[Kon5ole]

From actual use I've not had a "oh shit" panicked moment yet. More like a bunch of "Holy shit" euphoric moments.

So far I feel like I as a developer have gained actual superpowers, and can deliver results that make my stakeholders slackjawed with awe. I love it.

It will last perhaps a few months more, then they'll expect it. Delivering more features faster will be the new normal. But I think system developers, as in people who actually like to deliver new features and systems, will still be the ones doing it.

Fundamentally I think LLM's just change how to make information systems, they don't change who has the inclination to make them.

MBA's making excel sheets that do more than excel was ever intended to do has given programmers lots of work over the years. Such solutions identify a need for a properly designed system and frees up the budget to hire programmers.

If the same MBAs start vibe coding, I predict we will get even more to do, for similar reasons.

I may be horribly wrong, and if the day comes that I realize that it will be the "oh shit" panicked moment. So far so good!

[johnfn]

I do genuinely wonder if you’re correct that other people will begin to expect it. I feel I was suddenly able to do stunning stuff about a year ago, and I recall thinking this is nice but everyone will catch on to my secret soon and I won’t be exceptional any more. But 12 months have passed and I don’t think this has really panned out yet. Weaker engineers just don’t seem to understand that they can just ask AI things. Eg the other day another engineer spent like 3 hours trying to hunt down a particular line of code so I asked AI and it found it in like 5 minutes. I showed that to him, but then he immediately got stuck trying to find something else for a few more hours, so again I asked AI etc. It’s very baffling.

[Kon5ole]

There is definitely a learning threshold and it's still early days. Not every developer has found out how to make efficient use of these tools yet. But I think most will, soon enough.

But I think my own clients will soon start to question why some feature takes ME a week, when I was able to deliver another feature in a day or two.

That they are features that used to take months, and even delivering them in a week is a goddamn miracle by 2025 standards, will not be relevant. They won't expect such features to take months any longer, based on what I've delivered earlier this year.

So I think that the past few and maybe next few months, maybe a year, will be remembered as a "happy hour" for this tech as a developer. These are the days that we'll talk about saying "those were the days". :)

I am still optimistic that "the normal" in a few years will be pretty much like it has been before - I'll be delivering features at work and tinkering with hobby projects at home, and the major difference will be a much larger scope and ambition for both.

[djmips]

Direct use of AI is going to be a filter on a lot of people - some permanently I suspect (especially say older people). But perhaps this will be short lived as the interfaces to AI are improved enough that everyone will benefit.