641–650 of 809 posts
Thinking that software engineers can be replaced by AI is like thinking that mathematicians can be replaced by calculators.
Almost like we learned nothing from the bitcoin period where all the people that would make money if people invest in bitcoin constantly posted stories to HN about how amazing bitcoin is.
In my experience, it's been the complete opposite. The very experienced engineers that are actually willing to use top of the line tooling are much better than they were before, including those that are over 40, and over 50. Part of the practical degradation of traditional programmers over time has always been concentration and deep calculation, just like in chess. The old chess player knows chess much better than a…
> Part of the practical degradation of traditional programmers over time has always been concentration and deep calculation, just like in chess. Fortunately SWEs have the architect path, which frequently rewards having lots of deep intuition even as the details of calculation continue to change. So one question that's urgent but unknowable until we get there is.. are we going to get good architects if they don't come…
"I don't care if the app is a synchronous multi-page form with zero no need for websockets. It must have them!" (because it says so on my slide)
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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?
Wake me up when a peer reviewed study finds even a 2X increase in senior developer productivity
If by software engineering, one means typing code character by character into a text editor, sure it's going to be difficult to find someone to pay you for it. If you mean creating software, well we are creating more software than ever before and the definition of what software is has never been so diverse. I can see many different careers branching off from here.
In 2020, there are two companies that are competitors with each other. They each employ 100 programmers to do their job, and we all know how those organizations operated; perpetually behind, each feature added generating yet more possible future features, we've all lived it and are still largely living it today. In 2026, both companies decide that AI can accelerate their developers by a factor of 10x. I'm not asserti…
AI coding agents help speed up none of that. Meanwhile the developers are either sitting in meetings or working on something else while the product owners hash it out with the client.
And sometimes, after all that, you realize the client can get 95% of what they're asking for if you just tweak some existing feature. Everyone's mostly happy, the app stays less complex.
I keep reading about how AI will be fine because people can just retrain for different careers. However, I never read what those careers are or who is going to pay for retraining. I certainly don't have the money or time to go back to college and start a new career at the bottom.
I think the idea of being an employee is fundamentally changing. Not saying its good or bad but it's shifting to a more entrepreneurial phase where people have to step out of their 9 to 5s and find ways to deliver value that others want to pay for. We saw this pre-ai with uber and door dash. I think as AI automation dies down and most companies are competing at a near optimal level with the new tools we'll need human…
In my experience, it's been the complete opposite. The very experienced engineers that are actually willing to use top of the line tooling are much better than they were before, including those that are over 40, and over 50. Part of the practical degradation of traditional programmers over time has always been concentration and deep calculation, just like in chess. The old chess player knows chess much better than a…
I don't see this in practice. Senior engineers can prompt Claude just as fast as junior engineers can. Claude can debug broken code at roughly the same speed regardless of who's pressing Enter.
In fact, I've basically stopped using agents for most of my work. It's far more valuable for me to help the junior engineers develop a better sense of what's good and right, than it is for me to sit and review Claude commits all day.
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Thank you, it's been all but confirmed that lot of "AI layoffs" are due to reaching a workforce equilibrium from Covid era over hiring. Saying AI for anything, good news or bad news, is a get out of jail free card for execs who want to appease shareholders.
Who did they overhire? Like, Covid didn’t just increase the number of people in the field. Prior to Covid there was a so called talent shortage. The hiring that did occur was mostly net zero in aggregate. Workers got poached, grads got hired, compensation went to far up. And, that’s what they mean by overhired. They over paid. They now see the benefits of hiring cheaper talent on another continent. Cheaper talent tha…
Was it ever a lifetime career? Haven't most people looked around and asked themselves where are all the 50+ engineers? They basically don't exist in large numbers. Ageism is real in this industry. You either save up enough money to retire early, switch into management, or get forced out of the industry eventually. AI is just accelerating the trend. I see very few junior engineers resisting AI. I see a LOT of staff+ e…
Now, would I relish looking for a programmer job right now at my age? Hell no.
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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.
You can't possibly believe this, or you and me (and many others) are doing something different. LLMs have created an entire new - huge - set of bang-your-head moments, as they go off half-cocked in a million simultaneous directions, chasing their tail, or just making shit up. And since the vast majority of work is on existing - often ancient - codebases, let's find out if you feel the same way in 18 months.
The LLM will do what you tell it to do. Manage it.