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Is it a bubble?

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Re: Is it a bubble?

#151

Post by browningstreet »

its_ethan wrote: post #145
sp4cec0wb0y wrote: post #7

> In many advanced software teams, developers no longer write the code; they type in what they want, and AI systems generate the code for them. What a wild and speculative claim. Is there any source for this information?

Is it not sort of implied by the stats later: "Revenues from Claude Code, a program for coding that Anthropic introduced earlier this year, already are said to be running at an annual rate of $1 billion. Revenues for the other leader, Cursor, were $1 million in 2023 and $100 million in 2024, and they, too, are expected to reach $1 billion this year." Surely that revenue is coming from people using the services to gen…

Generating code isn’t the same as running it, running it on production, and living with it over time.

In time I’m sure it will, but it’s still early days, land grab time.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#152

Post by 9rx »

mxschumacher wrote: post #150
9rx wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bubbles occur when undue attention is directed towards something. When people are asking "are we in a bubble", there is no question that we are in a bubble. Nobody pays attention to things aligned to the fundamentals. That doesn't mean there will be a crash, though. Not all bubbles pop.

what are some historical examples of bubbles that didn't pop?

Since this is HN, I'll go with the most obvious: Software development. Unsustainable, speculative growth through the COVID-19 period, but on the other side relatively slow decline.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#153

Post by xnx »

zparky wrote: post #70
stack_framer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's kind of the first time in my life that I've been actively hoping for a technology to out right not deliver on its promise. Same here, and I think it's because I feel like a craftsman. I thoroughly enjoy the process of thinking deeply about what I will build, breaking down the work into related chunks, and of course writing the code itself. It's like magic when it all comes together. Sometimes I can't even beli…

It's been blowing my mind reading HN the past year or so and seeing so many comments from programmers that are excited to not have to write code. It's depressing.

Some carpenters like to make cabinets. Some just like to hammer nails.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#154

Post by zahlman »

9rx wrote: post #147
whoknowsidont wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. And if your team is doing this you're not "advanced." Lots of people are outing themselves these days about the complexity of their jobs, or lack thereof. Which is great! But it's not a +1 for AI, it's a -1 for them.

It's true for me. I type in what I want and then the AI system (compiler) generates the code. Doesn't everyone work that way?

Describing a compiler as "AI" is certainly a take.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#155

Post by Esophagus4 »

johnfn wrote: post #86
n8cpdx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you do 5-10 years of work in the year after you adopted AI? If you started after AI came in to existence 3 years ago (/s) you should have achieved 30 years of work output - a whole career of work.

I think AI only "got good" around the release of Claude Code + Opus 4.0, which was around March of this year. And it's not like I sit down and code 8 hours a day 5 days a week. I put on my pants one leg at a time -- there's a lot of other inefficiencies in the process, like meetings, alignment, etc, etc. But yes, I do think that the efficiency gain, purely in the domain of coding, is around 5x, which is why I was abl…

I'm not sure why, but it seems like your comment really brought out the ire in a few commenters here to discredit your experience.

Is it ego? Defensiveness? AI anxiety? A need to be the HN contrarian against a highly visible technology innovation?

I don't think I understand... I haven't seen the opposite view (AI wastes a ton of time) get hammered like that.

At the very least, it certainly makes for an acidic comments section.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#156

Post by DevDesmond »

zparky wrote: post #70
stack_framer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's kind of the first time in my life that I've been actively hoping for a technology to out right not deliver on its promise. Same here, and I think it's because I feel like a craftsman. I thoroughly enjoy the process of thinking deeply about what I will build, breaking down the work into related chunks, and of course writing the code itself. It's like magic when it all comes together. Sometimes I can't even beli…

It's been blowing my mind reading HN the past year or so and seeing so many comments from programmers that are excited to not have to write code. It's depressing.

Perhaps consider that I still think coding by prompting is just another layer of abstraction on top of coding.

I'm my mind, writing the prompt that generates the code is somewhat analogous to writing the code that generates the assembly. (Albeit, more stochastically, the way psychology research might be analogous to biochemistry research).

Different experts are still required at different layers of abstraction, though. I don't find it depressing when people show preference for working at different levels of complexity / tooling, nor excitement about the emergence of new tools that can enable your creativity to build, automate, and research. I think scorn in any direction is vapid.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#157

Post by nelgaard »

RyanOD wrote: post #40
jonwinstanley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also, a lot of the dot com companies that people invested in in 1999 went bust, meaning those specific investments went to zero even if the web as a whole was a huge success financially.

Sure...that's why it's important to diversify investments. For every Pets.com, hopefully you have a Google in your portfolio. Or, you skip all that and just put it all in an S&P 500 fund.

But you would not have had Google in you portfolio.

The bubble burst in 2000-2001, Google IPO was in 2004.

The S&P500 also did not do very well at the time.

That is the problem with bubbles.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#158

Post by Windchaser »

its_ethan wrote: post #145
sp4cec0wb0y wrote: post #7

> In many advanced software teams, developers no longer write the code; they type in what they want, and AI systems generate the code for them. What a wild and speculative claim. Is there any source for this information?

Is it not sort of implied by the stats later: "Revenues from Claude Code, a program for coding that Anthropic introduced earlier this year, already are said to be running at an annual rate of $1 billion. Revenues for the other leader, Cursor, were $1 million in 2023 and $100 million in 2024, and they, too, are expected to reach $1 billion this year." Surely that revenue is coming from people using the services to gen…

A back-of-the-napkin estimate of software developer salaries:

There are some ~1.5 million software developers in the US per BLS data, or ~4 million if using a broader definition Median salary is $120-140k. Let's say $120k to be conservative.

This puts total software developer salaries at $180 billion.

So, that puts $1 billion in Claude revenue in perspective; only about 0.5% of software developer salaries. Even if it only improved productivity 5%, it'd be paying for itself handily - which means we can't take the $1 billion in revenues to indicate that it's providing a big boost in productivity.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#159

Post by agumonkey »

sp4cec0wb0y wrote: post #7

> In many advanced software teams, developers no longer write the code; they type in what they want, and AI systems generate the code for them. What a wild and speculative claim. Is there any source for this information?

Seen it first hand. scan your codebase, plan extension or rewrite or both, iterate with some hand holding and off you go. And it was not even an advanced developer driving the feature (which is concerning).

Re: Is it a bubble?

#160

Post by agumonkey »

zahlman wrote: post #154
9rx wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true for me. I type in what I want and then the AI system (compiler) generates the code. Doesn't everyone work that way?

Describing a compiler as "AI" is certainly a take.

it's something that crossed my mind too honestly. natural-language-to-code translation.
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