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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

#131

Post by ehnto »

aizk wrote: post #64

This time it actually is different. HN might not think so, but HN is really skewed towards more senior devs, so I think they're out of touch with what new grads are going through. It's awful.

What is it that new grads are going through? If you are referring to difficulty finding a job, keep in mind that there is both an economic downturn and an over-hiring correction happening in the industry right now. I imagine the AI industry is indeed having an impact in how management is behaving, but I would not yet bet on AI actually replacing developers jobs holistically.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#132

Post by zkmon »

I see it as pure deterministic logic being contaminated by probabilistic logic at higher layers where human interaction happens. Seeking for human comfort by forcing computers to adapt to the human languages. Building adapters that can allow humans to stay in their comfort zone instead of dealing with the sharp-edged computer interfaces.

At the end, I don't see it going beyond being a glorified form-assistant who can search internet for answers and summarize. That boils down to chat bots that will remain and become part of every software component that ever need to interface with humans.

Agent stuff is just a fluff that is providing hype-cushion around chat bots and will go away with hype cycle.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#133

Post by ryandrake »

IshKebab wrote: post #125
pfannkuchen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of what is happening here is that different developers on HN have very different jobs and skill levels. If you are just writing a large volume of code over and over again to do the same sort of things, then LLMs probably could take your job. A lot of people have joined the industry over time, and it seems like the intelligence bar moved lower and lower over time, particularly for people churning out larg…

> different developers on HN have very different jobs and skill levels. Definitely this. When I use AIs for web development they do an ok job most of the time. Definitely on par with a junior dev. For anything outside of that they're still pretty bad. Not useless by any stretch, but it's still a fantasy to think you could replace even a good junior dev with AI in most domains. I am slightly worried for my job... but…

Yea, LLMs produce results on par with what I would expect out of a solid junior developer. They take direction, their models act as the “do the research” part, and they output lots of code: code that has to be carefully scrutinized and refined. They are like very ambitious interns who never get tired and want to please, but often just produce crap that has to be totally redone or refactored heavily in order to go into production.

If you think LLMs are “better programmers than you,” well, I have some disappointing news for you that might take you a while to accept.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#134

Post by ehnto »

utopiah wrote: post #105
cheevly wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I promise you that I can show you how to reliably solve any of them using any of the latest OpenAI models. Email me if you want proof; josh.d.griffith at gmail

I'd watch that show ideally with few base rules though, e.g. - the problems to solve must NOT be part of the training set - the person using the tool (e.g. OpenAI, Claude, DevStral, DeepSeek, etc) must NOT be able to solve problems alone as I believe otherwise the 1st is "just" search and the 2nd is basically offloading the actual problem solving to the user.

> the person using the tool (e.g. OpenAI, Claude, DevStral, DeepSeek, etc) must NOT be able to solve problems alone

I think this is a good point, as I find the operators input is often forgotten when considering the AIs output. If it took me an hour and decades of expertise to get the AI to output the right program, did the AI really do it? Could someone without my expertise get the same result?

If not, then maybe we are wasting our time trying to mash our skills through vector space via a chat interface.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#135

Post by NitpickLawyer »

Deep-Blue wrote: post #87
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,…

As of today NONE of the known AI codebots can solve correctly ANY of the 50+ programming exercises we use to interview fresh grads or summer interns. NONE! Not even level 1 problems that can be solved in fewer than 20 lines of code with a bit of middle school math.

After 25+ years in this field, having interviewed ~100 people for both my startup and other companies, I'm having a hard time believing this. You're either in an extremely niche field (such as to make your statement irrelevant to 99.9% of the industry), or it's hyperbole, or straight up bs.

Interviewing is an art, and IME "gotcha" types of questions never work. You want to search for real-world capabilities, and like it or not the questions need to match those expectations. If you're hiring summer interns and the SotA models can't solve those questions, then you're doing something wrong. Sorry, but having used these tools for the past three years this is extremely ahrd to believe.

I of course understand if you can't, but sharing even one of those questions would be nice.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#136

Post by hansmayer »

wiseowise wrote: post #127
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…

> So you've never programmed but can now scaffold a React application and basic backend in a couple of hours? Ahaha, weren’t you the guy who wrote an opus about planes? Is this your baseline for “stuff where LLMs break and real engineering comes into the room”? There’s a harsh wake up call for you around the corner.

What wake up call mate? I've been on board as early adopter with GH Copilot closed beta since 2021, it was around time when you did not even hear about the LLMs. I am just being realistic about the limits of the technology. In the 90s, we did not need to convince people about the Internet. It just worked. Also - what opus? Have the LLMs affected your attention span so much, that you consider what typically an primary school first-grader would read during their first school class, an "opus" no less? No wonder you are so easily impressed.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#137

Post by elboru »

doug_durham wrote: post #71
nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardest part of programming is knowing wtf all the existing code does and why.

And that is the super power of LLMs. In my experience LLMs are better a reading code than writing it. Have it annotate some code for you.

Still, code describes what and how, but not why.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#138

Post by hansmayer »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #115
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…

What you wrote here was relevant about 9 months ago. It’s now outdated. The pace and velocity of improvement of Ai can only be described as violent. It is so fast that there are many people like you who don’t get it.

Yeah, sure buddy :)

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#139

Post by germandiago »

doug_durham wrote: post #66
keyle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take food for example. We don't eat food made by computers even though they're capable of making it from start to finish. Sure we eat carrots probably assisted by machines, but we are not eating dishes like protein bars all day every day. Our food is still better enjoyed when made by a chef. Software engineering will be the same. No one will want to use software made by a machine all day every day. There are differen…

You should look at other engineering disciplines. How many highway over passes have unique “chef quality” designs? Very few. Most engineering is commodity replications of existing designs. The exact same thing applies to software engineering. Most of us engineers are replicating designs that came earlier. LLMs are good at generating the rote designs that make up the bulk of software by volume. Who benefit from an art…

There is a part of this that is true. But when you get the nuanced parts of every "replicated design" or need the tweaks or what the AI gave you is just wrong, that deteriorates quality.

For many tasks it is ok, for others it is just a NO.

For software maintenance and evolution I think it won't cut it.

The same way a Wordpress website can do a set of useful things. But when you need something specific, you just drop to programming.

You can have your e-commerce web. But you cannot ask it to give you a "pipeline excution as fast as possible for calculating and solving math for engineering task X". That needs SIMD, parallelization, understanding the niche use you need, etc. which probably most people do not do all the time and requires specific knowledge.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#140

Post by charcircuit »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #88
63stack wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think part of what is happening here is that different developers on HN have very different jobs and skill levels. If you are just writing a large volume of code over and over again to do the same sort of things, then LLMs probably could take your job. A lot of people have joined the industry over time, and it seems like the intelligence bar moved lower and lower over time, particularly for people churning out larg…

>at least in the sense that your abstractions are novel and the shape of the abstraction set is different from the standard things that exist

People shouldn't be doing this in the first place. Existing abstractions are sufficient for building any software you want.

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