If LLM/Agents contribute to software development, how does the role of software engineers evolve? SE should focus on : - System design - Integrations - Project management etc or the job will disappear in 10 years ?
sooner than that
AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
71–80 of 232 posts
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#72So who is liable if the AI makes severe mistakes?
Not that MS has been held accountable for all the security problems they've had recently.
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#73Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been using Github copilot daily for two years and ChatGPT for 1 year now. And I think the tide lifts all the boats. I’ve seen a (perceived) 2-3x productivity increase. I think these tools slightly favor people in front of the learning curve of a particular field. I’ve been dabbling in all sorts of things so if you’re a focused expert (who doesn’t need to explore but just exploit) you probably get less than a 2x…
But how many experts do you need? Most dev jobs are mostly repetitive plumbing and those might disappear very fast because 1 dev + LLM >= 5 devs without. So what we'll see is an increase in company margins and an elimination of a large swathe of the middle class. The alternative theory is that if everyone can now quickly create systems multiple companies and competing products will pop off which will drive down the m…
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Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the hypothetical high level language doesn't allow for ambiguous meanings, you can write a compiler for it and you don't need the AI. (Not saying you're wrong about "higher and higher levels of abstraction" - that's the way it's always been - but the unique promise of AI is the ability to deal with ambiguity in the requirements).
Ambiguity in requirements is where the majority of bugs come from now. So I don't think AI would improve things.
Assuming a (hypothetical, doubtful) AI as good as a human programmer, I think the advantage becomes speed. Think of it like a REPL that you program in English. Patching ambiguities with "Oh, I didn't mean X, I meant Y" becomes the work of minutes, not hours.
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be like steering offshore teams, with the difference the team are now AI agents. Better look for architecture and management jobs, only a few select ones would still be allowed into the magic tower. Naturally after a heavy round of letcode interviews that have nothing to do with writing AI algorithms.
Management ? I'm not sure, if the AI makes engineers 10-20x more efficient, you will need way less engineers, and way less managers.
Well maybe more project/program management than typical people management - you still need someone to organize the work at a higher level, collect the requirements and feedback, check all the compliance boxes, etc.
But I agree that typical line management jobs will evaporate along with the engineering ones.
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#77This sounds like 164 leetcode like questions. The correlation to actual capability is very tenuous in my opinion.
https://klu.ai/glossary/humaneval-benchmark
I'd love if I could 10X / 100X my productivity with AI, but as a heavy ChatGPT user, it's more like a 30% improvement. Awesome, obviously, but looking forward to improvement.
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#78I'm a software and product guy; what I don't get, is how we're going to replace us lowly engineers and not a substantial percentage of a company's Human stack. Close to engineering, what about the SCRUM masters? The testers. What about the product owners? What about devops? Further from us, what about the people signing up on our vacation? Or the ones signing up on our daily budgets when traveling, or hell, even the…
Don't really understand the trends myself (don't mean this in the positive or negative sense, just some grays popping up in my stubble), but the more people I know or meet that have jobs in IT, I have to notice that the tiniest percent of them are programmers. And it keeps getting more and more diluted.
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#79Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been using Github copilot daily for two years and ChatGPT for 1 year now. And I think the tide lifts all the boats. I’ve seen a (perceived) 2-3x productivity increase. I think these tools slightly favor people in front of the learning curve of a particular field. I’ve been dabbling in all sorts of things so if you’re a focused expert (who doesn’t need to explore but just exploit) you probably get less than a 2x…
But how many experts do you need? Most dev jobs are mostly repetitive plumbing and those might disappear very fast because 1 dev + LLM >= 5 devs without. So what we'll see is an increase in company margins and an elimination of a large swathe of the middle class. The alternative theory is that if everyone can now quickly create systems multiple companies and competing products will pop off which will drive down the m…
>> Most dev jobs are mostly repetitive plumbing
Those jobs should go away. Basically, the elimination of anything boring is ultimately a net good for humanity.