Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

normaltech.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–386 of 386 posts

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

#381

Post by rstuart4133 »

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…

The feeling I get is LLM's are the new Excel. I've seen lots of people develop little web based apps that tickle their interest. Things like dashboards for data that would didn't fit on their phone, table tennis scoring (really!), small account keeping apps, plotting calculated GPS path on a map.

These are tiny single use stuff. Exactly the sort of thing the company nerd would create spreadsheets for. The GUI is more advanced, but it is no more maintainable or scalable.

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

#382

Post by aenis »

jdauriemma wrote: post #363
aenis wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sometimes meet someone and hit it off immediately. A fellow engineer, hobbyist, anyone. That is my experience after working with Fable since it launched and barely sleeping. I never had more nuanced, interesting and fruitful design discussions in my life. And I've been programming across the entire stack, from transistors to enterprise architecture, and spent 40 years around computers. Love is love, it does not n…

I say the following with sincere concern. AI is a cool technology but anthropomorphizing it and using the L-word to describe your relationship with it is a symptom of AI psychosis. Respectfully, I suggest that you take a break and touch grass.

Well, in my 47 years on this planed I loved various inanimate objects. Bikes, cars, computers. I'll be fine with my recent infatuation, thanks.

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

#383

Post by johnthescott »

cloverich wrote: post #284
avgDev wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Codex has been great for me for backend wiring, mapping and creating boiler plate code in C#. However, it seems when I go in to fix things its 60% front-end. Idk, I like AI when it works, but it drives me insane when it keeps making errors. I've had a few errors which I figured out from documentation fairly quickly, provided said docs but the AI would still mess it up somehow.

> provided said docs but the AI would still mess it up somehow. The AI is not intelligent. Its really hard to grasp cleanly. But it can't do anything logically like we do. Its pattern matching. It has to be a pattern its seen; then it can assemble them. If there are competing patterns - it'll trip up being consistent. Long established libraries and languages that change the least, it'll be best at. Anything newer it'…

i spent a weekend with an ai expert trying to get claude to generate code from a yacc grammar for a new language and a smallish set of examples. claude never seemed to get past the bnf syntax.

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

#384

Post by pocksuppet »

RA_Fisher wrote: post #63
kypro wrote: post #7

Not buying it. The idea that deciding and delivering are things only humans can do with their intelligence seems faulty. As it stands AIs today are not always great at making decisions (but they're getting much better), and orgs of today still trust people and hold people to account, rather than their AI systems. Neither of these are strong moats. It's a moat only while AI systems have some limitations vs an expert h…

Agree, AIs are better decision-makers on average than people (just look at the grifters we've given power to). These are machines that can perform more advanced mathematics than even the most advanced mathematicians.

Are you talking about LLMs or symbolic manipulation systems? The latter are certainly very logical, the former... not so much.

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

#385

Post by eigencoder »

jorisw wrote: post #379
eigencoder wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not yet. I did specify some specific things about the tech stack and the way I wanted pages outlined that I think helped it get on the right track. But I honestly didn't look at any of the code at all, even when there were a couple bugs that needed fixed. In the future, I'll bet they could.

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

#386

Post by RA_Fisher »

pocksuppet wrote: post #384
RA_Fisher wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, AIs are better decision-makers on average than people (just look at the grifters we've given power to). These are machines that can perform more advanced mathematics than even the most advanced mathematicians.

Are you talking about LLMs or symbolic manipulation systems? The latter are certainly very logical, the former... not so much.

An LLM disproved a famous 80-year-old conjecture.
Post reply on HN