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Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

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Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#161

Post by phkahler »

SoftTalker wrote: post #128
bborud wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The AI is coming for that too. To some degree yes, in practice, not so much. In practice you have to be in the world, talk to people, know how to talk to people, know how to listen, and be able to understand the difference between what people say and what they actually need. Not want. Need. This was something I learnt in my very first job in the 1980s. I worked for someone who did industrial automation beyond PLCs…

> To some degree yes, in practice, not so much. We used to say that (not long ago, even) about the code-writing part. Why do we believe that LLMs are going to stop there? Why do we think they won't soon be able to talk to people, listen, and determine what they need? I think it's mostly a cope. We have robots walking just fine now, by the way.

>> We used to say that (not long ago, even) about the code-writing part. Why do we believe that LLMs are going to stop there? Why do we think they won't soon be able to talk to people, listen, and determine what they need?

Because they are currently "generative AI" meaning... autocomplete. They generate stuff but fall down at thinking and problem solving. There is talk of "reasoning models" but I think that's just clever meta-programming with LLMs. I can't say AI won't take that next step, but I think it will take another breakthrough on the order of transformers or attention. Companies are currently too busy exploiting the local maxima of LLMs.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#162

Post by JohnMakin »

> The career of a pro athlete has a maximum lifespan of around fifteen years. You have the opportunity to make a lot of money until around your mid-thirties,

This sounds ageist - I'm around 40 and feel I am at my mental peak, compared to even my mid 20's. This isn't a good analogy at all, the brain doesn't "wear out" like a professional athletes' body does, it just changes its structure. The brain is a remarkable organ.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#163

Post by thisisit »

KronisLV wrote: post #101
bborud wrote: post #67

Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…

> Yes, about 2-5% of the time. There are also those for whom that percentage is higher, let’s say 6-50%. > I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions The AI is coming for that too. You might just be lucky to be in circumstances that value your contributions or an industry or domain that isn’t well represented in the training data, or problem spaces too complex for AI. Not everyone is, not ev…

Lot of people don't seem to get that - It is easier to go from terrible to average but much harder to go from average to good.

I am sure AI bros are same people who were convinced consumer grade fully automated driving was going happen "by end of the year" for last 7 years.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#165

Post by marcosdumay »

mwigdahl wrote: post #80
GrinningFool wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you don't have to coax, trick, or guide your compiler into doing the right thing.

Clearly you are not a C++ programmer. :)

Maybe C++ compilers would benefit from asking an LLM to rewrite their messages in a way that makes the point clearer...

But the GP stands.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#166

Post by madduci »

bborud wrote: post #67

Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…

Because that classifies in "developers" and "software engineers". And software engineering isn't going to disappear anytime soon

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#167

Post by missedthecue »

ezekg wrote: post #72
pllbnk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem partially is that AI can also fix AI slop. At this point I am in doubt whether code quality matters anymore in most non-critical software. You can ask an LLM if the code has quality issues and refactor to a _better_ version. It will reason through, prepare a plan and refactor. So now with this "better" code you can expect that your LLM will be able to deliver higher quality results but that's all the qual…

In my experience, an LLM "refactoring" autonomously doesn't actually improve code quality, it simply reorganizes the mess into a new mess.

This is my experience with human developers too so I'm not sure if there's a meaningful difference.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#168

Post by cromka »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #131
KronisLV wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, about 2-5% of the time. There are also those for whom that percentage is higher, let’s say 6-50%. > I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions The AI is coming for that too. You might just be lucky to be in circumstances that value your contributions or an industry or domain that isn’t well represented in the training data, or problem spaces too complex for AI. Not everyone is, not ev…

> The AI is coming for that too. Current AI tech giants prove over and over and over again that this is not the case

We've literally just started, what "over and over" do you refer to?

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#169

Post by vineyardmike »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #143
bborud wrote: post #67

Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…

What you described are senior developers and system architects. Junior developers spend most of their time writing code (when they're not forced to attend pointless standups, because Agile/blah/blah) > The developers who still think their job is about writing code will perhaps not have a job in the future. So you're saying the same thing everyone else is saying. SWEs won't go away, but they will be greatly reduced, b…

> How will Sr Devs in the future be created?

As an extreme example, maybe we’ll see long-running internships and trainings like doctors experience. Doctors don’t start their career until ~12+ years of prep and training.

Pragmatically, software development has a lot of examples of teenagers making apps and college students building software companies. In the 12 years it takes for training, low-knowledge workers could be vibe coding continuously replacements of most commercial software products they’d be hired to build. So I doubt we’ll treat software development as a rarified high skill job.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#170

Post by kixiQu »

> If you work in construction, you need to lift and carry a series of heavy objects in order to be effective. But lifting heavy objects puts long-term wear on your back and joints, making you less effective over time. Construction workers don’t say that being a good construction worker means not lifting heavy objects. They say “too bad, that’s the job”.

My parents were both construction workers. There is an understanding that you cannot lift heavy objects forever. You stop lifting objects and move to being a foreman, a supervisor... and if you are uncomfortable learning to get others to do work that you before have done yourself, you burn out your body entirely and the consequences are horrible.

This is factual reality, but it is also a parable that has been important for me to internalize about delegation in my own career. It is not irrelevant to AI use, but I don't think it slots onto it totally as neatly.

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