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Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

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Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#31

Post by boxed »

throwaway_08932 wrote: post #23
couchand wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean it’s definitely a weaker argument than 2 years ago. Is it? I see no evidence that machines are any closer to "thinking creatively" than they ever have been. We certainly have been developing our capacity for computation to a great extent, but it's not at all evident that statistical methods and creativity are the same thing.

A practical definition of "creativity" is "can create interesting things." It's pretty clear that machines have become more "creative" in that sense over the last few years.

I have yet to see ChatGPT or something similar ask a followup to clarify the question. They just give you a "solution". That's equivalent of a super bad junior dev that will cause more trouble than the amount they will solve.

That being said, I think we could make such a system. It just has to have training data that is competent...

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#32

Post by Toutouxc »

clktmr wrote: post #26

As long as there is no AGI, no software engineer needs to be worried about their job. And when there is, obviously everything in every field will change and this discussion will soon be futile.

This has been my cope mantra so far. I don't mind if my job changes a lot (and ideally loses the part I dislike the most — writing the actual code), and if I find myself in a position where my entire skillset doesn't matter at all, then well a LOT of people are in trouble.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#33

Post by dt3ft »

alatriste wrote: post #19
vouaobrasil wrote: post #10

I've been using computers since I was about 12...long time ago. What I've come to the conclusion is this: the best programs and the best tools are the ones that are lovingly (and perhaps with a bit of hate too) crafted by their developers. The best software ecosystems are the ones that are developed slowly and with care. AI coding seems all wrong compared to that world. In fact, the only reason why there is a push fo…

I remember when people used to say similar things about using ASM, and then about the craft of writing things in C instead of managed languages like Java. At the end of the day most people will only care about how the tool is solving the problem and how cheaply. A cheap, slow, dirty solution today tends to win over a expensive, quick, elegant one next year. Now there are still some people writing ASM, and a lot of th…

Writing code by typing on a keyboard will be just a hobby?

Sure, and who is supposed to understand the code written by AI when we retire? Since writing code by typing on a keyboard will apparently cease to exist, who will write prompts for an AI and put the code together?

Person: Hey AI, build me a website that does a, b and c.

AI: Here you go.

Person: Looks like magic to me, what do I do with all this text?

AI: Push it to Git and deploy it to a web server.

Person: What is a web server? What is a Git?

AI: ... let me google that for you.

Yeah, I'm just not seeing it play down as in the conversation above.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#34

Post by margorczynski »

dt3ft wrote: post #33
alatriste wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when people used to say similar things about using ASM, and then about the craft of writing things in C instead of managed languages like Java. At the end of the day most people will only care about how the tool is solving the problem and how cheaply. A cheap, slow, dirty solution today tends to win over a expensive, quick, elegant one next year. Now there are still some people writing ASM, and a lot of th…

Writing code by typing on a keyboard will be just a hobby? Sure, and who is supposed to understand the code written by AI when we retire? Since writing code by typing on a keyboard will apparently cease to exist, who will write prompts for an AI and put the code together? Person: Hey AI, build me a website that does a, b and c. AI: Here you go. Person: Looks like magic to me, what do I do with all this text? AI: Push…

> Sure, and who is supposed to understand the code written by AI when we retire?

Why someone would need to? Do the product/business people who order creating something understand how it is done and what is Git, a webserver etc.? It is based on trust and if you can show the AI system can consistently achieve at least humanlike quality and speed on almost any development task then there is no need to have a technical person in the loop.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#35

Post by spacebuffer »

squigz wrote: post #24
throwaway_08932 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "I did this cool thing" posts get way more upvotes than the "let's be startuppy" posts. I don't think the "hacker" population is as rare as you're suggesting.

I don't think "shiny new thing" posts getting more upvotes indicate anything about the hacker population.

I think he's refering to posts like this[0] rather than the shiny new tool people usually get excited about.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30803589

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#36

Post by simonw »

boxed wrote: post #31
throwaway_08932 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A practical definition of "creativity" is "can create interesting things." It's pretty clear that machines have become more "creative" in that sense over the last few years.

I have yet to see ChatGPT or something similar ask a followup to clarify the question. They just give you a "solution". That's equivalent of a super bad junior dev that will cause more trouble than the amount they will solve. That being said, I think we could make such a system. It just has to have training data that is competent...

Tell them to ask you follow up questions and they will.

Some systems built on top of LLMs have this built in - Perplexity searches for example usually ask a follow up before running the search. I find it a bit annoying because it feels like about half the time the follow up it asks me isn't necessary to answer my original question.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#37

Post by pydry »

clktmr wrote: post #26

As long as there is no AGI, no software engineer needs to be worried about their job. And when there is, obviously everything in every field will change and this discussion will soon be futile.

Market consolidation (Microsoft/Google/Amazon) might cause a jobpocalypse, just as it did for the jobs of well paid auto workers in the 1950s (GM/Chrysler/Ford).

GM/Chrysler/Ford didn't have to be better than the startup competition they just had to be mediocre + be able to use their market power (vertical integration) to squash it like a bug.

The tech industry is headed in that direction as computing platforms all consolidate under the control of an ever smaller number of companies (android/iphone + aws/azure/gcloud).

I feel certain that the mass media will scapegoat AGI if that happens, because AGI will still be around and doing stuff on those platforms, but the job cuts will be more realistically triggered by the owners of those platforms going "ok, our market position is rock solid now, we can REALLY go to town on 'entitled' tech workers".

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#38

Post by dgb23 »

clktmr wrote: post #26

As long as there is no AGI, no software engineer needs to be worried about their job. And when there is, obviously everything in every field will change and this discussion will soon be futile.

> this discussion will soon be futile

Yes we could simply ask the AGI what to do anyways. I hope it's friendly.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#39

Post by iLoveOncall »

> Before the advent of these models, the main argument against automating these tasks was that machines can’t think creatively.

Really? For me it's always been, and hasn't changed since LLMs have been released, that it's much harder to explain in enough details what you want to an AI and get the correct result than to actually code the correct result yourself.

Prompting is like a programming language but keywords have a random outcome, it's 100% inferior to simply writing the code itself.

LLMs will help with tooling around writing the code, like static analysis does, but it'll never ever replace writing code.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#40

Post by agentultra »

bsaul wrote: post #30

", I believe there would still be an underlying formal definition of the business logic generated in the backend" Not just business logic. Technical one too, such as "proove that this critial code can never run into an infinite loop" AI could very well be the revolution needed to bring theorem proover and other formal proof based languages ( coq, idriss, etc) to the mainstream mass of developers.

Only if they can understand the proofs first.

However, LLMs aren't capable of writing proofs. They can only regurgitate text that looks like a proof by training on proofs already written. There's no reasoning behind what they produce. So why waste the time of a human to review it?

If the provers' kernel and automation make the proof pass but it makes no sense, what use is it?

People write proofs to make arguments to one another.

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