That's optimistic in itself, because it implies that being corrected (assuming we are correct) will right his path to seeing the value in his effort.
A more concerning option is that he does see the value, but the temptation of the zero-effort-machine is too strong.
Learning to put in enough effort for engineering takes - took - years of education, where double digit percentages failed each year. Some of us barely made it through the filter. I have no confidence I would if I encountered it as a youth today.
It was a huge thing, and I lived through all of it, yet never ran into a problem where copy-and-pasting would have been the lowest resistance solution. I never even ran into a problem where asking the question and waiting for a response would have made more sense than asking internally or working through it myself. The most difficult problems are relatively conceptual, which SO didn't like anyway.
I never really got it. I think it depended bigly on which domain and stack you were in.
These skills are all less valuable today, btw, along with roughly anything that would have allowed someone to thrive economically pre-2025 in spite of occasional accusations of high-functioning autism.
The issue is not that programming is getting automated. The issue is that the only skills that retain value are in low supply among programmers - and every other career you've considered retraining for.
Eh, my understanding is that the models are supposed to have guardrails against that. But also, getting better results generally requires refinement, a critical eye, and the skill to write out what's wrong. I'd guess these skills aren't common among that audience. But much more so, it likely defeats the purpose. The point is to be lazy (that's at least part of why people are willing to spend money on it).
On the other hand, I'd also expect the most degenerate among us to not care about the uncanny details. So who knows, really.
I do feel that Codex and Claude are both bad at something I'm good at: writing documentation. But it doesn't matter, because no human reads it. I'm spending a lot of time rewriting its output just for it to be piped back in again.
And that's just sorting out my self-image. Convincing someone who controls the pursestrings that I'm adding value was hard already.
It's odd, the stereotype of software developers is a know-it-all attitude, but start talking about types and you get excuses that boil down to 'I'm incapable of learning to understand the thing you learned to understand'.
There is a video called A New Programming Fundamentals Course that contains some concepts that are very helpful to understand cases like these. I'd recommend you watch, it's free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV13CNrq4ZA
Namely, the section on "Mapping knowledge webs" (around 3:33). It explains people can struggle to adopt concepts that are too far outside their current knowledge, but that it can still be possible for them to pick it up if they can build a path to it from their current knowledge. (This often presents itself as the "depth-first" learning style)
A lot of commenters here, talking about how monads are so simple and how not being able to learn them is just lazy, are misunderstanding how learning fundamentally works. You have to expand the knowledge graph in the direction of monads before it will be easy to pick up monads. You have to build a path. You cannot simply teach monads right off the bat and expect someone to intuitively "get it". People who intuitively "get it" are people who already have a path.
Do the reading b/c there's a machine that has done all the reading so it's hard to add value if you maintain the anti-intellectualism of 2010s software dev.
I don't want to celebrate UK roads too much. The majority of roundabout users in the UK are not indicating properly. Too many people are stopping at them when they have priority. Lanes are just a suggestion and using the correct lane is an invitation for someone to drive into the left of you.
In other areas: enough people don't know how to use a slip road that it becomes a problem to those who do. Likewise the flashing ambers of a pelican crossing. Lane discipline is much worse than on the continent, to the point you can see it creating traffic jams. Lots of people are driving big cars without the confidence needed to remain in their own lane.
There are millions of drivers who've never passed a theory test. We could do with more ruthlessness.
I feel like you're singling out UK drivers without much evidence here, I've driven lots across continental Europe, although mostly Spain<>France<>Germany<>Nordics, but in all countries people tend to not indicate properly, inside of roundabouts or outside of them. I'll admit to people in the Nordics being slightly better at signaling, but they make up by being so scared and non-confident in their driving that their hesitation causes near-accidents, rather than the opposite.
Still, all across the world the average driver seems to below what I imagined the average driver to be, before I started driving myself.
It may be user error, but that doesn't mean roundabouts aren't a footgun. It only takes one driver who doesn't do everything correctly to cause problems. It's not much fun driving around in the correct lane, only for someone to pull alongside you to the left (equivalent of "right" in the US, of course!). I failed a driving test because someone cut across me on a roundabout.
"I failed a driving test because someone cut across me on a roundabout." That driver may have cut across you on that roundabout but that doesn't mean roundabouts are a footgun.
When comparing two interfaces and one allows a larger amount of user error that interface is inferior.
The point is roundabouts require more work to navigate correctly than a four way intersection with traffic lights. Thus drivers are more likely to navigate incorrectly.
> When comparing two interfaces and one allows a larger amount of user error that interface is inferior.
Seeing a safety issue and ignoring all other considerations is an excellent example of the ‘overarching theory and imposed order’ I argued that Britain rejects in my first comment.
I mean, what you're trying to minimise is (frequency of misuse x consequences of misuse). signalised intersections target the frequency element, roundabouts target the consequences.
Not gonna lie, I know about the flashing ambers of the pelican crossing, but they are uncommon enough, whenever I see one, I spend several seconds wondering what is happening, until it clicks it's one of these crossings.
Smartphones are worse computing devices than laptops or desktops. Smartphones are also the most widely-used computing devices in the world, even by people sat at home with a better computing device on the other side of the room. History suggests worse just doesn't matter in the face of convenience.
A more concerning option is that he does see the value, but the temptation of the zero-effort-machine is too strong.
Learning to put in enough effort for engineering takes - took - years of education, where double digit percentages failed each year. Some of us barely made it through the filter. I have no confidence I would if I encountered it as a youth today.
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