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Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

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Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#351

Post by boxed »

simonw wrote: post #36
boxed wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

That's rather missing the point. If your question makes no sense it will not ask a followup, it will spit out garbage. This is pretty bad. If you are competent enough to ask it to ask for followup then you are probably already competent enough to either not need the tool, or competent enough to ask a good question.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#352

Post by Aerbil313 »

goatlover wrote: post #342
jimbokun wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't believe that's going to happen. If it were, humans would have stopped playing chess. But not only do lots of people still play chess, people making a living playing chess. There are YT channels devoted to chess. The same thing will be true of almost all sports, lots of entertainment, and lots of occupations where people prefer human interaction. Bar tenders and servers could be automated away, but plenty like…

Chess is not something you make new discoveries in anymore, not something that results in a product that people pay for. Poor analogy.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#353

Post by diego_sandoval »

rented_mule wrote: post #153
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…

I'm not sure that there is an endpoint, only a continuation of the transitions we've always been making. What we've seen as we transitioned to higher and higher level languages (e.g., machine code → macro assembly → C → Java → Python) on unimaginably more powerful machines (and clusters of machines) is that we took on more complex applications and got much more work done faster. The complexity we manage shifts from t…

> machine code → macro assembly → C → Java → Python

The increase in productivity, we can all agree on, but a non-negligible portion of HN users would say that each one of those new languages made programming progressively less fun.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#354

Post by diego_sandoval »

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.

Yeah, but those were boring jobs. Programming is fun.

I'm only half joking.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#355

Post by flohofwoe »

diego_sandoval wrote: post #353
rented_mule wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that there is an endpoint, only a continuation of the transitions we've always been making. What we've seen as we transitioned to higher and higher level languages (e.g., machine code → macro assembly → C → Java → Python) on unimaginably more powerful machines (and clusters of machines) is that we took on more complex applications and got much more work done faster. The complexity we manage shifts from t…

> machine code → macro assembly → C → Java → Python The increase in productivity, we can all agree on, but a non-negligible portion of HN users would say that each one of those new languages made programming progressively less fun.

I think where people will disagree is how much productivity those steps brought.

For instance I think the step from machine code to macro assembler is bigger than the step from a macro assembler to C (although still substantial), but the step from C to anything higher level is essentially negligible compared to the massive jump from machine code to a 'low level high level' language like C.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#356

Post by quonn »

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!

> I realise that I as a developer have put a lot of people out of a job.

For most developers this will not be true. Most apps, websites, compilers, desktop software etc. will not have put anyone out of a job. I certainly never ever put someone out of a job. I made some peoples live easier, but their total working hours didn't shorten and they certainly did not change profession or were replaced. In fact the majority of tasks that my software was applied to would simply have been deemed impossible to do and not have been done and that would have been all there was to it.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#357

Post by guappa »

margorczynski wrote: post #86
guappa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there could never be a new provider or a new protocol because AI wouldn't be able to use them or create them. You can just make websites on pre-approved list.

> So there could never be a new provider or a new protocol because AI wouldn't be able to use them or create them On what do you base this? Is there some upper bound to the potential in AI reasoning that bounds it skill to creating anything more complex? I think it is on the contrary - it is humans who are bound by our biological and evolutionary hard limits, the machine is not.

Show me 2 AIs talking to each other and agreeing on a protocol and successfully both implementing it on their side in a way that it works then.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#358

Post by Oioioioiio »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #261
Oioioioiio wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> The question is not about what AI can do today but what we assume AI will be able to do tomorrow. And I think many assumptions on this front are products of magical thinking that are discarding limitations of LLMs in favor of waiting for the intelligence to emerge from the machine, which isn't going to happen. ChatGPT and associated tech is cool, but it is, at the end of the day, pattern recognition and reproductio…

Most of the time i'm not 'inventing' anything new too.

I get a requirement, find a solution and the solution is 99,99999% not a new algorithm. I actually believe i never invented a new algorithm.

Besides the next step is reasoning in GPT-5 and devin shows that GPTs/LLMs can start breaking down tasks.

I don't mind being wrong tbh, there is no risk in it for me if AI will not take my job but i don't believe it. I do believve the progress will be better and better and AI will do more and more reasoning.

It can easily try and do things 1000x fater than us, including reasoning. Its not hard to see that it will also be able to create its own examples and learn from them.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#359

Post by Oioioioiio »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #257
dartos wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's worth noting, that it can do things like that because of the large amount of "how to do simple things in java" tutorials there are on the internet. Ask an AI to _make_ java, and it won't (and will continue to not) be able t…

> It's worth noting, that it can do things like that because of the large amount of "how to do simple things in java" tutorials there are on the internet. Much like the same points made elsewhere with regard to AI art: It cannot invent. It can remix, recombine, etc. but no AI model we have now is anywhere close to where it could create something entirely new that's not been seen before.

I have not seen crabs made out of food before.

What level do you think 'invention' have to be to count as something AI can't do?

The only thing AI needs is a feedback loop and a benchmark/cost function.

If the cost function is page impressions, thats easy. If its running unit tests based from business requirements, thats easy too.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#360

Post by taco-hands »

Hoasi wrote: post #178
dartos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it’s definitely a weaker argument than 2 years ago. AI may very well plateau, but it might not.

Not really. Large language models' output is creative only insofar as you prompt them to mix data. It allows you to create combinations that nobody has seen before. On its own, an LLM is incapable of producing anything creative. Hallucinating due to a lack of data is the closer it comes to autonomous creativity. Happy accidents are an unreliable creativity source. This type of creativity is amusing but doesn't solve…

There's a simple irony in it all. AI's perceived value is based upon and built from human creativity - remove it (and its evolution) and it will end in grey/brown sludge.
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