31–40 of 104 posts
I don't get it - it's an app that uses an image model to parse a pdf file and structure the data with a csv export?
Yes that phrase shows how simple it is, doesn't it? But before LLMs, computers couldn't understand that phrase. Now they can.
The guy from the story, it’s just another developer starting from a different trade, pretty normal across our history, musicians, lawyers that discovered that they were good at computers. The conclusion is flawed, not anyone can endure what this person did, sit at a terminal, going back and forward until something is finished. That’s what a SW dev does. My conclusion, many more people will discover that they are good…
New lower barrier means commodification.
The guy from the story, it’s just another developer starting from a different trade, pretty normal across our history, musicians, lawyers that discovered that they were good at computers. The conclusion is flawed, not anyone can endure what this person did, sit at a terminal, going back and forward until something is finished. That’s what a SW dev does. My conclusion, many more people will discover that they are good…
> thanks to a new lower barrier provided by LLM. New lower barrier means commodification.
I've more or less accepted this, and I think my future is in making software more resilient, secure, and fault tolerant. These people will likely want to scale these solutions up, tie different solutions together, and generally make their lives increasingly difficult. Often without realizing it. My experience is that Claude starts to make quite a mess in this context, and it'll often cause as many problems as it solv…
What could happen is a reduction in the amount of programs used, with a smaller set of more sophisticated programs doing more work. This maps to what we saw pre-industrial revolution: lots of small family operations doing menial manufacturing work (woodworking, textiles, cooking). This got replaced by large factories. A smaller amount of companies producing the a larger volume of goods. With AI, a smaller group of en…
The guy from the story, it’s just another developer starting from a different trade, pretty normal across our history, musicians, lawyers that discovered that they were good at computers. The conclusion is flawed, not anyone can endure what this person did, sit at a terminal, going back and forward until something is finished. That’s what a SW dev does. My conclusion, many more people will discover that they are good…
Let's take the metaphor of writing. Would we say this guy is just a writer who started from another trade? No. Writing is something that used to require experts (scribes) and that now anyone can do and is just a normal part of doing any work. Developers are scribes - we have sacred knowledge that is now being democratized because everyone can do it due to good enough tools. As a result, we won't be needed much going…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's take the metaphor of writing. Would we say this guy is just a writer who started from another trade? No. Writing is something that used to require experts (scribes) and that now anyone can do and is just a normal part of doing any work. Developers are scribes - we have sacred knowledge that is now being democratized because everyone can do it due to good enough tools. As a result, we won't be needed much going…
Writing is a tool, a technology. Much like hammers or saws, which are also commodified. And even though anyone can go buy a saw, not everyone is a carpenter.
It's a really interesting case study, but the summary seems to lean into the AI hype to an extent that borders on lying. > His fabrication shop uses it daily, and he built the entire thing in 8 weeks. During those 8 weeks he also had to learn everything about Claude Code, the terminal, VS Code, everything. I don't see how he can give this summary with a straight face after posting the interview that CLEARLY contradic…
I've noticed even experienced engineers have started overestimating how long things would take to build without AI. Believe it or not we coded before AI and not everything took years all the time.
Coding has never been the roadblock in software. Indeed don’t we experience this now with ai? Vibe code a basics idea then discover the things we didn’t consider. Try to vibe that and the code base quickly gets out of hand. Then we all discover “spec driven development” SDD and in turn discover thinking of specifying everything our selves is an even bigger of PITA?
>10 minutes per drawing now takes 60 seconds. It can do 100 drawings in five minutes bullshit story always leave something like this.
But even then, it also says 5m can save days of work. Days is minimum 2days, or 16h, or 960s. That’s not 10x faster as previously stated, but 192x faster.
So yeah, it doesn’t add up.
I went to college with a lot of actual engineers - mechanical, electrical, chemical, etc. In those fields you are designing products and then engineering processes to output a cog of some sort (drug, car, GPU, iPhone, etc) in the thousands to millions.
In our fields as SWEs, a lot of our job it's like the trades going into a house to install HVAC, fix a burst pipe, upgrade a circuit breaker, replace a furnace, etc. No two setups are exactly alike, no requirements are exactly alike, etc.
Even in the age of LLMs I think the industry remains more artisanal than engineering. And that's not a knock on us, I think it's because what we do is essentially automate business processes.. and no two businesses are alike. I don't think LLMs replace the role, it just makes parts of our job faster. The mindset of how you automate something doesn't generally exist in the minds of people who want the automation.