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Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

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Re: Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

#51

Post by webprofusion »

webprofusion wrote: post #48

I think currently once you get into the weeds of a project the AI can only really lend a helping hand, rather than do 30-50% of the work. It can kickstart new projects to get over the blank page syndrome but after that there's still work, either prompting or fixing it yourself. There are requirements-led approaches where you can try to stay in prompt mode as much as possible (like feeding spec to a junior dev) but th…

Where it really does open your eyes is when dealing with stuff you just wouldn't have done otherwise: - Can't remember the name of that web tool you used to base64 decode locally, just ask for one. - Would love to have a quick tool that does X: done. - Wouldn't know where to start building a C++ VST plugin for audio processing: done - Point it an a protocol RFC and get it to generate an API implementation stub: done (that one went from "maybe one day", to "shipped" simply because the initial donkey work got done by AI.

Re: Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

#52

Post by ai_assisted_dev »

I have been in software for 20 years, and was just about to quit 2-3 years ago because of how mundane things became. And now I am actually loving it again because of AI. I'd say, AI writes 95% of my code, and I use it for 75% of the decisions during working on a project.

I am under MUCH more pressure to deliver more in shorter periods of time, with just me involved in several layers of decision making, rather than having a whole team. Which may sound scary, but it pays the bills. At one company I contract with, I now have 2 PMs; where I am the only dev on a production app with users, shipping new features every few days (rather than weeks).

It feels more like performance art, than it even feels like software development at this point. I am still waiting for some of my features to come crashing prod down in fantastic fashion, being paged at 3am in the morning; debugging for 12 hours straight because AI has built such a gigantic footgun for me.... but it has yet to happen. If anything I am doing less work than before - being paid a little more, and the companies working with me have built a true dependency on my skills to both ship, maintain and implement stuff.

Re: Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

#53

Post by fcatalan »

My org is always a decade behind, so I'm still just ignoring the official push for whatever Oracle low code crap is called.

Hiring is as haphazard and inadequate as it has been in the last 25 years, no change there.

AI usage is personal, widespread and on a don't ask don't tell basis.

I use it a lot to:

- Write bullshit reports that no one ever reads.

- Generate minimal documentation for decade old projects that had none.

- Small, low stakes, low complexity improvements, like when having to update this page that was ugly when someone created it in 1999, I'll plop it on aistudio to give it a basic bootstrap treatment.

- Simple automation that wasn't worth it before: Write me a bash script that does this thing that only comes up twice a year but I always hate.

- A couple times I have tried to come up with more complex greenfield stuff to do things that are needed but management doesn't ever acknowledge, but it always falls apart and starts needing actual work.

Morale is quite crappy, as ever, but since some of the above feels like secretly sticking it to The Man, there are these beautiful moments.

For example when the LLM almost nails your bimonthly performance self report from your chat history, and it takes 10 minutes instead of 2 hours, so you get to quietly look out of the window for a long while, feeling relaxed and smug about pocketing some of the gains from this awesome performance improvement.

Re: Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

#54

Post by dreckneck »

In the practical sense, not much of my work actually changed and my company seems to be hiring the same as before.

In the psychological sense, I'm actually devastated. I'm honestly struggling to be motivated to learn/create new things. I'm always overthinking stuff like:

- "Why would I learn mobile app dev if in the near future there will be an AI making better UIs than me?" - "Why would I write a development blog?" - "Why would I publish an open-source library on GitHub? So that OpenAI can train its LLM on it?" - "Why would I even bother?"

And then, my motivation sharply drops to zero. What I've been up to lately is playing with non-tech related hobbies and considering switching careers...

Re: Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

#55

Post by bluefirebrand »

beambot wrote: post #42
chrisco255 wrote: post #9

AI does 0% of my work and we are actively hiring. As someone mentioned on another AI thread, if AI is so good why aren't people just doing 15 PRs a day on open source projects like Node.js, React, Kubernetes, Linux, Ansible, etc? AI is sometimes a productivity booster for a dev, sometimes not. And it's unpredictable when it will and won't be. It's not great at giving you confidence signals when you should be skeptica…

You don't use any AI - drafting documentation, write boilerplate code, transcribing meetings, simplifying team communications, searching product documentation, alternative to Google or StackOverflow, creating presentations, as a brainstorming partner? I would consider all of these "work". If you say AI does 0% of your work, I'd say you're either a genius, behind the curve or being disingenuous.

