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Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

normaltech.ai

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Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#331

Post by pesus »

LogicFailsMe wrote: post #328
onemoresoop wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what you're saying is true but only to the extent of simulacra AI can produce. But it's not really art if you know what I mean, it's an artefact of training on other people's art.

So what I do with AI art is start with a photo I took. I then extract its Lin Canny lines or other descriptive features algorithmically. From there, I apply various models to re-express the image in an interesting way. IMO it looks more like Digital Art out of photoshop and I would refute any claim that this isn't remotely artistic given I was the one that took the photo that is the base image. And it doesn't end up…

> It may not be your cup of tea, but it's a lot more effort than typing in a prompt and calling it a day.

Yeah, you have to type in 3 prompts instead of just 1.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#332

Post by aurareturn »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #327
mbrumlow wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your company might fail then. Because I won’t be fighting to work at your company, I’ll just compete with your company and get paid what I deserve. We already have CEOs is vendors trying to scare people away from vibe coding their contract away, while I diligently vibe code their contract away. Not much new here as my entire career has been coding away 3rd party contracts, and it’s now easier than ever.

The whole point is that the company doesnt need you if there is ample supply of developers

My point is that there isn't/won't be an ample supply of developers.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#333

Post by LogicFailsMe »

pesus wrote: post #331
LogicFailsMe wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what I do with AI art is start with a photo I took. I then extract its Lin Canny lines or other descriptive features algorithmically. From there, I apply various models to re-express the image in an interesting way. IMO it looks more like Digital Art out of photoshop and I would refute any claim that this isn't remotely artistic given I was the one that took the photo that is the base image. And it doesn't end up…

> It may not be your cup of tea, but it's a lot more effort than typing in a prompt and calling it a day. Yeah, you have to type in 3 prompts instead of just 1.

I'm going to love watching this melodrama play out over the next few years.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#334

Post by kurthr »

pramodbiligiri wrote: post #194
xnx wrote: post #8

Misleading > Among the 270 jobs in the 1950 U.S. census, only one job was automated away — elevator operator. But many others were rendered obsolete by new technology, like the job of telegraph operator. In that same time farm jobs went from 15% of the workforce to 2%.

They seem to address that: "This is sharply different from occupations such as agriculture in which labor demand was famously decimated due to mechanization and automation. The difference is that the amount of calories people consume is relatively fixed — even a 25% increase led to the obesity epidemic — whereas the amount of software produced has grown a millionfold."

I think that the amount of software produced has gone up by much more than a million fold since 1950. The first thing I would consider software and not flipping hardware switches was Assembly Language described in a book by Kathleen and Andrew Booth in 1947 and the phrase Assembly was first used to describe it in 1951. Even that is normally called firmware today.

That doesn't really mean to me that we have another million or billion-fold increase in utility coming, unless we're just counting lines of code. I don't need 1000 more apps on my phone or computer. Are we saying that every webpage and video is software, because they're already encoded in js and H264? or is it just the browser? the OS? How much more do we really need or even want?

Is it just that soon we'll all need to have "agents" working for us to protect us from the other "agents' that are trying to steal what we have? Is that the utility? Who's going to pay more for it?

It seems like we're already at the point where we pay about as much as people are willing to for software. It's already gone to the subscription model. You're already the product for advertising. It's already being enshitified to eke out some extra margin. It's already ~10% of GDP. It just can't grow much more without adding some new utility rather than just replacing what's already there. It needs to create something other than unemployment.

But if it doesn't create anything new, it will be the Tractor to Jevon's Paradox.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#335

Post by tossandthrow »

jdauriemma wrote: post #252
aenis wrote: post #251

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 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?

Replace Fable with Opus 4.8, 4.7, or 4.6 - and it is still true

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#336

Post by [deleted] »

mteoharov wrote: post #91

I 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…

[deleted]

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#337

Post by allajfjwbwkwja »

tossandthrow wrote: post #312
allajfjwbwkwja wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ones who don't have mental capacity to work with models Those people don't exist.

Sure they do - there are a lot of people who thrive working with concrete technologies and solve relatively straight forward issues (implement this component - style work). These people will see a brutal job market that is forcing them to take more responsibility and work at a higher level of abstraction. This is nothing new - A bunch of people simply don't thrive well as knowledge workers. The bar for being a knowle…

The latest tools will walk any monkey through the process of planning out and thinking through whatever they're supposed to be doing, and will then write the documentation for it. The bar is likely to go down, actually.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#339

Post by fragmede »

Kerrick wrote: post #127
fragmede wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that sense, AI is creating software jobs. Not very good ones, and they're being paid way less, but a jobs a job, I guess. We have to face the music. it's not that AI will take software jobs, it's that it will make them pay a janitor's wages. But while the AI isn't good enough to do it all, While there's still a vibe code wall that non-developers run into, senior developers will still have a job scaling that wall.…

That wall was detailed in 2003 in Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans, Chapter Four, "Smart UI Anti-Pattern." The context is the same, the problem is the same, the solution is the same. Even the advantages and disadvantages are the same as what you see in vibe-coded projects. > A project needs to deliver simple functionality, dominated by data entry and display, with few b…

That is fascinating. thank you for digging out that quote. Maybe I should get into book writing.

> with few business rules. Staff is not composed of advanced object modelers.

That seems dismissive of the people who live day-in-day-out with the problem at hand. In my experience, most people are actually advanced data modelers, but they spend their energy on that on people instead of machines. Makes them less gullible than me but worse at computers, so it's a wash.

> Rich capabilities were never requested. >

When you have to deal with someone else, especially from a different department or outside team, that you don't trust, revealing your rich inner data model of the situation at hand is not only not to your benefit, but often to your detriment. Especially with a history of IT projects not landing or going wrong. You're not getting those rich requests because you (well, the quoted author) isn't being trusted.

The advice is good, but dated. What do vibecoders who hit the wall need? Teaching people that wanna learn SQl has gotten a lotta people rich. Lemme talk to a thousand of the people vibecoding appa and lemme write their book. (After reading that book from 2003.)

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#340

Post by Yokohiii »

zuzululu wrote: post #299
Yokohiii wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now everybody has superpowers. I think that it's very odd how AI enthusiasts misinterpret the situation. If it turns out to be good enough to produce greenfield projects with agentic coding, then it will not only affect developers, but also whole companies and whole business sectors. The whole dev agency business model is only there because less technical companies don't know how to deal with software, others are j…

its not a misinterpretation but an observation. your moat as software dev is disappearing. i know several companies that reduced their 20+ full stack dev team to just 4, in some cases they got rid of them all together and it is now the CTO/CEO + contractors who are paid hourly and working less than 20 hours a week on average. We are only getting started, this trend is not going to revert, we are going to get cheaper…

That is the misinterpretation. You apply the shift of capabilities only to one portion, the devs. Why wouldn't it change management positions? You already name it, the headcount goes down, also less managers. Why even have a CTO?
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