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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

#471

Post by theshrike79 »

andrekandre wrote: post #449
theshrike79 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you dont use LLMs as a knowledge source without giving them tools. "Agents use tools in a loop to achieve a goal." If you don't give any tools, you get hallucinations and half-truths. But you give one a tool to do, say, web searches and it's going to be a lot smarter. That's where 90% of the innovation with "AI" today is coming from. The raw models aren't gettin that much smarter anymore, but the scaffoldi…

> The raw models aren't gettin that much smarter anymore, but the scaffolding and frameworks around them are. yes, that is my understanding as well, though it gets me thinking if that is true, then what real value is the llm on the server compared to doing that locally + tools?

You still can't beat an acre of specialized compute with any kind of home hardware. That's pretty much the power of cloud LLMs.

For a tool use loop local models are getting to "OK" levels, when they get to "pretty good", most of my own stuff can run locally, basically just coordinating tool calls.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#472

Post by nosianu »

JeremyNT wrote: post #370
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…

> After working with agent-LLMs for some years now, I can confirm that they are completely useless for real programming This is a bit of no-true-scottsman, no? For you "real programming" is "stuff LLMs are bad at," but a lot of us out in the real world are able to effectively extract code that meets the requirements of our day jobs from tossing natural language descriptions into LLMs. I actually find the rise of LLM…

I only use it sparingly thus far, and for small things, but I don't find it depressing at all - but timely.

All those many, many languages, frameworks, libraries, APIs and there many many iterations, soooo much time lost on minute details. The natural language description, even highly detailed down to being directly algorithmic, is a much better level for me. I have gotten more and more tired of coding, but maybe part of it is too much Javascript and its quickly changing environment and tools, for too many years (not any more though). I have felt that I'm wasting way too much time chasing all those many, many details for quite some time.

I'm not pro-high-level-programming per se - I started a long time ago with 8 bit assembler and knowing every one of the special registers and RAM cells. I cherish the memories of complex software fitting on a 1.44 MB floppy. But it had gotten just a bit too extreme with all the little things I had to pay attention to that did not contribute to solving the actual (business) problem.

I feel it's a bit early even if it's already usable, but I hope they can get at least one more giant leap out of AI in the next decade or so. I am quite happy to be able to concentrate on the actual task, instead of the programming environment minutiae, which has exploded in size and complexity across platforms.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#473

Post by theshrike79 »

sarchertech wrote: post #402
theshrike79 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this analogy you're clearly a private chef with clients who have very specific wishes and allergies. The rest of us are just pumping out CRUD-burgers off the API assembly line. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff. LLMs are really good with burgers, but not so much being a private chef.

Every useful CRUD app becomes its own special snowflake with time and users. Now if your CRUD app never gets any users sure it stays generic. But we’ve had low code solutions that solve this problem for decades. LLMs are good at stuff that probably should have been low code in the first place, but couldn’t be for reasons. That’s useful, but it comes with a ton of trade offs. And these kind of solutions covet a lot le…

I'm old enough to remember the "OMG low-code is going to take our jeeeerbbs!" panic :D

Like LLMs they took away a _very_ specific segment of software, Zapier, n8n, NodeRED etc. do some things in a way that bespoke apps can't - but they also hit a massive hard wall where you either need to do some really janky shit or just break out Actual Code to get forward.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#474

Post by theshrike79 »

adonovan wrote: post #355
theshrike79 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A circular saw doesn't learn either. It's a tool, just like an LLM.

The LLM isn't replacing your coworkers, it's a tool they can (and IMO should) learn to use, just like an IDE or a debugger.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#475

Post by theshrike79 »

yakattak wrote: post #379
theshrike79 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do sure. But I don’t have to completely reread what I wrote to grok it. That’s the issue. You either prompt and read the code it wrote to understand it before making a PR, or you prompt and drop the PR for your team. The latter is disrespectful. This has been my biggest hurdle so far. Sure the models do great at writing code, find things faster than I would. But time wise I still have to read what it wro…

Prompt & Drop is just plain stupid and warrants me walking over to said coworker's desk to smack them on the back of the head. =)

As for "reading in depth", it all depends on what you're doing, for most stuff I can just see if it looks good or not, I don't need to check out the PR and run it on my machine with a step-debugger to see what's going on.

And stuff should have unit tests anyway, if the tests pass and test coverage is sufficient - do you really need to go through the code with a fine toothed comb? If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and looks like a duck, isn't it duck enough. Do you need to dissect it and see if it's Duck all the way through?

At some point you just need to trust the tools you're using.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#476

Post by jimbo808 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #434
jimbo808 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can point to many examples > ...easily a week or more Got any examples worth "easily a week or more?"

Not the OP but I just got done with a codebase-wide re-architecture (driven by a need for a complex data migration) in a little ~2.5 weeks. 800+ files changed, 60k+ line diff. Without AI it would have taken me several months, and that is only if I managed to avoid burnout. The vendor quotes we got just to see if we could outsource the work were all six figures.

Did you thoroughly review the 60k line diff?

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#477

Post by furyofantares »

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…

> After working with agent-LLMs for some years now

Some years? I don't remember any agents being any good at all before just over 1 year ago with Cursor and stuff really didn't take off until Claude Code.

Which isn't to say you weren't working with agent-LLMs before that, but I just don't know how relevant anything but recent experience is.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#478

Post by automatic6131 »

lelele wrote: post #398
solaire_oa wrote: post #356

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…

> One day when the well runs dry, you must be able to either pay the actual cost What multiple of the current cost do you expect? Currently, GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT for Business cost $19/month and €29/month respectively. Even a 10×–20× increase will still be economically viable in a professional setting if the tools continue to save hours of work.

These tools (e.g. Chatgpt pro) lose money at $200/month

So expect, maybe, $1000 a month? Until your business is dependant on these LLMs. Then they can extract basically all your margin lol

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#479

Post by compiler-devel »

PTOB wrote: post #411
solaire_oa wrote: post #356

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…

As someone who works on the design and construction of datacenters, I cannot stress enough how apropos this comment is. Even before the first conversation in your IDE starts, the load on national and local government resources, local utility capacity, and roadway infrastructure is enormous. We're all paying whether we're using the tools or not.

Nearly nobody cares about the load on “national and local government resources, local utility capacity, and roadway infrastructure” for any other day-to-day activity. Why should they care about the same for AI which for most people is “out there online” somewhere? Related my, crypto bros worried about electricity usage only so far as its expense went and whether they could move closer to hydro dams.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#480

Post by aspenmartin »

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…

> you are clearly not an expert on the topic of software engineering should guide you here - unless you know what you are talking about, it's better to not say anything at all.

Yikes, pretty condescending. Also wrong!

IMO you are strawmanning pretty heavily here.

Believe it or not, using Claude to improve your productivity is pretty dissimilar to vibe coding a commercial airplane(?) which I would agree is probably not FAA approved.

I prefer not to toot my own horn, but to address an idea you seem to have that I don’t know math or CS(?) I have a PhD in astrophysics and a decade of industry experience in tech and other domains so I’m fairly certain I know how math and computers work but maybe not!

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