[tptacek]

I'm excited to read the first cogent piece making this point that doesn't devolve to gatekeeping, a detached and vaguely hostile professional software developer telling people with a newfound capability to solve practical problems for themselves with new software that they don't or shouldn't want the thing that they want, because whatever it is they come up with won't be "fit for purpose" until blessed by the guild, which has bylaws extrapolated from Brooks about the fundamental "limitations of LLMs".

[sov]

I think you've misread the article, specifically the purpose of the Brooks quotes. They're clearly not to denigrate anyone for wanting a more useful or convenient way of generating software--they're specifically about the "LLMs will obliterate software engineering as a profession" claims put forth by many LLM marketers. In fact, Brooks is never once mentioned in the "Power to the people?" section of the essay.

Generally, the whole point of the "Power to the people?" (and to some extent the "On being left behind") section(s) is to underscore the two antithetical claims made by many LLM marketers: 1. LLMs are so powerful and so natural and easy that someone with no experience can create amazing software, and 2. LLM usage is a core skill, one that if you don't begin training now you'll be left behind.

Obviously, both of these can't be simultaneously 100% true--either it's easy enough for the non-programming layperson to successfully generate software for an intentional purpose, or, LLM assisted programming is a skill you need to train to avoid professional obsolescence in modern society. So, the article disagrees with the majority of both claims, and accepts a weakened/minor portion of each: 1. LLM output is easy to generate but accurate prompting matters, and 2. when used for software development professionally, some amount of skilled human intervention does indeed seem necessary. And now these two claims do align.

However, if professional software engineers who work with and read code constantly, armed with the best software practices to aid LLMs we can determine, cannot use modern AI tools without shooting their feet off at relatively frequent rates, certainly you'd expect the layperson who must put an even greater amount of undue faith in the validity of the results to be at extremely high-risk of foot-shooting. It's not "gatekeeping" to forewarn people against unwarranted trust in LLM output, nor is it "gatekeeping" to suggest that modern tech communicators/marketers describing an overly flowery LLM tooling landscape might be doing people a disservice.

[oytis]

I am less sure about his argument about democratising software indeed. The only problem in my own life that I solve with software is a problem of getting paid, so what do I know. If someone can generate a piece of code for their needs, and they don't risk harming anyone but themselves, then it's a great application of LLMs.

[ekidd]

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of software does have hard constraints. And a lot of these constraints are "gatekept" by regulators, compliance policies, insurance companies, etc. If someone slops together a medical record system, and leaks a bunch of PHI, there will be consequences, even in the US. Similarly, good luck getting insurance against cyber attacks without a SOC2 audit or equivalent.

I've had this conversation with managers in multiple organizations this year: "Yes, you could totally vibe code that instead of paying for a SaaS. But you have strict contractual and professional obligations about data security. Do you want to be deposed and asked, 'So, did you really just vibe code the system that led to the data leak? Did the vibe coders have any professional qualifications? Did they even look at the code?'"

Similarly, a backend server that handles 8 million users a day is expected to stay up.

Now, there are 10,000 things that have less demanding requirements. I'm actually really delighted that people are able to vibe code their own tools with minimal knowledge of software engineering! We have been chronically underproducing niche software all along.

But if your software already has on-call shifts (and SLAs, etc) like the GP, then I think you want to be smart about how you combine human expertise with LLMs.

[skydhash]

That’s why the biggest proponent of LLM tooling are managers and entrepreneurs (aka people that are incentivized to reduce costs due to salary costs). But anyone that has to keep the system running and doesn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night is rightly cautious.

[kasey_junk]

I’m literally tasked with reliability engineering and llms are far and away the biggest boost in that in my career.

[threecheese]

To be fair, that’s a role which most companies don’t have; even if they have a titled “SRE”, many times it’s a sysadmin in a hat, looking very tired and nervous. It must be fun right now tho

[tptacek]

OK, I have no idea who you are, and this isn't personal, I'm responding to a comment and not a person --- but this is an argument that posits that one of the big problems with LLM software is "SOC2 audits". Since SOC2 audits are basically not a meaningful thing, I'm left wondering if the rest of your argument is similarly poorly supported.

It feels like a dunk to write that. But I genuinely do think there's so much motivated reasoning on both sides of this issue, and one signal of that is when people tip their hands like this.

[ekidd]

No offense taken.

I was going to argue that companies got to choose their own auditors, so of course there were some bad ones out there. But looking at the market, it seems like (1) the race to the bottom has gotten ridiculous, and (2) the insurance companies do not currently trust the auditors in any meaningful way. So, yeah, point to you.

Once upon a time, I went through SOC2 audits where the auditors asked lots of questions about Vault and really tried to understand how credentials got handled. Sure, that was exceptional even at the time.

But that still leaves a whole pile of other audits and regulatory frameworks I need to comply with. Probably most of these frameworks will eventually accept "The code was written by an LLM and reviewed by an actual programmer." I am less certain that you'll be able to get away with vibe coding regulated systems any time soon.

[tptacek]

SOC2 has never been about software resilience. You can create a set of attestations that will require you to present evidence to your auditors (who are ~accountants and will not know what the dotted quads of an IP address mean) about software quality, but there is no reason to do that and most organizations don't. SOC2 cares a great deal more about access management (in the "plotting on spreadsheet" sense) than it does about vulnerabilities.

My thing here is: you want to summon some kind of deus ex machina reason why the unpredictability (say) of agent-generated software will fail in the real world, but the concrete one you came up with fails to make that argument, pretty abruptly. Which makes me think the argument is less about the world as it is and more about the world as you'd hope it would be, if that makes sense.

[yellowapple]

Since when are SOC audits not a meaningful thing?

[kasey_junk]

If soc audits are driving your development process you are doing it backwards. And _certainly_ a time is coming when just using the llm will be soc compliant.

[threecheese]

I’d think any company big enough or working in certain markets which has a Compliance Officer cares about this; regulations are a legitimate business risk, and software integration contracts have security control compliance requirements which very much impact the sdlc.

Would you have the same reaction to requiring an approval for a production deployment? That’s driving the development process.

—-

Also jfc I need to cool it with the buzzwords, sorry I just got home from “talk like this all day” $job

[tptacek]

SOC2 is generally regarded as a joke and has in fact almost nothing to do with software resilience even on its own terms.

[cfloyd]

Nailed it