[AstroBen]

I shared your view a year ago. Hell half my posts here on HN are arguing against the annoying hype. Today I make heavy use of AI and my code quality has gone up, not down. It's better tested, better factored, with better error handling covering more edge cases

AI code is only buggy if no-one is guiding or reviewing it

I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code

[dexwiz]

I view AI like a gas pedal. For an experienced driver it can really help. For someone new, straight into a wall. For some code you go straight for hours and barely touch the steering wheel. For some code it's all wheel and too much gas is a mistake.

That said, we will need less coders overall. Just like you don't need human drafters or calculators in the same way. It will cut the bottom out of the industry, and entry level will be expected operate like a senior from 10 years ago.

[ethbr1]

Or as the article put it:

>> Most workers, and most work days, are just drudgery. Answering emails. Writing up quarterly plans. Reviewing metrics. Building applications that do something with data.

Yes. Those jobs are going to disappear. If your role's primary value is shuffling paper around an org, or putting minor edits on something before forwarding, your job is going to disappear to AI in the next 1-3 years.

Or AI-initiated human process optimization in the next 2-5 years, which I think is an underappreciated second wave.

To define that: if we 10x or 100x the productivity of certain roles, won't companies look at the remaining unaccelerated human speedbumps and ask "Is it really that important we have a person do that? Because it's now costing us substantial latency and throughput of the process as a whole."

And in many cases they'll likely conclude that no, it's not critical that a human be involved at that point. So poof those jobs as well.

As a result, we'll have many fewer humans being much more productive.

Tbd on whether that produces enough surplus (and equal allocation of it) to balance out the job losses.

[kamaal]

If there are no people, there won't be a need for managers to exist either. Who/What are the managers going to manage? The office air?

Eventually whoever that is running the business has to be smart enough to figure out everything, and the margin for error will be small in a economic environment where every one is already poor and can't spend to buy your things.

I remember the days of socialist India. If everyone is poor its impossible to do the good things like research, development, innovation. The reason is simple, with no one having money to buy your things, you will never make profits to invest in them.

[BobaFloutist]

Maybe NOS is a better analogy, since even the newest of drivers is going to need and get use out of the gas pedal.

[dexwiz]

I think new devs could probably get use of it as a replacement for SO or Google. But if they slam on it and think they can vibe code a whole app, they are going to have a bad time.

But NOS may be better. It might make you faster but it doesn't make you better.

[sundaeofshock]

That works because you are a senior developer who knows how to properly use the AI tools. What 10 years from now? What happens when senior devs are retiring and we do t have replacements since we replaced junior devs with AI?

[sauwan]

Presumably, AI has advanced in 10 years?

[evklein]

Do you believe there's a threshold to how good this stuff can get, or do you think it's all infinite upside?

[quesera]

Obviously not infinite, but humans have very real limitations too. We've all seen them.

[joquarky]

A materialist could logically conclude that it still has some way to go.

[evklein]

Well I'd probably consider myself a materialist but I'm not sure I'd agree. The evidence to me seems that it can really only come from two places: additional compute or new breakthroughs in AI learning. Compute's coming, certainly, but that only has the potential to improve things if it's added in conjunction with a commensurate AI breakthrough. I think the trend in improvement for transformer could be logistic, not exponential, like a lot of the snake-oil salesman like to state. And while there's plenty of evidence for compute there isn't much for the AI breakthrough that leads to an exponential jump, and if it does exist it's a trade secret, so until we know we don't know.

[ethbr1]

> What happens when senior devs are retiring and we do t have replacements since we replaced junior devs with AI?

... AI eats senior devs. Vibe coding front-end devs inherit the earth. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Clzx434IV6o

[guywithahat]

It makes me wonder if at some point people will regard writing code the same way they regard writing assembly

[0manrho]

> I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code

Always will, it's a question of how many people we need, not if. Well, until AGI (which I'm very bearish on in the near or even intermediate term) or some other monumental shift

[righthand]

I am senior developer and have easily and successfully avoided using Llm development these last few years. Nothing has changed for me and my team mates who do use it are slower than me and often don’t know what the Pr actually does.

You chose to invest in the downward career slope. That’s why your opinion has changed. If you continued to resist it you wouldn’t be looking to remove yourself from the auditing/coding position.

[AstroBen]

How is investing in something that improves my productivity and output quality a downward career slope? Continuing to use a hand saw when there are power tools available seems like the downward slope..

