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Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

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Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#571

Post by paulcole »

deathanatos wrote: post #206
rybosworld wrote: post #85

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.

> This is ego speaking. No, it really isn't. Repeatedly, the case is that people are trying to pass off GPT's work as good without actually verifying the output. I keep seeing "look at this wonderful script GPT made for me to do X", and it does not pass code review , and is generally extremely low quality. In one example, a bash script was generated to count number SLoC changed by author; it was extremely convoluted,…

> No, it really isn't

It really is. Either that or you’re not thinking about what you’re saying.

Imagine code passes your rigorous review.

How do you know that it wasn’t from an LLM?

If it’s because you know that you only let good code pass your review and you know that LLMs only generate bad code, think about that a bit.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#572

Post by paulcole »

rybosworld wrote: post #274
surgical_fire wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Is there any expectations that things will? Is there more untapped great quality data that LLMs can ingest? Will a larger model perform meaningfully better? Will it solve the pervasive issue of generating plausibly sounding bullshit? I used LLMs for a while, I…

> Is there any expectations that things will? Seems like an odd question. The answer is obviously yes: There is a very pervasive expectation that LLM's will continue to improve, and it seems odd to suggest otherwise. There is hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on AI training and that number is increasing each year. > Is there more untapped great quality data that LLMs can ingest? Why wouldn't there be? AI's…

It’s not worth arguing with anyone who thinks LLMs are a fad. I just tell them that they’re right and get back to using LLMs myself. I’ll take the edge while I can.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#573

Post by Volrath89 »

nimbleplum40 wrote: post #310
Volrath89 wrote: post #297

(10+ years of experience here) I will be starting training for commercial pilot license next year. The pay is much less than one of a software engineer but I think this job is already done for most of us, only the top 5% will survive. I don’t think I’m part of that top and don’t want to go to management or PO roles so I am done with tech

What makes you believe that commercial pilot is safer from AI than software engineering?

Big commercial airplanes basically already fly themselves. But people feel safer with pilots on board just in case, I don’t think that’s going to change.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#574

Post by adamredwoods »

cadamsau wrote: post #413
richardw wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those less confident: U.S. (and German) automakers were absolutely sure that the Japanese would never be able to touch them. Then Koreans. Now Chinese. Now there are tariffs and more coming to save jobs. Betting against AI (or increasing automation, really) is a bet against not against robots, but against human ingenuity. Humans are the ones making progress, and we can work with toothpicks as levers. LLM's are ou…

One hundred per cent this. LLM pair programming is unbelievably fun, satisfying, and productive. Why type out the code when you can instead watch it being typed while thinking of and typing out/speaking the next thing you want. For those who enjoy typing, you could try to get a job dictating letters for lawyers, but something tells me that’s on the way out too.

I've never found "LLM pair-programming" to be fun. I enjoy engaging my brain and coding on its own. Co-pilot and it's suggestions after a point become distracting. I'm sure there's are several use cases, but for me it's a tool that sometimes gets in the way (I usually turn off suggestions).

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#575

Post by KPGv2 »

Me001 wrote: post #536
pdimitar wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, as cynical and demeaning that must sound to them, I am arriving at the same conclusion.

All the programming for the Apollo Program took less then a year and Microsoft Teams is decades in development obviously they are better than NASA programmers.

the programming for the NASA program is very simple; the logistics of the mission, which has nothing to do with programming, is what was complex

You're essentially saying "the programming to do basic arithmetic and physics took only a year" as if that's remotely impressive compared to the complexity of something like Microsoft Teams. Simultaneous editing of a document by itself is more complicated than anything an Apollo program had to do

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#577

Post by adamredwoods »

LLM token size will have to increase a lot to digest a large system of code.

Then there's the companies that own LLMs that are large enough to do excellent coding. Consider "have" and "have nots", those that have the capital to incorporate these amazing LLMs and those that do not.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#579

Post by rozap »

boogieknite wrote: post #565
rozap wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Agree with this take. I think the probability that this happens within my next 20 years of work is very low, bu…

im also expecting this outcome. my thoughts are that once devs are completely replaced by ml then were going to finally have to adapt society to raise the floor because we can no longer outcompete automation. im ready to embrace this, but it seems like there is no plan for mass retirement and were going to need it. if something as complicated as app and system dev is automated, pretty much anything can be. earnest qu…

That's around, give or take a few years, when I plan to retire. Don't care a whole lot what happens after that point :)

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#580

Post by skydhash »

oangemangut wrote: post #417
dogman144 wrote: post #378

The last fairly technical career to get surprisingly and fully automated in the way this post displays concern about - trading. I spent a lot of time with traders in early '00's and then '10's when the automation was going full tilt. Common feedback I heard from these highly paid, highly technical, highly professional traders in a niche indusry running the world in its way was: - How complex the job was - How high a…

Having also worked on desks in the 00s and early 10s I think a big difference here is what trading meant really changed; much of what traders did went away with innovations in speed. Speed and algos became the way to trade neither of which humans can do. While SWE became significantly more important on trading desks, you still have researchers, quants, portfolio analysts, etc. that spend their working days developing…

> That being said, there's also a massive low hanging fruit in dev work that we'll automate away

And this has been solve for years already with existing tooling. Debuggers, Intellisense, Linters, Snippets and other code generations tools, build systems, Framework Specific tooling.... There's a lot of tools for writing and maintaining code. The only thing left was always the understanding of the system that solves the problem and knowledge of the tools to build it. And I don't believe we can automate this away. Using LLMs is like riding a drugged donkey instead of a motorbike. It can only work for very short distances or the thrill.

In any long lived project, most modifications are only a few lines of codes. The most valuable thing is the knowledge of where and how to edit. Not the ability to write 400 lines of code in 5 seconds.

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