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Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

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Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#221

Post by bawolff »

margalabargala wrote: post #190
dingnuts wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs are useful for coding now *sort of, sometimes, with simple enough problems with sufficiently little context, for code that can be easily tested, and for which sufficient examples exist in the training data. I mean hey, two years after being promised AGI was literally here, LLMs are almost as useful as traditional static analysis tools! I guess you could have them generate comments for you based on the code as…

Firstly, GPT-2 was released in 2019. Five years is not "almost ten years". Secondly, LLMs are objectively useful for coding now. That's not the same thing as saying they are replacements for SWEs. They're a tool, like syntax highlighting or real-time compiler error visibility or even context-aware keyword autocompletion. Some individuals don't find those things useful, and prefer to develop in a plain text editor tha…

> are broadly useful in the sense that they generally improve productivity across the industry. They already right now save enormous amounts of developer time,

But is that actually a true statement. Are there actual studies to back that up?

AI is hyped to the moon right now. It is really difficult to separate the hype from reality. There are ancedotal reports of ai helping with coding, but there are also ancedotal reports that they get things almost right but not quite, which often leads to bugs which wouldn't otherwise happen. I think its unclear if that is a net win for productivity in software engineering. It would be interesting if there was a robust study about it.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#222

Post by layer8 »

TZubiri wrote: post #142
simianparrot wrote: post #80

Nothing because I’m a senior and LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test, and it remains a waste of time. I have a job at a place I love and get more people in my direct network and extended contacting me about work than ever before in my 20 year career. And finally I keep myself sharp by always making sure I challenge myself creatively. I’m not afraid to delve into areas to understand them that might look “…

"Nothing because I’m a senior and LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test, and it remains a waste of time" That's why the question is future proof. Models get better with time, not worse.

Models don’t get better just by time passing. The specific reasons for why they’ve been getting better don’t necessarily look like they’ll extend indefinitely into the future.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#223

Post by jonahbenton »

I think in principle LLMs are no different from other lowercase-a abstractions that have substantially boosted productivity while lowering cost, from compilers to languages to libraries to protocols to widespread capabilities like payments and cloud services and edge compute and more and more. There is so much more software that can be written, and may be rewritten, abstract machines that can be built and rebuilt, across domains of hardware and software, that become enabled by this new intelligence-as-a-service capability.

I think juniors are a significant audience for LLM code production because they provide tremendous leverage for making new things. For more experienced folk, there are lots of choices that resemble prior waves of adoption of new state of the art tools/techniques. And as it always goes, adoption of those in legacy environments is going to go more slowly, while disruption of legacy products and services that have a cost profile may occur more frequently as new economics for building and then operating something intelligent start to appear.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#224

Post by simianparrot »

jcranmer wrote: post #193
rybosworld wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing because I’m a senior and LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test, and it remains a waste of time. I am constantly surprised how prevalent this attitude is. ChatGPT was only just released in 2022. Is there some expectation that these things won't improve? > LLM’s never provide code that pass my sniff test This is ego speaking.

This is at least the third time in my life that we've seen a loudly-heralded purported the-end-of-programming technology. The previous two times both ended up being damp squibs that barely mention footnotes in the history of computing. Why do we expect that LLMs are going to buck this trend? It's not for accuracy--the previous attempts, when demonstrating their proof-of-concepts, actually reliably worked, whereas wit…

I do seem to vaguely remember a time when there was a fair amount of noise proclaiming "visual programming is making dedicated programmers obsolete." I think the implication was that now everybody's boss could just make the software themselves or something.

LLM's as a product feel practically similar, because _even if_ they could write code that worked in large enough quantities to constitute any decently complex application, the person telling them what problem to solve has to understand the problem space since the LLM's can't reason.

Given that neither of those things are true, it's not much different from visual programming tools, practically speaking.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#227

Post by gspencley »

throwaway_43793 wrote: post #214
gspencley wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your customers don't care how your code smells, as long as it solves their problem and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Software is interesting because if you buy a refrigerator, even an inexpensive one, you have certain expectations as to its basic functions. If the compressor were to cut out periodically in unexpected ways, affecting your food safety, you would return it. But in software customers seem to be condit…

Code quality does not affect final product quality IMHO. I worked in companies with terrible code, that deployed on an over-engineered cloud provider using custom containers hacked with a nail and a screwdriver, but the product was excellent. Had bugs here and there, but worked and delivered what needs to be delivered. SWEs need to realize that code doesn't really matter. For 70 years we are debating the best archite…

> Code quality does not affect final product quality IMHO.

What we need, admittedly, is more research and study around this. I know of one study which supports my position, but I'm happy to admit that the data is sparse.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.04374

From the abstract:

"By analyzing activity in 30,737 files, we find that low quality code contains 15 times more defects than high quality code."

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#228

Post by extr »

throwaway_43793 wrote: post #49
indigoabstract wrote: post #35

I remember John Carmack talking about this last year. Seems like it's still pretty good advice more than a year later: "From a DM, just in case anyone else needs to hear this." https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1637087219591659520

It's a good advice indeed. But there is a slight problem with it. Young people can learn and fight for their place in the workforce, but what is left for older people like myself? I'm in this industry already, I might have missed the train of "learn to talk with people" and been sold on the "coding is a means to an end" koolaid. My employability is already damaged due to my age and experience. What is left for people…

?? Not sure what you mean. Carmack's advice is not specific to any particular point in your career. You can enact the principle he's talking about just as much with 30 YOE as you can with 2. It's actually easier advice to follow for older people than younger, since they have seen more of the world and probably have a better sense of where the "rough edges" are. Despite what you see on twitter and HN and YC batches, most successful companies are started by people in their 40s.

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#229

Post by bdangubic »

margalabargala wrote: post #190
dingnuts wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs are useful for coding now *sort of, sometimes, with simple enough problems with sufficiently little context, for code that can be easily tested, and for which sufficient examples exist in the training data. I mean hey, two years after being promised AGI was literally here, LLMs are almost as useful as traditional static analysis tools! I guess you could have them generate comments for you based on the code as…

Firstly, GPT-2 was released in 2019. Five years is not "almost ten years". Secondly, LLMs are objectively useful for coding now. That's not the same thing as saying they are replacements for SWEs. They're a tool, like syntax highlighting or real-time compiler error visibility or even context-aware keyword autocompletion. Some individuals don't find those things useful, and prefer to develop in a plain text editor tha…

exactly. many SWEs currently are fighting this fight of “oh it is not good enough bla bla…” on my team currently (50-ish people) you would not last longer than 3 months if you tried to do your work “manually” like we did before. several have tried, no longer around. I believe SWEs fighting LLMs are doing themselves a huge disservice in that they should be full-on embracing it and trying to figure out how to more effectively use them. just like any other tool, it is as good as the user of the tool :)

Re: Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?

#230

Post by cdfuller »

pockmarked19 wrote: post #192

I see this sort of take from a lot of people and I always tell them to do the same exercise. A cure for baseless fears. Pick an LLM. Any LLM. Ask it what the goat river crossing puzzle is. With luck, it will tell you about the puzzle involving a boatman, a goat, some vegetable, and some predator. If it doesn’t, it’s disqualified. Now ask it to do the same puzzle but with two goats and a cabbage (or whatever vegetable…

o1 had no issues solving this.

https://chatgpt.com/share/67609bca-dd08-8004-ba27-0f010afc12...

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