4 ms·

If LLM/Agents contribute to software development, how does the role of software engineers evolve? SE should focus on : - System design - Integrations - Projec

If LLM/Agents contribute to software development, how does the role of software engineers evolve? SE should focus on : - System design - Integrations - Project management etc or the job will disappear in 10 years ?

onion2k 3y ago
Prompt Engineering! I'm kidding. Software engineering roles of the "glue things together" kind will evolve into a 'technical product' role, defining how systems work, especially at the edges where systems interact. Architects and staff engineers already do this. Lower down the food chain engineers who actually invent new things will do the same, only quicker if they have an AI tool assisting with the grunt work of testing, boilerplate, etc. Engineers who don't really make new things will be replaced by 'low code' style apps that spit out clunky apps. That's already happening though. It's not a change. Those engineers won't leave the industry - they'll get to do more interesting things. Even at the entry level things won't really change that much. Expectations will go up a bit but people will still have to learn the trade. Where things will really change is the sheer amount of software we'll have. AI is going to make things go faster, so businesses will be able to automate everything. Dev resource will stop being the constraint that holds businesses back from doing everything they want to do with software. That's a game changer. Society will struggle to keep up.
- fhd2 3y ago
  Good take! I think one specific development we might see would be an end of the SaaS micro tool era. Right now, most companies I advise have an absolute _jungle_ of different tools and a bunch of interns manually bridging the gap between them. If software development becomes a lot cheaper, wouldn't companies be more likely to just roll their own versions of what they need, to meet their needs exactly and have everything fit together? Sounds like the job of a programmer wouldn't go away very near term in such a scenario. It might well become far less glamorous, less "technical", and not as well paid though. Comparable to an accountant maybe. As someone who started their career right after the dotcom bubble burst, various people asked me "Why are you doing this? There's no money in software anymore". Turns out there sure was. Back then I didn't know that, and I didn't care. I didn't get into it for the money, I got into it because I had a passion for it. Maybe it'll become more like back then again. Doesn't seem so bad to me.
  - onion2k 3y ago
    I think one specific development we might see would be an end of the SaaS micro tool era. Possibly, but if SaaS tool providers make APIs so AI tools can consume the data, that would open up a huge ecosystem of AI 'plugins' that would be immensely valuable. I think OpenAI have something like that already.
    - fhd2 3y ago
      Could be! Most SaaS tools I can think of cover some specific work flow in a way that it kinda works for 80% of the customers. Their UI is quite an intrinsic part of the offering, an API-only version of it wouldn't be as valuable. But if nobody has to put up with only getting 80% of their needs met, why would they? I'd imagine we'd have a few very general purpose systems that can indeed be glued together in a largely automated fashion. But getting the business processes into them in a meaningful way would then be the hard part, the programming. I can encourage everyone to read good old "Domain Driven Design", there's a world of interesting problems and work out there beyond the purely technical side of things. And I think that part is a lot more difficult to automate than creating a WordPress site from a .psd.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  << Society will struggle to keep up. Thank you for putting this into words as it happens to approach my thoughts on it. Our societies are already changing at a crazy pace that makes people not entirely comfortable. Now that this comfort will be lessened still, do you think people will demand changes not completely dissimilar from preserving horse buggys? The pace of change may end up being so fast, that not artificially limiting it may end up pissing a good portion of the planet.
pjmlp 3y ago
It would be like steering offshore teams, with the difference the team are now AI agents. Better look for architecture and management jobs, only a few select ones would still be allowed into the magic tower. Naturally after a heavy round of letcode interviews that have nothing to do with writing AI algorithms.
- Kuinox 3y ago
  Management ? I'm not sure, if the AI makes engineers 10-20x more efficient, you will need way less engineers, and way less managers.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    There is always a spot for more managers, welcome to big corps.
    - amlib 3y ago
      Its Managers all the way down...
    - nikolayasdf123 3y ago
      until big corp laysoff all that middle management
      - anticensor 3y ago
        and middle managers start their own firm, consisting entirely of manager managers
    - leifross 3y ago
      Replacing managers is a walk in the park compared to replacing programmers. The focus is on programming because that is the benchmark, if we can outsource that to AI, then we can replace everyone.
  - margorczynski 3y ago
CharlieDigital 3y ago
Code reviews in the short term [0]. Test reviews in the long term (E2E type). Effectively checking the correctness of the system as a whole to fulfill some business process. Exploratory testing as well to find edge cases and gaps. [0] I write a bit about this here: https://chrlschn.dev/blog/2023/07/interviews-age-of-ai-ditch-leetcode-try-code-reviews-instead/ https://chrlschn.dev/blog/2023/07/interviews-age-of-ai-ditch... and here https://coderev.app/ https://coderev.app/
UK-Al05 3y ago
Mainly get good at describing what you want. I think tests are good way of doing that, or some special requirements language will emerge that AI agents can use. I don't think English is particularly good way of describing things exactly. It often has ambiguous meanings which is where the bugs will come from.
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  How is code not just exactly that special requirements language you are looking for?
  - UK-Al05 3y ago
    It's more about defining outcomes exactly rather than a sequence of exact steps.
    - skydhash 3y ago
      Aka logic programming.
    - riffraff 3y ago
      SQL all the things!
    - UK-Al05 3y ago
      Something close to that.
    - ManuelKiessling 3y ago
      So, a declarative language describing a target state (versus how to get there), like the one used for Terraform, but for product behavior?
davedx 3y ago
Ask the copywriters and logo designers
mawadev 3y ago
I have a hard time understanding this overall. What stops people from letting Ai write a clone of your product/service and offering it for cheap without all of the organizational overhead? Wouldn't this simply disappear and just be all about administration?
- bamboozled 3y ago
  I’ve thought about the this too and the answer seems to be nothing. I’m working one such clone already and imo for a one man show I’ve come pretty close to achieving my goals. It’s a conundrum for “big tech” imo because if they give you too much access to their “AI” then yes, that might pose an existential threat to their core businesses. This is likely the reason for all the regulatory capture hopes and dreams.
bregma 3y ago
Someone will still need to review the reams and reams of bullshit code generated by these Markov chains. It'll be like all your code gets written by first-term co-op students who have discovered alcohol for the first time and think it's pretty neat, but you're still responsible for the final output and don't get to do any of the fun and interesting stuff. Just constant, mind-numbing code reviews of something that might look OK on the surface but is really just blow-up punching clowns all the way down and already shipped by the marketing department because your backlog is massive and after all, you've been replaced by a random number generator fed through an incomplete Bayesian database of random bad code that costs so much less,
- bigyikes 3y ago
  You described v1. Just wait for v2. You can’t possibly think these things will remain clowns forever. These things aren’t “Markov chains” - the architecture is significantly more scalable, which is exactly why this time is different.
  - grbsh 3y ago
    A Markov Chain is a mathematical structure, not a machine learning architecture. If there are a finite number of states, and a function to determine the probability to transition to any given state from any other state, then it’s a Markov chain. Transformers with finite block size have a finite number of states, so they are Markov chains.
  - leifross 3y ago
    GPT3 released four years ago, in terms of iterations beyond that, we are at ~v5, and progress has only been incremental relative to that milestone. The transformer models can only be scaled so far before not even VC money can sustain training. I believe we will get there eventually, but transformer based LLMs have been hitting a roof for a long time, and we need to think differently.
nikolayasdf123 3y ago
sooner than that
consumer451 3y ago
When it comes to Dall-E and Sora, I think the answer is that you still need someone to create the narrative, a good story teller. In terms of stuff like AutoDev, that's a product person, right? I think at least for now, we will still need human "customer development."

