431–440 of 809 posts
If you don't know how to code then you can't really influence the AI technically and that can result in everything being the same. Maybe you want a react app and using redux for state would be the best for the specific case but the AI doesn't recommend it and you don't know, then you are missing out and can end up with something suboptimal This was just an example
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Glib is called for. The amount of information asymmetry that's still on the table as vibe coders and vibe engineers and vibe doctors emerge is staggering. Professional experience is still incredibly valuable. Most software developers might spend more than 6% of their time coding but no senior developers are banging their heads for hours over typos. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xBilK3gT5e0
These days nobody bangs their heads over typos. LLMs evaporated 90% of the "moments of despair" when you have an error and googling it isn't helping, or googling it made you realize you have to read 30min of documentation. Coding is a joy now. LLMs shaved off all the rough edges.
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>> I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions > The AI is coming for that too. If this is true, then you'd have to conclude that AI is coming for everything . I'm still not convinced by that. But I am convinced that the part of software development that involves typing code manually into an IDE all day is likely gone forever.
It really doesn't have to come for everything to feel like it's taking everything. If it eliminates 10% of white collar jobs over the next decade, the impact will be felt everywhere.
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>> I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions > The AI is coming for that too. If this is true, then you'd have to conclude that AI is coming for everything . I'm still not convinced by that. But I am convinced that the part of software development that involves typing code manually into an IDE all day is likely gone forever.
It really doesn't have to come for everything to feel like it's taking everything. If it eliminates 10% of white collar jobs over the next decade, the impact will be felt everywhere.
So of 10% of lawyers get AI-d away, let’s say, the remaining 90% are 1.1x+ efficient and also up against other lawyers enjoying the same… work might go up. And on the customer side there is sooooo much BS with lawyers, but if both lawyer and customer can communicate faster or better with the LLMs, we should see more better cases with better dialog and case handling. Again, the total amount of lawyering could go up a lot. And then we have the cases prohibitive without the LLMs, now possible for big money. Better LLM empowered lawyers should be able to create new and more lawyer work.
As it stands I see people selling services that are subsidized by VC, template jobs we’d be doing faster with copy paste but it’s not copyright infringement when OpenAI does it, and a rush for valuations to soak up VC because the business model isn’t there. I’m seeing a huge uptick in visual bugs on large commercial platforms and customer facing apps, and don’t feel OpenAI is gonna kill Office anytime soon… or Chromium… or Steam… or emacs…
Call me an optimist, but I think those LLM pump and dumpers are creating a wave of fear that would be quite different if they weren’t lying and trying to boost an IPO. Chat GPT 2 was too dangerous to release, lul, and the class action suits are just getting started.
An actual lawyer replacing tech company should sell lawyering for infini-money, not pens that’ll totally 10x your lawyering (bro).
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It's important (and calming) to understand that since the Industrial Revolution started ~250 years ago, we've automated away most jobs several times over, while employment levels have stayed pretty constant. "Automating half the jobs" is the same as "double productivity per worker". When the doubling happens in 5 years rather than 50, it might be more disruptive, but I'm convinced we're on the verge of huge improveme…
What in the current state of world affairs outside of IT do you think is indicative of that potential for huge improvements in human standard of living?
If we double productivity per worker, we have twice as much wealth on average.
I know there are angry people convinced that this will all be consumed by billionaires and jews, but historically that is not at all the track record of the last 250 years, and I expect that to continue.
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But when a senior can do the job of 6 coworkers, what do you suppose will happen to the coworkers? In farming, those who were replaced by tractors did not keep their jobs. What is different now?
With farming, you couldn't just start your own farm, because it requires farmland, and there's only so much of that. But those 6 software engineers can start their own companies, fire up their own team of agents. There's no limit to how many companies can exist in the world.
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This is a bit of glib answer. Most of the time is spent coding which encompasses typing, retyping, and retyping again. It also includes banging your head against the wall while trying to get one of your rewrites to work against and under-documented API. OP's formulation makes SWE sound like a purely noble enterprise like mathematics. It's more like an oil rig worker banging on pieces of metal with large hammers to ge…
Most of the time is spent figuring what the right thing to do is, not writing the implementation. Sometimes the process of writing the implementation surfaces new considerations about what the right thing is, but still, producing text to feed to a compiler is not the bulk of the work of a software engineer. It is to unearth requirements and turn them into repeatable software.
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The least experienced developer writes the most code. Juniors would be spending whole day in the IDE, typing, testing, typing etc. Senior developers will go to a park for a few hours, think, then come back spent an hour or less typing code that just works or write nothing at all, maybe even delete code. Instead they might update documents, ask clarifications about found edge cases or errors in planning that were not…
Since software is in every industry of man, I think you'll need to mention which industry this perspective is coming from. This is definitely NOT the case in certain industries.
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Glib is called for. The amount of information asymmetry that's still on the table as vibe coders and vibe engineers and vibe doctors emerge is staggering. Professional experience is still incredibly valuable. Most software developers might spend more than 6% of their time coding but no senior developers are banging their heads for hours over typos. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xBilK3gT5e0
These days nobody bangs their heads over typos. LLMs evaporated 90% of the "moments of despair" when you have an error and googling it isn't helping, or googling it made you realize you have to read 30min of documentation. Coding is a joy now. LLMs shaved off all the rough edges.
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This is temporary. What is the SKILL.md equivalent going to be in five years? In ten? You don't already see a pattern emerging around solutions to encode that "professional experience" into the tools themselves? These LLMs can already incorporate our entire cultural corpus yet your "professional experience" is the threshold they won't cross?
The capacity of the person prompting it to understand is the threshold they won't cross. They can squeeze the gap as much as possible by dumbing down answers or slowly ramping up information complexity but there is a limit to comprehension.
If LLMs get good enough, one might be tempted to ask so what if most humans can't understand the output? Human civilization has by and large been a constant exercise in us collectively accomplishing more and more while individually comprehending less and less.
Our ancestors likely understood more about hunting live game or murdering each other than we do. Most of us do not consider that a great loss. Most of us living in the modern world depend on things we don't fully comprehend. I'm just not sure how this would lead to being reassured re the human as SWE.