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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

#351

Post by sevensor »

jader201 wrote: post #320

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 w…

> Our careers depend on LLMs not being able to solve complex problems so that we don’t risk/fear losing our careers

I think both this sentiment and the article are on the same wrong track, which is to see programming as solving well defined problems. The way I see it, the job is mostly about taking ill defined needs and turning them into well defined problems. The rest is just writing code. From this perspective, whether LLM prompting can replace writing code is only marginally relevant. It’s automating the easy part.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#352

Post by theshrike79 »

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…

LLMs are very good at first pass PR checks for example. They catch the silly stuff actual humans just miss sometimes. Typos, copy-paste mistakes etc.

Before any human is pinged about a PR, have a properly tuned LLM look at it first so actual people don't have to waste their time pointing out typos in log messages.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#353

Post by ryandrake »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #225
jvanderbot wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anno…

I agree in that these discussions (this whole hn thread tbh) are seriously lacking in concrete examples to be more than holy wars 3.0. Besides one point: junior developers can learn from their egregious mistakes, llms can't no matter how strongly worded you are in their system prompt. In a functional work environment, you will build trust with your coworkers little by little. The pale equivalent in LLMs is improving…

This seems to be one of the huge weaknesses of current LLMs: Despite the words "intelligence" and "machine learning" we throw around, they aren't really able to learn and improve their skills without someone changing the model. So, they repeat the same mistakes and invent new mistakes by random chance.

If I was tutoring a junior developer, and he accidentally deleted the whole source tree or something egregious, that would be a milestone learning point in his career, and he would never ever do it again. But if the LLM does it accidentally, it will be apologetic, but after the next context window clear, it has the same chances of doing it again.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#354

Post by bogzz »

jader201 wrote: post #320

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 w…

lol

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#355

Post by adonovan »

theshrike79 wrote: post #340
jader201 wrote: post #320

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 w…

Also 5: "But LLMs produce a bunch of code I need to read and review". Yes, but so do your coworkers? Do you complain about every PR you need to read? Are they all compressed diamonds of pure genious, not a single missed character or unoptimised function? Not a bad or suboptimal decision in sight? If so, shoot me a mail, I want to work where you're working =)

My coworkers learn, and an important part of my job is teaching them. LLM-based tools don't.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#356

Post by solaire_oa »

Most people in this thread are quibbling about the exact degree of utility LLMs provide, which a tedious argument.

What's more interesting to me is, per the article, the concern regarding everyone who is leaning into LLMs without realizing (or downplaying) the exorbitant, externalized cost. Our current LLM usage is being subsidized to the point of being free by outside investment. One day when the well runs dry, you must be able to either pay the actual cost (barring grand technology breakthroughs), or switch back to non-LLM workflows. I run local LLMs infrequently, and every single prompt makes my beefy PC sounds like a jet engine taking off. It's a great reminder to not become codependent.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#357

Post by wiz21c »

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…

Claude is currently porting my rust emulator to WASM. It's not easy at all, it struggles, I need to guide it quite a lot but it's way easier to let him do it than me learning yet another tech. For the same result I have 50% the mental load...

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#358

Post by dent9 »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #341
dent9 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are way beyond this. Now you use your plain text prompt to generate a requirements spec that the AI will follow when implementing your project https://kiro.dev/

Kiro is just trying to build a product around exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not a fan, because it's simultaneously too heavyweight and agents don't respect all the details of the specs it creates enough to make the time investment in super-detailed specs worthwhile. I have a spec driven development tool I've been working on that generates structured specs that can be used to do automatic code generation. This i…

That sounds cool, please do share your tools when they're ready :)

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#359

Post by dent9 »

claytongulick wrote: post #327
dent9 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely wrong. Codex 5.2 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 don't have any of these issues. They will regularly tell you that you're wrong if you bother to ask them and they will explain why and what a better solution is. They don't make up anything. The code they produce is noticeably more efficient in LoC than previous models. And yes they really will do research, they will search the Internet for docs and articles a…

With apologies, and not GP, but this has been the same feedback I've personally seen on every single model release. Whenever I discuss the problems that my peers and I have using these things, it's always something along the lines of "but model X.Y solves all that!", so I obediently try again, waste a huge amount of time, and come back to the conclusion that these things aren't great at generation, but they are fanta…

A lot of people are consistently getting their low expectations disproven when it comes to progress in AI tooling. If you read back in my comment history, six months ago I was posting about how AI is over hyped BS. But I kept using it and eventually new releases of models and tools solved most of the problems I had with them. If it has not happened for you yet then I expect it will eventually. Keep up with using the tools and models and follow their advancements and I think you'll eventually get to the point where your needs are met

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#360

Post by constantcrying »

baq wrote: post #348
constantcrying wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But that's exactly the promise of LLMs by the hypepeople behind it. I do not know and do not care what the "hypepeople" say. I can tell you that, by pure logic alone, LLMs will be superior at simple and routine tasks sooner, which means they will compete with outsourced labor first. LLMs need to be measured against their competition and their competition right now is outsourced labor. If an LLM can outperform an off…

Outsourced devs wielding smart models are even cheaper than onshore and the models lift all boats wrt capability. The bottleneck will soon be ideas for the things to build.

>Outsourced devs wielding smart models are even cheaper than onshore

But they do not compete. They have totally different jobs.

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