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The next two years of software engineering

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Re: The next two years of software engineering

#81

Post by KaiserPro »

jedberg wrote: post #55
hncoder12345 wrote: post #53

Sometimes I wonder if I made the wrong choice with software development. Even after getting to a senior role, according to this article, you're still expected to get more education and work on side projects outside of work. Am I supposed to want to code all the time? When can I pursue hobbies, a social life, etc.

It's funny you should ask this. When I started out, 30 years ago, here were the answers you'd get from most people: > Am I supposed to want to code all the time? Yes. > When can I pursue hobbies, Your hobby should be coding fun apps for yourself > a social life, etc. You social life should be hanging out with other engineers talking about engineering things. And the most successful people I know basically did exactly…

> You social life should be hanging out with other engineers talking about engineering things.

Fuck. That.

I worked at a faang, successful people weren't people that did engineering, it was people who did politics.

The most successful people were the ones that joined at the same time as the current VP.

Your hobbies need to be fun, to you. Not support your career. If its just there to support your career, its unpaid career development, not a hobby. Should people not code in their free time? thats not for me to decide. If they enjoy it, and its not hurting anyone, then be my guest.

Engineers are generally useless at understanding whats going on in the real world, they are also quite bad at communicating.

do. fun. things.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#82

Post by miki123211 »

Aurornis wrote: post #25
babblingfish wrote: post #20

My experience hasn't been LLMs automate coding, just speeds it up. It's like I know what I want the solution to be and I'll describe it to the LLM, usually for specific code blocks at a time, and then build it up block-by-block. When I read hacker news people are talking like it's doing much more than that. It doesn't feel like an automation tool to me at all. It just helps me do what I was gonna do anyways, but with…

> My experience hasn't been LLMs automate coding, just speeds it up. This is how basically everyone I know actually uses LLMs. The whole story about vibecoding and LLMs replacing engineers has become a huge distraction from the really useful discussions to be had. It’s almost impossible to discuss LLMs on HN because everyone is busy attacking the vibecoding strawman all the time.

As a professional programmer, I think both are useful in different scenarios.

You're maintaining a large, professional codebase? You definitely shouldn't be vibe coding. The fact that some people are is a genuine problem. You want a simple app that you and your friends will use for a few weeks and throw away? Sure, you can probably vibe code something in 2 hours instead of paying for a SaaS. Both have their place.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#83

Post by megamix »

The most important question is who will get paid the most? I don't think the future of software engineering will be attractive if all you do is more work for same or even less pay. A second danger is too much reliance on AI tools will centralise knowledge and THAT is the scariest thing. Software systems will need to perform for a long time, having juniors on board and people who understand software architecture will be massively important. Or will all software crash when this generation retires?

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#84

Post by izacus »

KaiserPro wrote: post #81
jedberg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you should ask this. When I started out, 30 years ago, here were the answers you'd get from most people: > Am I supposed to want to code all the time? Yes. > When can I pursue hobbies, Your hobby should be coding fun apps for yourself > a social life, etc. You social life should be hanging out with other engineers talking about engineering things. And the most successful people I know basically did exactly…

> You social life should be hanging out with other engineers talking about engineering things. Fuck. That. I worked at a faang, successful people weren't people that did engineering, it was people who did politics. The most successful people were the ones that joined at the same time as the current VP. Your hobbies need to be fun, to you. Not support your career. If its just there to support your career, its unpaid c…

You just sound very angry your career isn't fun to you. I'm sorry.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#85

Post by falloutx »

megamix wrote: post #83

The most important question is who will get paid the most? I don't think the future of software engineering will be attractive if all you do is more work for same or even less pay. A second danger is too much reliance on AI tools will centralise knowledge and THAT is the scariest thing. Software systems will need to perform for a long time, having juniors on board and people who understand software architecture will…

The people who don't lose their jobs will also not be in a great spot, there wont be a guarantee that they will never lose their jobs, they will continue to live on the wobbly and uncertain foundation, will get fired for first no they say to the management. If software engineering falls, all the related industries will fall too, thus creating a domino effect, that none of the execs can imagine right now.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#86

Post by falloutx »

Aurornis wrote: post #25
babblingfish wrote: post #20

My experience hasn't been LLMs automate coding, just speeds it up. It's like I know what I want the solution to be and I'll describe it to the LLM, usually for specific code blocks at a time, and then build it up block-by-block. When I read hacker news people are talking like it's doing much more than that. It doesn't feel like an automation tool to me at all. It just helps me do what I was gonna do anyways, but with…

> My experience hasn't been LLMs automate coding, just speeds it up. This is how basically everyone I know actually uses LLMs. The whole story about vibecoding and LLMs replacing engineers has become a huge distraction from the really useful discussions to be had. It’s almost impossible to discuss LLMs on HN because everyone is busy attacking the vibecoding strawman all the time.

> The whole story about vibecoding and LLMs replacing engineers has become a huge distraction

Because the first thing that comes from individual speed up is not engineers making more money but there being less engineers, How much less is the question? Would they be satisfied with 10%, 50% or may be 99%?

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#87

Post by lovich »

babblingfish wrote: post #20

My experience hasn't been LLMs automate coding, just speeds it up. It's like I know what I want the solution to be and I'll describe it to the LLM, usually for specific code blocks at a time, and then build it up block-by-block. When I read hacker news people are talking like it's doing much more than that. It doesn't feel like an automation tool to me at all. It just helps me do what I was gonna do anyways, but with…

All I know is that firing half my employees and never hiring entry level people again nets me a bonus next quarter.

Not really sure why this article is talking about what happens 2 years from now since that’s 8 times longer than anything anyone with money or power cares about.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#88

Post by athrowaway3z »

I've been saying for a decade that one of the fundamental issues with SWE in the average company, is that management does not seem to understand that SWE is a management level job. Its not an assembly line worker. It requires reorganizing, streamlining, stake-holders, etc - in code and data - which directly affect people much the same that any other management role has. There are just fewer issues with HR and more with CDNs or CVEs.

> A CEO of a low-code platform articulated this vision: in an “agentic” development environment, engineers become “composers,”

I see we'll be twisting words around to keep avoiding the comparison.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#89

Post by falloutx »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #69
babblingfish wrote: post #20

My experience hasn't been LLMs automate coding, just speeds it up. It's like I know what I want the solution to be and I'll describe it to the LLM, usually for specific code blocks at a time, and then build it up block-by-block. When I read hacker news people are talking like it's doing much more than that. It doesn't feel like an automation tool to me at all. It just helps me do what I was gonna do anyways, but with…

I'm somewhere in between myself. Before LLMs, I used to block a few sites that distracted me by adding entries in /etc/hosts file to mapping them to 127.0.0.1 on my work machine. I also made the file immutable so that it would take a few steps for me to unblock the sites. The next step was for me to write a cron job that would reapply the chattr +1 and rewrite the file once in 5 minutes. Sort of an enforcer. I used C…

It seems alright, but I wonder if it crashes the economy for vast majority of internet businesses. I personally run some tool websites like ones to convert images, cut videos but the traffic for now seems stable, but my tools don't target devs. Most likely you didnt actually need it, but who am i to judge, I just find myself doing random projects because it "takes less time".

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#90

Post by steve1977 »

amelius wrote: post #79
tigrezno wrote: post #72

The next two years of software engineering will be the last two years of software engineering (probably).

I don't see the market flooded yet with software that was "so easy to build using LLMs". Last year was, as it seems, just a normal year in terms of global software output.

If anything, looking at for example what Microsoft has been releasing, it's been a year below average (in terms of quality).
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