The recurring dream of replacing developers • Hacker News Board

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#251

Post by davnicwil » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

In the end, I think the dream underneath this dream is about being able to manifest things into reality without having to get into the details.

The details are what stops it from working in every form it's been tried.

You cannot escape the details. You must engage with them and solve them directly, meticulously. It's messy, it's extremely complicated and it's just plain hard.

There is no level of abstraction that saves you from this, because the last level is simply things happening in the world in the way you want them to, and it's really really complicated to engineer that to happen.

I think this is evident by looking at the extreme case. There are plenty of companies with software engineers who truly can turn instructions articulated in plain language into software. But you see lots of these not being successful for the simple reason that those providing the instructions are not sufficiently engaged with the detail, or have the detail wrong. Conversely, for the most successful companies the opposite is true.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#252

Post by samuelknight » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #247

This wave of AI innovation reveals that a lot of activity in coding turns out to be of accidental complexity instead of essential. Or put it another way, a lot of tasks in coding is conceptual to human, but procedural to AI. Conceptual tasks require intuitive understanding, rigorous reasoning, and long-term planning. AI is not there yet. On the other hand, procedural tasks are low entropy with high priors: once a pro…

You understate the capabilities of the latest gen LLMs. I can typically describe a user's bug in a few sentences or tell Claude to check fetch the 500 error in Cloud run logs and it will explain the root cause, propose a fix, and throw in new unit test in a two minutes.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#253

Post by SoftTalker » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 2:43 AM UTC

apsurd wrote: post #216

fenwick67 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The honest truth is it can go either way, really. Just ask all the sign-painters and portrait artists how their career is going

But sign painting isn't programming? The comment is insightful and talks specifically of low and no code options creating more need for developers. Great point. has nothing to do with non programming jobs.

Have you ever tried to paint a sign?

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#254

Post by mikewarot » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 2:46 AM UTC

>The tools expanded who could write software, but they didn’t eliminate the expertise required for substantial systems.

The hardest thing about software construction is specification. There's always going to be domain specific knowledge associated with requirements. If you make it possible, as Delphi and Visual Basic 6 did, for a domain expert to hack together something that works, that crude but effective prototype functions as a concrete specification that a professional programmer can use to craft a much better version useful to more people than just the original author.

The expansion of the pool of programmers was the goal. It's possible that AI could eventually make programming (or at least specification) a universal skill, but I doubt it. The complexity embedded in all but the most trivial of programs will keep the software development profession in demand for the foreseeable future.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#255

Post by apsurd » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 2:54 AM UTC

fenwick67 wrote: post #222

apsurd wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But sign painting isn't programming? The comment is insightful and talks specifically of low and no code options creating more need for developers. Great point. has nothing to do with non programming jobs.

what is special about programming jobs that makes them permanently immune from the high skilled workers being in low demand

software is an infinite resource

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#256

Post by lazypenguin » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 3:14 AM UTC

davnicwil wrote: post #251

In the end, I think the dream underneath this dream is about being able to manifest things into reality without having to get into the details. The details are what stops it from working in every form it's been tried. You cannot escape the details. You must engage with them and solve them directly, meticulously. It's messy, it's extremely complicated and it's just plain hard. There is no level of abstraction that sav…

Yes! I love this framing and it’s spot on. The successful projects that I’ve been involved in someone either cares deeply and resolves the details in real time or we figured out the details before we started. I’ve seen it outside software as well, someone says “I want a new kitchen” but unless you know exactly where you want your outlets, counter depths, size of fridge, type of cabinets, location of lighting, etc. ad infinitum your project is going to balloon in time and cost and likely frustration.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#257

Post by nebula8804 » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 3:24 AM UTC

jackfranklyn wrote: post #52

[flagged]

>COBOL was supposed to let managers write programs. VB let business users make apps. Squarespace killed the need for web developers. And now AI.

The first line made me laugh out loud because it made me think of an old boss who I enjoyed working with but could never really do coding. This boss was a rockstar at the business side of things and having worked with ABAP in my career, I couldn't ever imagine said person writing code in COBOL.

However the second line got me thinking. Yes VB let business users make apps(I made so many forms for fun). But it reminded me about how much stuff my boss got done in Excel. Was a total wizard.

