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The Post-Developer Era

joshwcomeau.com

51–60 of 71 posts

Re: The Post-Developer Era

#51

The other day I was reviewing the work of a peer on a relatively easy task (using a SDK to manage some remote resources given a static configuration). At several times I was like « why did you do that this way? This is so contrived ». And I should have known better but of course the answer started with « … I know but Copilot did this or that… ». Of course no test to validate properly the implementation. The sentiment…

Stack overflow was never a good excuse for crappy work and neither is AI.

Your real problem is a people problem: hiring, management, feedback, etc.

Re: The Post-Developer Era

#52

This whole post-developer idea is a red herring fueled by investor optics. The reality is AI will change how software is built, but it's still just a tool that requires the same type of precise thinking that software developers do. You can remove all need to understand syntax, but the need for translating vague desires from laypeople into a precise specification will remain—there's nothing on the AI horizon that will…

When COBOL came out it was hyped as ending the need for software developers because it looked sorta like normal English, however it still required someone to be able to think like a programmer. The need to be able to think like a developer is somewhat reduced, but I don't see it totally going away.

Re: The Post-Developer Era

#53
post #19

This whole post-developer idea is a red herring fueled by investor optics. The reality is AI will change how software is built, but it's still just a tool that requires the same type of precise thinking that software developers do. You can remove all need to understand syntax, but the need for translating vague desires from laypeople into a precise specification will remain—there's nothing on the AI horizon that will…

> the need for translating vague desires from laypeople into a precise specification will remain What makes you think LLMs will never be able to do that? Have you tried any of the various DeepResearch products? The workflow is that you make a request for a research project; and then it asks various clarifying questions to narrow down the specific question, acceptable sources, etc.; and only then does it do all the re…

Not OP,

AI may or may not, this is to be seen, but LLMs of today certainly won't.

Re: The Post-Developer Era

#54
post #27

I think the crux of this post is spot-on: we’re nowhere near a “post-developer” era. LLMs are great accelerators, but they still need a competent human in the loop. That said, I do think he understates how much the value of certain developer skills is shifting. For example, pixel-perfect CSS or esoteric algorithmic showmanship used to signal craftsmanship — now they’re rapidly becoming commoditized. With today’s tool…

Are you suggesting pixel perfect CSS is not needed any more, or that an LLM can fix any CSS problem presented to it?

Re: The Post-Developer Era

#55

The other day I was reviewing the work of a peer on a relatively easy task (using a SDK to manage some remote resources given a static configuration). At several times I was like « why did you do that this way? This is so contrived ». And I should have known better but of course the answer started with « … I know but Copilot did this or that… ». Of course no test to validate properly the implementation. The sentiment…

what's funny is that I have had good experience using the opposite workflow as said coworker

Do implementation with minimal (not none, tbf) AI support, ask copilot if there are any obvious issues with and otherwise check my work.

This workflow has helped me catch quite a few gotchas I would have otherwise missed.

Coding assistants are really helpful for validating output, I've had much more mixed results trying to use it to generate novel outputs.

Re: The Post-Developer Era

#56

The other day I was reviewing the work of a peer on a relatively easy task (using a SDK to manage some remote resources given a static configuration). At several times I was like « why did you do that this way? This is so contrived ». And I should have known better but of course the answer started with « … I know but Copilot did this or that… ». Of course no test to validate properly the implementation. The sentiment…

what's funny is that I have had good experience using the opposite workflow as said coworker Do implementation with minimal (not none, tbf) AI support, ask copilot if there are any obvious issues with and otherwise check my work. This workflow has helped me catch quite a few gotchas I would have otherwise missed. Coding assistants are really helpful for validating output, I've had much more mixed results trying to us…

was thinking about this while reading another story about AI code review.

Having an LLM write the code for me? Blecch, it doesn't do it right.

Have an LLM make suggestions about my code? That's fine. If some of them are asinine I just get to laugh and feel smart while ignoring them. But if 1/5 of the suggestions are actually good? That's a win.

But if 1/5 of the questions I ask an LLM are correct, that's a waste of time. Funny how the accuracy of the model matters a different amount depending on the task at hand!

Re: The Post-Developer Era

#57
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the PE ratio is high enough, the company can raise money by simply issuing more shares. Giving the company a money-printer is the whole point of the stock market. That's what makes you an investor -- you're offering the company the value of your shares by exposing yourself to "inflation" whenever the company needs to raise some money.

