While agents are able to take over a large part of code writing, software development skills themselves are still a moat. How to design systems for the future, for team collaboration, for cost efficiency, hosting strategies, security… these are decisions that will still have to be made by a software expert.
Domain expertise has always been the real moat
381–390 of 592 posts
Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat
#382While I agree that domain expertise has always been a moat, I believe the author is missing something critical: there is a big difference between being able to verify the output of a system is correct, and being able to tell a system how to generate the correct output to begin with. Personal example: I had a software engineering colleague who was the best coder of financial management systems I've ever encountered. H…
I fully agree here. It's also not uncommon to have the reply for specific items be "Ahh, well that is a bit of an edge case see because of X and Y" and then you learn there are many many "special cases" to the point that they aren't that special anymore.
Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having worked with domain experts I concur on the difficult time they have expressing the rules of their domains. Once I built a little domain-specific language for them, that was tested against old jobs to see if they contradicted the past; it was a nifty project and since then I am convinced that DSLs are underrated as a way to encode expertise.
Can you give an example (even if contrived) of how that would have looked ? I’m very curious !
I am also very interested!
Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat
#384It was never about the code. After spending the last 5 years building software for venture capital and private equity, this blog post really resonates with me. Writing code is by and far the _easiest_ part of my job; understanding the financial engineering and nuance behind what my company's customers need from us the tough part. We always joke that we'd rather hire a senior fund accountants and teach them to program…
You are wrong. Writing programs (atleast efficiently) is not the easiest part. It just appears to be once you get accustomed. Domain expertise is hard but not that hard compared to the insane mental discipline required to write efficient scalable code. Domain expertise is valuable and hard but I don't get this "domain expertise is harder than disciplined coding" mentality.
Right. If you're spending your time among developers to whom the code part is second nature, the differentiating thing becomes domain knowledge. If you spend your time among people of that domain who have no coding skill, to them it will appear to be the opposite.
I think there is some prestige factor in the background too. Being seen like some kind of code monkey is to be avoided like the plague. Business people really don't value the math savant engineer nerd archetype who just codes and codes.
Highest prestige is always taste and judgment, not correctness and skill. This is why people will also talk about how business soft skills, communication etc are more important than hard skills like programming, math, etc. I think one should be careful with this. On the one hand it's true that career progression is quite dependent on soft social skills, but there are also really hard kinds of software jobs where cognitive horsepower and technical experience are absolutely crucial and soft skills won't save you.
Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
An idea that's beginning to solidify for me is that AI tools make software development harder . It's harder because they dramatically raise the bar for what's possible to do. An individual developer can take on significantly more challenging projects now, because the ultimate constraint has always been time and AI can help you get more done in the time available. But the stuff you can get done with that time is a who…
I worry this is looking at where the ball is now instead of where it's going. The recent disproof of an Erdos conjecture should put to rest the idea that LLMs will reach a skill ceiling before they reach superintelligence. I believe we are headed for a world of superintelligent AI where LLMs are much better at logical thinking than humans, the same way that chess engines are much better at chess than humans. In that…
> In that world there's really nothing humans can offer in terms of logical thinking other than their humanity itself.
By your logic anyone who's not in the top 10% of intelligence can't offer anything. The world keeps spinning.
> An 8 year old with Stockfish can beat Magnus Carlsen, and an 8 year old with Codex (and daddy's credit card) will be able to beat me at software engineering.
That's just nonsense, nobody will work with 8 year old (it's illegal, to start with). Go touch grass.
Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat
#386While I agree that domain expertise has always been a moat, I believe the author is missing something critical: there is a big difference between being able to verify the output of a system is correct, and being able to tell a system how to generate the correct output to begin with. Personal example: I had a software engineering colleague who was the best coder of financial management systems I've ever encountered. H…
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Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't buy that at all. It doesn't matter how great the LLMs get, the act of creating software using them will still require a great deal of skill. Most people just don't think in terms of software. Try asking a non-developer in your life what their dream software would be for their work, or their hobby. If they don't have what Nilay Patel calls "software brain" I'd be surprised if they came up with something action…
> Try asking a non-developer in your life what their dream software would be for their work, or their hobby. If they don't have what Nilay Patel calls "software brain" I'd be surprised if they came up with something actionable. I've posted this in numerous comments because I think it bears repeating: there are tech-savvy non-developers who are actually building and shipping stuff with AI. I personally know a few who…
> there are tech-savvy non-developers who are actually building and shipping stuff with AI. I personally know a few who have been successful in acquiring initial customers.
It'll shake your world, but tech-savvy non-developers were building and shipping long before AI.
> they probably have a better intuitive sense for digital product design than a 30 or 40-something engineer who has been staring at an IDE for the past decade(s).
Because developers only stare at IDE 24/7, and never interact with anyone besides mother who brings tendies to their basement? What am I even reading?
Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat
#388There is a separate aspect of having domain expertise in that it open paths for a software engineer to make a lateral switch to a Business Analyst role. That in turn opens paths to management track on the business side as one gains deeper knowledge. If you have business expertise AND direct SDLC experience, that is a different kind of value you bring to the table.
Obviously it is a very different kind of track, take a long time to develop and means you are no longer programming but then with LLMs, hand rolled programming has been massively reduced anyway.
Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there are tech-savvy non-developers who are actually building and shipping stuff with AI I absolutely believe that. I think those are people with "software brain" who are on their way to becoming real developers. By the point they can write apps that are secure and scale... they'll have learned enough about software development to be employable as software developers. They'll be part of a new breed of developer who…
> I absolutely believe that. I think those are people with "software brain" who are on their way to becoming real developers. In my opinion, this is a software developer-centric way of thinking that reminds me of the saying, "if all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail." Here's an alternative perspective: For billions of people, technology products are an integral part of daily life. As a result, lots of people…
> The sad irony is that when software was eating the world and new CompSci grads could take their pick of $150,000+ job offers before ever writing a line of production code, a lot of people in the industry had a smug "tough luck" attitude towards all the workers being displaced by the tech boom. Now it's their turn.
You could've just written this sentence and dropped the rest. I understand your vindictive, "justice", self-hate line of thought, but not it's not a healthy way to live. Get help.
Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nevermind syntax, what's a variable? function? class? What's the difference between int/float/boolean string? Nevermind more advanced concepts like O(1) vs O(n). But when the vibe coder just needs to prompt "the page loads really slowly. plz fix" and the LLM can go in, add an index to the right SQL table, add a limit and pagination, so what if I can tell you the difference between PostgreSQL's dialect of SQL vs MySQL…
It only takes two or three unreviewed prompts like "the page loads slow, plz fix" for you to end up with a tangled mess that even the agents can't productively work with. Take a look at the Reddit forums for vibe-coders - now that a bunch of them have been hacking on things for 3+ months there's a growing awareness there that you hit a wall. Here's the first post I found from just searching "reddit vibe coding wall",…
Offtopic, but how do you monitor all of this stuff, Simon? Do you have a routine where you recheck Reddit, Twitter, HN, other resources, or do you use LLMs to find material for you?