AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
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Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#2If LLM/Agents contribute to software development, how does the role of software engineers evolve?
SE should focus on :
- System design
- Integrations
- Project management
etc
or the job will disappear in 10 years ?
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#3If LLM/Agents contribute to software development, how does the role of software engineers evolve? SE should focus on : - System design - Integrations - Project management etc or the job will disappear in 10 years ?
Prompt Engineering!
I'm kidding. Software engineering roles of the "glue things together" kind will evolve into a 'technical product' role, defining how systems work, especially at the edges where systems interact. Architects and staff engineers already do this.
Lower down the food chain engineers who actually invent new things will do the same, only quicker if they have an AI tool assisting with the grunt work of testing, boilerplate, etc.
Engineers who don't really make new things will be replaced by 'low code' style apps that spit out clunky apps. That's already happening though. It's not a change. Those engineers won't leave the industry - they'll get to do more interesting things.
Even at the entry level things won't really change that much. Expectations will go up a bit but people will still have to learn the trade.
Where things will really change is the sheer amount of software we'll have. AI is going to make things go faster, so businesses will be able to automate everything. Dev resource will stop being the constraint that holds businesses back from doing everything they want to do with software. That's a game changer. Society will struggle to keep up.
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#4If LLM/Agents contribute to software development, how does the role of software engineers evolve? SE should focus on : - System design - Integrations - Project management etc or the job will disappear in 10 years ?
It would be like steering offshore teams, with the difference the team are now AI agents.
Better look for architecture and management jobs, only a few select ones would still be allowed into the magic tower.
Naturally after a heavy round of letcode interviews that have nothing to do with writing AI algorithms.
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#5[flagged]
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#6If LLM/Agents contribute to software development, how does the role of software engineers evolve? SE should focus on : - System design - Integrations - Project management etc or the job will disappear in 10 years ?
Code reviews in the short term [0].
Test reviews in the long term (E2E type). Effectively checking the correctness of the system as a whole to fulfill some business process. Exploratory testing as well to find edge cases and gaps.
[0] I write a bit about this here: https://chrlschn.dev/blog/2023/07/interviews-age-of-ai-ditch... and here https://coderev.app/
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#7Great achievement, but what a horrible future we are facing.
Instead of progressing towards more powerful programming interfaces with less cause for misinterpretation, we are going to automate the silly process of writing redundant unit tests to check if the behavior that we wanted was encoded properly.
Why not skip this nonsense and have the code generated from the behavior in the first place?
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#8Great achievement, but what a horrible future we are facing. Instead of progressing towards more powerful programming interfaces with less cause for misinterpretation, we are going to automate the silly process of writing redundant unit tests to check if the behavior that we wanted was encoded properly. Why not skip this nonsense and have the code generated from the behavior in the first place?
Because test define the behaviour. The hardest part of requirements is describing exactly what you want. Tests are great way of doing that.
I think AI software development is going to involve writing tests, which the AI agents then get passing. Or some other requirements language that allows for exactness where English can fall down.
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#9[flagged]
Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft
#10If LLM/Agents contribute to software development, how does the role of software engineers evolve? SE should focus on : - System design - Integrations - Project management etc or the job will disappear in 10 years ?
Mainly get good at describing what you want.
I think tests are good way of doing that, or some special requirements language will emerge that AI agents can use. I don't think English is particularly good way of describing things exactly. It often has ambiguous meanings which is where the bugs will come from.