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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?

#151

Post by lelanthran »

titanomachy wrote: post #93
lelanthran wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My personal experience: writing code has always been the easy part. AI does most of that now. The only reason dev jobs paid more (by a factor of two or more) than pure solution modeling was because "writing code" was the hard part. If you wanted to get paid just modeling the solution and handing it off to a coding team, those jobs were available for decades, typically called Business Analysts but few devs moved fro…

Who hires “pure solution modelers”? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone like that.

> Who hires “pure solution modelers”? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone like that.

They're called Business Analysts, sometimes simply Analysts, and that's effectively their job - come up with a spec and give it to the software engineers.

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

#153

Post by softwaredoug »

stuaxo wrote: post #108
softwaredoug wrote: post #90

Every AI coding project feels like working with legacy code. All the skills I actually use look more like managing a big messy, brittle black box codebase. It’s exactly how we would have inherited a big ugly codebase pre AI. I think if you’re used to traditional green field development, and have never owned legacy code AI software engineering can be bewildering. If, however, you’ve been stuck maintaining legacy code,…

This sounds kinda of horrible ? I'd rather build things slower (perhaps with an LLMs help at times) that understandable and high quality.

I find with AI coding its like tick-tock

You "tick" - expanding functionality and get over your skis in code quality (this is the 'legacy code' part)

Then you "tock" - you break apart the slop into better and more reliable code.

The problem is whether you're allowed to "tock" as the pressure is often on the "tick" (more functionality) part.

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

#154

Post by theappsecguy »

lelanthran wrote: post #151
titanomachy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who hires “pure solution modelers”? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone like that.

> Who hires “pure solution modelers”? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone like that. They're called Business Analysts, sometimes simply Analysts, and that's effectively their job - come up with a spec and give it to the software engineers.

I've never seen BAs execute that way. I don't think that is an accurate description of their role and its link to SWEs.

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

#155

Post by jplusequalt »

koliber wrote: post #152

Every software developer will be a manager of one or more AI agents. Managing AI agents will turn out to be surprisingly similar to managing people, except for the drama, illness, and tragedy.

I'm downvoting you because:

1) You're anthropomorphizing AI.

2) You're devaluing your fellow human/professional.

>except for the drama, illness, and tragedy.

"By using AI we get all the benefits of workers but with none of the drawbacks of humans."

I hear this spiel most often about junior engineers on HN, and it really pisses me off. It just comes off as incredibly anti-social.

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

#156

Post by jplusequalt »

tedmiston wrote: post #114
ecshafer wrote: post #26

What are you writing that Claude is actually writing all of it? Every time I get past the green field stage, I just end up throwing out what it writes half the time since its trash. Claude seems really great at fix this unit test, generate this boiler plate, take this uml and build this framework out. But when I am doing refactorings, or implementing things that are beyond monotonous, I end up writing it all by hand.…

> What are you writing that Claude is actually writing all of it? Every time I get past the green field stage, I just end up throwing out what it writes half the time since its trash. For the current state of frontier models, you need to break the steps down so that the LLM understands a process like what you might go through as you expect it (which is often different for everyone). i.e., get it to agree to a spec, t…

What role do you serve in this process?

I can take all of those steps, turn them into separate skills, then give them to a product manager or business analyst who makes half your salary, but has far more knowledge about the customers needs than you do.

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

#157

Post by tedmiston »

sdellis wrote: post #150
tedmiston wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a random bug in one LLM's frontend app have to do with learning how to do prompt engineering well?

Because it proves that even the greatest prompt-engineers in the world are unable to vibe code their way out of a simple bug. The fact that this example is a small, annoying, random bug that is relatively harmless does not mean that the next bug won't be as harmless or even as apparent.

pretty big leap of faith there

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

#158

Post by tedmiston »

reverius42 wrote: post #134
tedmiston wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs (at least today’s) don’t build simple solutions ... ... by default .

Not sure why this is downvoted but you truly can get a lot of mileage out of asking Claude to simplify things.

Definitely. One of my fav techniques is to ask an LLM to simplify something by 90% or 99% if it looks overly complicated. Or asking the output to be critically reviewed by another agent too.

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

#159

Post by tedmiston »

jplusequalt wrote: post #156
tedmiston wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are you writing that Claude is actually writing all of it? Every time I get past the green field stage, I just end up throwing out what it writes half the time since its trash. For the current state of frontier models, you need to break the steps down so that the LLM understands a process like what you might go through as you expect it (which is often different for everyone). i.e., get it to agree to a spec, t…

What role do you serve in this process? I can take all of those steps, turn them into separate skills, then give them to a product manager or business analyst who makes half your salary, but has far more knowledge about the customers needs than you do.

the creative inputs to the whole process and judgment aspects of telling it how to refine and edit

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

#160

Post by jplusequalt »

tedmiston wrote: post #159
jplusequalt wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What role do you serve in this process? I can take all of those steps, turn them into separate skills, then give them to a product manager or business analyst who makes half your salary, but has far more knowledge about the customers needs than you do.

the creative inputs to the whole process and judgment aspects of telling it how to refine and edit

>the creative inputs to the whole process and judgment aspects of telling it how to refine and edit

Why does that require an engineer? I think a business analyst or product manager could do that just fine.

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