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The Future of AI Software Development

martinfowler.com

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Re: The Future of AI Software Development

#3

Post by adregan »

In the section on security:

> One large enterprise employee commented that they were deliberately slow with AI tech, keeping about a quarter behind the leading edge. “We’re not in the business of avoiding all risks, but we do need to manage them”.

I’m unclear how this pattern helps with security vis-à-vis LLMs. It makes sense when talking about software versions, in hoping that any critical bugs are patched, but prompt injection springs eternal.

Re: The Future of AI Software Development

#4

Post by bilekas »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #2

Looks to me like the people that are filthy rich [0] can afford to move so fast that even the people who are very rich in the regular way can't keep up. [0] Which is not even enough, these are the ones with truly excess money to burn.

I'm not sure you read the article, it's not referring to financials, but tech debt.

Re: The Future of AI Software Development

#5

Post by bilekas »

adregan wrote: post #3

In the section on security: > One large enterprise employee commented that they were deliberately slow with AI tech, keeping about a quarter behind the leading edge. “We’re not in the business of avoiding all risks, but we do need to manage them”. I’m unclear how this pattern helps with security vis-à-vis LLMs. It makes sense when talking about software versions, in hoping that any critical bugs are patched, but prom…

> but prompt injection springs eternal.

Yes, but some are mitigated when discoverd, and some more critical areas need to be isolated from the LLM so taking their time to provision LLM into their lifecycle is important, and they're happy to spend the time doing it right, rather than just throwing the latest edge tech into their system.

Re: The Future of AI Software Development

#6

Post by riffraff »

I think the title on HN doesn't reflect all that is in TFA, but rather the linked article[0]. Fowler's article is interesting tho.

I do like the idea that "all code is tech debt", and we shouldn't want to produce more of it than we need. But it's also worth remembering that debt is not bad per se, buying a house with a mortgage is also debt and can be a good choice for many reasons.

[0]: https://thenewstack.io/ai-velocity-debt-accelerator/

Re: The Future of AI Software Development

#8

Post by ethin »

bilekas wrote: post #5
adregan wrote: post #3

In the section on security: > One large enterprise employee commented that they were deliberately slow with AI tech, keeping about a quarter behind the leading edge. “We’re not in the business of avoiding all risks, but we do need to manage them”. I’m unclear how this pattern helps with security vis-à-vis LLMs. It makes sense when talking about software versions, in hoping that any critical bugs are patched, but prom…

> but prompt injection springs eternal. Yes, but some are mitigated when discoverd, and some more critical areas need to be isolated from the LLM so taking their time to provision LLM into their lifecycle is important, and they're happy to spend the time doing it right, rather than just throwing the latest edge tech into their system.

How exactly can you "mitigate" prompt injections? Given that the language space is for all intents and purposes infinite, and given that you can even circumvent these by putting your injections in hex or base64 or whatever? Like I just don't see how one can truly mitigate these when there are infinite ways of writing something in natural language, and that's before we consider the non-natural languages one can use too.

Re: The Future of AI Software Development

#9

Post by simonw »

> LLMs are eating specialty skills. There will be less use of specialist front-end and back-end developers as the LLM-driving skills become more important than the details of platform usage. Will this lead to a greater recognition of the role of Expert Generalists? Or will the ability of LLMs to write lots of code mean they code around the silos rather than eliminating them?

This is one of the most interesting questions right now I think.

I've been taking on much more significant challenges in areas like frontend development and ops and automation and even UI design now that LLMs mean I can be much more of a generalist.

Assuming this works out for more people, what does this mean for the shape of our profession?

Re: The Future of AI Software Development

#10

Post by senko »

riffraff wrote: post #6

I think the title on HN doesn't reflect all that is in TFA, but rather the linked article[0]. Fowler's article is interesting tho. I do like the idea that "all code is tech debt", and we shouldn't want to produce more of it than we need. But it's also worth remembering that debt is not bad per se, buying a house with a mortgage is also debt and can be a good choice for many reasons. [0]: https://thenewstack.io/ai-vel…

I like the "cognitive debt" idea outlined here: https://margaretstorey.com/blog/2026/02/09/cognitive-debt/ (from a participant of the retreat) and especially the pithy "velocity without understanding is not sustainable" phrase.
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