Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The recurring dream of replacing developers

caimito.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 535 posts

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#31

Post by SkiFire13 »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #22

It's not so much about replacing developers, but rather increasing the level of abstraction developers can work at, to allow them to work on more complex problems. The first electronic computers were programmed by manually re-wiring their circuits. Going from that to being able to encode machine instructions on punchcards did not replace developers. Nor did going from raw machine instructions to assembly code. Nor di…

> It's not so much about replacing developers, but rather increasing the level of abstraction developers can work at, to allow them to work on more complex problems.

People do and will talk about replacing developers though.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#32

Post by lkjdsklf »

Alex_L_Wood wrote: post #29
reactordev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rules engines were designed for just such a thing. Validating input/output. You don’t need a human to prompt AI, you need a pipeline. While a single LLM won’t replace you. A well designed system of flows for software engineering using LLMs will.

Well, who designs the system of flows?

If you ask the AI labs, the AI systems themselves will build these kinds of workflows for themselves.

That's the goal.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#33

Post by CodingJeebus »

xnx wrote: post #20

Don't take it personal. All business want to reduce costs. As long as people cost money, they'll want to reduce people.

> Don't take it personal. All business want to reduce costs. As long as people cost money, they'll want to reduce people.

"Don't take it personal" does not feed the starving and does not house the unhoused. An economic system that over-indexes on profit at the expense of the vast majority of its people will eventually fail. If capitalism can't evolve to better provide opportunities for people to live while the capital-owning class continues to capture a disproportionate share of created economic value, the system will eventually break.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#34

Post by blahnjok »

> We’re still in that same fundamental situation. We have better tools—vastly better tools—but the thinking remains essential.

But less thinking is essential, or at least that’s what it’s like using the tools.

I’ve been vibing code almost 100% of the time since Claude 4.5 Opus came out. I use it to review itself multiple times, and my team does the same, then we use AI to review each others’ code.

Previously, we whiteboarded and had discussions more than we do now. We definitely coded and reviewed more ourselves than we do now.

I don’t believe that AI is incapable of making mistakes, nor do I think that multiple AI reviews are enough to understand and solve problems, yet. Some incredibly huge problems are probably on the horizon. But for now, the general “AI will not replace developers” is false; our roles have changed- we are managers now, and for how long?

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#35

Post by lkjdsklf »

duskdozer wrote: post #11
jalapenos wrote: post #2

The dumb part of this is: so who prompts the AI? Well probably we'd want a person who really gets the AI, as they'll have a talent for prompting it well. Meaning: knows how to talk to computers better than other people. So a programmer then... I think it's not that people are stupid. I think there's actually a glee behind the claims AI will put devs out of work - like they feel good about the idea of hurting them, ra…

How about another AI? And who prompts that AI? You're right - another AI!

With all these AIs chaining and prompting eachother, we're approaching the point where some unlucky person is going to ask an AI something and it will consume all the energy in the universe trying to compute the answer.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#36

Post by MontyCarloHall »

SkiFire13 wrote: post #31
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #22

It's not so much about replacing developers, but rather increasing the level of abstraction developers can work at, to allow them to work on more complex problems. The first electronic computers were programmed by manually re-wiring their circuits. Going from that to being able to encode machine instructions on punchcards did not replace developers. Nor did going from raw machine instructions to assembly code. Nor di…

> It's not so much about replacing developers, but rather increasing the level of abstraction developers can work at, to allow them to work on more complex problems. People do and will talk about replacing developers though.

Were many of the aforementioned advancements marketed as "replacing developers"? Absolutely. Did that end up happening? Quite the opposite; each higher-level abstraction only caused the market for software and demand for developers to grow.

That's not to say developers haven't been displaced by abstraction; I suspect many of the people responsible for re-wiring the ENIAC were completely out of a job when punchcards hit the scene. But their absence was filled by a greater number of higher-level punchcard-wielding developers.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#39

Post by bdcravens »

CodingJeebus wrote: post #33
xnx wrote: post #20

Don't take it personal. All business want to reduce costs. As long as people cost money, they'll want to reduce people.

> Don't take it personal. All business want to reduce costs. As long as people cost money, they'll want to reduce people. "Don't take it personal" does not feed the starving and does not house the unhoused. An economic system that over-indexes on profit at the expense of the vast majority of its people will eventually fail. If capitalism can't evolve to better provide opportunities for people to live while the capita…

While not an incorrect statement, trillions of dollars have been paid to software developers to build software that invariably reduced labor costs.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#40

Post by psychoslave »

xnx wrote: post #20

Don't take it personal. All business want to reduce costs. As long as people cost money, they'll want to reduce people.

Some businesses want to reduce costs. Some want to tackle the challenge of using resources available in the most profitable manner, including making their employees grow to better contribute in tackling tomorrow's challenges.

A business leader board that only consider people as costs are looking at the world through sociopath lenses.

Post reply on HN