On paper. In reality, issuing shares (or debt) takes time and is a complex process, a mere sign of which can dampen share prices. > That's what makes you an investor -- you're offering the company the value of your shares by exposing yourself to "inflation" whenever the company needs to raise some money. I beg to differ. What makes me an investor is buying a share of future company profits, directly via dividends or…

You're not an "investor" if you aren't actually funding the company. Trading scrips that entitle you to a share of the profit is not "funding" the company.

Except that you are -- every time that the company prints shares, they've taken some value from you to fund their operations. If companies weren't allowed to issue shares from thin air, there wouldn't be much point to the stock market.

Re: The Post-Developer Era

#59

This whole post-developer idea is a red herring fueled by investor optics. The reality is AI will change how software is built, but it's still just a tool that requires the same type of precise thinking that software developers do. You can remove all need to understand syntax, but the need for translating vague desires from laypeople into a precise specification will remain—there's nothing on the AI horizon that will…

> First is that the majority of investor gains in the US stock market have been fueled heavily by AI hype. Every public tech CEO is getting questions from analysts about what their AI strategy, and they have to tell a compelling story. There's very little space or patience for nuance here because no one really knows how it will play out, but in the meantime investors are making decisions based on what is said. It's no surprise that the majority of execs are just jumping on the bandwagon so they have a story to keep their stock price propped up.

This is also the only place where LLMs have had a tangible impact wrt product offerings with some path of utility, so it must be sold this way.

The broader public (my experience, unprovoked, in conversations with the non-technical) are even aware of this--a neighbor of mine mentioned "prompting for code" to me the other day, while "AI" was a topic we discussed.

Programmers have been well-compensated and I suspect there's some sort of public dissatisfaction with the perception of "day in the life" types making loads of comp to drink free lattes or whatever; no-one will cry for us.

While, there's a billion and 6 "AI Startups" "revolutionizing healthcare/insurance/whatever with AI" but with nothing that the public has seen at any scale that can even be sold as a plausible demo.

Image/music gen and chatbots writing code are basically all of it, and the former isn't even often sold as a profitable path.

Re: The Post-Developer Era

#60

The other day I was reviewing the work of a peer on a relatively easy task (using a SDK to manage some remote resources given a static configuration). At several times I was like « why did you do that this way? This is so contrived ». And I should have known better but of course the answer started with « … I know but Copilot did this or that… ». Of course no test to validate properly the implementation. The sentiment…

Its actually amazing news, worse software quality means more oportunities for hackers and better tools

I have to disagree here based on experience--the majority of software projects I've worked on really didn't care much for "quality" in any sense.

A HUGE portion of work in f500 companies that are non-software firms is outsourced--these companies spend loads of cash on consulting companies (yes, those ones) that often produce results to which the description of sub-par would be a compliment. There's been various cases made public, but more often is routine and poor quality mundane work that's way over budget and barely meets requirements.

If anything, the prevalence and adoption of LLM-generated code will increase the quality in a lot of places.

If you've never had to wade through something that one of Those Companies wrote, you have no idea how bad it gets and how frequently this is the case.

We just saw DOGE-related cuts to Accenture and Deloitte--these companies have huge contracts all over the place, not just public sector.

There's a massive amount of crap out there.

Most companies do not care, do not understand "quality" outside of some cargo-culted notion of "clean", have only adopted modern practices as some sort of ritual* of Things You Do without any assessment on what tangibly works or doesn't, have no understanding of how to attract skilled professionals, nor assess them, nor nurture them. Often their definition of skilled is a resume that contains the proper "experience" with whatever Java/Angular/React/we-love-containers thing they use. With the right number of "years" near it.

*a recent example--company has GH Actions with CI/CD for every commit on all branches but routinely suffers delays due to misconfigurations, runner issues, and other headaches. Code Reviews for PRs exist but are basically pedantry that just slow down deployments ("change this to switch over if-else") while missing crucial bugs, randomly updating major dependencies cause vague security warning that breaks interfaces and other APIs. All this and more--and this is one of the better examples I can think of, in terms of "quality."

I'm saying this as I worked at a Pretty Good consulting company that's business model changed to sub-outsourcing some of the labor to some of These Companies and often had to fix, assist, push back on, work extra to clean up, the various decisions made in these cases.

I also "inherited" and worked on fixes for things left behind by some of these places.

Good thing is there often was low-hanging fruit. Extra and overprovisioned cloud resources wasting $$ and the like, absurd architectures with extra dbs and queues, and all sorts of nightmares.

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