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Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

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Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#141

Post by [deleted] »

estebank wrote: post #80
visarga wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION" — IBM slide from 1979.

[deleted]

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#142

Post by elicksaur »

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?

The difference is that your friend has a negative view of others than the OP is not presenting. They’re just stating their subjective enjoyment of an activity.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#143

Post by imbnwa »

glasss wrote: post #125
imbnwa wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tech has already learned there’s not enough real frontier left to reap the bounty of(removing zero interest rates that incentivize mere flow of capital). This stuff is being invested in to yield the most productivity at the least cost. There will either be a permanent net decrease in demand or, being so high level, most openings will pay no more than 60-70K in an America (likely with reduced benefits) where wages are already largely stagnant.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#144

Post by MisterTea »

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?

Boiler plate being eliminated by syntactic sugar or runtime is not the same thing. Sure that made diving in easier but it didn't abstract away the logic design part - the actual programming part. Now the AI spits out code for you without thinking about the logic.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#145

Post by brailsafe »

xandrius wrote: post #126
sanity wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, can't wait for the day when technical people can stop relishing in the moments of intimate problem solving between stamping out widgets, and instead spend all day constantly stamping out widgets while thinking about the incredible bullshit they'll be producing for pennies. Thanks boss!

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#146

Post by samatman »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #18
kovezd wrote: post #15

Folks see it wrong. Is not about human vs machine software development. Is about allocating the brightest humans to the most productive activities.

Keep in mind there are many more humans that aren't as bright. If there are fewer and fewer ways for them to contribute then they'll find other ways to get what they need.

A reasonable, albeit lossy, gloss on "bright" is "someone who earns their living through intellectual labor". Clearly there are mathematicians who become potato farmers, but what we don't see is movement in the other direction: call it sufficient but not necessary.

The corollary being that those people are already earning their bread doing things which an artificial intelligence can't replicate. I've seen many vast overestimates of how many of these jobs could even be replaced with a Jetsons robot, and we're nowhere close to deploying anything vaguely resembling one of those.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#147

Post by visarga »

samatman wrote: post #133
imbnwa wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll take the other side of that bet. It's reasonable to expect that sometime relatively soon, AI will be a clear-cut aid to developer productivity. At the moment, I consider it a wash. Chatbots don't clearly save me time, but they clearly save me effort, which is a more important resource to conserve. Software is still heavily rate-limited by how much of it developers can write. Making it possible for them to write…

> I've seen nothing from AI, either in production or on the horizon, that suggests that it will meaningfully lower the barrier to entry for practicing the profession, let alone enable non developers to do the work developers do.

Good observation. Come to think of it, all examples of AI coding require a competent human to hold the other end, or else it makes subtle errors.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#148

Post by imbnwa »

visarga wrote: post #147
samatman wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the other side of that bet. It's reasonable to expect that sometime relatively soon, AI will be a clear-cut aid to developer productivity. At the moment, I consider it a wash. Chatbots don't clearly save me time, but they clearly save me effort, which is a more important resource to conserve. Software is still heavily rate-limited by how much of it developers can write. Making it possible for them to write…

> I've seen nothing from AI, either in production or on the horizon, that suggests that it will meaningfully lower the barrier to entry for practicing the profession, let alone enable non developers to do the work developers do. Good observation. Come to think of it, all examples of AI coding require a competent human to hold the other end, or else it makes subtle errors.

How many humans do you need per project though? The number can only lower as AI tooling improves. And will employers pay the same rates when they’re already paying a sub for their AI tools and the work involved is so much more high level?

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#149

Post by sorokod »

The highest level would be like delegating part of your project or the entire project to a developer. These “AI coders” would take in the requirements, write the code, fix errors and deploy the final product to production.

About the "write the code" part - what code is that? Machine code, Assembly, JS? Who creates the languages, compilers, interpreters and the plethora of tools required to operate these and deploy to production?

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#150

Post by cokeandpepsi »

Oioioioiio wrote: post #140
dt3ft wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have you seen devin the ai developer demo? Business already doesn't know what security is, they will jump head first into everything which allows them to get rid of those weird developer dudes which they have to cater to and give a lot of money. I personally would also assume that there might be a new programming language AI will invent. Something faster, more optimized for AI.

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