[Aurornis]

> 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.

[miki123211]

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.

[iknowSFR]

I’m seeing vibe coding redefine what the product manager is doing. Specifically, adding solution execution to its existing strategy and decision making responsibilities. The PM puts solutions in front of a customer and sees what sticks, then hands over the concept to engineering to bake into the larger code base. The primary change here is no longer relying on interviews and research to make product decisions that engineering spends months building only to have flop when it hits market. The PM is being required to build and test dozens of solutions before anything makes its way to engineering resources. How engineering builds the overall solution is still under their control but the fit is validated before it hits their desk.

[sanderjd]

Yes!

I think the next step is to realize that this kind of product manager role is one that more "engineers" should be willing to take on themselves. It's pretty clear why user interviews and research and product requirement docs are not obviously within the wheelhouse of technical people, but building lots of prototypes and getting feedback is a much better fit!

[phn]

I think the problem starts with the name. I've been coding with LLMs for the past few months but most of it is far from "vibed", I am constantly reviewing the output and guiding it in the right direction, it's more like a turbo charged code editor than a "junior developer", imo.

[falloutx]

> 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%?

[spacebanana7]

Generally the demand for software engineers has increased as their productivity has increased, looking back over the past few decades. There seems to be effectively infinite demand for software from consumers and enterprises so the cheaper it gets the more they buy.

If we doubled agricultural productivity globally we'd need to have fewer farmers because there's no way we can all eat twice as much food. But we can absolutely consume twice as much CSS, try to play call of duty on our smart fridge or use a new SaaS to pay our taxes.

[zelphirkalt]

Oh but we can absolutely let all that food go to waste! In many places unbelievable amounts of food go to waste.

Actually, most software either is garbage or goes to waste at some point too. Maybe that's too negative. Maybe one could call it rot or becoming obsolete or obscure.

[raw_anon_1111]

I have been around for “the past few decades”. Then you saw the rapid growth of the internet, mobile and BigTech. Just from the law of large numbers, BigTech isn’t going to grow exponentially like it did post 2010.

It’s copium to think that with the combination of AI and oversupply of “good enough” developers, that it won’t be harder for developers to get jobs. We are seeing it now.

It wasn’t this bad after the dot com bust. Then if you were just an ordinary enterprise developer working “in the enterprise” in a 2nd tier city (raises hand), jobs were plentiful.

[sanderjd]

I think the better way to think of this is whether it will be harder for people who are good at using AI tools to accomplish things with computers to get jobs. Maybe, but I don't think so. I think this skill set will be useful in every line of work.

[raw_anon_1111]

That doesn’t solve the problem. It’s easy enough to be “good enough” at AI tools just like it’s easy enough to be a decent enterprise CRUD full stack/back end/mobile developer. It will still be hard to stand out from the crowd.

I saw this coming on the enterprise dev side where most people work back in 2015. Not AI of course, but the commoditization of development.

I started moving closer to the “business”, got experience in leading projects, soft skills, requirements gathering, AWS architecture etc.

I’m not saying the answer is to “learn cloud”. I am saying that it’s important to learn people skills and be the person trusted with strategy and don’t just be a code monkey pulling well defined tickets off the board.

[sanderjd]

My point is: I don't think there will be way more jobs for "AI developers", I think there will be plenty of jobs for people who are employed in an industry and adept with using AI tools to be effective at their job. These people would not be differentiating themselves from other "AI developers", but from other people who do their role in whatever industry they are in, but who aren't as adept with these tools.

[lelanthran]

> Generally the demand for software engineers has increased as their productivity has increased, looking back over the past few decades. There seems to be effectively infinite demand for software from consumers and enterprises so the cheaper it gets the more they buy.

I see this fallacy all the time but I don't know if there is a name for it.

I mean, we make used fun of MBAs for saying the same thing, but now we should be more receptive to the "Line Always Goes Up" argument?

[kasey_junk]

Jevons paradox and it’s not a fallacy. It’s an observable behavior. The problem is it’s not predictive.

[lelanthran]

> Jevons paradox and it’s not a fallacy. It’s an observable behavior. The problem is it’s not predictive.

I was referring specifically to this point, which, IMHO, is a fallacy:

>>> There seems to be effectively infinite demand for software from consumers and enterprises so the cheaper it gets the more they buy.

There is no way to use the word "infinite" in this context, even if qualified, that is representative of reality.

[ambicapter]

As counter-anecdata, I have a family members that are growing businesses from scratch and they constantly talk to me about problems they want to solve with software. Administrative problems, product problems, market research problems, you name it. I'm sure they have other problems they don't talk to me about where they're not looking for software solutions, but the list of places they want software to automate things is never-ending.

