Software design is now cheap

I don't buy that.

AI is taking over Senior Devs' Work is the same as IKEA is taking over carpenter's moat - no, no, and again no way.

AI lets you do some impressive stuff, I really enjoy using it. No doubt about that.

But app development, the full Software Delivery Life Cycle - boy, is AI bad. And I mean in a very extreme way.

I talked to a carpenter yesterday about IKEA. He said, people call him to integrate their IKEA stuff, especially the expensive stuff.

And AI is the same.

Configuration Handling: Works on my machine, impressive SaaS app, fast, cool, PostgreSQL etc.

And then there is the final moment: Docker, Live Server - and BOOM! deployment failed.

If you ever happen to debug and fix certain infrastructure and therefore deployment fails - you wish you were doing COBOL or x86/M68000 assembly code like it is 1987 all over again - if you happen to be a very seasoned Senior Dev with a lot of war stories to share.

If you are some vibe coder or consulting MBA - good luck.

AI fails so bad at doing certain things consistently well - and it costs company dearly.

Firing up a Landing Page in React using some Tailwind + ShadCN UI - oh well...

Software Design, Solution Architecture - the hard things are getting harder, not cheaper.

IKEA is great - for certain use cases. It made carpenter's work only more valuable. They thrived because of IKEA, they didn't suffer. In fact, there is more work for them to do. Is their business still hard, of course, but difficult in a different way (talent).

And all doomer's talking about the dev apocalypse - if AI takes over software development, who is in trouble then? Computer Science, software development? Or any and every job market out there?

Think twice. Develop and deploy ten considerably complex SaaS apps using AI and tell me how it went.

Access to information got cheaper. A fool with a tool is still a fool.

Why does the AI need SQL queries? Who needs that? It will just write its own ACID-compliant database with its own language, and while it's at it, reinvent the operating system as well. It's turtles all the way down.

[dead]

If AI makes the per line cost of producing software cheaper but you still need an expensive human in the loop then the per line cost is merely cheap not free or at the cost of electricity.

Given the choice between

A) having one AI produce a library and having 1000 produce code using that library which comes with tests human in the loop vetting documentation and examples which drastically increase the chance of the 1000 AIs doing it correctly

B) Having 1001 produce the same functionality provided by the library probably on average worse and requiring more expensive hand holding

What in that benefit of B? You might have slightly higher specificity to your use case but its more likely that the only increased specificity is shit you didn't realize you needed yet and will have to prompt and guide the AI to produce.

I fail to see how AI would obviate the need to modularize and re-use code.

> Most of the time, our job is just picking the right combination of well-known patterns to make the best possible trade-offs while fulfilling the requirements.

Right. I don't trust LLM's to pick the right pattern. It will pick _a_ pattern and it will mostly sorta fulfill the requirements.