161–170 of 1001 posts
My job is determining what needs to be done, proving it should be done, getting people to approve it and getting it done. LLMs help more with the last part which is often considered the lowest level. So if you're someone who just wants to code and not have to deal with people or business, you're more at risk.
LOL - this is where LLMs are being used the most right now!
A side note - maybe my project is just really trivial, maybe I’m dumber or worse at coding than I thought, or maybe a combination of the above, but LLMs have seemed to produce code that is fine for what we’re doing especially after a few iteration loops. I’m really curious what exactly all these SWEs are working on that is complex enough that LLMs produce unusable code
As for every job done well the most important thing is to truly understand the essence of your job, why it exist in the first place and which problem truly solves when done it well. A good designers is not going to be replaced by Dall-e/Midjourney, becuase the essence of design is to understand the true meaning/purpose of something and be able to express it graphically, not align pixels with the correct HEX colour co…
> A good software engineer is not going to be replaced by Cursor/Co-pilot, because the essence of programming is to translate the business requirements of a real world problem that other humans are facing into an ergonomic tool that can be used to solve such problem at scale, not writing characters on an IDE. Managers and executives only see engineers and customer service as an additional cost and will find an opport…
Yeah that will be a lucrative niche if you have the stomach for it...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nothing because I’m a senior and LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test, and it remains a waste of time. I am constantly surprised how prevalent this attitude is. ChatGPT was only just released in 2022. Is there some expectation that these things won't improve? > LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test This is ego speaking.
> Is there some expectation that these things won't improve? I definitely expect them to improve. But I also think the point at which they can actually replace a senior programmer is pretty much the exact point at which they can replace any knowledge worker, at which point western society (possibly all society) is in way deeper shit than just me being out of a job. > This is ego speaking. It definitely isn't. LLMs ar…
If that statement isn't coming from ego, then where is it coming from? It's provably true that LLM's can generate working code. They've been trained on billions of examples.
Developers seem to focus on the set of cases that LLM's produce code that doesn't work, and use that as evidence that these tools are "useless".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> most of the actual systems we work on will simply start disappearing. What systems do you think are going to start disappearing? I'm unclear how LLMs are contributing to systems becoming redundant.
Recovering enterprise SaaS PM here. I don't necessarily know that a lot of enterprise SaaS will disappear, but I do think that a lot of the companies that build it will go out of business as their customers start to build more of their internal systems with LLMs vs. buy from an existing vendor. This is probably more true at the SMB level for now than actual enterprise, both for technical and internal politics reasons…
As you visualize whole swaths of human workers getting automated away, also visualize the nitty gritty of day-to-day work with AI. If it gets something wrong, it will say "I apologize" until you, dear user, are blue in the face. If an actual person tried to do the same, the blueness would instead be on their, not your, face. Therein lies the value of a human worker. The big question, I think, is going to be: is that value commensurate to what we're making on our paycheck right now?
Most of my code is written by AI, but it seems most of my job is arranging that code.
Saves me 50-80% of my key strokes, but sprinkles subtle errors here and there and doesn't seem understand the whole architecture.
LLMs do help but to a limited extend. Never heard of anyone in the second category.
> how do you future-proof your career in light of, the inevitable, LLM take over?
Generally speaking, coding has never been a future proof career. Ageism, changes in technology, economic cycles, offshoring... When I went into that field in early 2000s, it was kind of expected that most people if they wanted to be somewhat successful had to move eventually to leadership/management position.
Things changed a bit with successful tech companies competing for talents and offering great salaries and career paths for engineers, especially in the US but it could very well be temporary and shouldn't be taken for granted.
LLMs is one factor among many that can impact our careers, probably not the most important. I think there's a lot of hype and we're not being replaced by machines anytime soon. I don't see a world where an entrepreneur is going to command an LLM to write a service or a novel app for them, or simply maintain an existing complex piece of software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there some expectation that these things won't improve? I definitely expect them to improve. But I also think the point at which they can actually replace a senior programmer is pretty much the exact point at which they can replace any knowledge worker, at which point western society (possibly all society) is in way deeper shit than just me being out of a job. > This is ego speaking. It definitely isn't. LLMs ar…
> LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test If that statement isn't coming from ego, then where is it coming from? It's provably true that LLM's can generate working code. They've been trained on billions of examples. Developers seem to focus on the set of cases that LLM's produce code that doesn't work, and use that as evidence that these tools are "useless".
if the stakeholders knew how to do what they needed to build and how, then they could use LLMs, but translating complex requirements into code is something that these tools are not even close to cracking.
I believe it's actually not that hard to predict what this might be:
1. Real human interaction, guidance and understanding: This, by definition, is impossible to replace with a system, unless the "system" itself is a human.
2. Programming languages will be required in the future as long as humans are expected to interface with machines and work in collaboration with other humans to produce products. In order to not lose control, people will need to understand the full chain of experience required to go from junior SWE to senior SWE - and beyond. Maybe less people will be required to produce more products but still, they will be required as long as humanity doesn't decide to give up control over basically any product that involves software (which will very likely be almost all products).
3. The market will get bigger and bigger to the point where nothing really works without software anymore. Software will most likely be even more important to have a unique selling point than it is now.
4. Moving to a higher level of understanding of how to adapt and learn is beneficial for any individual and actually might be one of the biggest jumps in personal development. This is worth a lot for your career.
5. The current state of software development in most companies that I know has reached a point where I find it actually desirable for change to occur. SWE should improve as a whole. It can do better than Agile for sure. Maybe it's time to "grow up" as a profession.
> First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations, but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
From this perspective, the code base isn’t just an artifact left over from the struggle of getting the computer to understand the business’s problems. Instead, it is an evolving methodological documentation (for humans) of how the business operates.
Thought experiment: suppose that you could endlessly iterate with an LLM using natural language to build a complex system to run your business. However, there is no source code emitted. You just get a black box executable. However, the LLM will endlessly iterate on this black box for you as you desire to improve the system.
Would you run a business with a system like this?
For me, it depends on the business. For example, I wouldn’t start Google this way.