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Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

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Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#281

Post by incrudible »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #235
carlmr wrote: post #29

Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017. His prediction was based on the trends he was seeing at the time. But it wasn't even AI. Instead he made this prediction because he saw the rise of no-code tools replacing software developers because managers could finally cut out the pesky "translators", i.e. software developers. I said it then and I will say it n…

You're missing a crucial point - AI learns/is taught by example. So no, future projects will not need to be ultra-specified because the specification will be "Give me one of those [points at thing]." The equivalent assumption would be that ChatGPT and MidJourney can't work because you have to specify every paragraph and every shape. Clearly that's not true. Just because every object and every texture had to be define…

Paintings are not mechanisms. Human vision is very forgiving. The back and forth between Midjourney looks more like throwing the dice until you get something you like, rather than telling it exactly what you need.

> The current Gen 1 AI tools do a little of this, but as Gen 1 they're just getting started

The current tools are not Gen 1. You can already see diminishing returns.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#282

Post by DrSiemer »

kabes wrote: post #110

I'm not at all concerned with AI. On the short to mid term it's making my life easier by relieving me of the boring parts of my job. It's pretty good at writing unit tests for example. But I don't see the current generation of AI making complete software architectures. However, even when it does get there or in the long term a new generation comes along that can do it, then I'm still not concerned. I have enough soft…

Exactly this. To finally be able to unlock the fridge with countless projects abandoned for lack of time and field knowledge!

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#283

Post by RivieraKid »

Here's my current thinking on the impact of GPT-4 on the developer job market:

- I expect developer productivity to go up 1.5x - 15x over the next several years assuming GTP-4 based tooling is integrated into IDEs.

- There will be two opposing forces acting on developer wages. First, developers will be more productive, therefore the price of one hour of work should go up. But - the supply of developer output will increase as well, which would push price per "line of code" or per "unit of developer output" down. So the big unknown is the demand curve.

- There will be a temporary boost in demand for developer work connected with the transition to this new technology. Big corporations will want to upgrade their systems to automate consumer support, startups will make new tools for AI-generated graphics, etc.

- We can also study the effects of technology-driven increases in worker productivity by looking into history. Developer productivity has always been going up - thanks to stackoverflow.com, better languages, better IDEs, more and better libraries, etc. There's also a greater supply of developers (e.g. India). Didn't change the job market too much. One should not draw strong conclusions from this though, it's a very superficial analysis. On the other hand, people working in agriculture have become much more effective, which lead to much fewer people working in agriculture, maybe because people need to eat as much calories per day as they did 100 years ago.

- My base case, based on the assumption that GPT-4 will not improve dramatically, is that developer wages will stay roughly constant. But there's a lot of uncertainty in this conclusion and in the assumption.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#284

Post by chii »

dmpk2k wrote: post #279
chii wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if the market becomes over saturated, how much will those jobs pay? AI makes everything else so cheap, that by just working for a small bit of time, you can afford all the necessities?

That's been the promise of increasing productivity for many decades, and yet...

if you were to life with only what was around at the time such productivity increases occurred - e.g., no internet, phone, and high speed computing, access to medical/transport improvements etc - you'd probably be able to live off minimum wage easily.

People worked more today because they desired more. In fact, the desire outstripped their ability to increase their wages!

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#285

Post by smallest-number »

I've always thought computer science was the closest thing the real world had to magic, because the essense of software is always automation - you write the spell, so later you just have to invoke it and magic happens.

Whether the actual spell is written in arcane runes or python or encoded as a language model doesn't matter, the essense is the same.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#287

Post by gregjor »

aflag wrote: post #268
411111111111111 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine doesn't predate it but it's very confusing for me to read this opinion. From my point of view, it totally did happen? Can you imagine how many programmers the company would've needed to get all the data a business analyst casually queries per day? What you're looking at is the quantity of people actually employed in the industry, not how many SQL made obsolete. The industry just grew so much that it didn't becom…

You're considering that every company that needs SQL today would hire enough developers to essentially write most of it from scratch. While some might, most companies that use SQL would not exist, because the cost of developing their product would be prohibitive.

Maybe. Before Oracle (mid-80s) every company did write their own database code.

I think a lot of smaller companies would struggle if that was still a requirement, but if relational/SQL had not come along we’d have something else like it.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#289

Post by Mizoguchi »

Software Engineering is just 10% writing code.

The other 90% is understanding specifications of requirements (sometimes even helping customers write them), produce detailed functional specifications, cost analysis, prototyping, meeting with third party vendors over interface design specifications, determine the project's scope, testing, delivery, integration and commissioning, bug fixing, identifying and managing scope changes among other things.

AI may help you complete some of these tasks more effectively, but at the end of the day it will be just another tool in your kit.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#290

Post by jackmott »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #259
carlmr wrote: post #29

Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017. His prediction was based on the trends he was seeing at the time. But it wasn't even AI. Instead he made this prediction because he saw the rise of no-code tools replacing software developers because managers could finally cut out the pesky "translators", i.e. software developers. I said it then and I will say it n…

> So exact in fact that they will need to specify a program in a click and drag interface, or in human language. This. I started programming in Machine Code, where the "editor" was a pad of graph paper. I've watched management- and business-focused people sneer at us geeks for my entire career, and watched them drool over the thought of finally getting rid of us. Hasn't happened yet. > I'd be surprised if the next st…

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