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The next two years of software engineering

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Re: The next two years of software engineering

#31

Post by collingreen »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #22
kibwen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite what completely uninformed people may think, the field "computer science" is not about software development. It's a branch of mathematics. If you want an education in software development, those are offered by trade schools.

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.

Plenty of schools offer software engineering degrees alongside computer science, including mine ~20 years ago.

The bigger problem when I was there was undergrads (me very much included) not understanding the difference at all when signing up.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#32

Post by jvans »

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…

i notice a huge difference between working on large systems with lots of microservices and building small apps or tools for myself. The large system work is what you describe, but small apps or tools I resonate with the automate coding crowd.

I've built a few things end to end where I can verify the tool or app does what I want and I haven't seen a single line of the code the LLM wrote. It was a creepy feeling the first time it happened but it's not a workflow I can really use in a lot of my day to day work.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#33

Post by eaurouge »

kylecazar wrote: post #30
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.

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.

So another strawman?

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#34

Post by ch4s3 »

> junior developer employment drops by about 9-10% within six quarters, while senior employment barely budges. Big tech hired 50% fewer fresh graduates over the past three years.

This study showing 9-10% drop is odd[1] and I'm not sure about their identification critria.

> We identify GenAI adoption by detecting job postings that explicitly seek workers to implement or integrate GenAI technologies into firm workflows.

Based on that MIT study it seems like 90+% of these projects fail. So we could easily be seeing an effect where firms posting these GenAI roles are burning money on the projects in a way that displaces investment in headcount.

The point about "BigTech" hiring 50% fewer grads is almost orthogonal. All of these companies are shifting hiring towards things where new grads are unlikely to add value, building data centers and frontier work.

Moreover the TCJA of 2017 caused software developers to not count for R&D tax write offs (I'm oversimplifying) starting in 2022. This surely has more of an effect than whatever "GenAI integrator roles" postings correlates to.

[1] https://download.ssrn.com/2025/11/6/5425555.pdf

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#36

Post by petesergeant »

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…

I’m doing both. For production code that I care about, I’m reading every line the LLM writes, correcting it a lot, chatting with an observer LLM who’s checking the work the first LLM and I are writing. It’s speeding stuff up, it also reduces the friction on starting on things. Definitely a time saver.

Then I have some non-trivial side projects where I don’t really care about the code quality, and I’m just letting it run. If I dare look at the code, there’s a bunch of repetition. It rarely gets stuff right the first time, but that’s fine, because it’ll correct it when I tell it it doesn’t work right. Probably full of security holes, code is nasty, but it doesn’t matter for the use-cases I want. I have produced pieces of software here that are actively making my life better, and it’s been mostly unsupervised.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#37

Post by none2585 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #22
kibwen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite what completely uninformed people may think, the field "computer science" is not about software development. It's a branch of mathematics. If you want an education in software development, those are offered by trade schools.

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.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#38

Post by pkaye »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #22
kibwen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite what completely uninformed people may think, the field "computer science" is not about software development. It's a branch of mathematics. If you want an education in software development, those are offered by trade schools.

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.

My university had Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering and Computer Science degrees (in additional to all the other standard ones.)

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#39

Post by garbawarb »

ch4s3 wrote: post #34

> junior developer employment drops by about 9-10% within six quarters, while senior employment barely budges. Big tech hired 50% fewer fresh graduates over the past three years. This study showing 9-10% drop is odd[1] and I'm not sure about their identification critria. > We identify GenAI adoption by detecting job postings that explicitly seek workers to implement or integrate GenAI technologies into firm workflows…

Hiring was booming until about 2020 though.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#40

Post by ch4s3 »

garbawarb wrote: post #39
ch4s3 wrote: post #34

> junior developer employment drops by about 9-10% within six quarters, while senior employment barely budges. Big tech hired 50% fewer fresh graduates over the past three years. This study showing 9-10% drop is odd[1] and I'm not sure about their identification critria. > We identify GenAI adoption by detecting job postings that explicitly seek workers to implement or integrate GenAI technologies into firm workflows…

Hiring was booming until about 2020 though.

The TCJA change (of 2017) went into effect in 2022, I should have been more clear.
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