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The recurring dream of replacing developers

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Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#341

Post by krethh »

red75prime wrote: post #281
eks391 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt like the article had a good argument for why the AI hype will similarly be unsuccessful at erasing developers. > AI changes how developers work rather than eliminating the need for their judgment. The complexity remains. Someone must understand the business problem, evaluate whether the generated code solves it correctly, consider security implications, ensure it integrates properly with existing systems, and…

No previous tool was able to learn on its own mistakes (RLVR). It might be not enough by itself, but it shows that something has changed in comparison with the 70-odd previous years.

LLM's don't learn on their own mistakes in the same way that real developers and businesses do, at least not in a way that lends itself to RLVR.

Meaningful consequences of mistakes in software don't manifest themselves through compilation errors, but through business impacts which so far are very far outside of the scope of what an AI-assisted coding tool can comprehend.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#342

Post by bitwize »

nebula8804 wrote: post #257
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 wr…

I knew a guy like that, except his tool of choice was Access. He could code, but it wasn't his strong suit, and when he was out of his element he typically delegated those responsibilities to more technical programmers, including sometimes myself. But with Access he could model a business with tables, and wire it together with VBA business logic, as easily as you and I breathe.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#343

Post by krethh »

red75prime wrote: post #282
AstroBen wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your entire argument is based around the possibility of it turning into a magic genie that can do anything

Turning into a human-level intelligence. If you believe that it requires magic, well, it's your right.

A $3 calculator today is capable of doing arithmetic that would require superhuman intelligence to do 100 years ago.

It's extremely hard to define "human-level intelligence" but I think we can all agree that the definition of it changes with the tools available to humans. Humans seem remarkably suited to adapt to operate at the edges of what the technology of time can do.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#344

Post by wtetzner »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #309
habinero wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is happening now. What the trendlines look like. What follows if those trendlines continue. Output per developer is rising. Time from idea to implementation is collapsing. Junior and mid level work is disappearing first. Teams are shipping with fewer people. These are not hypotheticals. My dude, I just want to point out that there is no evidence of any of this, and a lot of evidence of the opposite. > If you w…

“There is no evidence” is not skepticism. It’s abdication. It’s what people say when they want the implications to go away without engaging with anything concrete. If there is “a lot of evidence of the opposite,” the minimum requirement is to name one metric, one study, or one observable trend. You didn’t. You just asserted it and moved on, which is not how serious disagreement works. “You first, lol” isn’t a rebutta…

https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#345

Post by mejutoco »

Sometimes while on an ai thread like this I see posts with obvious and many grammatical mistakes. Many will be "typos" (although some seem conceptual). Maybe some are dictated/transcribed by busy people. Some might be incorrect on purpose, for engament. These are posted by pretty accomplished people sometimes.

And I always think: any of these users could have ran a basic grammar check with an llm or even a spellchecker, but didnt. Maybe software will be the same after all.

P.S. prob I jinxed my own post and did a mistake somewhere

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#346

Post by wtetzner »

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…

> The trendline is clear. Just as early aviation was dangerous but steadily improved, this technology is getting better month by month.

I'm yet to be convinced of this. I keep hearing it, but every time I look at the results they're basically garbage.

I think LLMs are useful tools, but I haven't seen anything convincing that they will be able to replace even junior developers any time soon.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#347

Post by omnicognate »

mejutoco wrote: post #345

Sometimes while on an ai thread like this I see posts with obvious and many grammatical mistakes. Many will be "typos" (although some seem conceptual). Maybe some are dictated/transcribed by busy people. Some might be incorrect on purpose, for engament. These are posted by pretty accomplished people sometimes. And I always think: any of these users could have ran a basic grammar check with an llm or even a spellcheck…

> prob I jinxed my own post and did a mistake somewhere

ai -> AI

didnt -> didn't

obvious and many -> many obvious

These are posted by ... sometimes -> Sometimes these are posted by...

prob --> Prob(ably)

did a mistake -> made a mistake

somewhere -> somewhere.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#348

Post by FridgeSeal »

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #325
mkleczek wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience the issue really is, unfortunately, that it is impossible to tell if a particular detail is irrelevant until after you have analyzed and answered all of them. In other words, it all looks easy in hindsight only.

I think the the most coveted ability of a skilled senior developer, is precisely this "uncanny" ability to predict beforehand if some particular detail is important or irrelevant. This ability can only be obtained through years of experience and hubris.

Woah woah woah, that sounds like a skill set we might have to _pay_ someone for??? Can’t we just prompt the model to do that??

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#349

Post by cuteeaglet »

Yeah, it's that same old story all over again. We're living in an era where AI IDEs, AI CLIs, and all sorts of online and offline tools keep popping up, giving off this vibe that 'developers can just pack their bags now.' But honestly? Development isn't just about typing code — it's really about programming thinking. That ability to break down problems, reason through complexity, and handle the messy real-world details.

AI's great at automating repetitive stuff — the boilerplate, the routine tasks — but it can't replace the judgment calls, the creativity, or understanding what's really going on under the hood. As some people have pointed out in this thread, you can't escape the details, and that's exactly where human developers come in and add value.

Re: The recurring dream of replacing developers

#350

Post by cuteeaglet »

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…

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