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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?

#771

Post by Chyzwar »

SoftTalker wrote: post #157
sarchertech wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This has traditionally been offloaded by having seniors do the hard thinking then distill it into a jira ticket which could be handed off to an engineer that'd actually write the code and punch every hiccup into google along the way. This is the theory, but I’ve never worked anywhere (and I’ve worked at a lot of places over 20 years) that actually did it like that in practice. What tends to happen is that the EMs an…

Nor have I seen this "punch every hiccup into google" approach. Most errors are things that (a) you've seen before if you have any significant experience and (b) have a pretty obvious cause if you simply read the error message and look at your code. Sure you might lean more on Google or SO if it's something you haven't seen before, or it's something deep in a stack that isn't code you actually wrote. But as the noob…

You would be surprised how many people struggle with "simply read error message".

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

#772

Post by jeffybefffy519 »

AI will divide computer science in two: 1. Normal Computer Science as it exists today, just much fewer doing it due to job supply dropping off 2. AI driven Product/Application Engineering, bulk will go here and the course will be shorter and move up the technical stack.

This is the only way I can see it playing out at the moment, because AI has completely eaten away the need for juniors and its also made it hard to train juniors since they just want to yolo it with CC all the time.

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

#773

Post by ethagnawl »

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #169
cbg0 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually "AI spending" is the new "lines of code" metric.

Too real. I got DMed by management recently asking if I was anti-AI because I had the lowest spend on the team as the lead, y'know, the one that has to review all the slop my peers are generating.

I'm sorry. These charades are such a complete waste of time, energy and money. They're some real 21st Century Office Space nonsense.

I recently joked (only slightly) that it's currently possible to get yourself promoted at these orgs using tokens as a productivity proxy by spending your days having Claude OCR dictionary pages.

The concerning corollary of that joke and this management strategy is: when do orgs start offloading reviews to Claude? They're already surveiling a large percentage of peoples' day-to-day and are in a position (or will claim to be) to make a judgement about how those tokens are being used.

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

#774

Post by zombot »

> But what's the problem then? Just use AI to fix it.

Even if that were feasible in a sustainable way (i.e. LLM-generated code wouldn't drown your code base in technical debt over the mid- to long term), the asymptotic end state of this is that the LLM provider owns the means of your production, not you anymore. How can anyone in their right mind run into this obvious trap?

> By the time you've untangled one bad decision, five more have been merged.

And then there's that. What's the value of all this "speed" when it destroys the most valuable thing you have?

> At some point, someone still has to know what is going on. And that's the most valuable person on the team.

The best you can do is see that you keep being one of those.

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

#775

Post by cbsmith »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #523
toss1 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>doctors make mistakes that kill people all the time Yes, but they make a lot FEWER such mistakes than would people who could not pass the exams and maintain a license. The standard is not perfection; the standard is as good as practical and better than if nothing were done. Medical licensing definitely meets both of those criteria. Unless you are arguing that anyone who takes a ten-week "Medical Bootcamp" is ready…

> they make a lot FEWER such mistakes than would people who could not pass the exams and maintain a license. I don’t know if that’s true. More schooling does not mean more trustworthy or careful doctors. And I suspect some negative trait selection. Milton Friedman wrote a PhD dissertation on the topic of medicine that I invite you to take a look at. > than if nothing were done. The alternative is not to invite people…

> I don’t know if that’s true. More schooling does not mean more trustworthy or careful doctors. And I suspect some negative trait selection.

The medical boards are well aware of this, which is why the standards are far more than just about having more schooling.

I am familiar with Friendman's dissertation, and while the economic claims it makes are solid, it isn't a take down about the medical impact of the boards. It really doesn't say one thing or another about them. Let's put it this way: if you are going to inflate the cost of a service, it's hard if the quality of the service is terrible and easily replicated by someone else.

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

#776

Post by spaqin »

solomonb wrote: post #574
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…

But CNC machining still requires a ton of physical skills. Its true that you maybe aren't planning out and executing every single tool pass by hand but there is still a tremendous amount of knowledge and physical skill that goes into setting up, indicating parts, etc.

I never found a competent metaphor for LLMs taking over. Any tool brought up before still required skill and thought, and deep knowledge of its intricacies.

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

#777

Post by tossandthrow »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #709
edot wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s his point, there isn’t one. You don’t need bespoke software anymore. We’ve got the basics already, all the standards we’d ever need, the agents can figure out how to put them together for whatever thing specific you need.

Well I'm not sure if that's a convincing premise, then. If micro libraries customized for the user's needs was all that was needed we wouldn't have most of the net moated out by overly invasive social media. Even if people could find the tools, they won't seek it if a one button solution can come to them. But we can't outcompete Instagram in a prompt, nor some popular app.

The issue is discoverability. Photoshop has that one magical button that solves all of your issues. But it is hidden behind specialized knowledge and a 10 step deep menu.

Agentic solutions just don't have these issues. You give them your image, that's it.

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

#778

Post by Valakas_ »

eshack94 wrote: post #230

This blog post illustrates the importance of NEVER outsourcing your critical thinking or outsourcing decision-making to an LLM. And to never take shortcuts with learning. Learning is hard, but learning things properly allows you to understand what is happening and allows you to ask the right questions about whether the changes an agent wants to make are the changes that will best serve the goals of the project (witho…

"This blog post illustrates the importance of NEVER outsourcing your critical thinking or outsourcing decision-making to an LLM."

This is a sentence that if written just 5 years ago would result in you being seen as crazy. "LLM capable of any sort of critical thinking? Haha. Not in 50 years."

It never ceases to amaze me how people are stuck in the here in the now and just accept the new reality as if it had always been this way, and will continue being this way in the foreseeable future.

This is the worst LLMs will ever be. Not outsourcing critical thinking to LLM will be seen as a liability in the not so distant future. Just a year or two ago almost no one even took LLM seriously for coding. Now the status quo has moved for also critical thinking, and we hear comments like this. LLM's chances of making a mistake will be orders of magnitude lowers than humans. Slowly learn to let the wheel go. AI will be much better at holding and controlling it.

"We should NEVER outsource number crunching to calculators. They are not 100% reliable and we can make mistakes when inputting the data." Someone in 1920's probably. I know it's a metaphor, and like all metaphors can't be compared 1-1. But it's to make a point how it illustrates my argument above.

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

#779

Post by unified101 »

Animats wrote: post #730
unified101 wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's your code review process (with or without agents). If you don't hold this fort, the battle is lost, and the repo is going to devolve.

What I'm getting at was covered in an article yesterday about the end of abstraction. There's an argument being made for layer-free software, where everything is one big blob of code, created and understood only by an LLM. The software is modified only by re-prompting. There are a lot of people edging around this concept, but it's not solid yet.

Can you point to any place/post making this argument? I'm an active lurker here, and have not seen anyone arguing for layer-free/blob-of-code type of workflow.

The fact that some teams find themselves there is simply a realization of what I stated - inactive maintainership by not taking code reviews seriously.

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

#780

Post by unified101 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #658
pickleRick243 wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I notice your two comments straddle the contradiction "It's definitely not happening, but also it's terrible that it is."

Where was I saying it's not happening? But if I can clarify my point. It's more that I'm trying to say "Company promises A is happening and B is the necessary consequences to achieve it". I do not believe A is happening but B is occurring despite that, in order to achieve hidden agenda C. Though in this case, C is not that hidden since every other article has them blabbing out loud about "wow it's going to be so amaz…

If you think A is not happening for a software engineer's role, then you are mistaken.

We are all scrambling to figure out what else we need to do (and so are many other roles).

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