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Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

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Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#331

Post by timedude »

bborud wrote: post #67

Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…

> Business owners who think they can do without developers because they think LLMs replace developers are fine by me too. Natural selection will take care of them in due course.

Thing is, natural selection will take care of you at the same time. Because you'll also come to rely on products they make, or services they offer, either directly or indirectly. So eventually, you too, will suffer the consequences of the enshloppification.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#332

Post by hatthew »

sefrost wrote: post #147
bborud wrote: post #67

Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…

Only 5% of your time is spent writing code? That sounds like a low estimate for most software engineers I work with. May I ask if you could estimate how you spend the other 95% of the time?

In no particular order

    - Meetings
    - Reading papers
    - Understanding legacy code
    - Reading internal news
    - Ad hoc chats with coworkers
    - Writing docs
    - Editing configs
    - Thinking about solutions
    - Slacking off
    - Analyzing results
    - Testing code
    - Reviewing PRs
    - Understanding others' ongoing projects

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#333

Post by rootusrootus »

monknomo wrote: post #219
ryandrake wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at how the billionaires are talking about AI: Their clear, unambiguous goal is basically to replace all white collar "knowledge" jobs. And there's currently nothing regulatory that's stopping them--they just need to wait for the state of the art to improve. Once AI is "good enough" if it ever is, they won't even think twice about 45% unemployment. What are we unemployed workers going to do about it? There's no e…

45% of folks sitting on their hands are going to have the free time to talk, and this group of people are skilled at organization. Are you planning on throwing your hands up and passively accepting whatever comes your way?

And at least in the US they have >45% of all the small arms weaponry. There is no bunker strong enough nor private army big enough if 100M people come for you.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#334

Post by hjort-e »

icedchai wrote: post #277
hjort-e wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spend 95% of your time on that stuff, you better be working on like critical infrastructure where nothing can go wrong, otherwise you are in an incredibly dysfunctional company.

I agree it would be absurd for it to take 95% of your time. I have, however, seen that it takes a lot more time than one would think. I did some contracting work for a severely dysfunctional meeting heavy organization and it was about 2 hours of meetings for every hour of real technical work!

Ah yes agreed, if it's more than 90% it just signals to me that a developers skills are probably being wasted too much on business/coordination stuff.

But i guess if we mean actual time tapping your keyboard making code, then it's true some days for senior+ devs, but definitely not technical work overall.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#335

Post by therepanic »

bel8 wrote: post #290
Schiendelman wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They build tractors, or sell tractors, or work in agricultural research and development...

I highly doubt that a significant portion of farm labor became salesman or researchers. Builders? I could see that but robots already replaced a portion of those too.

Well, if that's the case, then in your concept the issue isn't what will happen to the programmers, but rather to all the work in general.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#336

Post by rootusrootus »

phkahler wrote: post #161
SoftTalker wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To some degree yes, in practice, not so much. We used to say that (not long ago, even) about the code-writing part. Why do we believe that LLMs are going to stop there? Why do we think they won't soon be able to talk to people, listen, and determine what they need? I think it's mostly a cope. We have robots walking just fine now, by the way.

>> We used to say that (not long ago, even) about the code-writing part. Why do we believe that LLMs are going to stop there? Why do we think they won't soon be able to talk to people, listen, and determine what they need? Because they are currently "generative AI" meaning... autocomplete. They generate stuff but fall down at thinking and problem solving. There is talk of "reasoning models" but I think that's just cl…

> Companies are currently too busy exploiting the local maxima of LLMs

I get the feeling we can already spot the next AI Winter. Which is okay, we need a breather, and the current technology is useful enough on its own.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#338

Post by rpdillon »

bborud wrote: post #67

Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…

This is exactly it. The speed of light has not changed: we're limited by our ability to understand the system, and make decisions about what to do next. AI will speed that up, but the core work is the understanding and decision-making.

Saying otherwise is sort of like reducing the task of writing a novel to typing.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#339

Post by rayiner »

joe_mamba wrote: post #160
rayiner wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the younger people find better jobs? You used to have all these jobs for people who were maybe a bit smarter than average with good judgment. In the 1990s, the local community college used to advertise associates degrees for paralegals. That's a job that doesn't exist in the same way anymore thanks to computers. Now it's become an internship for kids with top credentials before they go to law school. Which is fin…

>It seems to me like all of these people are flocking now to healthcare fields. That seems totally unsustainable. Why? There will never be a shortage of sick/dying people. So medical staff, and also undertakers, aren't going anywhere.

Because most healthcare spending comes from tax dollars.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#340

Post by nomel »

varispeed wrote: post #329
sefrost wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 5% of your time is spent writing code? That sounds like a low estimate for most software engineers I work with. May I ask if you could estimate how you spend the other 95% of the time?

The least experienced developer writes the most code. Juniors would be spending whole day in the IDE, typing, testing, typing etc. Senior developers will go to a park for a few hours, think, then come back spent an hour or less typing code that just works or write nothing at all, maybe even delete code. Instead they might update documents, ask clarifications about found edge cases or errors in planning that were not…

Since software is in every industry of man, I think you'll need to mention which industry this perspective is coming from. This is definitely NOT the case in certain industries.
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