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The next two years of software engineering

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Re: The next two years of software engineering

#141

Post by haspok »

streetcat1 wrote: post #49

For some reason miss two important points: 1) The AI code maintainence question - who would maintain the AI generated code 2) The true cost of AI. Once the VC/PE money runs out and companies charge the full cost, what would happen to vibe coding at that point ?

Perhaps thinking about AI generated code in terms of machine code generated by a compiler helps. Who maintains the compiled program? Nobody. If you want to make changes to it, you recompile the source.

In a similar fashion, AI generated code will be fed to another AI round and regenerated or refactored. What this also means is that in most cases nobody will care about producing code with high quality. Why bother, if the AI can refactor ("recompile") it in a few minutes?

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#142

Post by menaerus »

qsera wrote: post #108
hncoder12345 wrote: post #53

Sometimes I wonder if I made the wrong choice with software development. Even after getting to a senior role, according to this article, you're still expected to get more education and work on side projects outside of work. Am I supposed to want to code all the time? When can I pursue hobbies, a social life, etc.

>I made the wrong choice with software development. If you didn't like working with computers, then you (and another gazillion people who choose it for the $$$) probably made the wrong choice. But totally depends on what you wanted to get out of it. If you wanted to make $$$ and you are making it, what is the problem? That is assuming you have fun outside of work. But if you wanted to be the best at what you do, then…

> If you didn't like working with , then you ...

This type of argument can hold for any profession and yet we aren't seeing this pattern much in other white-collar professions. Professors, doctors, economists, mechanical engineers, ... it seems like pretty much everybody made the wrong choice then?

I think this is a wrong way to look at it. OP says that he invested a lot of time into becoming proficient in something that today appears to be very close to part extinction.

I think that the question is legit, and he's likely not the only person asking oneself this question.

My take on the question is ability to adapt and learn new skills. Some will succeed some will fail but staying in status-quo position will certainly more likely lead to a failure rather than the success.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#143

Post by maciejzj »

TBH, it all feels like a huge gamble at this point. Neither skills, education, institutional ties, nor current employment can guarantee a stable foundation for life.

This hits harder depending on how much money, social capital, or debt you accumulated before this volatility began. If you’ve paid off your debts, bought a house, and stabilized your family life, you’re gambling with how comfortable the coming years will be. If you’re a fresh grad with student debt, no house, and no social network, you’re more or less gambling with your life.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#144

Post by falloutx »

torben-friis wrote: post #124
spacebanana7 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally the demand for software engineers has increased as their productivity has increased, looking back over the past few decades. There seems to be effectively infinite demand for software from consumers and enterprises so the cheaper it gets the more they buy. If we doubled agricultural productivity globally we'd need to have fewer farmers because there's no way we can all eat twice as much food. But we can abs…

the demand for software has increased. The demand for software engineers has increased proportionally, because we were the only source of software. This correlation might no longer hold. Depending on how the future shapes up, we may have gone from artisans to middlemen, at which point we're only in the business of added value and a lot of coding is over. Not the Google kind of coding, but the "I need a website for my…

> "I need a website for my restaurant" kind, or the "I need to aggregate data from these excel files in a certain way" kind

I am afraid that kind of jobs were already over by 2015. There are no code website makers available since then and if you can't do it yourself you can just pay someone on fiverr and get it done for less than $5-50 at this point, its so efficient even AI wont be more cost effective than that. If you have $10k saved you can hire a competitive agency to maintain and build your website. This business is completely taken over by low cost fiverr automators and agencies for high budget projects. Agencies have become so good now that they manage websites from Adidas to Lando Norris to your average mom & pop store.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#145

Post by phn »

miki123211 wrote: post #82
Aurornis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My experience hasn't been LLMs automate coding, just speeds it up. This is how basically everyone I know actually uses LLMs. The whole story about vibecoding and LLMs replacing engineers has become a huge distraction from the really useful discussions to be had. It’s almost impossible to discuss LLMs on HN because everyone is busy attacking the vibecoding strawman all the time.