You have a good point in that the stuff keeps expanding because while not all bosses will pick up the new stack many ambitious ones will. I'm sure it was the case during COBOL, during VB and is certainly the case when Excel hit the scene and I suspect that a lot of people will get stuff done with AI that devs used to do.

>But the job of understanding what to build in the first place, or debugging why the automated thing isn't doing what you expected - that's still there. Usually there's more of it.

Honestly this is the million dollar question that is actually being argued back and forth in all these threads. Given a set of requirements, can AI + a somewhat technically competent business person solve all the things a dev used to take care of? Its possible, im wondering that my boss who couldn't even tell the difference between React and Flask could in theory...possibly with an AI with a large enough context overcomes these mental model limitations. Would be an interesting experiment for companies to try out.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#258

Post by nebula8804 » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 3:34 AM UTC

tjr wrote: post #241

enos_feedler wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course that is true. The nuance here is that software isn’t just getting cheaper but the activity to build it is changing. Instead of writing lines of code you are writing requirements. That shifts who can do the job. The customer might be able to do it themselves. This removes a market, not grows one. I am not saying the market will collapse just be careful applying a blunt theory to such a profound technological…

Anecdote: I have decades of software experience, and am comfortable both writing code myself and using AI tools. Just today, I needed a basic web application, the sort of which I can easily get off the shelf from several existing vendors. I started down the path of building my own, because, well, that's just what I do, then after about 30 minutes decided to use an existing product. I have hunch that, even with AI mak…

I've heard that SASS never really took off in China because the oversupply of STEM people have caused developer salaries to be suppressed so low that companies just hire a team of devs to build out all their needs in house. Why pay for a SASS when devs are so cheap. These are just anecdotes. Its hard for me to figure out whats really going on in China.

What if AI brings the China situation to the entire world? Would the mentality shift? You seem to be basing it on the cost benefit calculations of companies today. Yes, SASS makes sense when you have developers (many of which could be mediocre) who are so expensive that it makes more sense to just pay a company who has already gone through the work of finding good developers and spend the capital to build a decent version of what you are looking for vs a scenario where the cost of a good developer has fallen dramatically and so now you can produce the same results with far less money (a cheap developer(does not matter if they are good or mediocre) guiding an AI). That cheap developer does not even have to be in the US.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#259

Post by da_chicken » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 3:39 AM UTC

It's not the dream of replacing developers.

It's the dream of replacing labor.

They've already convinced their customers what the value of the product is! Cutting labor costs is profit! Never mind the cost to society! Socialize those costs and privatize those profits!

Then they keep the money for themselves, because capitalism lets a few people own the means of production.

So everything that looks cheaper than paying someone educated and skilled to do a thing is extremely attractive. All labor-saving devices ultimate do that.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#260

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 3:42 AM UTC

nebula8804 wrote: post #258

tjr wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: I have decades of software experience, and am comfortable both writing code myself and using AI tools. Just today, I needed a basic web application, the sort of which I can easily get off the shelf from several existing vendors. I started down the path of building my own, because, well, that's just what I do, then after about 30 minutes decided to use an existing product. I have hunch that, even with AI mak…

I've heard that SASS never really took off in China because the oversupply of STEM people have caused developer salaries to be suppressed so low that companies just hire a team of devs to build out all their needs in house. Why pay for a SASS when devs are so cheap. These are just anecdotes. Its hard for me to figure out whats really going on in China. What if AI brings the China situation to the entire world? Would…

> I've heard that SASS never really took off in China because the oversupply of STEM people have caused developer salaries to be suppressed so low that companies just hire a team of devs to build out all their needs in house. Why pay for a SASS when devs are so cheap. These are just anecdotes. Its hard for me to figure out whats really going on in China.

At the high end, china pays SWEs better than South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India, and much Europe, so they attract developers from those locations. At the low end, they have a ton of low to mid-tier developers from 3rd tier+ institutions that can hack well enough. It is sort of like India: skilled people with credentials to back it up can do well, but there are tons of lower skilled people with some ability that are relatively cheap and useful.

China is going big into local LLMs, not sure what that means long term, but Alibaba's Qwen is definitely competitive, and its the main story these days if you want to run a coding model locally.