[Workaccount2]

The real missing the forest for the trees is thinking that software and the way users will use computers is going to remain static.

Software today is written to accommodate every possible need of every possible user, and then a bunch of unneeded selling point features on top of that. These massive sprawling code bases made to deliver one-size fits all utility.

I don't need 3 million LOC Excel 365 to keep track of who is working on the floor on what day this week. Gemini 2.5 can write an applet that does that perfectly in 10 minutes.

[BugheadTorpeda6]

I don't know. I guess it depends on what you classify as being change. I don't really view software as having changed all that much since around maybe the mid 70s as HLLs began to become more popular. What programmers do today and what they did back then would be easily recognizable to both groups if we had time machines. I don't see how AI really changes things all that much. It's got the same scalability issues that low code/no code solutions have always had and those go way back. The main difference is that you can use natural language, but I don't see that as being inherently better than say drawing a picture using some flowcharting tools in a low code platform. You just introduce the same problem natural languages always have had and why we didn't choose them in the first place, i.e. they are not strict enough and need lots of context. Giving an AI very specific sentences to define my project in natural language and making sure it has lots of context begins to look an awful lot like psuedocode to me. So as you learn to approach using AI in such a way that it produces what you want you naturally get closer and closer to just specifying the code.

What HAS indisputably changed is the cost of hardware which has driven accessibility and caused more consumer facing software to be made.

[ehnto]

I don't believe it will remain static, in fact it's done nothing but change every year for my entire career.

I do like the idea of smaller programs fitting smaller needs being easy to access for everyone, and in my post history you would see me advocate for bringing software wages down so that even small businesses can have software capabilities in house. Software has so much to give to society outside of big VC flips and tech monoliths. Maybe AI is how we get there in the end.

But I think that supplanting humans with an AI workforce in the very near future might be stretching the projection of its capabilities too far. LLMs will be augmenting how businesses operate from now and into the future, but I am seeing clear roadblocks that make an autonomous AI agent unviable, and it seems to be fundamental limitations of LLMs, eg continuity and context. Advances recently seem to be from supplemental systems that try to patch those limitations. That suggests those limits are tricky, and until a new approach shows up, that is what drives my lack of faith in an AI agent revolution.

But it is clear to me that I could be wrong, and it could be a spectacular miscalculation. Maybe the robots will make me eat my hat.