There is a large gap between people who have been using AI for coding for the hundreds or thousands of hours, vs. those who do not. People like Ed Zitron, who never managed or participated in dev projects scream from the rooftops that AI coding is only relevant for small hobby projects. Meanwhile, in my own backyard, we are happily shipping production stuff for a few months now, and newly launched IT projects get launched with substantially smaller teams. And anyone who ever had to work with mediocre developers will take Fable any day of the week.
Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
251–260 of 386 posts
Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
#252There is a large gap between people who have been using AI for coding for the hundreds or thousands of hours, vs. those who do not. People like Ed Zitron, who never managed or participated in dev projects scream from the rooftops that AI coding is only relevant for small hobby projects. Meanwhile, in my own backyard, we are happily shipping production stuff for a few months now, and newly launched IT projects get lau…
I'm sorry, but this is borderline silly. Fable has been out for less than a week and you're already making grand pronouncements about its superiority? How much first-hand evidence could you possibly have for that claim?
Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
#253We have been aggressively and enthusiastically automating away software engineering for the entire history of the computer industry. Every time we do so, we are able to build bigger, better things more quickly. When this happens, our work becomes more valuable and expectations rise to match. The world’s appetite for software has been insatiable so far. AI hasn’t replaced software engineers because every time we becom…
>e.g. front-end web development It's kind of funny that you say this, because I am a frontend developer and I tend to see the state of the art as being very good at doing the boring behind-the-scenes plumbing that I don't care about, and not great at doing the kind of bespoke design work that my day job's clients want. I'm not saying that either of us are definitively right or wrong, and I agree that having a more ge…
Most organisations need a high quality design system and to be able to assemble pages from it. Totally bespoke design will start with the designer using an agent. So the way I see it, the everyday stuff will be the first to go, followed by designers taking the rest of it. Front-end developers have their area eroded from the bottom then the top.
As far as frontend vs backend, there’s a greater scope for fuckups when dealing with the backend. Frontend problems tend to be more transient. So the stakes are lower, which means that the accountability of humans has less value.
Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
#254We have been aggressively and enthusiastically automating away software engineering for the entire history of the computer industry. Every time we do so, we are able to build bigger, better things more quickly. When this happens, our work becomes more valuable and expectations rise to match. The world’s appetite for software has been insatiable so far. AI hasn’t replaced software engineers because every time we becom…
Quite a few developers will likely loose their jobs. In particular the ones who don't have mental capacity to work with models - the ones who are forever junior. The engineers who can manage large scale projects using agents will, on the other hand, probably get a hefty salary bump.
I've worked in many places on many teams and never met anyone that essentially does nothing besides write code...
I question the obsession engineers have with their "code writing" being replaced by a machine.
Do you really think that's the value you bring to the table?
Non-engineers don't want to sit down and think about anything, they don't want to sit down and test that thinks actually work, they don't want to think about all the failure cases that could go wrong besides a few shallow tests, and they definitely don't want to have to pick up the mess if something does go wrong...
This is what you get paid to do. Coding is a small part of that.
Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
#255There is a large gap between people who have been using AI for coding for the hundreds or thousands of hours, vs. those who do not. People like Ed Zitron, who never managed or participated in dev projects scream from the rooftops that AI coding is only relevant for small hobby projects. Meanwhile, in my own backyard, we are happily shipping production stuff for a few months now, and newly launched IT projects get lau…
I'm sorry, but this is borderline silly. Fable has been out for less than a week and you're already making grand pronouncements about its superiority? How much first-hand evidence could you possibly have for that claim?
If he is already enjoying what he claims with pre-Fable models, then it stands to reason Fable is already above that baseline, and therefore your nitpick is silly.
Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
#256There is a large gap between people who have been using AI for coding for the hundreds or thousands of hours, vs. those who do not. People like Ed Zitron, who never managed or participated in dev projects scream from the rooftops that AI coding is only relevant for small hobby projects. Meanwhile, in my own backyard, we are happily shipping production stuff for a few months now, and newly launched IT projects get lau…
You've never actually read anything Ed Zitron wrote, have you?
Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
#257Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
>e.g. front-end web development It's kind of funny that you say this, because I am a frontend developer and I tend to see the state of the art as being very good at doing the boring behind-the-scenes plumbing that I don't care about, and not great at doing the kind of bespoke design work that my day job's clients want. I'm not saying that either of us are definitively right or wrong, and I agree that having a more ge…
Yeah everyone thinks its great at the things they don't personally know that much about or appreciate and I think it's kind of embarrassing to proclaim its going to do someone else's speciality great but not theirs and just reveals an underlying ignorance.
I’ve been writing front-end code for more than a quarter of a century. I can assure you I’m not saying this because I’m unfamiliar with the field.
Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
>e.g. front-end web development It's kind of funny that you say this, because I am a frontend developer and I tend to see the state of the art as being very good at doing the boring behind-the-scenes plumbing that I don't care about, and not great at doing the kind of bespoke design work that my day job's clients want. I'm not saying that either of us are definitively right or wrong, and I agree that having a more ge…
Yeah everyone thinks its great at the things they don't personally know that much about or appreciate and I think it's kind of embarrassing to proclaim its going to do someone else's speciality great but not theirs and just reveals an underlying ignorance.
Honestly I think it's great at the things I do know about. I've been doing this stuff soup to nuts since javascript was released, and it's tactically better across the board - presentation, ux, frontend ui, api, backend, databases, even systems and devops.
It's taste can be atrocious, so we're not replacing engineers entirely yet, but it's clear that it's almost hands off for any task I would have done as a consultant in 2012, for example. And, contrary to my opinion a couple months ago, I think taste is a pretty shallow moat, ultimately. Many of my clients when I was operating a consultancy had plenty of taste, if that's all they required, and I think it'd be foolish to assume frontier models won't acquire taste eventually.
I do think that, ultimately, the tippy top of the pinnacle for things like truly original design work, truly original work of any kind, will take a long time to replace. But most software engineering isn't moving the boundaries of the possibilities of humanity, it's making sure that we can turn $0.10 of infra spend into $2 of revenue reliably.
Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
#260I work at a dev agency, most of our clients are start ups that need to go into the market quickly. We've used agentic development for about a year and a half now and our roles have changed drastically during that time. I can't speak to the volume of projects flowing in (as I do not know the exact numbers) but from what I can see all that has changed is the expectations for what can be delivered. And instead of 5 peop…
> You don't really need to work for a company anymore, because a solo dev can absolutely build crazy things
Don't conflate what is theoretically vs. realistically possible. In the real world, successful companies have moats from data, patents/IP, network effects, and so forth. Just because you can develop something in 1/100th the time doesn't make it instantly feasible to build a new business around. Look around the tech industry today.. plenty of companies that could be disrupted by spry AI-powered buidlers, but they are not (owing to these lock-in effects).