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AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

blog.florianherrengt.com

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Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#951

Post by gofreddygo »

Syntaf wrote: post #35

> bad engineers were always a liability This part of the article hits home for me. With AI, "bad" engineers can now amplify their "bad" engineering x10 across the organization. The most egregious of these cases for me is often long tenured engineers who have lost interest in the craft, creating a dangerous combination of having enough merit to ship but not enough interest to make what they ship _good_. I am still a f…

Bad engineers. Like bad wine, bad pizza and bad exes are impossible to guess till you taste it. Changes you forever. Changed me. You know its bad and good lord! dont bother explain it someone else who will not taste it themselves.

There's different kinds of bad too, some justified. The senior that made their way boot licking and being at the right place and time. The junior that just got there. The senior that does not care anymore for being left out of promo two years ago and having to report to the person they despised as being a bad engineer.

AI isn't making human behavior better. In any way.

Life is too short for all this, keep doing the good stuff, filter in the good, keep the bad out that you can, ignore the rest. Have the self reflection to know when things aren't working out, and when its worth getting out. Build the wisdom to not repeat the same mistakes. Believe that there's a lot of good work to be done in the world and contribute in any way possible.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#952

Post by WalterBright »

defrost wrote: post #941
WalterBright wrote: post #940

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that, but my whole life I've heard again and again and again that "high stakes testing" does not work. I've heard all the arguments. But the bottom line is the testing is an effective filter. After all, would you get on a jetliner piloted by a handsome fellow with a firm handshake who failed to pass all the written tests, but really knows how to fly? It's not that hard to study the leetcode books. Doesn'…

Person that can fly every time - Diana Barnato Walker flew 80 types of aircraft before finally getting a commercial flying licence.

I'm sure she passed the written tests.

My dad flew 23 airplane types - single engine, multi engine, 2 wings, 1 wing, bombers, fighters, jets, and piston engines. In his papers I found some of the written exams he had to pass to get certified to fly them. Just "knowing how to fly" is a good way to get yourself killed.

There was one incident where his F-86 Saber jet had its engine quit. He was faced with the choice of bailing out or gliding back to base. Having passed the written test, he knew how to calculate the best gliding angle, the best velocity, the best configuration of the airplane, took into account the wind, the altitude, and the weight, and figured he could bring the bird in. Which he did, safely.

All that boring stuff that requires study and it has to reside in your brain.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#953

Post by WalterBright »

tombert wrote: post #947
WalterBright wrote: post #940

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that, but my whole life I've heard again and again and again that "high stakes testing" does not work. I've heard all the arguments. But the bottom line is the testing is an effective filter. After all, would you get on a jetliner piloted by a handsome fellow with a firm handshake who failed to pass all the written tests, but really knows how to fly? It's not that hard to study the leetcode books. Doesn'…

> It's not that hard to study the leetcode books. Doesn't the prize of a top shelf salary make it worthwhile? It's a good investment in your career You are arguing two different points here. I am, generally speaking, reasonably good at the leetcode stuff, because I agree that it’s not that hard to get good at it. As a practical thing for society as it currently is , sure, studying up on the idiotic leetcode stuff is…

> But that pays little bearing on whether leetcode is a good test, and whether it should be something that we are using as a metric. I am arguing that it’s a dumb test and we should stop doing it at a systemic level.

Would you feel differently if you owned the company, and you'd be paying the salary for months for someone who talked a good game but was incompetent?

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#954

Post by WalterBright »

esseph wrote: post #888
WalterBright wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it is an effective way.

It's memorization, not understanding. It is not effective.

Memorizing is the first step to understanding. In grade school, one memorizes the alphabet for a good reason.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#955

Post by tombert »

WalterBright wrote: post #953
tombert wrote: post #947

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not that hard to study the leetcode books. Doesn't the prize of a top shelf salary make it worthwhile? It's a good investment in your career You are arguing two different points here. I am, generally speaking, reasonably good at the leetcode stuff, because I agree that it’s not that hard to get good at it. As a practical thing for society as it currently is , sure, studying up on the idiotic leetcode stuff is…

> But that pays little bearing on whether leetcode is a good test, and whether it should be something that we are using as a metric. I am arguing that it’s a dumb test and we should stop doing it at a systemic level. Would you feel differently if you owned the company, and you'd be paying the salary for months for someone who talked a good game but was incompetent?

