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Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?

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Re: Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?

#71

Post by themgt »

schmookeeg wrote: post #56
themgt wrote: post #50

I will just say, if you are any good at programming and have experience using agents, you're in the top 0.1% of the world in adoption of a critical new technology. It may seem hopeless as a programmer , but imo you'd be much better off reframing your situation re: the above sentence.

Iunno, I feel like being born in a first world country did most of that "top 0.1% of the world" work. That sentence works the same with and without AI/LLMs. Among peers, I feel like I am top 20%? 30%? maybe, by being a good programmer who is adept at agents. A year ago was the 0.1% point, this stuff is spreading like wildfire. A year from now I think it's going to just be de rigeur that these are our tools now. Worse…

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Re: Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?

#73

Post by Ainaguade »

"This is exactly why we built AINAScan — we found that AI-generated code passes all tests and 'works', but consistently produces the same 15 structural bugs: save functions that never write to DB, async functions with no await, parameters that have zero effect on return values. Linters miss all of these. The code looks fine until production."

Re: Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?

#74

Post by noufalibrahim »

retrac wrote: post #3

I have had some truly spectacular results that still kind of stagger me in the last few months using Claude in my hobby projects -- but even though Claude insists on trying to slip its name into the git history as credit it's not Claude -- it's me. Someone who has studied CS and software engineering for decades will craft different prompts from someone without that background. A suggested axiom: there is nothing I ca…

Fair enough but speed, especially the kind that comes with LLMs, is fast enough to open new ways of working and doing things. We don't have infinite time and if there's something that can give me multiple, for example, UI suggestions in a minute which I can pick from, it's a different way of working than sitting with a UI designer for several hours have discussions. So, while I agree with you in theory, I don't fully agree with you in, what I think you're implying, when it comes to practice.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?

#75

Post by wuschel »

linzhangrun wrote: post #60

"Computer" use to be a job title. So no, I am not optimistic about the future of most programmers, maybe even all programmers. One possibility is that software starts to look more like traditional manufacturing. The machine is the company’s core asset. The engineer only needs to know how to operate the machine well. Once that happens, the barrier gets much lower, need much less people, and the job naturally become mu…

Thank you for your comment. I enjoyed it a lot. Good food for thought.

Your analogon is a bit leaky abstraction in the sense that it misses out on the broad stastical nature of LLMs. However, I find it is a good way to illustrate the potential industrial transformation.

It is hard to say what the future will bring. The original AsK HN post is definitly an omen for things to come.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?

#76

Post by pllbnk »

Eventually the costs of running inference will catch up to us, then we will see. But LLMs are really expensive and it is possible that with the incredible amounts of code they generatr it might become too expensive for them to keep up with it. There should be some kind of equilibrium which might take a while to reach but I think knowledge work won't disappear.

However many people have rightfully been saying it for years before LLMs that many so-called software engineers had no business in this field because for a lot of them it was just a way to earn more money than peers. It's not an issue by itself, just a rational human choice but the fact that it was possible was just because of unhealthy economic conditions.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?

#77

Post by gpderetta »

stackghost wrote: post #43
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Knowing how to implement Djikstra or a linked list by heart is no longer important. This was never important. The important part was always knowing when to use them.

>The important part was always knowing when to use them. Two things can be true simultaneously. I think there was a time when deep familiarity with implementing algorithms was important.

always was. Still is.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?

#78

Post by austin-cheney »

Software was never a precise occupation. It was a tool shed that obeyed the Pareto Principle: 20% of the people deliver 80% of the value.

This was the expectation because hiring was the primary goal, not product delivery. The industry could have fixed this by upgrading itself from an occupation to a profession built upon standards and credentials. That never happened because the 80% would become unemployable, which adds friction to hiring (the real business goal before COVID).

Now, that ship has sailed and there is no going back. The Pareto Principle is now a 5%/95% funnel because there is less incentive to learn to do the work. Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?

#79

Post by munksbeer »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #44
retrac wrote: post #3

I have had some truly spectacular results that still kind of stagger me in the last few months using Claude in my hobby projects -- but even though Claude insists on trying to slip its name into the git history as credit it's not Claude -- it's me. Someone who has studied CS and software engineering for decades will craft different prompts from someone without that background. A suggested axiom: there is nothing I ca…

> hobby projects Unfortunately despite being impressive for solo stuff, such results don’t scale to software you’d give to others.

Claude writes probably 95% of our code now, fintech, amongst top 5 in the world in what we do. I am 100% certain we're not even at the forefront of using agents for coding compared to some others.

It definitely can scale.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?

#80

Post by allanmacgregor »

al_borland wrote: post #5

> ask claude to write, and ask claude to explain This works, until it doesn’t. I’m continuously shocked by these stories, where so many people put the future of their job/company in the hands of these agents after only a few months of existing. I still constantly run into bad output from LLMs, from code to basic questions. I don’t understand how anyone can hand things over to something that is laughably wrong on a pr…

AI is just a tool, and, as always, people will use it incorrectly and lazily. Are we forgetting the good old days of Copy/Paste from Stack Overflow?

LLMs just made it more convenient for the same people to take the lazy route.

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