As a professional programmer, I think both are useful in different scenarios. You're maintaining a large, professional codebase? You definitely shouldn't be vibe coding. The fact that some people are is a genuine problem. You want a simple app that you and your friends will use for a few weeks and throw away? Sure, you can probably vibe code something in 2 hours instead of paying for a SaaS. Both have their place.

I think the problem starts with the name. I've been coding with LLMs for the past few months but most of it is far from "vibed", I am constantly reviewing the output and guiding it in the right direction, it's more like a turbo charged code editor than a "junior developer", imo.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#146

Post by lelanthran »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #95
falloutx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole story about vibecoding and LLMs replacing engineers has become a huge distraction Because the first thing that comes from individual speed up is not engineers making more money but there being less engineers, How much less is the question? Would they be satisfied with 10%, 50% or may be 99%?

Generally the demand for software engineers has increased as their productivity has increased, looking back over the past few decades. There seems to be effectively infinite demand for software from consumers and enterprises so the cheaper it gets the more they buy. If we doubled agricultural productivity globally we'd need to have fewer farmers because there's no way we can all eat twice as much food. But we can abs…

> Generally the demand for software engineers has increased as their productivity has increased, looking back over the past few decades. There seems to be effectively infinite demand for software from consumers and enterprises so the cheaper it gets the more they buy.

I see this fallacy all the time but I don't know if there is a name for it.

I mean, we make used fun of MBAs for saying the same thing, but now we should be more receptive to the "Line Always Goes Up" argument?

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#147

Post by alansaber »

Jean-Papoulos wrote: post #112

>The flip scenario: AI unlocks massive demand for developers across every industry, not just tech. Healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, and finance all start embedding software and automation. I find this one hard to believe. Software is already massively present in all these industries and has already replaced jobs. The last step is complete automation (ie drone tractors that can load up at a hub, go to the field…

Agree, people were already worried about the excessive focus on software over physical technology well before LLMs significantly reduced the barrier to entry

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#148

Post by ruszki »

nl wrote: post #121
Chris2048 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which experts?

Does Linus Torvalds count?

When has he stated that he uses AI like that? The last I heard about him a month ago, he specifically stated that he was not interested in AI to write code: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-ai-tool-maintai...

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#149

Post by menaerus »

falloutx wrote: post #85
megamix wrote: post #83

The most important question is who will get paid the most? I don't think the future of software engineering will be attractive if all you do is more work for same or even less pay. A second danger is too much reliance on AI tools will centralise knowledge and THAT is the scariest thing. Software systems will need to perform for a long time, having juniors on board and people who understand software architecture will…

The people who don't lose their jobs will also not be in a great spot, there wont be a guarantee that they will never lose their jobs, they will continue to live on the wobbly and uncertain foundation, will get fired for first no they say to the management. If software engineering falls, all the related industries will fall too, thus creating a domino effect, that none of the execs can imagine right now.

I really do wonder what sort of economy change is coming to us because companies will hypothetically need to hire less people to sustain the equal output of today. They can do that basically today so not even hypothetically anymore, it just needs some time to take off.

The question IMO is, who will be creating the demand on the other side for all of these goods produced if so many people will be left without the jobs? UBI, redistribution of wealth through taxes? I'm not so convinced about that ...

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#150

Post by falloutx »

menaerus wrote: post #149
falloutx wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who don't lose their jobs will also not be in a great spot, there wont be a guarantee that they will never lose their jobs, they will continue to live on the wobbly and uncertain foundation, will get fired for first no they say to the management. If software engineering falls, all the related industries will fall too, thus creating a domino effect, that none of the execs can imagine right now.

I really do wonder what sort of economy change is coming to us because companies will hypothetically need to hire less people to sustain the equal output of today. They can do that basically today so not even hypothetically anymore, it just needs some time to take off. The question IMO is, who will be creating the demand on the other side for all of these goods produced if so many people will be left without the jobs…

UBI is just a pipe dream. The rich are clutching their pearls even harder.
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