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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?

#531

Post by codexon »

deaton wrote: post #254
ryandrake wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

See this is the big issue I've been seeing. The only vibe coded product I can think of off the top of my head that's succeeding at all is Bun, and maybe I'm behind the times but it feels like Bun's success is mostly being pushed by Anthropic; I've yet to see much other than Claude Code use it.

There's very little incentive for people to advertise that their product was vibe coded. In fact there's many incentives to hide it. Many people hate AI and why would you invite more competition?

Bun gets a lot of hate for vibe coding.

I vibe coded to modernize one of my old hobby websites (so not even vibe coding from scratch) and I immediately got anti-AI comments, and I didn't even say I used AI.

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

#532

Post by hdndjsbbs »

overgard wrote: post #375
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…

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…

If compensation for software devs was in line with other profession there wouldn't be bootcamps. The problem is it's an easy job that gets paid a ton of money

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

#533

Post by Chance-Device »

level87 wrote: post #474

It’s difficult to have spent a long time learning something, only for that thing to suddenly become accessible to anyone; something that was once scarce and valuable is now abundant and cheap. There are still machinists doing things by hand, but for real production or prototyping, most will now use a 5-axis CNC machine. It still requires an operator of sorts, but much of the work that once required skilled manual mac…

This is exactly right, thank you for saying it. Nice example with the CNC machine too.

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

#534

Post by andrewflnr »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #491
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…

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?

People doing "mechanical engineering" in their garage don't need licenses either. I don't love the licensing idea either, but that's not a good argument.

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

#535

Post by andrewflnr »

phil21 wrote: post #386
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…

Or it’s just the largely self-taught intrinsically curious autodidact developers and engineers have always been 10x and the “average” person in it for the paycheck is really what a 1xer has always actually been. I think the industry highly skewed towards the former back in the 90s (and earlier!) when I first entered it. There certainly were vast differences between the best and the worst, but nothing like the giganti…

I'm very much a curious autodidact and there are still people who easily 10x me or more. Someone like Fabrice Bellard is an obvious, extreme example.

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

#536

Post by [deleted] »

Barrin92 wrote: post #512
singpolyma3 wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>Why would we restrict other creative work in this way? Because it isn't creative work. Software underpins payment processors, medical services, emergency alerts, infrastructure. In the UK not long ago a ransomware attack took the healthcare system offline and surgeries had to be postponed. in 2021 the Colonial Pipeline attack took 50% of the US East Coast's oil supply offline. The entire German train system died a f…

[deleted]

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

#537

Post by bossyTeacher »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #76
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…

This is me to a tee. I think I'm a fairly good software engineer, and I loved building software and mentoring more junior engineers who I thought had both ability and a good attitude. I also think I was a pretty pragmatic engineer (I was not an "architecture astronaut"), but I did enjoy the craft of getting into the nitty gritty details of software. The past 5-10 years or so saw me pretty beaten down though with soft…

> The past 5-10 years or so saw me pretty beaten down though with software engineering, and AI was the final nail in the coffin that caused me to leave the profession in later middle age.

What year did you leave? And what are you doing now?

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

#538

Post by WalterBright »

bdangubic wrote: post #519
WalterBright wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Such test filter out the obvious frauds. if you need garbage like leetcode to filter out "obvious frauds" you got a whole lot of problems in your company/team/...

A colleague of mine came to me for advice. He wanted one of those high dollar jobs at a well-known MegaCorp. He knew a leetcode test was used by them. I suggested that his top priority was to study the leetcode books for the next 3 weeks. I told him those three weeks would be the best ROI he'd ever make.

He did so. He aced the test. He got the job with a huge offer. He agreed that the ROI was out of the park!

P.S. I'm curious what your test is for obvious frauds?

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

#539

Post by eudamoniac »

codexon wrote: post #494
ryandrake wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Then why isn't Photoshop killed?

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

#540

Post by Planktonne »

overgard wrote: post #375
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…

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…

> we ended up with a lot of people that just can't do the job

I don't think this is attributable to the 'learn to code' push; I know many fine engineers who came through boot camps, and many, many poor ones who came in the 'official' way.

The problem is that we trained too many people, many of them without the aptitude, not how we trained them.

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