The future of software development is software developers • Hacker News Board

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#281

Post by jmogly » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 2:03 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #173

jmogly wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it varies from 0x to a modest 2x. It can help you write good code quickly, but, I only spent about 20-30% of my time writing code anyway before AI. It definitely makes debugging and research tasks much easier as well. I would confidently say my job as a senior dev has gotten a lot easier and less stressful as a result of these tools. One other thing I have seen however is the 0x case, where you have given…

Ok, if you're a senior dev, have you 'caught' it yet? Ask it a question about something you know well, and it'll give you garbage code that it's obviously copied from an answer on SO from 10 years ago. When you ask it for research, it's still giving you garbage out of date information it copied from SO 10 years ago, you just don't know it's garbage.

Of course, step one is always critically think and evaluate for bad information. I think for research, I mainly use it for things that are testable/verifiable, for example I used it for a tricky proxy chain set up. I did try to use it to learn a language a few months ago which I think was counter productive for the reasons you mentioned.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#282

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 2:03 PM UTC

spicyusername wrote: post #280

snickerer wrote: post #198

After working with agent-LLMs for some years now, I can confirm that they are completely useless for real programming. They never helped me solve complex problems with low-level libraries. They can not find nontrivial bugs. They don't get the logic of interwoven layers of abstractions. LLMs pretend to do this with big confidence and fail miserably. For every problem I need to turn my brain to ON MODE and wake up, the…

I can confirm that they are completely useless for real programming And I can confirm, with similar years of experience, that they are not useless. Absolutely incredible tools that have saved hours and hours helping me understand large codebases, brainstorm features, and point out gaps in my implementation or understanding. I think the main disconnect in the discourse is that there are those pretending they can relia…

[deleted]

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#283

Post by threethirtytwo » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

hansmayer wrote: post #142

threethirtytwo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you joking? You realize entire companies and startups are littered with ppl who only use AI.

> littered with ppl who only use AI "Littered" is a great verb to use here. Also I did not ask for a deviated proxy non-measure, like how many people who are choking themselves to death in a meaningless bullshit job are now surviving by having LLMs generate their spreadsheets and presentations. I asked for solid proof of succesful, commercial products built up by dreaming them up through LLMs.

The proof is all around you. I am talking about software professionals not some bullshit spread sheet thing.

What I’m saying is this: From my pov Everyone is using LLMs to write code now. The overwhelming majority of software products in existence today are now being changed with LLM code.

The majority of software products being created from scratch are also mostly LLM code.

This is obvious to me. It’s not speculation, where I live and where I’m from and where I work it’s the obvious status quo. When I see someone like you I’m thinking because the change happened so fast you’re one of the people living in a bubble. Your company and the people around you haven’t started using it because the culture hasn’t caught up.

Wait until you have that one coworker who’s going at 10x speed as everyone else and you find out it’s because of AI. That is what will slowly happen to these bubbles. To keep pace you will have to switch to AI to see the difference.

I also don’t know how to offer you proof. Do you use google? If so you’ve used products that have been changed by LLM code. Is that proof? Do you use any products built by a start up in the last year? The majority of that code will be written by an LLM.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#284

Post by therobots927 » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 2:08 PM UTC

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…

That’s a very good point I hadn’t heard explained that way before. Makes a lot of sense and explains a lot of the circular debates about AI that happen here daily.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#285

Post by broast » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 2:10 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #262

underdeserver wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are saying Codex 5.2 fullsolved crypto challenges in 39C3 CTF last weekend. Three months ago I would have agreed with you, but anecdotal evidence says Codex 5.2 and Opus 4.5 are finally there.

You'll get a vastly different experience the more you use these tools and learn their limitations and how you can structure things effectively to let them do their job better. But lots of people, understandably, don't take the time to actually sit down and learn it. They spend 30 seconds on some prompt not even a human would understand, and expect the tooling to automatically spend 5 hours trying its hardest at imple…

Prompt engineering is just good transfer notes and ticket writing, which is something a majority of the devs I've worked with don't enjoy or excel at

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#286

Post by cheevly » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 2:11 PM UTC

hansmayer wrote: post #216

matthewmacleod wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What would you need to see to change your mind? I can generate at mind-boggling scale. What’s your threshold for realizing you might not have explored every possible vector for AI capabilities?

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#287

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 2:12 PM UTC

threethirtytwo wrote: post #278

leptons wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a typical no-proof "AI"-boosting response, and from an account created only 35 days ago.

Right I’m a bot made to promote AI like half the people on this thread. I don’t know if you noticed a difference from other hype cycles but other ones were speculative. This one is also speculative but the greater divide is that the literal on the ground usefulness of AI is ALREADY going to change the world. The speculation is that the AI will get better and will no longer need hand holding.

[deleted]

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#288

Post by solumunus » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 2:15 PM UTC

snickerer wrote: post #198

After working with agent-LLMs for some years now, I can confirm that they are completely useless for real programming. They never helped me solve complex problems with low-level libraries. They can not find nontrivial bugs. They don't get the logic of interwoven layers of abstractions. LLMs pretend to do this with big confidence and fail miserably. For every problem I need to turn my brain to ON MODE and wake up, the…

It’s crazy how different my experience is. I think perhaps it’s incredibly important what programming language you are using, what your project and architecture is like. Agents are making an extraordinary contribution to my productivity. If they jacked my Claude Code subscription up to $500/month I would be upset but almost certainly would keep paying it, that’s how much value it brings.

I’m in enterprise ERP.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#289

Post by csomar » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

I really wonder why people aren't drawing comparisons with crypto/blockchain. In the beginning, there were also two camps: people who thought crypto would replace our entire financial system and everything would be tokenized on the blockchain, and another camp who predicted that within a few years bitcoin would be worth exactly zero and all crypto/blockchain companies would disappear.

The reality turned out to be somewhere in the middle. Crypto didn't replace our financial system, but it exists as a 1-2 trillion dollar segment serving a particular (though controversial) niche of the global economy. It's not going to zero anytime soon.

I think AI/LLMs will follow the same path. There's definitely a level of usefulness there. But we've clearly hit a ceiling since 3.5/4.0. Advancement has only happened in benchmarks and open source models. Also, the idea that a neural net that accepts a fixed amount of padded tokens and returns a list of probabilities will replace the complexities of the human brain is delusional at best.

The only real issue I see is that certain actors in the US have taken such large positions that unwinding them could potentially destroy the US economy at worst, or trigger a recession at best. But this mainly concerns the US, which is on an AI high at the moment.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#290

Post by dent9 » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 2:17 PM UTC

underdeserver wrote: post #245

snickerer wrote: post #198

After working with agent-LLMs for some years now, I can confirm that they are completely useless for real programming. They never helped me solve complex problems with low-level libraries. They can not find nontrivial bugs. They don't get the logic of interwoven layers of abstractions. LLMs pretend to do this with big confidence and fail miserably. For every problem I need to turn my brain to ON MODE and wake up, the…

People are saying Codex 5.2 fullsolved crypto challenges in 39C3 CTF last weekend. Three months ago I would have agreed with you, but anecdotal evidence says Codex 5.2 and Opus 4.5 are finally there.

I've been using Codex and Claude Sonnet for many months now for personal (Codex) and work (Sonnet) and I agree. Three months ago these tools were highly usable, now with Codex 5.2 and Sonnet 4.5 I think we're at the point where you can confidently rely on them to analyze your repo codebase and solve, at the very least, small scoped problems and apply any required refactor back throughout the codebase.

6-12+ months ago the results I was getting with these tools were highly questionable but in the last six months the changes have been pretty astounding