The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers • Hacker News Board

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#131

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

geraneum wrote: post #52

ryanjshaw wrote: post #4

Until a year ago I believed as the author did. Then LLMs got to the point where they sit in meetings like I do, make notes like I do, have a memory like I do, and their context window is expanding. Only issue I saw after a month of building something complex from scratch with Opus 4.6 is poor adherence to high-level design principles and consistency. This can be solved with expert guardrails, I believe. It won’t be l…

> poor adherence to high-level design principles and consistency. This can be solved with expert guardrails, I believe. That’s a bit… handwavy…!

[deleted]

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#132

Post by analog31 » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 7:30 PM UTC

PeterWhittaker wrote: post #62

One important and often overlooked democratization is spreadsheet formulas: non-programmers began programming without knowing they were, and without concern for error and edge cases. I cannot find the reference right now, but I recall seeing years ago articles about how mistakes in spreadsheet formulae were costing millions or more. I see an analog with AI-generated code: the disciplined among us know we are programm…

I have a feeling that the cost of bad / inefficient / late software runs into at least the billions. The biggest risks are unavoidably attached to the most costly software projects, that are probably the most likely to be conducted in the most sophisticated and professional fashion with the latest silver bullet methodologies.

The Mythical Man Month is just over half a century old, yet still reads like it was written yesterday.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#133

Post by richm44 » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 7:31 PM UTC

krisoft wrote: post #128

guitarbill wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, we can ignore that specific example, and that software has an effect on the world, and that people have been trained to expect software to be deterministic and accurate. Or if you want compare vibe coding with any technology, like electricity. Sure, that one person got electrocuted or their house burned down. But it's just so useful, and "somehow civilization continues to function". I guess they should've known…

> we can ignore that specific example We are not ignoring it. It is just not an example of a load bearing excel sheet.

Try this https://theconversation.com/the-reinhart-rogoff-error-or-how...

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#134

Post by richm44 » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 7:43 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #109

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #13

I'd say that the article left out Software Reuse - talked a lot more about in the late 90's early 00's than now. You could argue that coding with LLM's is a form of software reuse, that removes some of its disadvantages.

It's talked about a lot now, too - that's ultimately what is meant by such terms as Software Bill Of Materials (SBOM).

SBOMs are more an attempt to solve some of the problems introduced by software reuse. https://archive.fosdem.org/2025/schedule/track/sbom/ has some interesting talks about the successes and failures of them.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#135

Post by ares623 » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 7:48 PM UTC

Kinrany wrote: post #61

ares623 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can rent their own tools, more like.

No, they can make their own tools. They rent someone else's tools in the process of making their own tools.

They can continue renting to maintain the tools they make.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#136

Post by PeterWhittaker » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 7:51 PM UTC

hearsathought wrote: post #116

PeterWhittaker wrote: post #62

One important and often overlooked democratization is spreadsheet formulas: non-programmers began programming without knowing they were, and without concern for error and edge cases. I cannot find the reference right now, but I recall seeing years ago articles about how mistakes in spreadsheet formulae were costing millions or more. I see an analog with AI-generated code: the disciplined among us know we are programm…

> non-programmers began programming without knowing they were Using excel in the traditional sense isn't the same as programming. Unless they were doing some VBA or something like that which the vast majority of excel/spreadsheet users don't. > spreadsheet formulae formulas. We aren't speaking latin here. > I see an analog with AI-generated code: the disciplined among us know we are programming and consider error and…

> formulas. We aren't speaking latin here.

Define "here", please! Perhaps your "here" and mine differ, but the view from my here is that while all three plurals are generally acceptable, formulae is the correcter double plus good spelling for this context.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#137

Post by sfblah » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 7:51 PM UTC

I generally agree that it's difficult and counterproductive to try to eliminate talented programmers who put together the core of systems and set up the patterns that things like LLMs can emulate.

But, the modal programmer at this point is some person who attended a front-end coding bootcamp for a few months and basically just knows how to chain together CSS selectors and React components. I do think these people are in big trouble.

So, while the core, say, 10% of people I think should remain in the system. This 90% periphery of pretty bad programmers will probably need to move on to other jobs.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#138

Post by pixelsort » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #111

pixelsort wrote: post #85

> There is every reason to believe that those who invest in deep understanding will continue to be valuable, regardless of what tools emerge. I don't take issue with this, except that it's a false comfort when when you consider the demand will naturally ebb and individual workload will naturally escalate. In that light, I find it downright dishonest because the rewards for attaining deep knowledge will continue to ev…

Bridging software with domain-specific needs of its professional users is nothing new: that is how domain-specific professional software gets built. What is new is that the people doing this are being referred to hysterically as "class traitors", when the improvements they're working on will bring massive and widely available benefits to professionals the world over.

While the desire is not new, advancements in LLMs and diffusion models have made this sort of bridging effective and attractive to an unprecedented degree.

Those massively and widely available benefits will continue to deflate the value of human intelligence until even most of innovators currently working on them lose their seats at the table too.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#139

Post by designerarvid » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

sfblah wrote: post #137

I generally agree that it's difficult and counterproductive to try to eliminate talented programmers who put together the core of systems and set up the patterns that things like LLMs can emulate. But, the modal programmer at this point is some person who attended a front-end coding bootcamp for a few months and basically just knows how to chain together CSS selectors and React components. I do think these people are…

During the 90’s economic crisis all drafters drawing building blueprints by hand disappeared from the Swedish construction industry. Engineers started using CAD instead

Just one example of how this has happened again and again.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#140

Post by GuB-42 » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 8:00 PM UTC

ryanmcl wrote: post #70

simonw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often think about how the modern world genuinely does run on Excel formulas, many written by amateurs, most without automated tests and with version control based on final_final_v2 suffixes. Somehow civilization continues to function! Makes me a bit less terrified that untested vibe coded slop will sink the economy. It's not that different from how things work already.

[dead]

The thing is that programming is not an end goal, it is a means to a end. No one is paying you to "write code", they are paying you to make a website shat serves as a storefront, to make a video game, something for accounting,...

It turns out that in many of these cases, code is an effective way of doing it, but there may be other options. For a storefront, there are website builders that let you do it very effectively if your needs match one of their templates, there are game engines that require no code, and a lot of accounting can be done in Excel.

What I wanted to say is that maybe you could have done without code, but thanks to LLMs making code a viable option even for beginners, that's what you went for. In fact, vibe coding is barely even coding in the strictest sense of writing something in a programming language, since you are using natural language and code is just an intermediate step that you can see.

The reason programmers use programming languages is not gatekeeping, unlike what many people who want to "eliminate programmers" think. It is that programming languages are very good at what they do, they are precise, unambiguous, concise and expressive. Alternatives like natural languages or graphical tools lack some of these attributes and therefore may not work as well. Like with many advanced tools, there is a learning curve, but once you reach a certain point, like when you intend to make it your job, it is worth it.