onion2k 3y ago

Prompt Engineering! I'm kidding. Software engineering roles of the "glue things together" kind will evolve into a 'technical product' role, defining how systems work, especially at the edges where systems interact. Architects and staff engineers already do this. Lower down the food chain engineers who actually invent new things will do the same, only quicker if they have an AI tool assisting with the grunt work of testing, boilerplate, etc. Engineers who don't really make new things will be replaced by 'low code' style apps that spit out clunky apps. That's already happening though. It's not a change. Those engineers won't leave the industry - they'll get to do more interesting things. Even at the entry level things won't really change that much. Expectations will go up a bit but people will still have to learn the trade. Where things will really change is the sheer amount of software we'll have. AI is going to make things go faster, so businesses will be able to automate everything. Dev resource will stop being the constraint that holds businesses back from doing everything they want to do with software. That's a game changer. Society will struggle to keep up.

fhd2 3y ago
Good take! I think one specific development we might see would be an end of the SaaS micro tool era. Right now, most companies I advise have an absolute _jungle_ of different tools and a bunch of interns manually bridging the gap between them. If software development becomes a lot cheaper, wouldn't companies be more likely to just roll their own versions of what they need, to meet their needs exactly and have everything fit together? Sounds like the job of a programmer wouldn't go away very near term in such a scenario. It might well become far less glamorous, less "technical", and not as well paid though. Comparable to an accountant maybe. As someone who started their career right after the dotcom bubble burst, various people asked me "Why are you doing this? There's no money in software anymore". Turns out there sure was. Back then I didn't know that, and I didn't care. I didn't get into it for the money, I got into it because I had a passion for it. Maybe it'll become more like back then again. Doesn't seem so bad to me.
- onion2k 3y ago
  I think one specific development we might see would be an end of the SaaS micro tool era. Possibly, but if SaaS tool providers make APIs so AI tools can consume the data, that would open up a huge ecosystem of AI 'plugins' that would be immensely valuable. I think OpenAI have something like that already.
  - fhd2 3y ago
    Could be! Most SaaS tools I can think of cover some specific work flow in a way that it kinda works for 80% of the customers. Their UI is quite an intrinsic part of the offering, an API-only version of it wouldn't be as valuable. But if nobody has to put up with only getting 80% of their needs met, why would they? I'd imagine we'd have a few very general purpose systems that can indeed be glued together in a largely automated fashion. But getting the business processes into them in a meaningful way would then be the hard part, the programming. I can encourage everyone to read good old "Domain Driven Design", there's a world of interesting problems and work out there beyond the purely technical side of things. And I think that part is a lot more difficult to automate than creating a WordPress site from a .psd.
A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
<< Society will struggle to keep up. Thank you for putting this into words as it happens to approach my thoughts on it. Our societies are already changing at a crazy pace that makes people not entirely comfortable. Now that this comfort will be lessened still, do you think people will demand changes not completely dissimilar from preserving horse buggys? The pace of change may end up being so fast, that not artificially limiting it may end up pissing a good portion of the planet.

