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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

#211

Post by jvanderbot »

chii wrote: post #193
gentooflux wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs generate the most likely code given the problem they're presented and everything they've been trained on, they don't actually understand how (or even if) it works. I only ever get away with that when I'm writing a parser.

> they don't actually understand how but if it empirically works, does it matter if the "intelligence" doesn't "understand" it? Does a chess engine "understand" the moves it makes?

This is a semantic dead end when discussing results and career choices

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#212

Post by ozgrakkurt »

chii wrote: post #189
ChicagoDave wrote: post #187

Here’s how I see it. Writing code or building software well requires knowledge of logic, data structures, reliable messaging, and separation of concerns. You can learn a foreign language just fine, but if you mangle the pronunciation, no one will talk to you. Same thing with hacking at software without understanding the above elements. Your software will be mangled and no one will use it.

> Your software will be mangled the quality of how maintainable the source code is has no bearing on how a user perceives the software's usefulness. If the software serves a good function for the user, they will use it, regardless of how badly the datastructures are. Of course, good function also means reliability from the POV of the user. If your software is so bad that you lose data, obviously no one will use it. B…

This is bean counter mentality. Personally just don’t believe this is how it works.

The intention/perspective of development is something on its own and doesn’t correspond to the end result directly.

This is such a complex issue that everything comes down to what someone believes

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#213

Post by lelanthran »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #147
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,…

> 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, make decisions based on research, literature, and also the state of our projects better than me. That is just not true, assuming you have a modicum of competence (which I assume you do). AIs suck at all these tasks; they are not even as good as an inexperienced hum…

Depends on how he defined "better". If he uses the word "better" to mean "good enough to not fail immediately, and done in 1/10th of the time", then he's correct.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#214

Post by llmslave2 »

user34283 wrote: post #201
llmslave2 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would you know whether he is an expert on the topic of software engineering or not? Because of their views on the effectiveness of AI agents for generating code.

Considering those views are shared by a number of high profile, skilled engineers, this is obviously no basis for doubting someone's expertise.

I've yet to see it from someone who isn't directly or indirectly affiliated with an organisation that would benefit from increased AI tool adoption. Not saying it's impossible, but...

Whereas there are what feels like endless examples of high profile, skilled engineers who are calling BS on the whole thing.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#215

Post by jvanderbot »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #181
ryandrake wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 int…

> LLMs produce results on par with what I would expect out of a solid junior developer This is a common take but it hasn't been my experience. LLMs produce results that vary from expert all the way to slightly better than markov chains. The average result might be equal to a junior developer, and the worst case doesn't happen that often, but the fact that it happens from time to time makes it completely unreliable fo…

I think any further discussion about quality just needs to have the following metadata:

- Language

- Total LOC

- Subject matter expertise required

- Total dependency chain

- Subjective score (audited randomly)

And we can start doing some analysis. Otherwise we're pissing into ten kinds of winds.

My own subjective experience is earth shattering at webapps in html and css (because I'm terrible and slow at it), and annoyingly good but a bit wrong usually in planning and optimization in rust and horribly lost at systems design or debugging a reasonably large rust system.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#216

Post by hansmayer »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #149
hansmayer wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I expect it’s your “I’m an expert and everyone else is merely an idiot child” attitude that’s probably making it hard to take you seriously. And don’t get me wrong - I totally understand this personality. There are a similar few I’ve worked with recently who are broadly quite skeptical of what seems to be an obvious fact to me - their roles will need to change and their skillsets will have to develop to take advantag…

I am a bit tired of explaining, but I run my own company, so its not like I have to fear my "roles and responsibilities" changing - I am designing them myself. I also am not a general skeptic of the "YAGNI" type - my company and myself have been early adopters on many trends. Those that made sense of course. We also tried to be early adopters of LLMs, all the way since 2021. And I am sorry if that sounds arrogant to you, but anyone still working on them and with them to me looks like the folks who were trying to build computers and TVs with the vaccuum tubes. With the difference that vaccuum tubes computers were actually useful at the time.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#217

Post by trashb »

john61 wrote: post #124

It is just the Eliza effect on a massive scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect Reading Weizenbaum today is eye opening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Power_and_Human_Reaso...

I agree the ELIZA effect is strong, additionally I think it is some kind of natural selection.

I feel like LLM's are specifically selected to impress people that have a lot of influence. People like investors and CEO's. Because a "AI" that does not impress this section of the population does not get adopted widely.

This is one of the reasons I think AI will never really be an expert as it does not need to be. It only needs to adopt a skill (for example coding) to pass the examination of the groups that decide if it is to be used. It needs to be "good enough to pass".

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#218

Post by aprilthird2021 »

lelanthran wrote: post #209
chii wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m basically just the conductor of all those processes. a car moves faster than you, can last longer than you, and can carry much more than you. But somehow, people don't seem to be scared of cars displacing them(yet)? Perhaps autodriving would in the near future, but there still needs to be someone making decisions on how best to utilize that car - surely, it isn't deciding to go to destination A without someone…

> a car moves faster than you, can last longer than you, and can carry much more than you. But somehow, people don't seem to be scared of cars displacing them(yet)? ??? Cars replaced horses, not people. In this scenario you are the horse.

Well no, you'd be the horse driver who becomes a car driver

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#219

Post by mekoka »

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…

Indeed, discussions on LLMs for coding sound like what you would expect if you asked a room full of people to snatch up a 20 kg dumbbell once and then tell you if it's heavy.

> I think the real risk is that dumping out loads of boilerplate becomes so cheap and reliable that people who can actually fluently design coherent abstractions are no longer as needed.

Cough front-end cough web cough development. Admittedly, original patterns can still be invented, but many (most?) of us don't need that level of creativity in our projects.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#220

Post by hansmayer »

baq wrote: post #146
hansmayer wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sure buddy :)

Disrespect the trend line and get rolled over by the steamroller. Labs are cooking and what is available commercially is lobotomized for safety and alignment. If your baseline of current max capability is sonnet 4.5 released just this summer you’re going to be very surprised in the next few months.

Right, like I was steamrolled by the "Team of Pocket Ph.D Experts" announced earlier this year with ChatGPT 5 ? Remember that underwhelming experience? The Grok to which you could "paste your entire source code file"? The constantly debilitating Claude models? Satya Nadella desperately dropping down to a PO role and bypassing his executives to try and micro-manage Copilot product development because the O365 Copilot experience is experiencing a MASSIVE pushback globally from teams and companies forced to use it ? Or is there another steamrolling coming around? What is this time? Zuckerberg implements 3D avatars in a metaverse with legs that can walk around and talk to us via LLMs? And then they sit down at virtual desks and type on virtual keyboards to produce software? Enlighten me please!
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