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The next two years of software engineering

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Re: The next two years of software engineering

#181

Post by zipy124 »

tibbar wrote: post #27
sys_64738 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CS degree is there to teach you concepts and fundamentals that are the foundation of everything computing related. It doesn't generally chase after the latest fads.

Sure, but we need to update our definitions of concepts/fundamentals. A lot of this stuff has its own established theory and has been a core primitive for software engineering for many years. For example, the primitives of cloud computing are largely explained by papers published by Amazon, Google, and others in the early '00s (DynamoDB, Bigtable, etc.). If you want to explore massively parallel computation or contai…

This is mostly software engineering not computer science though. That is but a small sub-section of computer science.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#182

Post by throwaway6734 »

Aurornis wrote: post #25
babblingfish wrote: post #20

My experience hasn't been LLMs automate coding, just speeds it up. It's like I know what I want the solution to be and I'll describe it to the LLM, usually for specific code blocks at a time, and then build it up block-by-block. When I read hacker news people are talking like it's doing much more than that. It doesn't feel like an automation tool to me at all. It just helps me do what I was gonna do anyways, but with…

> 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.

I perform software engineering at a research oriented institution and there are some projects I can now prototype without writing a line of code. The productivity benefits are massive

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#183

Post by thunspa »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #63
antonymoose wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a better Google for me. Instead of searching AWS or StackOverflow it hallucinates a good enough output that I can refactor into an output.

The reason why it is better is that with search you have to narrow your search down to a specific part of what you are trying to do, for example if you need a unique id generating function as part of what you are trying to do you first search for that, then if you need to make sure that whatever gets output is responsive 3 columns then you might search for that, and then do code to glue the things together to what yo…

I resonate with the phrase: "You never learn to ask good questions"

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#184

Post by conartist6 »

babblingfish wrote: post #20

My experience hasn't been LLMs automate coding, just speeds it up. It's like I know what I want the solution to be and I'll describe it to the LLM, usually for specific code blocks at a time, and then build it up block-by-block. When I read hacker news people are talking like it's doing much more than that. It doesn't feel like an automation tool to me at all. It just helps me do what I was gonna do anyways, but with…

The best advice to juniors is "do not use AI!"

Dunno why the author thinks an AI-enhanced junior can match the "output"of a whole team unless he means in generating lines of code, which is to say tech debt.

Being able to put a lot of words on screen is not the accomplishment in programming. It usually means you've gone completely out of your depth.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#185

Post by amrocha »

danieltanfh95 wrote: post #76

The most useful thing juniors can do now is use AI to rapidly get up to the speed with the new skill floor. Learn like crazy. Self learning is empowered by AI. Engineers > developers > coders.

Because employers famously hire based on skill and not credentials or existence

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#186

Post by rwmj »

maciejzj wrote: post #143

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…

Work on becoming Financially Independent. The best time to start was when you started your career, the second best time to start is now.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#187

Post by amrocha »

falloutx wrote: post #93
amelius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the market flooded yet with software that was "so easy to build using LLMs". Last year was, as it seems, just a normal year in terms of global software output.

You are not looking at right places. Github repo counts have been high since 2020 because there are companies & individuals who run fork scripts. So AI cant match the numbers. But on product hunt, the amount of projects is First week of Jan: 5000+, Entire Jan 2018: 4000 approx.

That doesn’t mean industry output is high, it means people are starting new products.

Has the output of existing companies/products increased substantially?

Have more products proven successful and started companies?

hard to say but maybe a little

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#188

Post by pepperball »

rwmj wrote: post #186
maciejzj wrote: post #143

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…

Work on becoming Financially Independent. The best time to start was when you started your career, the second best time to start is now.

Yeah really seems like the only way to win (or rather not lose) is simply not to play.

At this point I’ve realized I need to cast all other ambitions aside and work on getting some out of the way land that I own.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#189

Post by kylecazar »

Chris2048 wrote: post #106
kylecazar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half strawman -- a mudman, perhaps. Because we're seeing proper experts with credentials jump on the 'shit, AI can do all of this for me' realization blog post train.

Which experts?

Well, I have a lot of respect for antirez (Redis), and at the time of my writing this comment he had a front page blog post in which we find:

"Writing code is no longer needed for the most part."

It was a great post and I don't disagree with him. But it's an example of why it isn't necessarily a strawman anymore, because it is being claimed/realized by more than just vibecoders and hobbyists.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#190

Post by djeastm »

334f905d22bc19 wrote: post #118
trueismywork wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can think of LLMs as a higher level language for whatever programming language you are using, but informal with ambiguous grammar.

On the foolishness of "natural language programming". - prof.dr.Edsger W.Dijkstra https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667...

>We would need all the intellect in the world to get the interface narrow enough to be usable, and, in view of the history of mankind, it may not be overly pessimistic to guess that to do the job well enough would require again a few thousand years.

It seems it only took until about 2023 or so

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