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An industrial piping contractor on Claude Code [video]

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Re: An industrial piping contractor on Claude Code [video]

#51

Post by mathisfun123 »

coldtea wrote: post #47
mathisfun123 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol you think developers aren't already commodities? You joking? edit: i love how this is getting downvotes but no further responses. y'all are in denial. let me ask you this: why is the most common interview loop round a generic LC round? lolol

"Lol", do you think in lols or do you ever sit and consider something more deeply? Or maybe you think adding a lol makes the other side's argument ridiculous and yours stronger? Skipping the lols, here's the answer to your question: doesn't matter if developers "are already commodities" to some degree. First, because that degree is small, else developers wouldn't command such high salaries relative to other trades. S…

> developers wouldn't command such high salaries relative to other trades.

lololol something can be a commodity and still expensive. to wit: have you heard of this thing called oil which is recently very expensive?

> do you think in lols or do you ever sit and consider something more deeply?

i think deeply enough to recognize when someone's reasoning is so flawed they should've almost immediately reconsidered their claim upon conceiving of it. and then i laugh out loud (at them) when they didn't. occasionally many many times.

Re: An industrial piping contractor on Claude Code [video]

#52

Post by AndrewKemendo »

pbiggar wrote: post #28
mromanuk wrote: post #21

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…

What is this “sacred knowledge?”

Is it knowing how to write a regex without a reference, or maybe implementing a distributed ec postgres cluster using bash, ooh how about writing a minimum cnn in C for edge classification ooohhh wooowee…

Ever worked construction? There’s hammer swingers that need one swing per nail and never miss. Or plasterers that make chalk look like marble. How about a high voltage lineman that can switch a 20kv oil-cooled transformer in less than 15 minutes to get the power to the school back on

No different from any tradesman - we’re not special

Re: An industrial piping contractor on Claude Code [video]

#53

Post by unkiep »

mromanuk wrote: post #21

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…

This sounds like "no true Scotsman..."

Re: An industrial piping contractor on Claude Code [video]

#54

Post by dahart »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #33
coldtea wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> thanks to a new lower barrier provided by LLM. New lower barrier means commodification.

Lol no it doesn't you literally have it backwards - think about the trades, specifically construction, as low barrier to entry jobs and consider that houses/buildings are all different (not commodities).

> consider that houses/building are all different (not commodities)

The vast majority of US housing construction is tract housing, which is a commodity. In the EU, flats, which are also commodities.

Re: An industrial piping contractor on Claude Code [video]

#55

Post by mathisfun123 »

dahart wrote: post #54
mathisfun123 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol no it doesn't you literally have it backwards - think about the trades, specifically construction, as low barrier to entry jobs and consider that houses/buildings are all different (not commodities).

> consider that houses/building are all different (not commodities) The vast majority of US housing construction is tract housing, which is a commodity. In the EU, flats, which are also commodities.

Citation please. Certainly I'm aware of cookie cutter developments but "vast majority" seems like an exaggeration to me.

Re: An industrial piping contractor on Claude Code [video]

#56

Post by kaycey2022 »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #3

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…

scaling these solutions will prove to be counter productive. If you are thinking of scaling you are still trapped in the current paradigm. This plumber guy is only unique in that he read the news and pushed a little harder to see what the actual f is going on. In the days that come, every single person who is serious about their job will do and experience the same thing.

I'm not saying this particular individual is wrong in trying to build his solution to the market. Maybe there is some VC money to be made in this moment. But as AI in the workplace gets normalised, most people will either come up with solutions for their problems, or they will ask someone they know to help them with this.

scale will only matter if you are explicitly building a platform. That will still require real software engineering skills.

As for hardware interfacing, if I am not mistaken, almost all companies selling hardware right now still behave like babies when it comes to users getting access to the software inside it. They void warrantees, sue them, so on etc. For ambitious user driven software innovations in the hardware space the companies should open up their interfaces. I don't see this happening at all not only because of the companies' greed but also for regulatory and safety reasons.

Re: An industrial piping contractor on Claude Code [video]

#57

Post by williamcotton »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #55
dahart wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> consider that houses/building are all different (not commodities) The vast majority of US housing construction is tract housing, which is a commodity. In the EU, flats, which are also commodities.

Citation please. Certainly I'm aware of cookie cutter developments but "vast majority" seems like an exaggeration to me.

”The current market share of custom-built homes is approximately 19% of total single-family starts”

https://www.nahb.org/blog/2025/08/custom-home-building-grows...

Re: An industrial piping contractor on Claude Code [video]

#58

Post by xvedejas »

williamcotton wrote: post #57
mathisfun123 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation please. Certainly I'm aware of cookie cutter developments but "vast majority" seems like an exaggeration to me.

”The current market share of custom-built homes is approximately 19% of total single-family starts” https://www.nahb.org/blog/2025/08/custom-home-building-grows...

New multifamily construction in the US that has to undergo design review is arguably fairly custom in that each site will have different requirements. I think it's fair to say that commoditization is a spectrum?

Re: An industrial piping contractor on Claude Code [video]

#59

Post by vunderba »

joshstrange wrote: post #30
pbiggar wrote: post #28

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…

> 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 forward. The ability to solve problems is what’s important. Not your ability to remember things or to hold sacred knowledge.

This. Software development probably requires some of the least boilerplate memorization in all of STEM. Deductive reasoning and imagination are far more important than being flexing that you’ve committed quicksort to memory.
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