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Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

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Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#331

Post by nonethewiser »

jgwil2 wrote: post #324
nonethewiser wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think it’s basically the same. Its further on the same continuum of: Natural language/Machine code.

I don't really think it's a continuum. There is a continuum of abstraction among programming languages, from machine code to Java/Python/Haskell or whatever, but natural language is fundamentally different: it's ambiguous, ill-defined. Even if LLMs generate a lot of our code in the future, somebody is going to have to understand it, verify its correctness, and maintain it.

Natural language, python, c, assembly

The distance isn’t the same between them, but each one is more abstracted than the next.

Natural language can be ambiguous and ill defined. Because the compiler is smarter. Just like you don’t have to manage memory in Python, except it abstracts a lot more.

The fact is that this very instant you can compile from natural language.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#332

Post by xnx »

bugbuddy wrote: post #328
xnx wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without robotics, many jobs like nursing (or construction) that require training will be able to be accomplished with much less training + a live computer coach that can give context-specific directions.

This is how we get to Idiocracy. Everyone is now relying on AI and become stupid because of it.

Definitely a risk. There's also an upside to having a 1-on-1 tutor with limitless patience and knowledge.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#333

Post by xandrius »

brailsafe wrote: post #145
xandrius wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It feels that people commenting on this post are forgetting that tools have evolved since the times of punch cards or writing only in pure assembly.

I personally wouldn't have enjoyed being that kind of programmer as it was a tedious and very slow process, where the creativity of the developer was rather low as the complexities of development would not allow for just anyone to be part of it (my own assumption).

Today we have IDEs, autocomplete, quick visual feedback (inspectors, advanced debuggers, etc.) which allow people who enjoy creating and seeing the results of their work as opposed to purely be typing code for someone else.

So, I don't get why people jump straight to thinking that adding yet another efficiency tool would destroy everything. To me it seems to make developing simpler applications something which doesn't require a computer science degree, that's all.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#334

Post by jimbokun »

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…

It’s interesting how all of these articles implicitly assume AI keeps getting more intelligent then at some point just…stops.

There’s no reason to think AI won’t also take over all the parts you don’t find appealing, too. The whole point of the Singularity, is that no aspect of human work cannot be performed better by superhumanly intelligent machines.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#335

Post by jimbokun »

vczf wrote: post #170
falcor84 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it. We gradually remove technical constraints and move to a higher level of abstraction, much closer to the level of the user and the business rather than the individual machine. But what's the endpoint of this? There will probably always be a need for expert-level troubleshooters and optimizers who understand all the layers, but for the rest of us, I'm wondering if the job would…

The endpoint is that being a programmer becomes as obsolete as being a human "calculator" for a career. Millions, perhaps billions of times more lines of code will be written, and automated programming will be taken for granted as just how computers work. Painstakingly writing static source code will be seen the same way as we see doing hundreds of pages of tedious calculations using paper, pencil, and a slide rule.…

It will equally eliminate the need for all scientists and engineers. And every other human occupation.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#336

Post by jimbokun »

nradov wrote: post #270
vczf wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be underestimating the potential of an automated evolutionary programming system at discovering novel and surprising ways to do computation—ways that no human would ever invent. Humans may have a better distribution of entropy generation (i.e. life experience as an embodied human being), but compared to the rate at which a computer can iterate, I don't think that advantage will be maintained. (Humans will s…

Perhaps, but evolutionary results are difficult to test. They tend to fail in bizarre, unpredictable ways in production. That may be good enough for some use cases but I think it will never be very applicable to mission critical or safety critical domains. Of course, code written by human programmers on the lower end of the skill spectrum sometimes has similar problems...

I mean, I don’t even like programming with Spring because what all of those annotations are doing is horribly opaque. Let alone mountains of AI generated code doing God knows what.

I mean Ken Thompson put a back door into the C compiler no one ever found. Can you imagine what an AI could be capable of?

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#337

Post by jimbokun »

tejohnso wrote: post #152
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?

Seems so. Those friends did have to contend with the enjoyable part of their job disappearing. Whether they called it cheating or not is doesn't diminish their loss.

They could move into compilers or VMs or low level performance profiling, where those skills are still very important.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#338

Post by jimbokun »

nonethewiser wrote: post #331
jgwil2 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think it's a continuum. There is a continuum of abstraction among programming languages, from machine code to Java/Python/Haskell or whatever, but natural language is fundamentally different: it's ambiguous, ill-defined. Even if LLMs generate a lot of our code in the future, somebody is going to have to understand it, verify its correctness, and maintain it.

Natural language, python, c, assembly The distance isn’t the same between them, but each one is more abstracted than the next. Natural language can be ambiguous and ill defined. Because the compiler is smarter. Just like you don’t have to manage memory in Python, except it abstracts a lot more. The fact is that this very instant you can compile from natural language.

There is a vast gulf between natural language and the other 3, which are fundamentally very similar to each other.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#339

Post by jimbokun »

xandrius wrote: post #333
brailsafe wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It feels that people commenting on this post are forgetting that tools have evolved since the times of punch cards or writing only in pure assembly. I personally wouldn't have enjoyed being that kind of programmer as it was a tedious and very slow process, where the creativity of the developer was rather low as the complexities of development would not allow for just anyone to be part of it (my own assumption). Today…

That’s like saying Shakespeare couldn’t be productive as a writer because he didn’t have a word processor.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#340

Post by jimbokun »

the_arun wrote: post #297
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".

Agreed. But isn't this what is happening over a period for all manual jobs? I mean people used to carve wood. Now, machines do that with more precision & speed. The same goes for laying roads, construction & other professions. All niche jobs will become mundane chores. I don't know if it is good or bad. Because humans always find a way to cultivate something new.

Only until machines are better at everything humans can do.
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