same thing that happened to translators. they are still needed, just several orders of magnitude fewer than before.
What's gonna happen to software engineers?
71–80 of 113 posts
Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference for me has been that you can use llm as your main typing interface, you couldn't do that (without being annoying) before I think opus 4.5
i've heard of principle level engineers saying their typing is bad now. skill atrophy is real. especially for the stupid.
I'm typing to talk to the LLM, so definitely not lost.
The main atrophy I'm concerned about is keeping in mind the state of a massive piece of code executing in my mind.
Now with LLM I just ask "show me the state by putting comments in the code" and I just read it
Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?
#73> they don't need you but you still need them.
I can see very few reasons why AI couldn't replace their expertise for all of us non-experts, the same way it did for software development.
Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?
#74Software Engineers, like all licensed professional Engineers will be just fine, as AI can't assume liability, nor be professionally licensed. Programmers, on the other hand have a lot less leverage to bring to bear. Of course, the above assumes that the job cuts are actually AI related, and not just cover for having to fire people because ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy - aka free money) is over.
> Software Engineers, like all licensed professional Engineers will be just fine, as AI can't assume liability, nor be professionally licensed.
There's no such licensing, unlike other fields such as medicine you are not required by law to hold any license or qualification to perform software engineering.
Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?
#75They're going to be overworked. In the old days we programmed systems by literally wiring them. There wasn't much work, only a few "programmers" were employed. Then somebody came up with Punch cards that was much more vision than wiring the systems directly. This opened the door for a lot more people to use them and now programmers were busier. The punch cards didn't scale either so eventually we created panels with…
>Every time developing software gets easier, it only increases the amount of work required. I'm busier today than I've ever been in my entire life.
I have the same sentiment. So far, no indication that I can be replaced yet. Maybe some day, but right now I'm more productive because of AI (*), but just as if not more busy.
(*) Such as: Obviously the coding side, but also...
AI is helping scrape logs to diagnose bugs, and doing so with high accuracy, much, much faster than I could have done.
AI is taking care of my work journal (basically how I manage my own state) by scraping slack, emails, git commits, ticket state changes and everything else, and updating and maintaining my journal each day. I can't overstate how pleased I am with this. I am usually pretty diligent but if I get out of the habit, I could go weeks before I was back in. Now it is trivial and I always do it.
And more.
Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?
#76Software Engineers, like all licensed professional Engineers will be just fine, as AI can't assume liability, nor be professionally licensed. Programmers, on the other hand have a lot less leverage to bring to bear. Of course, the above assumes that the job cuts are actually AI related, and not just cover for having to fire people because ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy - aka free money) is over.
> Software Engineers, like all licensed professional Engineers will be just fine, as AI can't assume liability, nor be professionally licensed. There's no such licensing, unlike other fields such as medicine you are not required by law to hold any license or qualification to perform software engineering.
An business over a certain size will want people that are "responsible" or in other words liable for software issues.
Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?
#77why do people forget so quickly that you can just code without LLMs? And be hugely impactful? Like in 2020 i coded better shit than my principle agentic engineer go do a good job. it's increasingly rare nowadays. the frauds are growing.
It's bizarre isn't it. It being treated as though actually knowing how to write quality code by hand is a skill that's somehow been lost to time...
I can only guess that a lot of the engineers who went into software purely for money were all too happy to distance themselves from writing code and really don't want to go back...
Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?
#78[flagged]
This is not a choice and it's not about labour, as usual. It's about the product, as usual. Instead of buying any quartz watch that keeps basically perfect time, people pay thousands of times more for a watch that's worse at timekeeping as a status symbol, or because they appreciate watches as art or as constructions. You would have needed your analogy to say why these same reasons would apply to hand-made software.
The correct argument is, again, about product and not labour. Hand-made software still is a better product, and so it's worth paying for.
Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?
#79[flagged]
The Swiss govt has done much to protect Swiss labor from external market pressures; whether the watch is a handmade movement or quartz is irrelevant.
If it were quartz it would be needing to justify why it costs more than $10. The Swiss government doesn't do anything to get people to buy Swiss watches. They're good status symbols, so rich people buy them.
Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?
#80> they don't need you but you still need them. I can see very few reasons why AI couldn't replace their expertise for all of us non-experts, the same way it did for software development.
The reason is a
lack of an immediate verification process. The reason LLMs are been great at programming but less so elsewhere is because if it generates non-working code, calling hallucinated libraries or functions, there's immediate feedback. That code doesn't compile, it crashes, it fails tests, it's slow, it's buggy. But if the LLM gives me bad relationship advice, there's no repl that it can use to retry that conversation with my now-ex until we're back together. Or whatever thing that it's being used for that doesn't have some sort of way to give it a verifier.
So taste is still a thing. Software engineering will have to develop (uh oh) taste and the ability to say no. Your app could include a button to make the device scream like a monkey, but if management tells you it has to have a feature that makes no sense, the answer is no.