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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?

#161

Post by thisisit »

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.

Is that so hard to believe? My work uses proprietary language. Something like ABAP for SAP [1]. AI has ingested lot of documentation available on the internet. But it cannot tell the difference between versions. So, AI code often has correct but deprecated functions.

And don't get me started on the "time savings" for boiler plate documentation. It messes up every time.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABAP

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

#162

Post by bakuninsbart »

ath3nd wrote: post #119
revskill wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's just logical, LLM is a useful tool, those experienced are just code monkeys that whey they got stuck.

> No, it's just logical, LLM is a useful tool How open are you to the possibility that it's the other way around? Because the study suggests that it's actually junior code monkeys that benefit from LLMs, and experienced software engineers don't instead get a decline of their productivity. At least that's what the only available study so far shows. That's corroborated with my experience mentoring juniors, the more the…

I think you are making a couple of very good points getting bogged down in the wrong framework of discussion. Let me rephrase what I think you are saying:

Once you are very comfortable in a domain, it is detrimental to have to wrangle a junior dev with low IQ, way too much confidence but encyclopediac knowledge of everything instead of just doing it yourself.

The dichotomy of Junior vs. Senior is a bit misleading here, every junior is uncomfortable in the domain they are working in, but a Senior probably isn't comfortable in all domains. For example, many people with 10+ SE experience I know aren't very good with databases and data engineering, which is becoming an increasingly large part of the job. For someone who has worked 10+ years on Java Backends, now attempting to write Pythin data pipelines, Coding Agents might be a useful tool to gap that bridge.

The other thing is creation vs. critique. I often let my code, writing and planning be rewiewed by Claude or Gemini, because once I have created something, I know it very well, and I can very quickly go through 20 points of criticism/recommendations/tips and pick out the relevant ones. - And honestly, that has been super helpful. Using it that way around, Claude has caught a number of bugs, taught me some new tricks and made me aware of some interesting tech.

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

#163

Post by cafebeen »

dns_snek wrote: post #93
lazystar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and the LLM probably responded with "You're absolutely right!" to every idea they asked about.

That's one of the things I find most interesting when it comes to LLMs, a depressingly large proportion of the population seems to enjoy interacting with a deranged sycophant who treats all of their ideas and comments as a stroke of genius. Every time I read a response like "[you're right] [you're smart] [more than others]" to the most obvious observation it makes me squirm with discomfort. Especially when I just poi…

Yes, this feature might be a prime driver of user engagement and retention, and it could even emerge "naturally" if those criteria are included for optimization in RLHF. In the same way that the infinite scrolling feed works in social media, the deranged sycophant might be the addictive hook for chatbots.

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

#164

Post by ponector »

xtracto wrote: post #147
ponector wrote: post #102

Hiring is slower, salaries for open positions are down as well. But the reason is more offshoring to cheaper locations than AI. As of AI, I've been asked to test a partial rewrite of the current UI to the new components. For a few weeks I've been logging 10+ bugs a day. The only explanation I have, they use AI tool to produce nicely looking code which does not work properly in a complex app.

Just a comment: One of the reasons why offshoring is increasing and will likely increase in the following year, is because CXOs are being sold that a cheap Mexican, Tico, or Indian using AI can be as performant as a local.(also Language barriers are decreasing also due to AI) I'm Mexican (in Mexico) and I've seen this firsthand. There may be some truth to it, but soon enough these new companies will find out what sev…

The next stage of offshoring: companies offshored to Eastern Europe are now offshoring to India due to substantial rise of salaries and costs in EE.

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

#165

Post by gmerc »

Ya, you know, I think when the CSO finally is let out of the broom closet where they got locked for voicing concerns about AI adoption, we're going to see a hell of a reckoning. Prompt injection into code agents is murderous, especially since it can be persisted.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/georgzoeller_how-stupidly-eas...

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

#166

Post by chrisco255 »

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.

LLM does 0% of my work, don't know what to tell you. LLMs are like 3 years old, I learned to do everything I know without LLMs, how is that hard to believe? How do you think all the software you use everyday, including this site itself, was written? 99.99% of it without any LLMs at all.

Do I use LLMs as an alternative to Googling? Absolutely. That doesn't mean AI is doing my job. Google and Stack Overflow also do 0% of my job. It's great as a reference tool. But if you're going to be that pedantic, we've got to count any help I receive from any human or tool as doing some % of my job. Do I count the open source software I build on? Do I count Slack as doing some % of my job since I don't have to go into the office and interface with everyone face-to-face? Does Ford get some of the credit for building the vehicle that gets me to the office?

Have I used a meeting transcription tool? Occasionally, yeah. That doesn't mean it does any part of my work. My job was never to transcribe meetings. Do I use it to brainstorm? No, I've found it's fairly useless for that. Do I use it to create presentations? No, I just write my slides the old fashioned way.

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

#167

Post by projectazorian »

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…

> 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?

Because those projects are mature and have a very high bar for contributions, so aren't a good fit for AI?

Opening a PR on Linux is very different from opening a PR on a company's non-critical-path CRUD service.

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

#168

Post by sublinear »

revskill wrote: post #121
ath3nd wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, it's just logical, LLM is a useful tool How open are you to the possibility that it's the other way around? Because the study suggests that it's actually junior code monkeys that benefit from LLMs, and experienced software engineers don't instead get a decline of their productivity. At least that's what the only available study so far shows. That's corroborated with my experience mentoring juniors, the more the…

Those "experienced" actually are just senior code monkeys if u ask me, it's trivial right ? I don't assume the reason why, but it's just illogical for a junior to get benefits and the seniors don't. The wrong ones here is the "experienced". I know how to use the AI tools for my purpose (that's why i use them), and of course, to make the impossible possible. Even if i failed to do so, it's not the decrease in producti…

You're gonna need to define "code monkey".

My understanding is that a code monkey just does what they're told. All the planning and behind the scenes negotiations that the senior devs and management do is completely opaque to them.

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

#170

Post by austin-cheney »

We are not allowed to use AI where I work but even if we were it wouldn’t be very helpful.

My guess is that people who find the most benefit from AI are the people who have the most questions to ask, which aren’t the most productive developers either way.

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