[threethirtytwo]

“The hard part of writing software has never been the writing.”

I’m tired of these endless articles on HN about software engineers trying to reinvent their identity while trying not to lose touch with reality.

One way of dealing with LLMs is to deny the skill level of LLMs. Claim they can’t code as well as you. This excuse works to a certain extent but it also fails because not only are their multitudes of cases where the LLM IS intrinsically worse than me… but there are multitudes of cases where it is better. So this excuse cannot be universally true.

The other way is to claim software engineering was never the hard part of engineering and that other things were harder and that was always where your primary skill was located. This excuse is also idiotic. First, Software engineering is hard. It is genuinely not something that anyone can pick up very quickly. Second, all those other “skills” like “domain expertise” are STILL targets for the LLM. It’s not like the LLM exclusively is only good at software.

Just face the goddamn truth. AI is on a trajectory to dominate. That’s what all the trendlines say. It’s not currently dominating, but it’s close, and the trajectory points to an endgame where it is fundamentally better. The trendline could be wrong but the trendline is the best quantitative predictor we have and it’s been trumping all the half baked theories on HN where people were claiming self driving cars would never happen and AI could never code. HN was historically wrong… the trendlines and the VCs who made those bets have been right. So who’s the bigger idiot? Those VCs creating the AI bubble or HNers who have been continuously wrong about everything? (Minus crypto, HNers were right about crypto).

If the trendline is true our skills as engineers not just the software part is on track to being dominated by an artificial intelligence. The tools trivialize your skills until all the moats are gone. Not only that… AI is becoming better at art. Poetry, writing, paintings, music… AI shows us how trivially reproduceable all of it is. That is the truth. We aren’t not unique and all the meaning behind being human is just an algorithm. It’s all reproducible. Even your self delusional attempt to deny and delude yourself away from these truths is predictable. I can see someone formulating a retort right now.

[aaronbrethorst]

Have you considered becoming a residential electrician? Good job, pays well, lots of problem solving, and it won’t be replaced with an AI. I’m serious!

[bayarearefugee]

If a real AI job apocalypse hits there will be no escaping it for anyone.

Even people whose job can't be done by AI will be impacted because there will be far less demand for their services (everyone whose job IS directly AI replaceable will be a brokie) and there will also be far more supply of people moving into their field to escape all the jobs AI does directly replace.

"Join the trades" is the new "learn to code" in terms of seeming like good advice but having a very short shelf life.

[analog31]

A lot of the trades involve physical work, can be seasonal, and ride the construction cycle up and down. The employers tend to be small, and many are family owned, so they are "off the radar" of OSHA and EEOC. You may be at the mercy of bias and nepotism.

The trades are great, but not a panacea. Maybe emigrate to a country with better conditions for the working class.

[suncemoje]

I’d go with physical therapy! Or something else that’s closer to humans and health. “Problem solving” becomes that much more tangible and directly meaningful to another person

[threethirtytwo]

chatgpt can already do a big part of this job since most of the "therapy" needs to be self directed. So consult the AI and have it tell you what you need to do.

[4fff]

You cannot be serious surely?

Why do you think people get trained by a PT in person? Its not simply training - it actually goes well beyond into the realm of 'wellness'. man you are a certified bozo.

[threethirtytwo]

Only about 10% to 20% of PT genuinely sessions need to be in person. It's similar to going to a doctors office, not every appointment technically needs to happen in person. That makes most PT sessions basically AI-able.

It takes a lot of balls to call me a bozo when it's obvious you're the one who's an idiot.

[threethirtytwo]

I have. Or general well rounded construction worker who knows how to build all aspects of a house. A full stack builder.

Have you?

[aaronbrethorst]

DIY’er exclusively but if my thesis is wrong it sounds like an interesting backup.

[YZF]

Good comment but I think the timelines are not clear. Humans are an algorithm. This was true before AI. In certain domains (playing chess e.g.) machines have already surpassed humans. Humans still play chess though and chess is more popular than ever.

I still drive my car and self driving cars have yet to displace human drivers. I think the sentiment on HN and other places when Google started talking self driving cars circa 2009 is that it's harder than it looks. Typically the first 80% of progress is easy and the rest isn't as easy. We're almost 20 years after a "pretty good self driving car" and we're still not at "self driving cars outperform humans under all situations".

Today humans use AI. You can't fire up Claude and ask it "what do you want to work on today". The amount of context we have as humans is vastly larger than the context LLMs have. If you give LLMs vague context they're completely lost. They are mind blowing in many ways but they are not anywhere close to AGI. They're also not close to being able to build complex software only guided by someone who has no idea what software is and how computers work. They can do some of that but I've yet to see any major successful piece of software built that way. They also consume vast physical resources to get the job done.

Before LLMs I think it was a given that at some point we would have AGI that's smarter than us. Machines we build aren't constrained by the biological constraints we are subject to and can evolve faster than we have. But when that's gonna happen, whether that's actually LLM-like in architecture, and what things will look like once that happens, are fairly open questions at this point. In the mean time LLMs can certainly generate a lot of code and we can use them to build more stuff.

[threethirtytwo]

>Good comment but I think the timelines are not clear. Humans are an algorithm. This was true before AI. In certain domains (playing chess e.g.) machines have already surpassed humans. Humans still play chess though and chess is more popular than ever.

It was always true even before AI, AI just makes it more evident since Transformers are LITERALLY an algorithm that produces content nearly identical to content humans produce.

[YZF]

ELIZA also produced something similar to what humans produce. Transformers are pretty amazing but they're not at s/human/transformer/. They're limited in context, learning and long term performance in ways that are pretty significant and not trivial to overcome. You can see that as you increase the complexity of the work you're asking them to do in different dimensions.

[lpln3452]

It is premature to conclude that someone is wrong and will ultimately be replaced, as the final verdict on LLMs is not yet in. In fact, recent trends show rather negative outcomes. Multiple analyses continuously indicate that recent layoffs are driven by the normalization of the post-pandemic bubble and economic recession due to wars, not LLMs. Companies are merely using LLMs as a convenient excuse to frame hiring freezes as innovation. Furthermore, many companies are reconsidering LLM adoption due to cost and efficiency issues.

You claim to be rational and logical, but your argument completely lacks substance and is just full of highly subjective claims. Your 'prediction' is closer to astrology than actual forecasting. Sure, prophecies hit the mark by chance every now and then, but that doesn’t prove the person has any predictive ability. That is precisely what your argument looks like: completely confident without a single piece of evidence. To top it off, you totally abandoned reason and logic in your last sentence. Saying that anyone who disagrees with you is just deluding themselves and that you already know what people will say to snap back is exactly the kind of stuff a cult leader would say.

You're completely giving up based on some strange delusion. I don't even blame you for that. But it's genuinely ridiculous how you use it as an excuse to attack others and act all smug while pushing your defeatist arguments.

[threethirtytwo]

"Just face the goddamn truth. AI is on a trajectory to dominate. That’s what all the trendlines say. It’s not currently dominating, but it’s close, and the trajectory points to an endgame where it is fundamentally better. The trendline could be wrong but the trendline is the best quantitative predictor we have and it’s been trumping all the half baked theories on HN where people were claiming self driving cars would never happen and AI could never code. "

This is what I wrote. ^ Please respond to that, rather then not addressing the nuance in my argument.

[MattPalmer1086]

There's certainly a whole lot of "it was never the coding that was our value" articles about right now. I agree that they represent a degree of self delusion to an extent. But it's also a useful examination of where your value might lie in this new AI age. I think there will be a role for humans in it - where exactly it lies is obviously up in the air.