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The next two years of software engineering

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Re: The next two years of software engineering

#211

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

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…

I have been around for “the past few decades”. Then you saw the rapid growth of the internet, mobile and BigTech. Just from the law of large numbers, BigTech isn’t going to grow exponentially like it did post 2010.

It’s copium to think that with the combination of AI and oversupply of “good enough” developers, that it won’t be harder for developers to get jobs. We are seeing it now.

It wasn’t this bad after the dot com bust. Then if you were just an ordinary enterprise developer working “in the enterprise” in a 2nd tier city (raises hand), jobs were plentiful.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#212

Post by dasil003 »

falloutx wrote: post #164
lelanthran wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 re…

There consumer internet is mostly cropped up by white collar people buying stuff online and clicking on ads. Once the cutting starts, the whole internet economy just becomes a money swapping machine between 7 VC groups. The demand for paid software is decreasing cause these AI companies are saying "Oh dont buy that SAAS product because you can build it yourself now"

SaaS is not just software though, it’s operationalized software and data management. The value has increasingly been in the latter well before AI. How many open source packages have killed their SaaS competitors (or wrappers)?

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#213

Post by falloutx »

amrocha wrote: post #187
falloutx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>Has the output of existing companies/products increased substantially?

Would be impossible to tell.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#214

Post by hnthrow0287345 »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #182
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.

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

Prototypes are always meant to be thrown away though, someone's going to have to redo it to comply with coding standards, scaling requirements, and existing patterns in the code base.

If the prototype can be just dropped in and clear a PR and comply with all the standards, you're just doing software engineering for less money!

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#215

Post by RivieraKid »

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…

It's been a cause of mild background anxiety for me for the past 3 years. One part is financial and the other is a potential loss of a comfortable and relatively high status job that I can get even with below average social and physical skills.

I need about 4.5 years until basic financial independence, I wonder how does it feel to be at that point.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#216

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

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 have been programming professionally since 1996. I have never once spent one minute on “side projects”.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#217

Post by wolpoli »

falloutx wrote: post #144
torben-friis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just to add to the point: no code web site makers have already incorporated AI to simplify marketing tasks like drafting copies/blogs/emails.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#218

Post by glemion43 »

RivieraKid wrote: post #215
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…

It's been a cause of mild background anxiety for me for the past 3 years. One part is financial and the other is a potential loss of a comfortable and relatively high status job that I can get even with below average social and physical skills. I need about 4.5 years until basic financial independence, I wonder how does it feel to be at that point.

I'm more worried about the global impact.

Will people still buy and sell houses?

Will house prices go down because no one can afford them?

Will house prices go up because so few will sell their assets?

I would like to buy a small farm today without debt and cheap energy (upfront investment in solar and storage) but I need a few years more.

Does the world can really change that fast? I don't know but the progress in AI is fast, very fast.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#219

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

jedberg wrote: post #55
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.

It's funny you should ask this. When I started out, 30 years ago, here were the answers you'd get from most people: > Am I supposed to want to code all the time? Yes. > When can I pursue hobbies, Your hobby should be coding fun apps for yourself > a social life, etc. You social life should be hanging out with other engineers talking about engineering things. And the most successful people I know basically did exactly…

I also started 30 years ago - mid 1996.

I did not do side projects. I really enjoyed most of my 20s as a single person. I was a part time fitness instructor, I dated, hung out with friends, did some traveling.

The other developers at my job also had plenty of outside hobbies.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#220

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

izacus wrote: post #84
KaiserPro wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You social life should be hanging out with other engineers talking about engineering things. Fuck. That. I worked at a faang, successful people weren't people that did engineering, it was people who did politics. The most successful people were the ones that joined at the same time as the current VP. Your hobbies need to be fun, to you. Not support your career. If its just there to support your career, its unpaid c…

You just sound very angry your career isn't fun to you. I'm sorry.

I never worked “for fun”. My job for 30 years is just a means to support my addiction to food and shelter. I don’t hate my job especially my last 3 since 2020 when I started working remotely. But it is just something I do.
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