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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

#371

Post by nec4b »

JimDabell wrote: post #369
nec4b wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not. I really fail to see where do you see frontend development to be easier for AI to pick up compared to backend. As I said frontend is writing code for an user interface and backend for a machine interface.

You think “taste in colours” is a development task not a design task‽

Knowing that a white font is not visible on white background is not really a design job is it? Calling an API on the other hand requires mostly logic and documentation or do you disagree?

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

#372

Post by allajfjwbwkwja »

tossandthrow wrote: post #358
allajfjwbwkwja wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State of the art tools will soon be even better at being generalists and handling abstraction than at coding. Even GPT 4 could do a better job planning a project than implementing it. The main bottleneck is context, which all of the big companies are solving by hoovering up all their internal data that's in writing into agentic knowledge graphs. The end game is fully autonomous teams of agents, led by other agents.

Project planning is not more abstraction - a lot of companies use junior staff as project managers. And sure, they will also find a hard time finding jobs, unless they can move up the hierachy.

There's very few spaces in the hierarchy for people so abstract that they just say "this needs to be faster" or "add this feature."

Talk of any further "abstraction" just sounds like the "I have people skills" guy from Office Space.

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

#373

Post by shardullavekar »

some x.com influencer claiming that they built a one man company with agents doing everything. Like, hey Claude - create a staffing automation company and a swarm of agents search, reach out, follow ups, and AI voice calls etc. Its bs marketing, I get it but "what if this comes true, not now but in future?" - drives the anxiety. The sandwich framework sounds great until the decision and accountability is passed on to AI with guardrails. The AI in its current state is great to take the feedback and decide the next course of actions.

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

#374

Post by loki-ai »

aenis wrote: post #317
jdauriemma wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Fable caught us in the middle of a crisis where we had to replace a supplier with a quickly-put-together home made solution. We have been working with it non stop since it launched. And thanks to a lot of baseline experience with previous models, our small band of relatively old hands decided we are badly in love with it. Now, remind yourself when was the last time you had to work with a developer who went to CS beca…

that's what I'm seeing it across other teams as well: backlogs size barely smaller and even defects rising. the low performers have only gotten lazier.

the difference now is that people are starting to openly question the extreme productivity gaps and their usual excuses aren't working anymore.

AI doesn't need to replace everyone. just dropping the bottom 1 or 2 people per team would already be catastrophic for the field

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

#375

Post by JimDabell »

nec4b wrote: post #371
JimDabell wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think “taste in colours” is a development task not a design task‽

Knowing that a white font is not visible on white background is not really a design job is it? Calling an API on the other hand requires mostly logic and documentation or do you disagree?

Forget AI exists for a moment. You’ve got a team of humans working on a project. You’ve got a backend developer, a frontend developer, a DBA, a platform engineer, a graphic designer, a UX person, a product manager, and a QA person.

Whose responsibility is it to select the colours? You think this is the responsibility of one of the developers‽ You don’t think “having taste in colours” is solidly owned by the designer‽ You think this is a developer task not a design task‽

Aside from that, the specific example you chose is an area where we have deterministic algorithms for judging contrast – we don’t even need AI for that, regular old procedural code can do it.

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

#376

Post by sebasmart »

This matches the exact point being discussed. I actually just published a two-part article on HackerNoon digging into this exact issue—and the consequences of ignoring it.

Hopefully, this adds some useful context to the discussion:

Part 1: System Definition Brings Software Engineering to AI Coding https://hackernoon.com/system-definition-brings-software-eng...

Part 2: Working Code, Wrong Engineering: Why AI-Generated Code Needs System Definition Tests https://hackernoon.com/working-code-wrong-engineering-why-ai...

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

#377

Post by sebasmart »

JimDabell wrote: post #65

We 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…

You’re right that automation has historically expanded what we can build. But the real work of software engineering isn’t coding. It’s architecting solutions: defining the problem, making trade-offs, and designing for maintainability and change. That’s significantly harder to automate, and I explained why in another reply on this thread. Even if AI becomes competent at engineering (my two-part series covers what “System Definition” would be needed to get there), it still has a deeper limitation: AI is a consensus machine. It excels at recombining what’s already known and rewarded. Paradigm shifts and black swans almost always come from people willing to challenge the current consensus, which is exactly what AI consensus tends to suppress. That’s the real risk to technological progress: how do we move in new directions when AI defaults to following the majority view from past experience? https://hackernoon.com/who-dares-to-be-the-first-cassandras-...

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

#378

Post by Kerrick »

fragmede wrote: post #339
Kerrick wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I suspect that vibe coders who hit a wall need the same thing that programmers from 2003 who hit a wall needed. Talk to the business people, get an understanding of their domain and the problem at hand, and model that as a series of anthropomorphic objects that encode the business rules in the language that the domain experts already used (tweaked by the need for disambiguation and clarity). Back in the day, this was software design, a distinct skill (and often job!) from computer programming.

I'd love to read your book, if you write it. Anybody who's talked to a thousand people trying to solve the same problems will have an amazing perspective and a lot to teach.

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

#379

Post by jorisw »

eigencoder wrote: post #268
altern8 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, machines will allow ordering an app.

Yeah, I think this will really be a thing. I have been using `exe.dev` lately, and I was at an AirBnB with my family where we wanted to play a game, but it needed pencil and paper for each person, but we didn't have those. I thought it would be nice to have a little web app where you could write your input and then vote on other people's responses directly from your phone. I just spun up a VM on exe.dev, asked the AI…

Do you think just anyone (now or soon) would be able to do what you needed to do to get that app specified and running?

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

#380

Post by jorisw »

rambojohnson wrote: post #288
altern8 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think, is that everyone who needs small software to manage a todo list or synchronize files, or whatever "normal" people do, will end up with bespoke personalized software written by their own AI People can't be bothered to cook for themselves, and often order crappy, unhealthy food that costs 10 times as much just so they don't have to cook. Now they're going to build their own software every time they think the…

the thing is they won't need to "cook" anymore to get it done. they can just... describe what they want to eat.

"Tea, Earl Grey, Hot"
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