6 ms·

Every time I see these articles I get more and more worried about my employability to be frank... with no backup plan and way too much time poured into learning

Every time I see these articles I get more and more worried about my employability to be frank... with no backup plan and way too much time poured into learning software engineering. It's not looking good gang.

simonw 3y ago
I'm genuinely not worried about that. As others have observed, us programmers will be in trouble when regular people learn to produce a product spec that's detailed enough that an LLM can create the working software that they need. That sounds a lot like programming to me! I expect our work will change: we'll be able to spend more time thinking about what we are building and less time typing code on our keyboards. But if anything, we're going to become more valuable - because we'll be able to get a whole lot more done.
- gwoolhurme 3y ago
  That's fair and I hope that is the case. That might even be fun, and I mean I actually have a lot of fun with gpt-4 now. My bigger complaint there then is that you need more money to be competitive in this industry now? Until LLMs become smaller more efficient? Like back in university the best student was a Russian immigrant who learned back in Moscow on pen and paper, no compiler to mostly handhold.
  - jacknews 3y ago
    Yes it's like weavers and looms. It depends if the 'skill' of programming/creating shifts more to the LLMs vs programmers. If so market capitalism will see programming commodified. If not, and LLMs just add leverage to what programmers/creatives do, it'll move more towards a sports/entertainment model (winner takes all, or most), with probably far fewer professional participants.
- agileAlligator 3y ago
  The workflow has shifted a step up: 1. Define problem 2. Generate specifications <- 3. Write the code Knowing how to do step 3 will get less and less important everyday.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    I think most utility software projects won't even require this three step process. More like "define problem, use an AI-assisted interface to whip up a few solutions, spit shine your favorite, if necessary."
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    LLMs seem very well-suited to generating written specifications, like they do with writing the code itself. They can even help with the "define problem" part.
    - agileAlligator 3y ago
      Steps 1 and 2 are more reliant on human-to-human communication if you are developing an application to be used by some end user and not something that just ingests data and processes it. It takes skill to translate non-technical speak into a clear goal and specifications required to achieve that goal, to probe the third party and ask specific questions to tease out their expectations of the application. That, LLMs can't do yet. I have no doubt that they'll get better at that in the near future though.
      - HPsquared 3y ago
        Ah, requirements capture.. yeah, not straight ChatGPT but "having a directed conversation" doesn't seem like a stretch. EDIT: for example, Character.ai as an example of character prompting. You can prime an LLM with a prompt so that it asks you certain types of questions.
- chefandy 3y ago
  Not having a detailed product spec is a much, much bigger problem when you can't change the product to fit your needs on a whim. Beyond that, there's a few layers between "software developer" and "regular people" that complicate your prediction. While most developers don't hold interface designers in particularly high regard, honestly ask average people what they think of most developer-made interfaces and you'll find out the skill is a lot trickier than it seems. Most developers only think they know what developers do, but they're like many corporate workers see everyone from the head network architect to the community college desktop support intern as "computer people who can fix your email." Most think interface designers primarily work on aesthetics, but most probably aren't even invited to meetings about branding/visual aesthetic/etc...) Going further, many of those designers are savvy enough to write some basic code and likely bodge something into place, especially if they're using some kind of purpose-built interface that can handle things like data model consistency between builds. It's a very unpopular opinion around here, but I think designers using the next generation of no-code tools will eat front-end and simple app developers' lunches and I think it will happen really soon. I'll bet teams at Wix, Webflow and other no-code authoring tools are working like mad to develop these tools right now, and I'll bet that's a hair's breadth from automatically generating electron apps from whatever users make there. If your specialty is code, and there are people with whole other useful skillsets that could passably approximate that capability with a few occasional hours from a contractor, the developer isn't going to be the one that still has a job. While the demand for developers is still large, it's not infinite, and I look askance at assumptions that there won't be a really painful 'adjustment' for a lot of working professionals.
  - kaveh_h 3y ago
    That’s assuming frontends need to be ”developed” at all in the future. There’s a possibility intelligent chat bots able to generate microfrontends on the fly is going to eat our lunch, but what is really going to eat the lunches is a failing capitalistic system due too lack of demand for labour. I guess overall society is going to balance things out somehow, curious if it’s going to be a in a civil manner or brutal disruption.
    - gwoolhurme 3y ago
- TheCleric 3y ago
  > I expect our work will change: we'll be able to spend more time thinking about what we are building and less time typing code on our keyboards. But if anything, we're going to become more valuable - because we'll be able to get a whole lot more done. That would be lovely, but not how efficiency works in a capitalistic society. We can produce cars much faster in a factory then we could in the past due to various factors including automation. This doesn't mean the workers get to take their time and a do a better job. Instead it means they are expected to have a higher volume. This is what I worry about with the rise of LLM programming (especially as someone who is less than impressed with the actual output I've seen). It's not that I as a software engineer will be replaced by someone using GPT, but rather it's I'll be replaced by another software engineer who doesn't care, using GPT to produce 3x as much "software" at half the quality because the only metric that some will look at is volume.
- kirso 3y ago
  That will never happen because business changes requirements on an hourly basis :) Jokes aside, I think you kind of need to know how to problem solve in code to even know in which direction to go. If I tell it, create a Facebook - the limit will kick in. But most people do not konw how to destructure Facebook in terms of functionality and what components are.
finite_depth 3y ago
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simonw 3y ago

