[aristofun]

It’s a trap to be scared and try to gamble on near future.

By the time most of today’s wannabe AI gurus are good enough to get a decent job offer - AI would not be such a big deal (best case scenario imo).

I didn’t notice any “obvious” changes in the game that weren’t there before.

For instance I don’t see anything different in requirements and comments of HRs reaching me.

JVM is still same jvm, bugs are still bugs, unit tests are still unit tests.

The fact that now instead of googling a problem you google and gpt it is a minor change in any real world complex engineering context that im aware of.

What exactly is obvious to you that im missing?

[mech422]

I agree on the AI stuff ... personally, I think it's going to need 5 years or so just to iron out all the legal and regulatory stuff before the 'next big push'

In general, I think you make your money in Tech at the ends.. Either bleeding edge or trailing edge. ATM, I'm working on Rust, serverless, playing with Pijul, keeping an eye on OpenTF, and pulumi.

For trailing edge stuff - I figure I'll be the worlds oldest COBOL coder by the time I retire and can use that to fund my retirement :-P

[Tommah]

There are certain aspects of computing that will probably always be around. We'll always need fast compilers that generate fast code -- people don't want slow programs, and programmers don't want to wait for compiles to finish. Relational databases aren't disappearing anytime soon. And as we keep getting smaller and smaller devices, we'll keep shrinking things down, so we'll need new ways of representing and compressing data. The list goes on and on. If you can get comfortable with things like these, you'll always be useful to somebody.

(And yes, COBOL will be with us for many years to come. In the next century, we'll probably be emulating IBM mainframes on quantum computers.)

[Tommah]

I think AI will still be important, but the AI of the future won't look like the AI that we have today. People have a tendency to redefine "AI" to mean whatever the new hotness is -- LLMs today, deep neural nets a few years ago -- but new things are created all the time, and fads always change. When I started grad school for comp sci nearly 20 years ago, I worked with a group that was big on "AI", but we were dealing with multi-agent systems. No neural nets or super-intelligences or anything like that. Neural nets were actually considered passé back then; I vividly recall a professor telling me that SVMs (support vector machines) were stronger than neural nets, because SVMs had a stronger theoretical foundation and were more amenable to mathematical analysis. Neural nets, on the other hand, just happen to work -- but they happen to work very very well! Deep learning didn't gain traction until after I had finished grad school.

The LLMs that we have today are amazing, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. Having to train it on a huge dataset is problematic for some uses; perhaps there is a related structure that can be trained more easily and more quickly. That would also reduce the effect of OpenAI's monopoly. LLMs also have specific weaknesses, like poor performance at arithmetic. At this stage, I wouldn't really feel comfortable feeding problems into an LLM and presenting users with the LLM's answers. It's still the Wild West in many aspects. There is always an improvement on the horizon, but it's hard to tell where it will come from and when it will come. Maybe we'll have LLMs that really start to resemble intelligence, or maybe we'll have a totally different structure that does everything LLMs can do plus more.

[p1esk]

The obvious thing is gpt-6 (or even gpt-5) will be able to do your job better and faster than you. This will happen in 1-2 years. That doesn’t scare you?

[diarrhea]

I am bearish on that prediction. I’m not convinced LLMs can scale that much more. Of course, I’d be happy to be wrong. In that case, I’ll leverage the tools to become more productive.

[harshalizee]

Knowing how to code doesn't make you a Software Engineer in the same way being able to read and write in English doesn't make you an author. If you truly believe the current and future iterations of GPT can code better than you, look to elevate your own skill.

If ever, a GPT-like LLM/AGI ever exists where it can distill business requirements, understand modular designs and intelligently establish complex relationships between different systems and contexts, then 99% of all jobs will perish.

This will be an unprecedented disruption at a macro scale that humanity has never seen before. All of our current economic models will be instantly trash. How likely do you think this will happen? If it does, there's no real incentive to have these systems produce anything because no one can afford to buy anything. A global revolution would be inevitable.

[p1esk]

unprecedented disruption at a macro scale that humanity has never seen before

Exactly.

How likely do you think this will happen?

I estimate the chance of this happening after the release of GPT-5: 50%. Chance of this happening after GPT-6 is released: 90%.

You painted a pretty bleak picture of what might happen. I tend to agree with your assessment, but there's a chance that the total automation of everything will make things so cheap that quality of life will actually improve for majority of humankind. In any case, we still have a few years to prepare for this disruption.

p.s. I'm not sure why people are talking about software engineering as some sort of a subtle skill that is hard to automate. It's quite likely that GPT-5 will be able to talk to my boss, colleagues, and any other other stakeholders to understand what needs to be done, access all relevant information, iterate on requirements, ask for help, and problem solve, and it will do so better than me, or anyone else in this thread. Even if GPT-5 is not quite there yet, it's almost guaranteed that GPT-6 will be (barring some unlikely global catastrophic events preventing further technological progress). At that point, there will be no reason for my boss to employ me, or for his boss to employ him, and so on.

[zilti]

LOL maybe it will if you are a "coding by copying from StackOverflow" "developer"

[aristofun]

let's bet 1000USD that in 2 years there will not be even 2 confirmed real cases where any algorithm is doing a full time job of senior+ software engineer?

[p1esk]

In two years the job of a senior software engineer will be completely redefined, so I'm not sure how we could test your prediction. Would someone who tells an AI model to build something still be an engineer, or would we call that person a manager?

[aristofun]

I bet another 1000$ that it would not be completely redefined

At best it would embrace using some AI assisted tools in no more extent than today's cars use algorithms for those safety features.

But the nature of the profession will only change when the mainstream computers design changes drastically (and there is no strong signs of that yet)

[seabearDEV]

Is there any evidence that supports this statement?

[p1esk]

Progression GPT1-2-3-4 in last 5 years, with no indication of any slowdown in the near future.

[aristofun]

there are plenty of signs that it is slowing down

including current versions quality degradation, unprofitable business models (it's still too damn expensive to be covered by your average 19$/m subscription) etc.

[badpun]

There's no indication that the pace of innovation for LLMs in the near future will be anywhere near what it has been in the past few years.

[p1esk]

Is there an indication it won't be?

[badpun]

We simply don't know what it will be. Growth in nature does not continue at the same pace forever, and eventually the speed of innovation will taper off.

It's a common phenomena, described with an S-curve: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function). We can't know if LLMs are already there, or not yet, we'll only know after the fact.