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Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

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Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#121

Post by empath-nirvana »

visarga wrote: post #68
empath-nirvana wrote: post #48

I don't really think that thinking of LLMs and related technologies as "Artificial Humans" is the right way to think about how they're going to be integrated into workflows. What is going to happen is that people are going to be adopt these tools to solve particular tasks that are annoying or tedious for developers to do, in a way similar to the way tools like Ansible and Chef replaced the task of logging into ssh se…

> 1) Those tasks that it is still currently only possible for a human to do. 2) Those tasks which are easier and cheaper for a human to do. I agree, but "1" must include all tasks where a mistake could lead to liabilities for the company, which is probably most tasks. LLMs can't be held responsible for their fuckups, they can't be punished, they have no body. It's like the genie from the bottle, it will grant your th…

It's vanishingly rare that individuals have any liability or are punished for software fuckups. Maybe if someone is completely incompetent, they'll get fired, but I'm not sure that's meaningfully different than cancelling a service that doesn't work as advertised.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#122

Post by sharadov »

IMO LLMs are going to be enhancers for experienced programmers.

Although I worry that a lot of junior programming jobs will simply vanish. Software is facing the same headwinds that a lot of low-level office jobs faced, they were first shipped overseas and then automated away.

A lot of software development which is CRUD applications is going to be disrupted.

Bespoke software that requires specialized skills is not going away anytime soon.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#123

Post by imbnwa »

jayd16 wrote: post #115
JohnFen wrote: post #83

> In summary, I believe there would still be a market for Software Developers in the foreseeable future, though the nature of work will change This is precisely what I dread. When it comes to software development specifically, the parts that the AI cheerleaders are excited about AI doing are exactly the parts of the job that I find appealing. If I wanted to be a glorified systems integrator, I would have been doing t…

I understand your feelings but I do also wonder if its not similar to complaining about compilers or garbage collection. I'm sure there are people that love fiddling with assembly and memory management by hand. I assume there will be plenty of interesting/novel problems no matter the tooling because, fundamentally, software is about solving such problems.

Software engineering as an occupation grew because of static analysis and GCs (literally why the labor market is the size that it is as we speak); the opposite appears to be the outcome of AI advances.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#124

Post by barfbagginus »

JohnFen wrote: post #83

> In summary, I believe there would still be a market for Software Developers in the foreseeable future, though the nature of work will change This is precisely what I dread. When it comes to software development specifically, the parts that the AI cheerleaders are excited about AI doing are exactly the parts of the job that I find appealing. If I wanted to be a glorified systems integrator, I would have been doing t…

You will be able to speak what human needs must be fulfilled. Then the code will appear and you'll be able to meet those human needs.

You, not a boss, will own the code.

And if you have any needs, you will be able to speak the word and those needs will be met.

You will no longer need to work at all. Whatever you want to build, you will be able to build it.

What about that frightens you?

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#125

Post by glasss »

imbnwa wrote: post #123
jayd16 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your feelings but I do also wonder if its not similar to complaining about compilers or garbage collection. I'm sure there are people that love fiddling with assembly and memory management by hand. I assume there will be plenty of interesting/novel problems no matter the tooling because, fundamentally, software is about solving such problems.

Software engineering as an occupation grew because of static analysis and GCs (literally why the labor market is the size that it is as we speak); the opposite appears to be the outcome of AI advances.

The same happened with accountants and spreadsheet software, the number of accounting jobs grew. The actual work they performed became different. I think a similar thing is likely to happen in the software world.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#126

Post by xandrius »

sanity wrote: post #119
warbled_tongue wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This resonates strongly with me. I don't want to describe the painting, I want to paint it. If this is indeed where we end up, I don't know that I'll change professions (I'm 30+ years into it), but the joy will be gone. It will truly become "just a job".

I remember back in the 80s I had friends who enjoyed coding in assembly and felt that using higher-level languages was "cheating" - isn't this just a continuation of that?

Great point.

I think this will weed out the people doing tech purely for the sake of tech and will bring more creative minds who see the technology as a tool to achieve a goal.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#127

Post by imbnwa »

Towaway69 wrote: post #120
JohnFen wrote: post #83

> In summary, I believe there would still be a market for Software Developers in the foreseeable future, though the nature of work will change This is precisely what I dread. When it comes to software development specifically, the parts that the AI cheerleaders are excited about AI doing are exactly the parts of the job that I find appealing. If I wanted to be a glorified systems integrator, I would have been doing t…

Being a developer, I heartily agree with you. Being a human, I realise that I as a developer have put a lot of people out of a job. Those folks have had to adapt to that change. I guess now it's our time to adapt to change. At least it keeps me on my feet!

The catch is that those people could, barring the AI advances we seem to be seeing, could retrain for an SWE labor market that lagged demand; that wont even be possible for devs put out of work in the future.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#128

Post by xandrius »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #12
IggleSniggle wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, you could make similar arguments for the typewriter, the printing press, or the wheel.

Nope, there is a fundamental difference that people who point out this analogy ALWAYS fail to acknowledge: AI is a mechanism to replace people at work that is largely considered creative. Yes, AI may not be truly creative, but it does replace people doing jobs, and those people feel they are doing something creative. The typewriter, the printing press, the wheel, never did anything of the sort. And, you're also ignor…

This feels like people getting spooked by autocomplete in editors.

We're pretty far from AI being able to properly, efficiently and effectively develop a full system that I believe before that will take my job, I'd probably be retired or something. If my feeling is wrong, I'm still sure some form of developer will be needed, even just to keep the AI running

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#129

Post by Oioioioiio »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #100
JohnFen wrote: post #83

> In summary, I believe there would still be a market for Software Developers in the foreseeable future, though the nature of work will change This is precisely what I dread. When it comes to software development specifically, the parts that the AI cheerleaders are excited about AI doing are exactly the parts of the job that I find appealing. If I wanted to be a glorified systems integrator, I would have been doing t…

Call me a cynic (many have, especially on this topic) but I can't help but think that the majority of what AI will "successfully" replace in terms of craftsmanship is going to be stuff that would've never been produced the "correct" way if you will. It's going to be code created for and to suit the interests of the business major class. Just like AI art isn't really suitable for anything above hobby fun stuff like ge…

The question is not about what AI can do today but what we assume AI will be able to do tomorrow.

All of what you wrote in your second paragraph will become something AI will be doing better and faster than you.

We never had technology which can write code like this. I prompted ChatGPT to write a very basic java tool which renders an image from an url and makes it bigger on a click. It just did it.

Its not hard to think further and a lot of technology is already going into this direction. Alone last week devin was showne. Gemini has a window token of 1 Million tokens. Groq shows us how it will feel to have instant response.

Right now its already good enough that people with Copilot like to keep it when asked. We already now pay billions for AI daily. This means the amount of research, business motivation and money flowing into it now is probably staggering in comparision to what moved this field a few years ago.

Its not clear at all how fast we will progress but i'm pretty sure, we will hit a time were every junior is worse than AI which will force people of rethinking what they are going to do. Do i hire an junior and train him/her? Or do i prefer to invest more into AI? The gap will widen and widen, a generation or a certain amount of people will stay longer and might be able to stay in development but a lot of others might just not.

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