I'm genuinely not worried about that. As others have observed, us programmers will be in trouble when regular people learn to produce a product spec that's detailed enough that an LLM can create the working software that they need. That sounds a lot like programming to me! I expect our work will change: we'll be able to spend more time thinking about what we are building and less time typing code on our keyboards. But if anything, we're going to become more valuable - because we'll be able to get a whole lot more done.

gwoolhurme 3y ago
That's fair and I hope that is the case. That might even be fun, and I mean I actually have a lot of fun with gpt-4 now. My bigger complaint there then is that you need more money to be competitive in this industry now? Until LLMs become smaller more efficient? Like back in university the best student was a Russian immigrant who learned back in Moscow on pen and paper, no compiler to mostly handhold.
- jacknews 3y ago
  Yes it's like weavers and looms. It depends if the 'skill' of programming/creating shifts more to the LLMs vs programmers. If so market capitalism will see programming commodified. If not, and LLMs just add leverage to what programmers/creatives do, it'll move more towards a sports/entertainment model (winner takes all, or most), with probably far fewer professional participants.
agileAlligator 3y ago
The workflow has shifted a step up: 1. Define problem 2. Generate specifications <- 3. Write the code Knowing how to do step 3 will get less and less important everyday.
- chefandy 3y ago
  I think most utility software projects won't even require this three step process. More like "define problem, use an AI-assisted interface to whip up a few solutions, spit shine your favorite, if necessary."
- HPsquared 3y ago
  LLMs seem very well-suited to generating written specifications, like they do with writing the code itself. They can even help with the "define problem" part.
  - agileAlligator 3y ago
    Steps 1 and 2 are more reliant on human-to-human communication if you are developing an application to be used by some end user and not something that just ingests data and processes it. It takes skill to translate non-technical speak into a clear goal and specifications required to achieve that goal, to probe the third party and ask specific questions to tease out their expectations of the application. That, LLMs can't do yet. I have no doubt that they'll get better at that in the near future though.
    - HPsquared 3y ago
      Ah, requirements capture.. yeah, not straight ChatGPT but "having a directed conversation" doesn't seem like a stretch. EDIT: for example, Character.ai as an example of character prompting. You can prime an LLM with a prompt so that it asks you certain types of questions.
chefandy 3y ago
Not having a detailed product spec is a much, much bigger problem when you can't change the product to fit your needs on a whim. Beyond that, there's a few layers between "software developer" and "regular people" that complicate your prediction. While most developers don't hold interface designers in particularly high regard, honestly ask average people what they think of most developer-made interfaces and you'll find out the skill is a lot trickier than it seems. Most developers only think they know what developers do, but they're like many corporate workers see everyone from the head network architect to the community college desktop support intern as "computer people who can fix your email." Most think interface designers primarily work on aesthetics, but most probably aren't even invited to meetings about branding/visual aesthetic/etc...) Going further, many of those designers are savvy enough to write some basic code and likely bodge something into place, especially if they're using some kind of purpose-built interface that can handle things like data model consistency between builds. It's a very unpopular opinion around here, but I think designers using the next generation of no-code tools will eat front-end and simple app developers' lunches and I think it will happen really soon. I'll bet teams at Wix, Webflow and other no-code authoring tools are working like mad to develop these tools right now, and I'll bet that's a hair's breadth from automatically generating electron apps from whatever users make there. If your specialty is code, and there are people with whole other useful skillsets that could passably approximate that capability with a few occasional hours from a contractor, the developer isn't going to be the one that still has a job. While the demand for developers is still large, it's not infinite, and I look askance at assumptions that there won't be a really painful 'adjustment' for a lot of working professionals.
- kaveh_h 3y ago
  That’s assuming frontends need to be ”developed” at all in the future. There’s a possibility intelligent chat bots able to generate microfrontends on the fly is going to eat our lunch, but what is really going to eat the lunches is a failing capitalistic system due too lack of demand for labour. I guess overall society is going to balance things out somehow, curious if it’s going to be a in a civil manner or brutal disruption.
  - gwoolhurme 3y ago
TheCleric 3y ago
> I expect our work will change: we'll be able to spend more time thinking about what we are building and less time typing code on our keyboards. But if anything, we're going to become more valuable - because we'll be able to get a whole lot more done. That would be lovely, but not how efficiency works in a capitalistic society. We can produce cars much faster in a factory then we could in the past due to various factors including automation. This doesn't mean the workers get to take their time and a do a better job. Instead it means they are expected to have a higher volume. This is what I worry about with the rise of LLM programming (especially as someone who is less than impressed with the actual output I've seen). It's not that I as a software engineer will be replaced by someone using GPT, but rather it's I'll be replaced by another software engineer who doesn't care, using GPT to produce 3x as much "software" at half the quality because the only metric that some will look at is volume.
kirso 3y ago
That will never happen because business changes requirements on an hourly basis :) Jokes aside, I think you kind of need to know how to problem solve in code to even know in which direction to go. If I tell it, create a Facebook - the limit will kick in. But most people do not konw how to destructure Facebook in terms of functionality and what components are.

finite_depth 3y ago

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