Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

human-in-the-loop.bearblog.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 1001 posts

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

#711

Post by rfgplk »

techblueberry wrote: post #688
george_max wrote: post #617

I see many comments saying, "AI can't do X with 80-100% accuracy; therefore our professions are in good hands." While I don't want to sound overly pessimistic, the models are improving at a rapid rate. If asked ~3 years ago where the state of the models are today, it would sound like sci-fi if answered, "the models are creating full MVP apps in ~30 minutes with one prompt". The hurdles the models are facing now, like…

What is your theory of when AI gets to 100%. PMs and business analysts build all the software? Or just like a 700 or so 1-founder companies in the world and everyone else is without work? The matrix?

> Or just like a 700 or so 1-founder companies in the world and everyone else is without work?

This. But instead of 700 it's more likely that everyone will be a founder (more or less). It's already scary how easy it is to launch an MVP or produce prototypes with the latest models.

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

#712

Post by rfgplk »

p2detar wrote: post #643
george_max wrote: post #617

I see many comments saying, "AI can't do X with 80-100% accuracy; therefore our professions are in good hands." While I don't want to sound overly pessimistic, the models are improving at a rapid rate. If asked ~3 years ago where the state of the models are today, it would sound like sci-fi if answered, "the models are creating full MVP apps in ~30 minutes with one prompt". The hurdles the models are facing now, like…

Why would it stop with just developer layoffs? When software companies rely on LLM providers to run their business, I’d argue we‘ll see a massive bust of these companies around the world - from on-prem products to SaaS. Customers may build the software they need entirely in-house or via prompt-engineer consultants, without the need to buy software tools like today. It could be a very very different world.

> Customers may build the software they need entirely in-house or via prompt-engineer consultants, without the need to buy software tools like today. It could be a very very different world.

Already happening. I know of a few places that have gotten such large gains from LLMs that they know have their engineers working on creating homegrown ports of popular services (Docker etc.).

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

#713

Post by Cherryontop11 »

techblueberry wrote: post #688
george_max wrote: post #617

I see many comments saying, "AI can't do X with 80-100% accuracy; therefore our professions are in good hands." While I don't want to sound overly pessimistic, the models are improving at a rapid rate. If asked ~3 years ago where the state of the models are today, it would sound like sci-fi if answered, "the models are creating full MVP apps in ~30 minutes with one prompt". The hurdles the models are facing now, like…

What is your theory of when AI gets to 100%. PMs and business analysts build all the software? Or just like a 700 or so 1-founder companies in the world and everyone else is without work? The matrix?

See my issue with these comparisons is that it always compare AI to 100%.

When 100% does not exist. Most software out there has issues, bugs, compliance problems, security weaknesses, scaling, redundancy, availability issues...etc. A lot of this is not actually related to how good or bad software engineers are. It's about costs and time to ROI. Greed is an issue too.

So people seem to have this idea that software created by humans is perfect (its not). And that deterministic (human created software with if/then) is alway going to be better than probabilistic (LLMs). Which in a perfect world is the case, but we live in a capitalistic world where this is not the case.

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

#715

Post by gedy »

GuB-42 wrote: post #687
gedy wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But as always, further working on it proved extremely difficult, as it always tried to go back to making generic stuff, ignoring the details you give it. It's like any LLM, it's not a tool for if you know exactly what you want with all these knobs and fine grained controls. > The most interesting result I had was actually when I managed to get it off rails, a bug more or less. I asked it to mix two very different g…

> I don't think that's a bug or unexpected In this particular case, it really gave some "uncanny valley" feeling. That is, on the surface, it sounds like something familiar, but something is off. The wrongness was completely unintended, not prompted for, but interesting, in the same way that eldritch horror is interesting. I wanted to mix heavy metal and hardstyle, the idea I had in mind was to imagine a battle, one…

I think it sounds cool, the style mix is really interesting. Had some fun doing similar:

https://suno.com/song/a24e349b-de3b-4f98-a733-f7f70949571f

https://suno.com/s/Ff9n8A7R9k7iTpBD

I definitely come from the angle of appreciating the novelty and newness of sound from this generated music, especially when tasked with mashups. I'd not use if I had a strong vision around refining a particular song though, maybe that's the challenge with the "battle" inspiration you were after.

FYI though you can give some hints to the generation about what you want, if you look at the 'lyrics' for the two instrumental songs above you'll see them in the brackets.

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

#717

Post by zuzululu »

shreddit wrote: post #136

This doesn’t read to me as someone who is sincerely impressed or rather surprised what ai is capable off. This reads like someone is trying to convince me, that ai is just this good, and that the author is telling me to use more ai. To me this sounds like: Trust me, it’s really bad, i know what I’m talking about. Just lean into it, or change profession.

I didn't get that impression at all, I think there is genuine write off or outdated view of LLMs here. I also see lot of people sharing issues raised by LLMs at tasks that a human would also fail to produce an accurate result.

So in this thread there is a mix of genuine edges that LLMs need harness and guidance with tasks that when given to a human will not perform well in that LLM is supposed to suddenly solve.

Like the thread above about financial compliance, without knowing specifics it can be very vague in language and confusing unless you apply to precedents and exact scenarios that can give you a range for what is acceptable/unacceptable. Mythos or any LLM isn't going to magically figure these edges out for you because a human would also struggle at such task.

My advice is don't let what you read here including my comment dictate your own decisions, but apply the same common sense, apply it in ways that it can help you and figure out when to use determinism vs LLM in the context of your jobs.

These lazy comments that simply try to paint a black and white categorization of AI/LLM are just noise.

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

#718

Post by jckahn »

batshit_beaver wrote: post #639
throw-the-towel wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of us here are building something genuinely new, though?

Hopefully everyone? Else your job could have been outsourced or replaced by a junior with access to Google and StackOverflow way before LLMs (it just wasn’t due to zero interest rates and proliferation of bullshit jobs in tech companies).

That's not been my experience. Most professional software is just a CRUD app in one form or another.

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

#719

Post by TurdF3rguson »

hatsix wrote: post #460
odeono wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Soul and humanity" is doing a lot of work here. Does the woodworker who shape using a handsaw use less "soul" than the one who uses a machine? Does the musician who use a DAW and VSTs instead of analogue tape recorders create music with less "soul"? Does the painter who buys acryllic paint instead of synthesizing their own dye from plants use less "soul"? As technological innovation progresses, the barrier to creati…

Does the carpenter who used to build custom fit cabinets with hand and power tools put in the same creativity when he just carries around a scanner, scans the area, the customers use software to select the layout, approve the work, then the CNC cuts out the wood, then all that's left is to put the screws in the holes and go home. This isn't like the step from hand saws to power saws, and it's disingenuous to pretend…

Yes, hand made goods come with a story and a memory of the artesan who created them and those things have value.

It's not the item's soul that's at stake when you stop recognizing that, it's your own.

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

#720

Post by mgh95 »

fragmede wrote: post #678
thewebguyd wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IT. They tend to over-interpret regulation, and super-restrict beyond what is needed for actual de-facto compliance. IME this is less the fault of IT and more so bad auditors that won't consider, or just don't understand, what compensating controls are. If it doesn't meet their little checklist exactly, they fail the audit.

> compensating controls How to say you deal with PCI compliance without saying you steal with PCi compliance.

Compensating controls also come up in the context of BSA/AML.
Post reply on HN