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

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#311

Post by bdangubic » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

trashb wrote: post #210

> Edgar Dijkstra called it nearly 50 years ago: we will never be programming in English, or French, or Spanish. Natural languages have not evolved to be precise enough and unambiguous enough. Semantic ambiguity and language entropy will always defeat this ambition. This is the most important quote for any AI coding discussion. Anyone that doesn't understand how the tools they use came to be is doomed to reinvent them…

> These are the same people that create applications in MS Excel.

Ones that want their application to work? :) the last piece of software you should be knocking is MS Excel, in my 30+ year career the one common thread just about everywhere I worked (or contracted at) has used Excel to run some amazing sh*t

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#312

Post by alexwhb » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

As much as my first gut reaction to this article was to be excited about its conclusion, I can’t say my experience matches up. Are LLMs perfect? Absolutely not, but I can point to many examples in my own work where using Codex has saved me easily a week or more—especially when it comes to tedious refactors. I don’t agree with the conclusion; the real-world improvement and progress I’ve seen in the last year in the problem-solving quality of these agents has been pretty astounding.

The reason for my excitement about the conclusion is obvious: I want programmers and people to stay in demand. I find the AI future to be quite bleak if this tech really does lead to AGI, but maybe that’s just me. I think we’re at a pretty cool spot with this technology right now—where it’s a powerful tool—but at some point, if or when it’s way smarter than you or me… I'm not sure that's a fun happy future. I think work is pretty tied to our self worth as humans.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#313

Post by jimbo808 » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:07 PM UTC

alexwhb wrote: post #312

As much as my first gut reaction to this article was to be excited about its conclusion, I can’t say my experience matches up. Are LLMs perfect? Absolutely not, but I can point to many examples in my own work where using Codex has saved me easily a week or more—especially when it comes to tedious refactors. I don’t agree with the conclusion; the real-world improvement and progress I’ve seen in the last year in the pr…

> but I can point to many examples in my own work where using Codex has saved me easily a week or more

Care to share a few of these examples?

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#314

Post by dent9 » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:08 PM UTC

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.

Have you had your head in the sand for the past two years?

At the recent AWS conference, they were showcasing Kiro extensively with real life products that have been built with it. And the Amazon developers all allege that they've all been using Kiro and other AI tools and agents heavily for the past year+ now to build AWS's own services. Google and Microsoft have also reported similar internal efforts.

The platforms you interact with on a daily basis are now all being built with the help of AI tools and agents

If you think no one is building real commercial products with AI then you are either blind or an idiot or both. Why don't you just spend two seconds emailing your company AWS ProServe folks and ask them, I'm sure they'll give you a laundry list of things they're using AI for internally and sign you up for a Kiro demo as well

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#315

Post by baq » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:18 PM UTC

elktown wrote: post #309

threethirtytwo wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First examine your post. Can you create a 3D avatar with legs that can walk and talk? If not, then for this area you’ve been steam rolled. Anyway main point is, you’re looking at the hype headlines which are ludicrous. Where most optimists come from is that they are using it in the daily to code. To them it’s right in front of their eyes. I’m not sure what your experience is but my opinion on AI doesn’t come from spe…

I have a hard time trusting the judgement of someone writing this: > I no longer write code. I’ve been a swe for over a decade. AI writes all my code following my instructions. My code output is now expected to be 5x what it was before because we are now augmented by AI. All my coworkers use AI. We don’t use ChatGPT we use anthropic. If I didn’t use AI I would be fired for being too slow. https://news.ycombinator.com…

You should drop the prejudice and focus to be aware of the situation. This is happening all over the world, most people who have crossed this bridge just don’t share, just like they don’t share that they’ve brushed their teeth this morning.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#316

Post by dent9 » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:20 PM UTC

hansmayer wrote: post #74

aspenmartin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

I never said "planted", that is your own assumption, albeit a wrong one. I do respect it though, as it is at least a product of a human mind. But you don't have to be "planted" to champion an idea, you are clearly championing it out of some kind of conviction, many seem to do. I was just giving you a bit of reality check. If you want to show me how to "guess where things are heading" / I am actually one of the early…

Bro idk why you waste your time writing all this. No one cares that you were an early adopter, all that means is that you used the rudimentary LLM implementations that were available from 2022-2024 which are now completely obselete. Whatever experience you think you have with AI tools is useless because you clearly haven't kept up with the times. AI platforms and tools have been changing quickly. Every six months the capabilities have massively improved.

Next time before you waste ten minutes typing out these self aggrandizing tirades maybe try asking the AI to just write it for you instead

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#317

Post by dent9 » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:24 PM UTC

threethirtytwo wrote: post #279

skydhash wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m an expert in what I do. A professional, and few people can do what I do Are you an astronaut?

Obviously not troll, I know I’m bragging. But I have to emphasize that it is not some stupid oh “only domain experts know AI is shit. Everyone else is too stupid to understand how bad it is” That is patently wrong. Few people can do what I do and as a result I likely make more money than you. But now with AI… everyone can do what I do. It has leveled the playing field… what I was before now matters fuck all. Understa…

You are wrong. People like yourself will likely be smart enough to stay well employed into the future. It's the folks who are arguing with you trying to say that AI is useless who will quickly lose their jobs. And they'll be all shocked Pikachu face when they get a pink slip while their role gets reassigned to an AI agent

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#318

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:24 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…

[deleted]

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#319

Post by embedding-shape » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:25 PM UTC

solumunus wrote: post #288

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.

Even more important than those things, is how well you can write and communicate your ideas. If you cannot communicate your ideas so a human could implement it as you wanted it to without asking extra questions, a LLM isn't gonna be able to.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#320

Post by jader201 » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:25 PM UTC

I feel like the comments/articles that continue to point out how LLMs cannot solve complex problems are missing a few important points:

1. LLMs are only getting better from here. With each release, we continue to see improvements in their capabilities. And strong competition is driving this innovation, and will probably not stop anytime soon. Much of the world is focused on this right now, and therefore much of the world’s investments are being poured into solving this problem.

2. They’re using the wrong models for the wrong job. Some models are better than others at some tasks. And this gap is only shrinking (see point 1).

3. Even if LLMs can’t solve complex problems (and I believe they can/will, see points 1 and 2), much of our jobs is refactoring, writing tests, and hand coding simpler tasks, which LLMs are undeniably good at.

4. It’s natural to deny LLMs can eventually replace much/all of what we do. Our careers depend on LLMs not being able to solve complex problems so that we don’t risk/fear losing our careers. Not to mention the overall impact to the general way our lives are impacted if AGI becomes a reality.

I’ve been doing this a while, and I’ve never seen the boost to productivity that LLMs bring. Yes, I’ve seen them make a mess of things and get things wrong. But see points 1-3.