pjmlp 3y ago

It would be like steering offshore teams, with the difference the team are now AI agents. Better look for architecture and management jobs, only a few select ones would still be allowed into the magic tower. Naturally after a heavy round of letcode interviews that have nothing to do with writing AI algorithms.

Kuinox 3y ago
Management ? I'm not sure, if the AI makes engineers 10-20x more efficient, you will need way less engineers, and way less managers.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  There is always a spot for more managers, welcome to big corps.
  - amlib 3y ago
    Its Managers all the way down...
  - nikolayasdf123 3y ago
    until big corp laysoff all that middle management
    - anticensor 3y ago
      and middle managers start their own firm, consisting entirely of manager managers
  - leifross 3y ago
    Replacing managers is a walk in the park compared to replacing programmers. The focus is on programming because that is the benchmark, if we can outsource that to AI, then we can replace everyone.
- margorczynski 3y ago

CharlieDigital 3y ago

Code reviews in the short term [0]. Test reviews in the long term (E2E type). Effectively checking the correctness of the system as a whole to fulfill some business process. Exploratory testing as well to find edge cases and gaps. [0] I write a bit about this here: https://chrlschn.dev/blog/2023/07/interviews-age-of-ai-ditch-leetcode-try-code-reviews-instead/ https://chrlschn.dev/blog/2023/07/interviews-age-of-ai-ditch... and here https://coderev.app/ https://coderev.app/

UK-Al05 3y ago

Mainly get good at describing what you want. I think tests are good way of doing that, or some special requirements language will emerge that AI agents can use. I don't think English is particularly good way of describing things exactly. It often has ambiguous meanings which is where the bugs will come from.

somewhereoutth 3y ago
How is code not just exactly that special requirements language you are looking for?
- UK-Al05 3y ago
  It's more about defining outcomes exactly rather than a sequence of exact steps.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    Aka logic programming.
  - riffraff 3y ago
    SQL all the things!
  - UK-Al05 3y ago
    Something close to that.
  - ManuelKiessling 3y ago
    So, a declarative language describing a target state (versus how to get there), like the one used for Terraform, but for product behavior?

davedx 3y ago

Ask the copywriters and logo designers

mawadev 3y ago

I have a hard time understanding this overall. What stops people from letting Ai write a clone of your product/service and offering it for cheap without all of the organizational overhead? Wouldn't this simply disappear and just be all about administration?

bamboozled 3y ago
I’ve thought about the this too and the answer seems to be nothing. I’m working one such clone already and imo for a one man show I’ve come pretty close to achieving my goals. It’s a conundrum for “big tech” imo because if they give you too much access to their “AI” then yes, that might pose an existential threat to their core businesses. This is likely the reason for all the regulatory capture hopes and dreams.

bregma 3y ago

Someone will still need to review the reams and reams of bullshit code generated by these Markov chains. It'll be like all your code gets written by first-term co-op students who have discovered alcohol for the first time and think it's pretty neat, but you're still responsible for the final output and don't get to do any of the fun and interesting stuff. Just constant, mind-numbing code reviews of something that might look OK on the surface but is really just blow-up punching clowns all the way down and already shipped by the marketing department because your backlog is massive and after all, you've been replaced by a random number generator fed through an incomplete Bayesian database of random bad code that costs so much less,

bigyikes 3y ago
You described v1. Just wait for v2. You can’t possibly think these things will remain clowns forever. These things aren’t “Markov chains” - the architecture is significantly more scalable, which is exactly why this time is different.
- grbsh 3y ago
  A Markov Chain is a mathematical structure, not a machine learning architecture. If there are a finite number of states, and a function to determine the probability to transition to any given state from any other state, then it’s a Markov chain. Transformers with finite block size have a finite number of states, so they are Markov chains.
- leifross 3y ago
  GPT3 released four years ago, in terms of iterations beyond that, we are at ~v5, and progress has only been incremental relative to that milestone. The transformer models can only be scaled so far before not even VC money can sustain training. I believe we will get there eventually, but transformer based LLMs have been hitting a roof for a long time, and we need to think differently.

nikolayasdf123 3y ago

sooner than that

consumer451 3y ago

When it comes to Dall-E and Sora, I think the answer is that you still need someone to create the narrative, a good story teller. In terms of stuff like AutoDev, that's a product person, right? I think at least for now, we will still need human "customer development."