[falloutx]

There consumer internet is mostly cropped up by white collar people buying stuff online and clicking on ads. Once the cutting starts, the whole internet economy just becomes a money swapping machine between 7 VC groups.

The demand for paid software is decreasing cause these AI companies are saying "Oh dont buy that SAAS product because you can build it yourself now"

[rowanajmarshall]

As much as I appreciate the difference between literal infinity and consumers' demand for software, there's just so much bad software out there waiting to be improved that I can't see us hitting saturation soon.

[Ragnarork]

This reasoning is flawed in my opinion, because at the end of the day, the software still has to be paid for (for the people that want/need to make a living out of it), and customers wallet are finite.

Our attention is also a finite resource (24h a day max). We already see how this has been the cause for the enshittificaton of large swathes of software like social media where grabbing the attention for a few seconds more drives the main innovation...

[jimbokun]

Most software is paid for by businesses, not consumers.

[torben-friis]

the demand for software has increased. The demand for software engineers has increased proportionally, because we were the only source of software. This correlation might no longer hold.

Depending on how the future shapes up, we may have gone from artisans to middlemen, at which point we're only in the business of added value and a lot of coding is over.

Not the Google kind of coding, but the "I need a website for my restaur1ant" kind, or the "I need to agregate data from these excel files in a certain way" kind. Anything where you'd accept cheap and disposable. Perhaps even the traditional startup, if POCs are vibecoded and engineers are only introducer later.

Those are huge businesses, even if they are not present in the HN bubble.

[falloutx]

> "I need a website for my restaurant" kind, or the "I need to aggregate data from these excel files in a certain way" kind

I am afraid that kind of jobs were already over by 2015. There are no code website makers available since then and if you can't do it yourself you can just pay someone on fiverr and get it done for less than $5-50 at this point, its so efficient even AI wont be more cost effective than that. If you have $10k saved you can hire a competitive agency to maintain and build your website. This business is completely taken over by low cost fiverr automators and agencies for high budget projects. Agencies have become so good now that they manage websites from Adidas to Lando Norris to your average mom & pop store.

[wolpoli]

Just to add to the point: no code web site makers have already incorporated AI to simplify marketing tasks like drafting copies/blogs/emails.

[csa]

I wonder exactly what you do, because almost none of your comment jibes with my knowledge and experience.

Note that I own an agency that does a lot of what you say is “solved”, and I assure you that it’s not (at least in terms of being an efficient market).

SMBs with ARR up to $100m (or even many times more that in ag) struggle to find anyone good to do technical work for them either internally or externally on a consistent basis.

> I am afraid that kind of jobs were already over by 2015.

Conceptually, maybe. In practice, definitely not.

> There are no code website makers available since then

… that mostly make shit websites.

> and if you can't do it yourself you can just pay someone on fiverr and get it done for less than $5-50 at this point,

Also almost certainly a shit website at that price point, probably using the no-code tools mentioned above.

These websites have so many things wrong with them that demonstrably decrease engagement or lose revenue.

> its so efficient even AI wont be more cost effective than that.

AI will be better very soon, as the best derivative AI tools will be trained on well-developed websites.

That said, AI will never have taste, and it will never have empathy for the end user. These things can only be emulated (at least for the time being).

> If you have $10k saved you can hire a competitive agency to maintain and build your website

You can get an ok “brochure” website built for that. Maintaining it, if you have an agency that actually stays in business, will be about $100 minimum for the lowest effort touch, $200 for an actually one line change (like business hours), and up from there from anything substantial.

If you work with a decent, reputable agency, a $10k customer is the lowest on the totem pole amongst the agency’s customer list. The work is usually delegated to the least experienced devs, and these clients are usually merely tolerated rather than embraced.

It sucks to be the smallest customer of an agency, but it’s a common phenomenon amongst certain classes of SMBs.

> This business is completely taken over by low cost fiverr automators and agencies for high budget projects.

This is actually true. Mainly because any decent small agency either turns into one that does larger contracts, or it gets absorbed by one.

That said, there is a growing market for mid-sized agencies (“lifestyle agencies”?).

> Agencies have become so good now that they manage websites from Adidas to Lando Norris to your average mom & pop store

As mentioned above, you absolutely do not want to be a mom and pop store working with a web agency that works with any large, international brand like Adidas.

I appreciate your points from a conceptual level, but the human element of tech, software, and websites will continue to be a huge business for many decades, imho.

