71–80 of 631 posts
I'm curious how the 6 months have looked from a non-programmer's perspective. What kind of co-working tools and similar optimizations have people from other fields experienced?
I wonder how much the 'inflection point' is a thing vs marketing. I'm sure the models got somewhat better, but even now when I'm trying to 'vibe code' a game with the latest models (combination of Codex w/ gpt5.5 and gpt5.3-codex), they really do struggle. They definitely get something barebones up and running, but it's far from a fully fledged application.
Paradox - you can get multiple inflection points even as systems start to have dimishing marginal returns in core capability, I think this is due to 'threshold crossing' where something 'becomes good enough for a specific purpose' - it just unlocks capabilities. 'Nail Guns' used to be heavy, required heavy power cords, they were extremely expensive. When they got lighter, cheaper, battery pack ... at some point, they…
If you're a vulnerability researcher or a security person generally, there's a big inflection point from Spring of this year.
If you're a vulnerability researcher or a security person generally, there's a big inflection point from Spring of this year.
If you're a vulnerability researcher or a security person generally, there's a big inflection point from Spring of this year.
Can you be more specific?
I met a few people at PyCon this week who have been part of Glasswing (they're just starting to be allowed to talk about it) and it really does drive down the cost of finding vulnerabilities.
I've been collecting notes on that here: https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-security-research/
If you're a vulnerability researcher or a security person generally, there's a big inflection point from Spring of this year.
Can you be more specific?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you justify your salary given that you're just using a tool that any of us could use for $20 an hour in your role?
Because the tool will happily give you a "solution" that kinda works for a few inputs. It will happily correct itself when you give it more incorrect tests. It will almost never converge on the general solution that will pass tests you haven't given it yet. This is why AI is sooo good at Javascript and related slop. A solution that "kinda works" is good enough 9 times out of 10 and if some tests fail well ... YOLO an…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember this very clearly myself. Before opus 4.5, I was doing a lot of hand holding and was coding a lot myself, but I have not written code since that day more or less. I did write some stuff myself just to learn how the enigma encryption machine worked, so wrote myself to learn. But professionally, I stopped coding in November.
How do you justify your salary given that you're just using a tool that any of us could use for $20 an hour in your role?
What you're saying is like "how do you justify your salary as a NASA engineer when anyone can use Simulink and generate the code?"
It is extremely ignorant.
what are your thoughts on Software engineer replacement. My team has already seen big reductions. Q/A team is gone. Software Engineer reduced by a third. Scared for the future
Personally, the more time I spend working with coding agents the least worried I am for my career. Getting the best results out of them is really hard. They amplify existing skills and experience, so the more experience you have the better.