It's a meme at this point. People who don't know anything about programming (lex fridman): "It's revolutionary. People with no programming skills can create entire apps." People who program for a living: "It can reproduce variants of code that have been implemented already 1000s of times, and... nothing else".
Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
531–540 of 886 posts
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that last 5% is what you're paying for
But not really. Looking around my shop, I’m probably the only one around who used to write a lot of C code. No one is coming to ask me about obscure memory bugs. I’m certainly not getting paid better than my peers. The knowledge I have is personally gratifying to me because I like having a deeper understanding of things. But I have to tell you I thought knowing more would give me a deeper advantage than it has in act…
I would argue that your advantage right now is that YOU are the one position they can't replace with LLMs, because your knowledge requires exact fine detail on pointers and everything and needs that exact expertise. You might have toughen the same pay as your peers, but you also carry additional stability.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#533There's such a huge disconnect between people reading headlines and developers who are actually trying to use AI day to day in good faith. We know what it is good at and what it's not. It's incredibly far away from doing any significant change in a mature codebase. In fact I've become so bearish on the technology trying to use it for this, I'm thinking there's going to have to be some other breakthrough or something…
> It's incredibly far away from doing any significant change in a mature codebase
A lot of the use cases are on building something that has already been built before, like a web app, a popular algorithm, and etc. I think the real threat to us programmers is stagnation. If we don't have new use cases to develop but only introduce marginal changes, then we can surely use AI to generate our code from the vast amount of previous work.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#534This article is entirely built on 2 big and wrong assumptions: 1. AI code ability will be the same as is today 2. Companies will replace people for AI en masse at a given moment in time Of course both these assumptions are wrong, the quality of code produced by AI will improve dramatically as model evolves. And is not even just the model itself. The tooling, the Agentic capabilities and workflow will entirely change…
> Of course both these assumptions are wrong, the quality of code produced by AI will improve dramatically as model evolves.
This is the fundamental delusion that is driving AI hype.
Although scale has made LLMs look like magic, actual magic (AGI) is not on the scaling path. This is a conjecture (as is the converse), but I'm betting the farm on it personally and see LLMs as useful chat bots that augment other, better technologies for automation. If you want to pursue AGI, move on quickly to something structurally and fundamentally better.
People don't understand that AGI is pure speculation. There is no rigorous, non-circular definition of human intelligence, let alone proof that AGI is possible or achievable in any reasonable time frame (like 100 years).
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#535Counterpoint: lots of software is relatively very simple at its core, so perhaps we don't need nearly as many employed developers as we have today. Alternatively, we have far more developers today, so perhaps companies are only firing to re-hire for lower salaries. Regarding the first hypothesis: For example, one person can make a basic social media site in a weekend. It'll be missing important things from big social…
> I'm confident the LLMs that exist today can't replace developers, and I wouldn't be surprised if they don't "augment" developers so fewer developers + LLMs don't maintain the same productivity. But perhaps many programmers are being fired because many programmers just aren't necessary, and AI is just a placebo.
The last part is the important part.
There's loads of jobs that don't "need" to exist in software gigs at many companies generally, ranging from lowly maintenance type CRUD jobs to highly complex work that has no path to profitability, but was financially justifiable a few years prior in a different financial environment.
Examples: IIRC, Amazon had some game engine thing that had employed a bunch of graphics programmers (Lumberyard maybe?) that they scrapped (probably for cost reasons), Alexa has been a public loss leader and has had loads of layoffs. Google had their game streaming service that got shelved and other stuff I can't recall that they've surely abandoned in recent years, etc.
Those roles were certainly highly skilled, but mgmt saw no path to profit or whatever, so they're gone.
There's also the opposite in some cases. Many f500s are pissing away money to get some "AI" "Enabled" thing for their whatever and throwing money at companies like Accenture et al to get them some RAG chatbot thing.
There's certainly a brief period where those opportunities will increase as every CTO wants to "modernize" and "leverage AI", although I can't imagine it lasting.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zuckerberg, as always, is well known for making excellent business decisions that lead to greater sector buy in. The Metaverse is going great.
Really, that's what you're going with, arguing against the business acumen of the world's second richest person, and the only one at that scale with individual majority control over their company? As for the Metaverse, it was always intended as a very long-term play which is very early to be judged, but as an owner of a Quest headset, it's already going great for me.
Howard Hughes was one of the biggest business successes of the 20th century, on par with, if not exceeding, the business acumen of the zucc. Fantastically rich, hugely successful, driven, talented, all that crap.
Anyway he also acquired RKO Pictures and led it to its demise 9 years later. In aviation he had many successes, he also had the spruce goose. He bought in to TWA then got forced out of its management.
He died as a recluse, suffering from OCD and drug abuse, immortalized in a Simpsons episode with Mr. Burns portraying him.
People can have business acumen, and sometimes it doesn't work out. Past successes doesn't guarantee future ones. Maybe the metaverse will eventually pay off and we'll all eat crow, or maybe (and this is the one I'm a believer of) it'll be a huge failure, an insane waste of money, and one of the spruce geese of his legacy.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why wouldn't this be the case for people using LLM like it was for everyone else? I feel like it's a bit different this time because LLMs aren't just an abstraction. To make an analogy: Ruby on Rails serves a similar role as highways—it's a quick path to get where you're going, but once you learn the major highways in a metro area you can very easily break out and explore and learn the surface streets. LLMs are a G…
The problem is now that the LLM GPS will lead you to the wrong place once a day on average, and then you still need either open the map and study where you are and figure out the route, or refine the destination address and pray it will bring you to the correct place. Such a great analogy!
Try asking your GPS for the Western blue line stop on the Chicago L. (There are two of them and it will randomly pick one)
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Of course both these assumptions are wrong, the quality of code produced by AI will improve dramatically as model evolves. How are you so sure?
I'm not sure, it's an observation considering how AI improvement is related to Moore's law. [1]( https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/07/nvidia-ceo-says-his-ai-chi... )
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Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLMs are a much bigger jump in productivity than moving to a high level language.
At least for the type of coding I do, if someone gave me the choice between continuing to work in a modern high-level language (such as C#) without LLM assistance, or switching to a low-level language like C with LLM assistance, I know which one I would choose.
Likewise, under no circumstances would I trade C for LLM-aided assembly programming. That sounds hellish. Of course it could (probably will?) be the case that this may change at some point. Innovations in higher-level languages aren't returning productivity improvements at anywhere close to the same rate as LLMs are, and in any case LLMs probably benefit from improvements to higher-level languages as well.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zuckerberg, as always, is well known for making excellent business decisions that lead to greater sector buy in. The Metaverse is going great.
Really, that's what you're going with, arguing against the business acumen of the world's second richest person, and the only one at that scale with individual majority control over their company? As for the Metaverse, it was always intended as a very long-term play which is very early to be judged, but as an owner of a Quest headset, it's already going great for me.
Are you really claiming that it's inherently wrong to argue against somebody who is rich?