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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?

#491

Post by singpolyma3 »

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…

This sounds like a terrible idea. Do people need license to draw a picture or write a song? Why would we restrict other creative work in this way?

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

#492

Post by WalterBright »

jselysianeagle wrote: post #463
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "learn to code" and software bootcamp craze always baffled me. Like what other profession markets themselves as "Hey, our job is so easy that any schmuck off the street can enter the career with 4 months of training." Practically every other job I can think of at a similar salary level has entrance requirements (e.g. grad school admissions exams), extensive and expensive training, a lengthy apprenticeship p…

> Like what other profession markets themselves as "Hey, our job is so easy that any schmuck off the street can enter the career with 4 months of training." For one, the industry never did professionalize to begin with, certainly not in the way accountants, lawyers etc did. We never had any real body that could certify proficiency, which is what contributed to companies having to resort to leetcode and other such sty…

> We never had any real body that could certify proficiency

Good!

> having to resort to leetcode and other such styles of interviewing

Such test filter out the obvious frauds.

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

#493

Post by roncesvalles »

Syntaf wrote: post #35

> bad engineers were always a liability This part of the article hits home for me. With AI, "bad" engineers can now amplify their "bad" engineering x10 across the organization. The most egregious of these cases for me is often long tenured engineers who have lost interest in the craft, creating a dangerous combination of having enough merit to ship but not enough interest to make what they ship _good_. I am still a f…

Bad engineers simply don't care about good engineering. They aren't even trying. LLMs have made these engineers super "productive".

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

#494

Post by codexon »

ryandrake wrote: post #142
mikert89 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the field is basically over as a long term career unless you are truly exceptional. It will become very easy to build most software, and the upper end will be filled with the top people in the country/from abroad. Wages are certainly going down for most software roles

> It will become very easy to build most software We keep hearing this, but where is the Photoshop killer written by a gas station attendant? Where is the PayPal alternative written by a retired nurse? Over and over we're told that software is now trivial to write, and Claude is evidently writing some billions of lines of code a day, but where are the results? Where is the vibe coded app toppling the legacy hand-code…

There are multiple "photoshop killers" already available, even for free like photopea. I would bet that you can ask AI to make a clone of it. People just haven't done it because there's no need to waste tokens on that.

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

#495

Post by decimalenough »

NateEag wrote: post #478
e2le wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are probably imagining that it would be expert developers with a track record of success. I'll admit I am unsure how such individuals would be chosen. I imagine it would be prudent to learn what processes are used by other licensed professions when choosing such individuals. > who write lots of blog posts and books about programming and give lots of conference keynotes I do not think people who write blog posts…

> I would hope that any regulation is evidence driven. Have you found existing regulation in any field that's evidence-driven? My impression is that regulation is not made in a way that has much to do with evidence, but I would be delighted to be shown evidence I'm wrong.

Aviation comes to mind. Most aviation regulations exist because people died.

It's hardly a perfect system, but the problem is mostly that it's too conservative and risk aware, making it difficult to impossible to innovate and ignoring the risk this creates. (The world's most popular light aircraft is the 1950s-vintage Cessna 172, mostly because it's impossibly slow and costly to get a reasonably priced modern competitor certified.)

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

#496

Post by eudamoniac »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #414
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…

The whole "learn to code" and software bootcamp craze always baffled me. Like what other profession markets themselves as "Hey, our job is so easy that any schmuck off the street can enter the career with 4 months of training." Practically every other job I can think of at a similar salary level has entrance requirements (e.g. grad school admissions exams), extensive and expensive training, a lengthy apprenticeship p…

It's called suicidal empathy. It manifests in many domains.

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

#497

Post by backwardsponcho »

nkrisc wrote: post #449
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…

But how many of those bootcamp people actually went on to get software jobs? One of the big criticisms of that whole phenomenon that I recall is that people were graduating them and then were unable or unprepared to actually get a job in the industry? So how many people "learned to code" and then ended up back on non-software related careers?

I think that changed around the time COVID hit and offer was highly surpassed by demand. Lots of overhiring during those days.

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

#499

Post by Terr_ »

falcor84 wrote: post #64
Tangurena2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintenance will be forever. Tax laws change annually, so the payroll app will never stop being updated.

I don't accept that argument. As I see it, laws should be structured as data rather than code, using a clean non-Turing-Complete DSL for any embedded logic and calculations. Maybe there would still be occasional situations when new software features are needed, but it should be a rare occurrence rather than on every new change.

> laws should be structured as data rather than code

There was a submission a while back that might be relevant here: "Why Law Is Law-Shaped" (lawvm.org) [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47945861

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

#500

Post by cocoto »

mikert89 wrote: post #354
kakacik wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't be photoshop then. It will be shitty, buggy clunky app that costed a (major) fraction to develop but it will also earn a fraction. Companies like MS can afford this ie with Office suite but patience of markets and customers can allow them to go only so far, if ie Excel becomes semi-useless thats the end of Office and big cash cow for M$ (I'd say about time, that monopoly is not good for consumers at all). Th…

This is cope, ai coding agents will follow the path of self driving cars. They will be watched with extreme caution, but will slowly but surely expand outwards. Eventually manually writing code will be considered a dangerous/bug introducing act

If AI coding agents follow the same path then any software engineer over 25yo can peacefully continue working for 30 years until the tech is capable. The comparison is futile…
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