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AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

blog.florianherrengt.com

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Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#451

Post by efields »

liendolucas wrote: post #417

I have witnessed first hand this and must say is a disaster, the person that came up with a fix to an issue that I didn't understand tried everything to convince me that the automated fix works. Indeed the fix did work, but when I asked him to explain me the problem and the fix he started to use the prompt to get answers. At that point I just let it go, the only thing that I mentioned later on is that I'm ok with pus…

This is a problem for sure. I don't care what writes the code, but if I commit it or approve the merge, I need to be able to explain it, full stop. I don't need go line by line, just point and explain this does this does that which leads to that.

If "can you explain this?" is a question a direct report has to put into a prompt, they are failing at their job.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#452

Post by Silhouette »

e2le wrote: post #432
overgard wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of think the whole "Learn to Code" push of the 2010s was one of the worst things that happened to our industry. Call me a gatekeeper if you want but, we ended up with a lot of people that just can't do the job. The problem is our industry mostly doesn't have any sort of reasonable mentorship or apprenticeship culture, so we've always left it to the engineers to teach themselves. Sink or swim. The problem is th…

> Call me a gatekeeper if you want but, we ended up with a lot of people that just can't do the job. Increasingly I am of the opinion that software engineering aught to be a licensed profession, similar to civil engineers, medical professionals, or lawyers. A board of peers to hold you accountable and a licence that can be revoked at any time. Additionally, legislation could be written to require such licensed indivi…

The problem with making programming a regulated profession is who gets to define the regulations. You are probably imagining that it would be expert developers with a track record of success. I would bet on it being the people who write lots of blog posts and books about programming and give lots of conference keynotes - whether or not those people have any evidence base to support their advocated policies or any personal track record of delivering good software.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#453

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

moregrist wrote: post #326
soperj wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

computational complexity was never part of calculus. Calculus is the math of continuous change.

You don’t learn Big-O in Calculus because it requires CS algorithmic concepts. But the core question of “how does this behave as N -> \infty?” is asymptotic behavior (ie: limits) which were developed for calculus and are very much part of the foundational calculus canon.

> You don’t learn Big-O in Calculus because it requires CS algorithmic concepts

Big O notation was invented in 1894.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#454

Post by dgellow »

api wrote: post #182
dgellow wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that framing because it glosses over what makes AI distinct from other technology. Pretty much anything can be used as a tool, that’s not an interesting aspect of AI. However standard tools do not take decisions on behalf of the user, they do not apply judgement. They come with assumptions and constraints that make some decisions more likely to be made. But the whole thing about LLMs is that they apply judgeme…

If you go back in time and imagine yourself in 1950, would you have said that about computers in general? Yes their decisions are the result of pre programmed heuristics, but to the operator that can feel as opaque as AI. In fact in the early days of computing AI was used to refer to a broader swath of what we now call heuristics and machine learning. Is a very sophisticated computer driven adaptive control system ma…

LLMs don’t have a will of their own and will (very likely) never have one, they aren’t an entity or anything that can have a sense of self. They are a compressed dataset with a next token prediction engine. From the token prediction + complexity of the dataset + reinforcement learning + whatever other techniques AI folks are using we are able to derive judgement and decision making (of course the LLMs don’t judge or decide anything, they have no free will of any sort, it’s purely derived from the patterns within the dataset).

Though I personally don’t find the topic of consciousness interesting, it’s not something we are able to define and is distracting from all the other aspects of LLMs that should be discussed or evaluated for what they are.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#455

Post by gadflyinyoureye »

lnrd wrote: post #411
logicchains wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a scapegoat, it's basic economics that wages are determined by supply and demand; increasing the supply decreases wages. It's also basic economics that this ultimately reduces costs to consumers, but that doesn't make it any less painful for the workers whose wages face downward pressure due to increased competition from labor force growth.

Never heard the words "basic economics" used outside of strawman political arguments. To think that H-1B developers can meaningfully shift the supply to the point that is felt by other people it's very shortsighted. The job market has been very difficult for years with vastly more supply than demand and its due to plenty economic, financial and political reasons. Interest rates itself affect it way more than any H-1B…

There are approximately 250,000 to 300,000 H-1B workers in software development in the United States at any given year. No the general idea behind the program is that these hundreds of thousands of individuals are so highly skilled that there are no Americans able to fulfill the role. While I fully agree with you on all the topics about financing and interest rates, here’s my question: would there be as slow of a market for software development if those hundreds of thousands of individuals were not here? There was a court case that showed the H1B visas reduced salaries by about 30%. The court ruled that 30% is not a large enough number to say that it has a negative impact on the market. Others disagreed.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#456

Post by wing-_-nuts »

stronglikedan wrote: post #438
e2le wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Call me a gatekeeper if you want but, we ended up with a lot of people that just can't do the job. Increasingly I am of the opinion that software engineering aught to be a licensed profession, similar to civil engineers, medical professionals, or lawyers. A board of peers to hold you accountable and a licence that can be revoked at any time. Additionally, legislation could be written to require such licensed indivi…

> software engineering aught to be a licensed profession Only in certain industries, where outcomes can hurt people in any way. There's opportunity to engineer software in just about every industry, but I don't think a widget vendor that wants to connect to a WMS should be compelled to hire licensed anything. Of course, licensed engineers should cost more too.

It's not licensed per se, but in certain areas of the defense industry, one is restricted to using the 'DOD approved' subset of C++. Coders that know how to be productive within those constraints (and can pass clearance) are much more rare than your average code monkey

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#457

Post by plaidfuji »

logicchains wrote: post #396
doron wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill, while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth"

AI gives the skilled more ability than ever before to create wealth; they can realize an idea by themselves and a few hundred dollars of LLM spending, that would previously have been out of reach for anyone lacking the capital to hire 5-10 people.

This assumes that writing standalone apps (what is now implied by “realizing an idea” in the AI hype-o-sphere) still has defensible value

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#458

Post by efields »

logicchains wrote: post #396
doron wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill, while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth"

AI gives the skilled more ability than ever before to create wealth; they can realize an idea by themselves and a few hundred dollars of LLM spending, that would previously have been out of reach for anyone lacking the capital to hire 5-10 people.

I agree with you in theory, but wealth goes hand in hand with relationships. If you can use your skills to make something great with AI in a short amount of time, someone else probably do it too. If they have better connections than you do, they win. Relationships get you farther than raw skill.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#459

Post by dgellow »

happytoexplain wrote: post #445
api wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go back in time and imagine yourself in 1950, would you have said that about computers in general? Yes their decisions are the result of pre programmed heuristics, but to the operator that can feel as opaque as AI. In fact in the early days of computing AI was used to refer to a broader swath of what we now call heuristics and machine learning. Is a very sophisticated computer driven adaptive control system ma…

>If you go back in time and imagine yourself in 1950, would you have said that about computers in general? I'm not the parent, but personally, no, I don't believe so. I always appreciate the "it's like past changes" thought when things change, but in my opinion, this one simply isn't. It's notably different both quantitatively and, critically, qualitatively , than all previous increments in computers/software. This i…

I agree, and you wrote that better than I could have. Though it’s difficult to say why exactly I feel that way

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#460

Post by gambiting »

I work in software and I wonder what companies are letting in those 25k line PRs? If I change more than 3 files at once that's already rising a sea of eyebrows and it will be a week or more to get it through code review. I can't even imagine what kind of supernatural circumstance would lead to anyone accepting a 25k PR at all.
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