151–160 of 403 posts
> Senior developers: Fewer juniors means more grunt work landing on your plate I'm not sure I agree with that. Right now as a senior my task involves reviewing code from juniors; replace juniors with AI and it means reviewing code from AI. More or less the same thing.
> More or less the same thing. Worse. The AI doesn't share any responsibility.
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I don't think that works. The fact that it can produce different output for the same input, usage of tools etc. don't really fit into the analogy or mental model. What has worked for me is treating it like an enthusiastic intern with his foot always on the accelerator pedal. I need to steer and manage the brakes otherwise, it'll code itself off a cliff and take my software with it. The most workable thing is a pair p…
I feel like some of the frontier models are approaching run-of-the-mill engineer who does dumb stuff frequently. That said, with appropriate harnessing, it’s more like go-karts on a track; you can’t keep them out of the wall, but you can reset them and get them back on a path (when needed). Not every kart ends up in the wall, but all of them want to go fast, so the better defined the track is the more likely the kart…
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Please don’t get my hopes up. Adaptable people like me will outcompete hard in the post-engineering world. Alas, I don’t believe it’s coming. The tech just doesn’t seem to have what it takes to do the job.
Some related fields will be gone too. And the jobs which will remain will be impossible to get.
Exactly my thoughts lately ... Even by yesterday's standards it was already very difficult to land a job and, by tomorrow's standards, it appears as if only the very best of the best will be able to keep their jobs and the ones in a position of decision making power.
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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 shou…
> Senior developers: Fewer juniors means more grunt work landing on your plate I'm not sure I agree with that. Right now as a senior my task involves reviewing code from juniors; replace juniors with AI and it means reviewing code from AI. More or less the same thing.
>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…
I think there's a good chance demand goes up in Europe. We are going to need to de-risk our software dependencies, and Germany is going to need to use computers. Germany is going to be crazy, I think.
The Gewerkschaft tactics to resist AI is what I’m really interested in seeing.
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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...
> Also note that the python visualizer tool has been basically written by vibe-coding. I know more about analog filters -- and that's not saying much -- than I do about python. It started out as my typical "google and do the monkey-see-monkey-do" kind of programming, but then I cut out the middle-man -- me -- and just used Google Antigravity to do the audio sample visualizer.
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> 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 shou…
Jevons paradox and it’s not a fallacy. It’s an observable behavior. The problem is it’s not predictive.
I was referring specifically to this point, which, IMHO, is a fallacy:
>>> There seems to be effectively infinite demand for software from consumers and enterprises so the cheaper it gets the more they buy.
There is no way to use the word "infinite" in this context, even if qualified, that is representative of reality.
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> More or less the same thing. Worse. The AI doesn't share any responsibility.
And can’t be mentored by the senior except in some ersatz flat text instruction files.
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What I want is for universities to offer a degree in Software Engineering. That's a different field from Computer Science. You say that belongs in a trade school? I might agree, if you think trade schools and not universities should teach electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and chemical engineering. But if chemical engineering belongs at a university, so does software engineering.
Saying this as a software engineer that has a degree in electrical engineering - software "engineering" is definitely not the same as other engineering disciplines and definitely belongs in a trade school.