[skeeter2020]

anecdotal at best but I have directly heard CTOs - and hear noise beyond my immediate bubble - talk about 10x improvements with a straight face. Seems ridiculous to me, and even if the coding gets 10x easier the act of defining & solving problems doesn't #nosilverbullet

[falloutx]

It doesnt even have to work, it just need to show execs that it can be used to cut costs by firing employees.

[throwaway6734]

I perform software engineering at a research oriented institution and there are some projects I can now prototype without writing a line of code. The productivity benefits are massive

[hnthrow0287345]

Prototypes are always meant to be thrown away though, someone's going to have to redo it to comply with coding standards, scaling requirements, and existing patterns in the code base.

If the prototype can be just dropped in and clear a PR and comply with all the standards, you're just doing software engineering for less money!

[quest88]

the reality is people will be shipping "prototype code" all the time, outpacing those that don't and winning.

[latexr]

> It’s almost impossible to discuss LLMs on HN because everyone is busy attacking the vibecoding strawman all the time.

What’s “the vibecoding strawman”? There are plenty of people on HN (and elsewhere) repeatedly saying they use LLMs by asking them to “produce full apps in hours instead of weeks” and confirming they don’t read the code.

Just because everyone you personally know does it one way, it doesn’t mean everyone else does it like that.

[Chris2048]

I'd assume the straw-man isn't that vibe-coding (vbc) doesn't exist, but that all/most ai-dev is vbc, or that it's ok to derail any discussion on ai-assisted dev with complaints applicable only/mainly to vbc.

[latexr]

Neither of those would be a strawman, though. One would be a faulty generalization and the other is airing a grievance (could maybe be a bad faith argument?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization

Though I get that these days people tend to use “strawman” for anything they see as a bad argument, so you could be right in your assessment. Would be nice to have clarification on what they mean.

[Chris2048]

Hmm, if the purpose of either is so an "easier" target can be made, I think it could still qualify as a straw-man; I think an accusation of straw-manning is in part a accusation of another's intent (or bad faith - not engaging with the argument).

[latexr]

> Hmm, if the purpose of either is so an "easier" target can be made, I think it could still qualify as a straw-man

Good point.

> I think an accusation of straw-manning is in part a accusation of another's intent (or bad faith - not engaging with the argument).

There I partially disagree. Straw-manning is not engaging with the argument but it can be done accidentally. As in, one may genuinely misunderstand the nuance in an argument and respond to a straw man by mistake. Bad faith does require bad intent.

[kylecazar]

Half strawman -- a mudman, perhaps. Because we're seeing proper experts with credentials jump on the 'shit, AI can do all of this for me' realization blog post train.

[Chris2048]

Which experts?

[kylecazar]

Well, I have a lot of respect for antirez (Redis), and at the time of my writing this comment he had a front page blog post in which we find:

"Writing code is no longer needed for the most part."

It was a great post and I don't disagree with him. But it's an example of why it isn't necessarily a strawman anymore, because it is being claimed/realized by more than just vibecoders and hobbyists.

[nl]

Does Linus Torvalds count?

[ruszki]

When has he stated that he uses AI like that? The last I heard about him a month ago, he specifically stated that he was not interested in AI to write code: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-ai-tool-maintai...

[Philpax]

3 days ago: https://github.com/torvalds/AudioNoise/blob/main/README.md

> Also note that the python visualizer tool has been basically written by vibe-coding. I know more about analog filters -- and that's not saying much -- than I do about python. It started out as my typical "google and do the monkey-see-monkey-do" kind of programming, but then I cut out the middle-man -- me -- and just used Google Antigravity to do the audio sample visualizer.

[darkwater]

For me there are two things notesworthy in that repo:

* the README was clearly not written by an LLM nor aided

* he still uses GPLv2 (not 3) as the license for his works

[quest88]

the author of this post and Steve yegge come to mind

[eaurouge]

So another strawman?

[tech_tuna]

There's a crazy amount of hype, fear and blatant lies in the mix. And the pace is absolutely bonkers. The pace of announcements is even more bonkers. Maybe things will settle down to a new normal at some point.

You might think that everyone has FOMO or is an anti-AI Luddite when of course there are a LOT of us somewhere in the middle, just trying to get our work done and trying to figure out what our careers will look like in 5-10 years.

One big thing that no one seems to talk about - GenAI is unlocking many new (and oftentimes "small") business ideas that were not practical just a few years ago. I have witnessed this firsthand. . . however, it will also take away jobs. How many, who knows?

tl;dr everyone is full of shit or selling something or terrified to the point where they can't think straight. And no one has a crystal ball.