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The recurring dream of replacing developers

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Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#331

Post by bitwize »

onenite wrote: post #288
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…

manifest-driven development.

Just put the intention out there in the universe and the universe will answer!

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#332

Post by krethh »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #321
imiric wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “We’ve seen this before and it didn’t happen” is not analysis. It’s selective pattern matching used when the conclusion feels safe. > If you want to argue seriously, you have to start with ground truth. What is happening now. What the trendlines look like. What follows if those trendlines continue. Wait, so we can infer the future from "trendlines", but not from past events? Either past events are part of a macro t…

>Wait, so we can infer the future from “trendlines”, but not from past events? Either past events are part of a macro trend, and are valuable data points, or the micro data points you choose to focus on are unreliable as well. Talk about selection bias… If past events can be dismissed as “noise,” then so can selectively chosen counterexamples. Either historical outcomes are legitimate inputs into a broader signal, or…

Respectfully, you seem to love the sound of your writing so much you forget what you are arguing about. The topic (at least for the rest of the people in this thread) seems to be whether AI assistance can truly eliminate programmers.

There is one painfully obvious, undeniable historical trend: making programmer work easier increases the number of programmers. I would argue a modern developer is 1000x more effective than one working in the times of punch cards - yet we have roughly 1000x more software developers than back then.

I'm not an AI skeptic by any means, and use it everyday at my job where I am gainfully employed to develop production software used by paying customers. The overwhelming consensus among those similar to me (I've put down all of these qualifiers very intentionally) is that the currently existing modalities of AI tools are a massive productivity boost mostly for the "typing" part of software (yes, I use the latest SOTA tools, Claude Opus 4.5 thinking, blah, blah, so do most of my colleagues). But the "typing" part hasn't been the hard part for a while already.

You could argue that there is a "step change" coming in the capabilities of AI models, which will entirely replace developers (so software can be "willed into existence", as elegantly put by OP), but we are no closer to that point now than we were in December 2022. All the success of AI tools in actual, real-world software has been in tools specifically design to assist existing, working, competent developers (e.g. Cursor, Claude Code), and the tools which have positioned themselves to replace them have failed (Devin).

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#333

Post by zahlman »

lotu wrote: post #106
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…

You say that like someone that has been coding for so long you have forgotten what it's like to not know how to code. The customer will have little idea what is even possible and will ask for a product that doesn't solve their actual problem. AI is amazing at producing answers you previously would have looked up on stack overflow, which is very useful. It often can type faster that than I can which is also useful. Ho…

> However, if we are going to see the exponential improvements towards AGI AI boosters talk about we would have already seen the start of it.

Maybe you already understood this, but many of the "AI boosters" you refer to genuinely believe we have "seen the start of it".

Or at least they appear to believe it.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#334

Post by enos_feedler »

falloutx wrote: post #163
lotu wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that like someone that has been coding for so long you have forgotten what it's like to not know how to code. The customer will have little idea what is even possible and will ask for a product that doesn't solve their actual problem. AI is amazing at producing answers you previously would have looked up on stack overflow, which is very useful. It often can type faster that than I can which is also useful. Ho…

>The customer will have little idea what is even possible and will ask for a product that doesn't solve their actual problem. How do you know that? For tech products most of the users are also technically literate and can easily use Claude Code or whatever tool we are using. They easily tell CC specifically what they need. Unless you create social media apps or bank apps, the customers are pretty tech savvy.

I agree. People forget that people know how to use computers and have a good intuition on what they are capable of. Its the programming task that many people cant do. Its unlocking users to solve their own problems again

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#335

Post by Culonavirus »

gtowey wrote: post #311
fragmede wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your kitchen contractor an unthinking robot with no opinions or thoughts of their own that has never used a kitchen? Obviously if you want a specific cabinet to go in a specific place in the room, you're going to have to give the kitchen contractor specifics. But assuming your kitchen contractor isn't an utter moron, they can come up with something reasonable if they know it's supposed to be the kitchen. A sink, a…

You kitchen contractor will never cook in your kitchen. If you leave the decisions to them, you'll get something that's quick and easy to build, but it for sure won't have all the details that make a great kitchen. It will be average. Which seems like an apt analogy for software. I see people all the time who build systems and they don't care about the details. The results are always mediocre.

> The results are always mediocre.

I think this is a major point people do not mention enough during these debates on "AI vs Developers": The business/stakeholder side is completely fine with average and mediocre solutions as long as those solutions are delivered quickly and priced competitively. They will gladly use a vibecoded solution if the solution kinda sorta mostly works. They don't care about security, performance or completeness... such things are to be handled when/if they reach the user/customer in significant numbers. So while we (the devs) are thinking back to all the instances we used gpt/grok/claude/.. and not seeing how the business could possibly arrive to our solutions just with AI and wihout us in the loop... the business doesn't know any of the details nor does it care. When it comes to anything IT related, your typical business doesn't know what it doesn't know, which makes it easy to fire employees/contractors for redundancy first (because we have AI now) and ask questions later (uhh... because we have AI now).

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#336

Post by yxhuvud »

xnx wrote: post #81
jackfranklyn wrote: post #52

[flagged]

Machinery made farmers more efficient and now there are more farmers than ever.

No, but both demand and space to grow stuff are very much limitations in that space. They are not even close to being that for programming.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#337

Post by godelski »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #274
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…

Counterpoint: perhaps it's not about escaping all the details, just the irrelevant ones, and the need to have them figured out up front. Making the process more iterative, an exploration of medium under supervision or assistance of domain expert, turns it more into a journey of creation and discovery, in which you learn what you need (and learn what you need to learn) just-in-time. I see no reason why this wouldn't b…

  > perhaps it's not about escaping all the details, just the irrelevant ones
But that's the hard part. You have to explore the details to determine if they need to be included or not.

You can't just know right off the back. Doing so contradicts the premise. You cannot determine if a detail isn't important unless you get detailed. If you only care about a few grains of sand in a bucket you still have to search through a bucket of sand for those few grains

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#338

Post by Ekaros »

fragmede wrote: post #275
lazypenguin wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is your kitchen contractor an unthinking robot with no opinions or thoughts of their own that has never used a kitchen? Obviously if you want a specific cabinet to go in a specific place in the room, you're going to have to give the kitchen contractor specifics. But assuming your kitchen contractor isn't an utter moron, they can come up with something reasonable if they know it's supposed to be the kitchen. A sink, a…

Maybe they have a kitchen without dishwasher. So unless asked they won't include one. Or even make it possible to include one. Seems like a real possibility. Maybe eventually after building many kitchens they learn they should ask about that one.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#339

Post by sebazzz »

jackfranklyn wrote: post #52

[flagged]

> The developers who get displaced are the ones doing purely mechanical work that was already well-specified.

And that hits the offshoring companies in India and similar countries probably the most, because those can generally only do their jobs well if everything has been specified to the detail.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#340

Post by Ekaros »

fn-mote wrote: post #83
jandrese wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree because Sales couldn't exist with a product There are a lot of counterexamples throughout history.

This is too cryptic. Be clearer what you mean. Ponzi schemes?

It works. But for most it is not sustainable. It in most cases collapses eventually. But ideas and words and now pictures and videos do sell as in get pre-orders or pre-payments.
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