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LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

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Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#601

Post by vor_ »

ilaksh wrote: post #494
t34t34r43 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting this under a burner so I don't dox myself: I work in FinTech on a regulated product. We have access to Mythos. Mythos identified part of our codebase that it confidently asserted was not complaint with a particular regulation and we were at grave risk by allowing it to operate the way it was. Except this was not the case, it had of course hallucinated what the regulation actually required (I know this because…

3 years max. Maybe 5 if you are lucky.The models will continue to improve. The exponential gains in compute efficiency that have been ongoing for 70+ years will continue and that will result in even smarter models. There are dramatic hardware changes in the pipeline. But really that particular issue could have been solved by literally just telling it in a markdown file or instructions something like "verify all facts…

> 3 years max. Maybe 5 if you are lucky.The models will continue to improve. The exponential gains in compute efficiency that have been ongoing for 70+ years will continue and that will result in even smarter models. There are dramatic hardware changes in the pipeline.

I remember hearing that 10 years ago about self-driving.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#602

Post by NewsaHackO »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #356
GuB-42 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suno, the AI Music thing. I don't know if y'all have tried it, but it now produces really good stuff I played with it a bit, and no, it doesn't! And I am talking as someone with limited music culture, musicians are likely to be even more critical. For the first few tries, it sounds impressive and the tunes are catchy. It used to sound wrong in the background but they mostly (but not completely) fixed that. However,…

Suno is completely incapable of producing heavy metal. I can't speak for other genres bc I don't listen to them, but what it produces is completely hollow and devoid of what makes metal metal. I also think most metal fans will categorically reject AI-made metal on principle.

>will categorically reject AI-made metal on principle.

I think this is a huge part of the reason people sometimes find AI criticism so dismissible; there is always some factor other than the actual product it seems that AI-made assets are judged on. With Suno, the biggest ones I've seen are 1) hating AI-created music by virtue of it being AI-created, and 2) the hate is from people who attempt to generate income from their music production, and Suno made music cuts into that pie.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#603

Post by rightbyte »

mike_hearn wrote: post #515
an0malous wrote: post #38

There’s one force where software engineering is being automated by LLMs, but the other force is that there isn’t really much more software that needs to be built. Even before AI coding became big, back in 2021, we were already in late stage SaaS territory where each new idea was an increasingly minor variation of an existing idea. There were no new GitHubs, Herokus, Stripes, Salesforces, Instagrams, Reddits, just var…

Can't disagree more! There's bottomless demand for more software. Here's a few examples I encountered just in the last few weeks that wouldn't be feasible before LLMs: - More localism. Are you afraid of being cut off from tech by some future US government? Now it's feasible for your local culture to grow its own office suite, operating systems, Active Directory competitor etc. A less interdependent world with more co…

> Now it's feasible for your local culture to grow its own office suite, operating systems, Active Directory competitor etc. A less interdependent world with more competition does have its advantages.

That is allready solved by FOSS.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#605

Post by Melatonic »

lubujackson wrote: post #474
ericmcer wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dynamic of agent codes human reviews does seem like the only sane one for the foreseeable future. Even Anthropic themselves still fall back to this. The problem is that sucks, even if all software engineers keep their jobs and salaries, the floor is still pulled out from under us. Imagine if a surgeons job was to supervise robot surgeons from a remote computer, or a woodworker just signs off on work before the ma…

I think there is a big difference between a surgeon, who is performing a specific task with a clear outcome, to a woodworker, who might produce a unique piece of art or a functional chair. I think the surgeon-type tasks will be replaced eventually. More interesting are the woodworker types, which has some similarities to SWEs. When industrialization hit, we definitely lost a ton of craftsmanship and craftsman, but a…

Im not sure your assumption holds at all. If anything the ikea chair could argued to be a very efficient use of resources producing a minimally useful chair. But why is it less likely to wobble ?

In addition the incentives are misaligned - the "artisan" made chair (in the past) wasn't likely made for aesthetic reasons - it was made to last long term and function. And if it wobbled or had any problems the original woodworker was probably around to fix it.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#606

Post by kolinko »

ofjcihen wrote: post #508
ilaksh wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 years max. Maybe 5 if you are lucky.The models will continue to improve. The exponential gains in compute efficiency that have been ongoing for 70+ years will continue and that will result in even smarter models. There are dramatic hardware changes in the pipeline. But really that particular issue could have been solved by literally just telling it in a markdown file or instructions something like "verify all facts…

This is akin to “don’t make mistakes” “Verify all facts and compliance requirements” leaves enormous holes even if you assume the LLM has a concept of facts and requirements (it does not). What facts? What requirements? For what industry? For what subset of that industry? For what country or countries that you will be doing business in? Are these current “facts” and “requirements” or is the LLM referencing a dusty ar…

Well, you wouldn't just give human a task "verify all facts and compliance requirements" and expect it to end well either, no?

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#607

Post by rybosworld »

rglover wrote: post #587

Based on what I've been seeing/reading online the past ~6 months or so, I think there's a self-fulfilling prophecy going on here. Developers are concerned about jobs going away, but how often are they pushing back in their orgs about how AI works? In response to "are you using AI to move faster," how many are responding with "yes, but there are some things you should know..."? If there's no pushback and just pure acc…

For most companies that I've worked for, pushback is normal and expected as long as you've built some trust/rapport with your management chain.

However with AI, it feels different. I have seen both technical and non-technical managers tell engineers something to the effect of "you aren't prompting correctly" if they aren't able to get the task done within some preferred time frame.

We are seeing the industry revive metrics like lines of code, number of tickets closed, bug's found (looking at you Mythos), and now even "tokenmaxxing". It's exhausting to push back on. These are all things that we know will be gamed. But the individual that brings this up might be viewed as "anti-ai" or something.

If you're an IC, I do think the best thing to do is just go along with it. Sooner or later we will see more shocked-pikachu-faced executives when they realize that engineers are spending tokens just for the sake of it.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#608

Post by spacechild1 »

p-e-w wrote: post #25
josephg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exactly zero percent of the market is willing to pay for hand-built software. People are increasingly associating “AI art” with cheap slop. I wonder if the same will ever happen to programming.

People can’t even reliably recognize AI art anymore. The classic “AI images were everywhere in 2023, but I rarely see them now” phenomenon.

It's mostly pretty easy to recognize.

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#609

Post by [deleted] »

dasil003 wrote: post #347
mariopt wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the core issue is not AI itself, it's people. Right now non-tech people just think AI will do anything they want and are the one in charge of hiring/firing, managing, etc. It's horrible to be a software dev right now, you've to deal with AI and lunatics. Of course Domain Knowledge is important but, right now it's very hard to have reasonable conversation because... you know... AI this, AI that. I had a custom…

There's no point debating people who are in a blind mania. Sometimes it's better to just keep your head down and focus on what you can control while "mistakes are made". You will be infinitely more appreciated once they acknowledge that help is needed.

[deleted]

Re: LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

#610

Post by Upvoter33 »

eikenberry wrote: post #517
ilaksh wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 years max. Maybe 5 if you are lucky.The models will continue to improve. The exponential gains in compute efficiency that have been ongoing for 70+ years will continue and that will result in even smarter models. There are dramatic hardware changes in the pipeline. But really that particular issue could have been solved by literally just telling it in a markdown file or instructions something like "verify all facts…

The classic 3-5 year window for a new technology that is uncertain and requires just a few more breakthroughs to get there...

written with confidence too. I'm amazed at the levels of confidence people have in predicting the (unclear) future.
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