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The future of software development is software developers

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Re: The future of software development is software developers

#51

Post by jennyholzer3 »

treespace8 wrote: post #12
joefourier wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used an LLM specifically trained for tool calling, in Claude Code, Cursor or Aider? They’re capable of looking up documentation, correcting their errors by compiling and running tests, and when coupled with a linter, hallucinations are a non issue. I don’t really think it’s possible to dismiss a model that’s been trained with reinforcement learning for both reasoning and tool usage as only doing pattern matc…

I'm using Claude code to help me learn Godot game programming. One interesting thing is that Claude will not tell me if I'm following the wrong path. It will just make the requested change to the best of its ability. For example a Tower Defence game I'm making I wanted to keep turret position state in an AStarGrid2D. It produced code to do this, but became harder and harder to follow as I went on. It's only after wat…

don't use LLMs for Godot game programming.

edit: Major engine changes have occurred after the models were trained, so you will often be given code that refers to nonexistent constants and functions and which is not aware of useful new features.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#52

Post by weakfish »

foxygen wrote: post #46
mohsen1 wrote: post #3

I really really want this to be true. I want to be relevant. I don’t know what to do if all those predictions are true and there is no need (or very little need) for programmers anymore. But something tells me “this time is different” is different this time for real. Coding AIs design software better than me, review code better than me, find hard-to-find bugs better than me, plan long-running projects better than me,…

I think I've been using AI wrong. I can't understand testimonies like this. Most times I try to use AI for a task, it is a shitshow, and I have to rewrite everything anyway.

Same. Seems to be the never ending theme of AI.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#53

Post by aspenmartin »

hansmayer wrote: post #43
jayd16 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When prices go down or product velocity goes up we'll start believing in the new 20x developer. Until then, it doesn't align with most experiences and just reads like fiction. You'll notice no one ever seems to talk about the products they're making 20x faster or cheaper.

+1 - I wish at least one of these AI boosters had shown us a real commercialised product they've built.

AI boosters? Like people are planted by Sam Altman like the way they hire crowds for political events or something? Hey! Maybe I’m AI! You’re absolutely right!

In seriousness: I’m sure there are projects that are heavily powered by Claude, myself and a lot of other people I know use Claude almost exclusively to write and then leverage it as a tool when reviewing. Almost everyone I hear that has this super negative hostile attitude references some “promise” that has gone unfulfilled but it’s so silly: judge the product they are producing and maybe just maybe consider the rate of progress to _guess_ where things are heading

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#54

Post by cmrdporcupine »

hansmayer wrote: post #42
aspenmartin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn’t read like shilling and advertisement, it’s tiring hearing people continually dismiss coding agents as if they have not massively improved and are driving real value despite limitations and they are only just getting started. I’ve done things with Claude I never thought possible for myself to do, and I’ve done things where Claude made the whole effort take twice as long and 3x more of my time. It’s not l…

> I’ve done things with Claude I never thought possible for myself to do, That's the point champ. They seem great to people when they apply them to some domain they are not competent it, that's because they cannot evaluate the issues. So you've never programmed but can now scaffold a React application and basic backend in a couple of hours? Good for you, but for the love of god have someone more experienced check it…

This is remarkably dismissive and comes across as arrogant. In reality they assist many people with expert skills in a domain in getting things done in areas they are competent in, without getting bogged down in tedium.

They need a heavy hand to police to make sure they do the right thing. Garbage in, garbage out.

The smarter the hand of the person driving them, the better the output. You see a problem, you correct it. Or make them correct it. The stronger the foundation they're starting from, the better the production.

It's basically the opposite of what you're asserting here.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#55

Post by hansmayer »

d_silin wrote: post #7

In aviation safety, there is a concept of "Swiss cheese" model, where each successful layer of safety may not be 100% perfect, but has a different set of holes, so overlapping layers create a net gain in safety metrics. One can treat current LLMs as a layer of "cheese" for any software development or deployment pipeline, so the goal of adding them should be an improvement for a measurable metric (code quality, uptime…

> One can treat current LLMs as a layer of "cheese" for any software development or deployment pipeline

It's another interesting attempt at normalising the bullshit output by LLMs, but NO. Even with the entshittified Boeing, the aviation industry safety and reliability records, are far far far above deterministic software (know for a lot of un-reliability itself), and deterministic, B2C software to LLMs in turn is what Boeing and Airbus software and hardware reliablity are for the B2C software...So you cannot even begin to apply aviation industry paradigms to the shit machines, please.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#56