If AI gets to a point where I'm fully able to be removed from auditing/coding positions.. well there won't be any coding positions left for anyone

> often don’t know what the Pr actually does

this is on them for being lazy. I thoroughly review the code AI produces. I don't commit it if I don't understand it

[nunez]

Analogizing AI to power tools is like analogizing building an IKEA bookshelf to outsourcing the job to a TaskRabbit.

Power tools automate manual hand movements, but you still need to follow the manual and know what fits where. Or you can spend money on a contractor from TaskRabbit to do it for you, perhaps badly.

LLMs make it faster to generate code, sure. Automating boilerplate code isn't too unlike using a drill to fit a screw.

But witting software writ large still requires thinking, something that the companies providing these services are heavily incentivized to remove.

[righthand]

> How is investing in something that improves my productivity and output quality a downward career slope?

> I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code

You don’t think relying on a system you yourself are predicting will replace you isn’t investing in a downward slope. Wait until you find out Llms are helping suppress your wages.

> this is on them for being lazy.

Just like you gave into Llms you became lazy about writing code. That is the trend with Llms, to do less work as you’ve been pointing out.

You saving time the same thing as being lazy.

[AstroBen]

Not using LLMs doesn't make them go away. Whether they suppress wages or replace anyone is completely out of my control. Avoiding them just means I'd be producing below my potential

> you became lazy about writing code

I haven't, though. I still do the same amount of work except now I get more done. Now more of my energy goes into architecture, testing, specs, making sure it's built well instead of the lower level wiring things together

I use them for their perfect memory and as a creativity buddy, not for them to think for me

[ethics13]

>I haven't, though. I still do the same amount of work except now I get more done.

And the expectations will exceed you getting more done. You don't think your employer will try and squeeze even more out of you because of AI?

[AstroBen]

I'd rather be unemployed than work for someone like that

[righthand]

I have no goal to make them go away. My goal is to not use them because I don’t have to. Using Llms removes your agency to not use them. You become more reliant on using them.

[Sebb767]

> and successfully avoided using Llm development these last few years.

I'm not sure that's much of an achievement, to be honest. If you tried it and it turned out to be not useful for you, fine, I'm on your side. But refusing to try for the sake of it seems backwards. I mean, then why use CI, version control and those fancy IDEs anyway? Notepad is a perfectly cromulent text editor (and what is code, if not text, anyway?) and my local build.bat and deploy.bat do their job nicely and quickly.

[yubblegum]

> what is code, if not text, anyway?

Poetry is text too. It is a misleading categorization.

> I mean, then why use CI, version control and those fancy IDEs anyway?

CI, version control, and IDEs do not think for you.

Resisting using LLMs to do the code that you know perfectly well how to do is like resisting using maps to tell you to make "now make a left turn" to travel from A to B, when you have gone from A to B a zillion fucking times. It is perfectly sensible, specially if you want to retain your skills and mental acuity.

Anecdotally, I know individuals (ok, Dad /g) who can no longer negotiate even the most simple routes without the stupid map thing walking them through all the turns. Routes that were taken for years without these gizmos now require the gizmo.

This is an unfortunate 'experiment' we are conducting in this field. The actual lasting results (or damages) are unknown as of yet. We have some idea though.

[righthand]

I never said I didn’t try it. You said that.

[JeremyNT]

I used to be like you and then I decided to get up to speed on where things stand a couple of months ago.

I hate using it but I can write issues in gitlab, send them to aider, and it will spit out working solutions complete with test coverage.

Right now I think I'm maybe still faster just writing things myself but this feels incredibly tenuous. I'm certain that in a year vibe driven development will be faster.

There is no programmer's union. When the industry decides it's time to get rid of developers because vibe coding is faster than mid level developers, there is no counter.

The only developers left will be either true 100x geniuses or vibe coders. I'm not the former so I am trying to make sure I can become the latter long enough to last a few extra years.

Regardless of how much you personally want to resist, this is what is going to happen.

[righthand]

I didn’t say I don’t invest or use automation or other AI. I said I don’t use Llms. There’s a huge difference.

[WaltPurvis]

>someone in the middle

In the middle between AI and what?

[ffsm8]

The requirements.

He's essentially saying that it's a complete guess how long the job of a programmer exists, and when it will change over to essentially product manager, of which you'll need a lot less.

It could be decades... Or next month.

[nicolapede]

What's your workflow/tool set?