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The future of software development is software developers

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Re: The future of software development is software developers

#501
post #330
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely scary in a way. However I'm still finding a trend even in my org; better non-AI developers tend to be better at using AI to develop. AI still forgets requirements. I'm currently running an experiment where I try to get a design and then execute on an enterprise 'SAAS-replacement' application [0]. AI can spit forth a completely convincing looking overall project plan [1] that has gaps if anyone, even t…

AI does not forget requirements when you use a spec driven AI tool like Kiro

Are you on the Kiro marketing team?

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#502
post #432
post #210

> Edgar Dijkstra called it nearly 50 years ago: we will never be programming in English, or French, or Spanish. Natural languages have not evolved to be precise enough and unambiguous enough. Semantic ambiguity and language entropy will always defeat this ambition. This is the most important quote for any AI coding discussion. Anyone that doesn't understand how the tools they use came to be is doomed to reinvent them…

> Natural languages have not evolved to be precise enough and unambiguous enough. Are they? I feel like AIs fill in a lot of the blanks with reasonable assumptions rather than the input being precise

English is poor language in terms of preciseness - and even worse in terms of impreciseness.

Sometimes it looks like about anything else would be better as a programming interface.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#503
post #444

This is the usual „but they can’t do the hard stuff“ argument. It’s not the right lens - at least not for employment. If you need three programmers to deliver a project, one doing boilerplate, one intermediate and one doing hard task. And the AI can’t do the hard task then you’ve still got two unemployed dudes. So yeah you can make the technically correct argument that it still needs a programmer but it glosses over…

i hope the collective realization that "hard task" guys were once intermediate or boilerplate guys comes sooner than later :(

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of what is happening here is that different developers on HN have very different jobs and skill levels. If you are just writing a large volume of code over and over again to do the same sort of things, then LLMs probably could take your job. A lot of people have joined the industry over time, and it seems like the intelligence bar moved lower and lower over time, particularly for people churning out larg…

> different developers on HN have very different jobs and skill levels. Definitely this. When I use AIs for web development they do an ok job most of the time. Definitely on par with a junior dev. For anything outside of that they're still pretty bad. Not useless by any stretch, but it's still a fantasy to think you could replace even a good junior dev with AI in most domains. I am slightly worried for my job... but…

you say this as if web development isnt 90% of software.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a typical no-proof "AI"-boosting response, and from an account created only 35 days ago.

Proof of what? Should you also have to prove you are not a bot sponsored by short-sellers? It’s all so so silly, anti-AI crowds on HN rehash so many of the same tired arguments it’s ridiculous: - bad for environment: how? Why? - takes all creative output and doesn’t credit: common crawl has been around for decades and models have been training for decades, the difference is that now they’re good. Regurgitating traini…

>Should you also have to prove you are not a bot sponsored by short-sellers?

On a 35 day-old account, yes. Anything "post-AI" is suspect now.

The rest of your comment reads like manufactured AI slop, replying to things I never even wrote in my one sentence comment. And no surprise coming from an account created 1 day ago.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Creating CRUD app is barely a level over starting a new project with the IDE wizard. For you, maybe. But for a non-progrmamer who's starting a business or just needs a website it's the difference between hiring some web dev firm and doing it themselves.

> it's the difference between hiring some web dev firm and doing it themselves. anecdote but i've had a lot of acquaintances who started at both "hiring some web dev firm" and "doing it themselves" with results largely being the same: "help me fix this unmaintainable mess and i will pay you x"... jmo but i suspect llms will allow for the later to go further before the "help me" phase but i feel like that aint going a…

Just like my previous comments, much depends on the specifics.

My wife's sister and her husband run a small retail shop in $large_city. My sister-in-law taught herself how to set up and modify a website with a shopify storefront largely with LLM help. Now they take online orders. I've looked at the code she wrote and it's not pretty but it generally works. There will probably never be a "help me fix this unmaintainable mess and I will pay you" moment in the life of that business.

The crux of my point is this: In 2015 she would have had to hire somebody to do that work.

This segment of the software industry is where the "LLMs will take our jerbs" argument is coming from.

The people who say "AI is junk and it can't do anything right" are simply operating in a different part of the industry.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely this, and TFA touches on the point about natural language being insufficiently precise: AI can write you an entire CRUD app in minutes, and with some back-and-forth you can have an actually-good CRUD app in a few hours. But AI is not very good (anecdotally, based on my experience) at writing fintech-type code. It's also not very good at writing intricate security stuff like heap overflows. I've never tried…

> and with some back-and-forth you can have an actually-good CRUD app in a few hours Perhaps the debate is on what constitutes "actually-good". Depends where the bar is I suppose.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Litigating our personal opinions about "actually-good" is irrelevant and pointless.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with Airbnb. Oh and Moviepass. Those were the days.

Except none of those cost structures are based primarily on a resource that gets cheaper over time.. a.k.a. compute.

Computer isn’t getting cheaper, growth right now is supply constrained to memory which if you haven’t seen the news recently…

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#509
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a metaphore - used to code by hand, now he doesn't, but still produces software. Keep religion out of this.

No one shrugs off 5x like brushing one's teeth in the morning. That makes no sense.

You're confusing critical thinking with having an axe to grind it seems. Bye.

Re: The future of software development is software developers

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a typical no-proof "AI"-boosting response, and from an account created only 35 days ago.

Right I’m a bot made to promote AI like half the people on this thread. I don’t know if you noticed a difference from other hype cycles but other ones were speculative. This one is also speculative but the greater divide is that the literal on the ground usefulness of AI is ALREADY going to change the world. The speculation is that the AI will get better and will no longer need hand holding.

>AI is ALREADY going to change the world.

Nice slop response. This is the same thing said about blockchain and NFTs, same schtick, different tech. The only thing "AI" has done is convince some people that it's a magical being that knows everything. Your comments seem to be somewhere on that spectrum. And, sure what if it isn't changing the world for the better, and actually makes things much worse? You're probably okay with that too, I guess, as long as your precious "AI" is doing the changing.

We've seen what social media and every-waking-hour access to tablets and the internet has done to kids - so much harm that some countries have banned social media for people under a certain age. I can see a future where "AI" will also be banned for minors to use, probably pretty soon too. The harms from "AI" being able to placate instead of create should be obvious, and children shouldn't be able to use it without adult supervision.

>The speculation is that the AI will get better and will no longer need hand holding.

This is nonsense. No AI is going to produce what someone wants without telling it exactly what to do and how to do it, so yes, it will always need hand holding, unless you like slurping up slop. I don't know you, if you aren't a bot, you might just be satisfied with slop? It's a race to the bottom, and it's not going to end up the way you think it will.

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