Post by [deleted] »

aspenmartin wrote: post #48
hansmayer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve done things with Claude I never thought possible for myself to do, That's the point champ. They seem great to people when they apply them to some domain they are not competent it, that's because they cannot evaluate the issues. So you've never programmed but can now scaffold a React application and basic backend in a couple of hours? Good for you, but for the love of god have someone more experienced check it…

Seems fine, works, is fine, is better than if you had me go off and write it on my own. You realize you can check the results? You can use Claude to help you understand the changes as you read through them? I mean I just don’t get this weird “it makes mistakes and it’s horrible if you understand the domain that it is generating over” I mean yes definitely sometimes and definitely not other times. What happens if I DO…

[deleted]

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#57

Post by doug_durham »

jayd16 wrote: post #36
aspenmartin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn’t read like shilling and advertisement, it’s tiring hearing people continually dismiss coding agents as if they have not massively improved and are driving real value despite limitations and they are only just getting started. I’ve done things with Claude I never thought possible for myself to do, and I’ve done things where Claude made the whole effort take twice as long and 3x more of my time. It’s not l…

When prices go down or product velocity goes up we'll start believing in the new 20x developer. Until then, it doesn't align with most experiences and just reads like fiction. You'll notice no one ever seems to talk about the products they're making 20x faster or cheaper.

You’ve never read Simon Willison’s blog? His repo is full of work that he’s created with LLM’s. He makes money off of them. There are plenty of examples you just need to look.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#58

Post by aspenmartin »

jayd16 wrote: post #36
aspenmartin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn’t read like shilling and advertisement, it’s tiring hearing people continually dismiss coding agents as if they have not massively improved and are driving real value despite limitations and they are only just getting started. I’ve done things with Claude I never thought possible for myself to do, and I’ve done things where Claude made the whole effort take twice as long and 3x more of my time. It’s not l…

When prices go down or product velocity goes up we'll start believing in the new 20x developer. Until then, it doesn't align with most experiences and just reads like fiction. You'll notice no one ever seems to talk about the products they're making 20x faster or cheaper.

Who is saying anything about 20x? Sorry did I miss something here?

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#59

Post by bdangubic »

foxygen wrote: post #46
mohsen1 wrote: post #3

I really really want this to be true. I want to be relevant. I don’t know what to do if all those predictions are true and there is no need (or very little need) for programmers anymore. But something tells me “this time is different” is different this time for real. Coding AIs design software better than me, review code better than me, find hard-to-find bugs better than me, plan long-running projects better than me,…

I think I've been using AI wrong. I can't understand testimonies like this. Most times I try to use AI for a task, it is a shitshow, and I have to rewrite everything anyway.

how much time/effort have you put in to educate yourself about how they work, what they excel at, what they suck at, what is your responsibility when you use them…? this effort is directly proportional to how well they will serve you

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#60

Post by to11mtm »

63stack wrote: post #19
mohsen1 wrote: post #3

I really really want this to be true. I want to be relevant. I don’t know what to do if all those predictions are true and there is no need (or very little need) for programmers anymore. But something tells me “this time is different” is different this time for real. Coding AIs design software better than me, review code better than me, find hard-to-find bugs better than me, plan long-running projects better than me,…

This reads like shilling/advertisement.. Coding AIs are struggling for anything remotely complex, make up crap and present it as research, write tests that are just "return true", and won't ever question a decision you make. Those twenty engineers must not have produced much.

I'd be willing to give you access to the experiment I mentioned in a separate reply (have a github repo), as far as the output that you can get for a complex app buildout.

Will admit It's not great (probably not even good) but it definitely has throughput despite my absolute lack of caring that much [0]. Once I get past a certain stage I am thinking of doing an A-B test where I take an earlier commit and try again while paying more attention... (But I at least want to get where there is a full suite of UOW cases before I do that, for comparison's sake.)

> Those twenty engineers must not have produced much.

I've been considered a 'very fast' engineer at most shops (e.x. at multiple shops, stories assigned to me would have a 20 is a bit bloated, unless we are talking about WITCH tier. I definitely can get done in 2-3 hours what could take me a day. I say it that way because at best it's 1-2 hours but other times it's longer, some folks remember the 'best' rather than median.

[0] - It started as 'prompt only', although after a certain point I did start being more aggressive with personal edits.

[1] - IDK why they did it that way instead of capacity, OTOH that saved me when it came to being assigned Manual Testing stories...

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