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LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

human-in-the-loop.bearblog.dev

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Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#361
post #140
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people would just call that construction

Construction working entirely with wood If only there was another word for that...?

Wood construction is not typically considered woodworking, although there is often a lot of overlap. But the skills needed to make furniture are pretty different from the skills needed to make decks, fences, etc.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#362
post #269

> I don't know what to do. Ride the wave. You rode it when websites/webapps were the wave. I came into software industry before internet, kept changing my horse. You are never too old to learn new tricks. The new wave create new kind of work and workers. Be one of them. Ride the beast, master the tools. It's the same game again.

This here.

Overall society feels more turbulent, but this is otherwise all the same song and dance all over again.

The 90s and 00s had this wave of "object oriented programming changes everything". Hey we're doing this thing that's been done successfully 100s of times before, but now it's OO. Writing some code in involving an airplane? Just purchase this omni-airplane object that does everything for airplanes (an actual thing I was told in college).

That's weird OO isn't the be all end all? Code gen, get this Ruby on rails running. Look at me building this website in two seconds. Code gen everywhere.

Huh, that's going to a funny place... TDD. If you aren't TDDing then you're such a bad engineer that you should be locked in prison (real conversation I observed). Oh wait, not TDD, BDD. That fixes it.

Lean, no Agile, no agile like with a small a ... but it was first, no scrum, no xml wait that was last decade, json, and finally SAFe.

Hey, have you seen this chat bot thingy?

Every iteration brings good stuff if you're paying attention. But it also brings a lot of hype and anxiety. Experiment and learn.

The one thing that's remained constant for me is that nearly everyone would rather die than to think carefully about the consequences of their dreams coming true. And as long as that remains true they'll continue to pay for someone else to ride the hype dragon on their behalf.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#363

Interesting that this dev sees domain knowledge as the most important part of his job. Over my nearly 30 year history, I consider domain knowledge as the least important aspect, and in fact have experience of many varied domains. 3 years web development, 2 years systems administration, 5 years point-of-sale / payment systems, 3 years performance management software, 16 years games development, 2 years GPU development…

Most people don't really want to acknowledge this because most people have optimized only for learning domains and are still terrible at the job of actually putting together solutions, writing software, etc., even after 8+ years of work ostensibly doing exactly that. Constantly falling standards agree with them, though; no one really cares to have good software that is well put together, it's more important to have surface level knowledge about frameworks and domain knowledge that can be taught in less than a month (though most people think their particular domain is oh-so-complex and difficult to deal with).

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get a pot of land and grow your own food Rejecting industrialized society is actually very expensive

"industrialized society" just rejected 160,000 sofware engineers this year. other industries are no better. you are either wage-slave barely making it. or getting laid off, as those people are not needed.

There were layoffs yes. The solution is to pursue something that on a small scale is net negative financially? Get out of here.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#365
I don't believe agents care less about architecture than us. Badly architected code has the same effect on them as on us, namely to slow them down and degrade the quality of their output. Which translates to the same thing as well, loss of revenue.

Coding agents are driving up the value of architectural skills to the detriment of more specialized/technical skills.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

look at layoffs.fyi. chances are he will be laid off pretty soon. and if not tomorrow, give it couple extra years until AI gets even better. it is one-way road, down the hill. not woodworking. farming. get a pot of land and grow your own food. do not participate in economy at all. that's the only survival.

> get a pot of land and grow your own food Rejecting industrialized society is actually very expensive

Artisanal food for hipsters is always going to be a market. People are willing to pay a premium for locally or regionally grown produce, fruit, eggs and meat.

However, it's a risky business so I'd only recommend getting started if you either (!) are FIRE already even after sinking 3 million bucks into purchasing land and machinery as well as constructing all the buildings or if you join a cooperative/union or if you got experienced farmers in your family.

Everything else - especially following "prepper" influencers shilling books and holding more public speeches to shill for said books than they are actually working on their farm - is a recipe for certain disaster.

If in doubt... first try raising a few dozen chickens in your yard as a starting point.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#367
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever your feelings on the future of the industry are, it's hard to imagine you'll find more professional success in artisan woodworking than artisan software. A small percentage of the market, maybe a fraction of a percent, are still willing to pay for hand-built goods - bonus if it's thoroughly modern but retro (steam-punk keyboards, maybe). Exactly zero percent of the market is willing to pay for hand-built s…

> Exactly zero percent of the market is willing to pay for hand-built software. People are increasingly associating “AI art” with cheap slop. I wonder if the same will ever happen to programming.

No it won't. Everyone knows their favourite film director.

Virtually nobody has their favourite app developer.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#368

> Maybe I should consider transforming my woodworking hobby into a profession... Whatever your feelings on the future of the industry are, it's hard to imagine you'll find more professional success in artisan woodworking than artisan software.

I have a historic house with a hand carved/ uniquely shaped door. The jamb rotted and we paid a woodworker $4k to create a replacement. The door itself would easily cost $25k to replace. So, move to a major historic area with hand carved doors and you could make some decent money.

you need some explicit /s in there, i'm afraid it's too dry

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#369
post #362
post #269

> I don't know what to do. Ride the wave. You rode it when websites/webapps were the wave. I came into software industry before internet, kept changing my horse. You are never too old to learn new tricks. The new wave create new kind of work and workers. Be one of them. Ride the beast, master the tools. It's the same game again.

This here. Overall society feels more turbulent, but this is otherwise all the same song and dance all over again. The 90s and 00s had this wave of "object oriented programming changes everything". Hey we're doing this thing that's been done successfully 100s of times before, but now it's OO. Writing some code in involving an airplane? Just purchase this omni-airplane object that does everything for airplanes (an act…

> Overall society feels more turbulent, but this is otherwise all the same song and dance all over again.

The thing is... everything you mentioned had only brought the need to retrain.

This new hotness AI? It's bringing actual layoffs, and not just of the boom bust cycle kind, but permanent, industrial-revolution kind that lasts for decades.

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