> If you say AI does 0% of your work, I'd say you're either a genius, behind the curve or being disingenuous

AI was doing 0% of my work 10 years ago too, why should I be any less effective without it now?

You think I'm behind the curve because I'm not buying into the AI craze?

Ok. What's so important about being on the curve anyways, exactly? My boss won't pay me a single cent more for using AI, so why should I care?

Re: Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

#56

Post by bluefirebrand »

dbetteridge wrote: post #4

Tired. Mostly of having to try and explain to people why having an AI reduce software development workload by 30-50% doesn't reduce headcount or time taken similarly. Turns out, lots of time is still sunk in talking about the features with PM's, stakeholders, customers etc. Reducing the amount of time a dev NEEDS to spend doing boilerplate means they have more time to do the things that previously got ignored in a ti…

> having to try and explain to people why having an AI reduce software development workload by 30-50%

I'm tired of having to try and explain that AI isn't remotely reducing my workload by 30-50%, and in fact it often probably slows me down because the stupid AI autocomplete gets in the way with incorrect suggestions and prevents me from getting into any kind of flow

Re: Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

#57

Post by bluefirebrand »

o11c wrote: post #19

I'm just waiting for the hype-cycle to end. AI might revolutionize some industry (probably natural-language-adjacent), but not ours. COBOL has already been attempted, and far more competently (and with less energy cost). If people can seriously have an AI do 50% of their work, that's usually a confession that they weren't actually doing real work in the first place. Or, at least , they lacked the basic competence wit…

> If people can seriously have an AI do 50% of their work, that's usually a confession that they weren't actually doing real work in the first place. Or, at least, they lacked the basic competence with tools that that any university sophomore should have.

Strongly agree here. I am extremely skeptical of anyone reporting this kind of productivity gain.

Re: Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

#58

Post by bluefirebrand »

mirekrusin wrote: post #49
kazinator wrote: post #5

I feel like I suddenly have a superpower. I'm wearing glasses that tell me who all the fucking assholes and impostors are.

Do you mind elaborating on how? It's hard to say if it's sarcasm or you're referring to some genuinely interesting insight.

My insight is if you think AI is giving you a 50% performance boost, you're either an imposter or a paid shill

Re: Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

#59

Post by englishrookie »

ai_assisted_dev wrote: post #52

I have been in software for 20 years, and was just about to quit 2-3 years ago because of how mundane things became. And now I am actually loving it again because of AI. I'd say, AI writes 95% of my code, and I use it for 75% of the decisions during working on a project. I am under MUCH more pressure to deliver more in shorter periods of time, with just me involved in several layers of decision making, rather than ha…

Would you mind sharing your setup (LLM model, IDE, best practices)? Personally, I'm struggling to get value out of Continue.dev in VSCode (using Gemini 2.0 Flash by default, with the option to switch to more advanced models). I still revert to pasting code into ChatGPT chat window (using the website), frequently.

Are you using agentic features, given that you have not just one but two PMs?

Re: Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?

#60

Post by sublinear »

beambot wrote: post #42
chrisco255 wrote: post #9

AI does 0% of my work and we are actively hiring. As someone mentioned on another AI thread, if AI is so good why aren't people just doing 15 PRs a day on open source projects like Node.js, React, Kubernetes, Linux, Ansible, etc? AI is sometimes a productivity booster for a dev, sometimes not. And it's unpredictable when it will and won't be. It's not great at giving you confidence signals when you should be skeptica…

You don't use any AI - drafting documentation, write boilerplate code, transcribing meetings, simplifying team communications, searching product documentation, alternative to Google or StackOverflow, creating presentations, as a brainstorming partner? I would consider all of these "work". If you say AI does 0% of your work, I'd say you're either a genius, behind the curve or being disingenuous.

Are you saying everyone who isn't barely starting their career is a genius? In the current state of things I'd gladly take mediocre work from a human over slop from an AI.
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