We are at an impasse here, because I do not accept the premise that the leetcode tests realistically gauge competency or serve as an effective filter.

In your hypothetical the implication is that the leetcode would be effective at removing people who “talked a big game but are incompetent”. I disagree with that.

I could be wrong about leetcode, but for me to realistically engage with your argument would be a tacit agreement with the premise, and I cannot engage with that in good faith.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#956

Post by win311fwg »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #944
sadlyuramoron wrote: post #909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to get standards-compliant garbage? That's how you get standards-compliant garbage.

I don't really, but at least there would be standards. Like, the massive amount of hacks and breaches we've seen in the past ten years indicate that something needs to happen.

There are plenty of standards. For example, the GDPR is a well known one (mostly because everyone is tired of pressing "Accept cookies" buttons).

But standards are always going to be slow to react. Even in mature industries like construction the standards are still trying to find completeness. The standards today are way different than they were a decade ago and they'll be way different ten years from now.

And building construction is something that we've been doing for almost as long as humans have existed. Those standards have been built up over centuries and millennia. Software is gaining some maturity, but still a young pup in the grand scheme of things, so it hasn't had much time to even get through the easy standards.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#957

Post by sirsinsalot »

scorpioxy wrote: post #686
sirsinsalot wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four MONTHS?! Most of the dolts I interviewed in the UK had a 6 week bootcamp behind them and called themselves "JavaScript Experts". No joke.

I was once commissioned to teach such a "bootcamp". It was a 4-months duration but 1 day a week. So something like 2-4 weeks total duration. I found out that the students were promised that this was enough to get them a job doing software development and were disappointed when I told them it wasn't. So towards the end, I took some time to explain what was missing and why it will take MUCH longer to even just learn th…

Yes the whole bootcamp ring was a con job. Shame on them.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#958

Post by mdemare »

falcor84 wrote: post #64
Tangurena2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintenance will be forever. Tax laws change annually, so the payroll app will never stop being updated.

I don't accept that argument. As I see it, laws should be structured as data rather than code, using a clean non-Turing-Complete DSL for any embedded logic and calculations. Maybe there would still be occasional situations when new software features are needed, but it should be a rare occurrence rather than on every new change.

I bet tax law is Turing-complete.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#959

Post by bossyTeacher »

mrbombastic wrote: post #315
SoftTalker wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone get rich doing something easy?

Because the companies everyone claims are now obsolete are making a lot of money still doing the supposedly obsolete things?

No one buys CDs but Taylor Swift still makes a lot of money from her music. Doesn't negate that making music is economically worse than ever.

Most people book flights online, travel agents still make a lot of money. Doesn't negate that travel agency as a business is economically worse than ever.

Most people have cameras in their pockets that can take good photos, photographers still make a lot of money. Doesn't negate that being a photographer is economically worse than ever.

Hopefully, you see the pattern. You don't remember that companies that are no longer around.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#960

Post by sarchertech »

jasode wrote: post #413
sublinear wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's also a spectrum of hard-to-easy in enterprise software but it's much more narrow than engineering code bases. I'm not going to bang this drum too much, because it's been done to death for well over a decade, but lines-of-business supported by CRUD apps are rarely simple from an engineering perspective. Much of that engineering is in the decisions made outside the codebase, or spread across multiple codebase…

>, but lines-of-business supported by CRUD apps are rarely simple from an engineering perspective. You misread my comment as some dig at CRUD LOB enterprise coders. I used to work on enterprise ERP code with 20000+ tables. Yes, I agree it definitely wasn't simple. Instead, I was responding to a very specific observation the gp made: he saw that both senior and junior devs were interchangeable when randomly assigning…

> Instead, I was responding to a very specific observation the gp made: he saw that both senior and junior devs were interchangeable when randomly assigning the next JIRA ticket. That can only happen in a situation where the JIRA tickets are similar enough in complexity that the difference in skills between your senior and junior devs are irrelevant when the work is assigned.

That’s not what I was saying.

I was saying that the perception of management is that the tickets are interchangeable. Not that the tickets are actually interchangeable.

Notice what I said after that. That this usually results in seniors coming in at the end to rescue the project.

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