCor @lincolixavier A vontade de hitar é mais alta, nem que o custo disso seja propagar desinformação a jovens profissionais.

O próprio livro que ele usa como carteirada (que é sobre o ideal, não o real ou regra a ser cagada) já desmente isso:
https://t.co/YJFg0c53Hy

[sushi com abacate @sushicomabacate]

@lincolixavier Imagina 🤣
Não tenho dúvidas que refactoring é ainda mais negligenciado que testes.
Mas msmo assim quero deixar esse trecho do livro.

Acho que flexibilidade funciona melhor na adoção de boas práticas do que rigidez.
Mas obrigado por trazer o assunto. 👍