5 ms·

The hardest part of software development is not writing code, full stop. It never has been and it never will be. The hard part is designing, understanding, veri

The hardest part of software development is not writing code, full stop. It never has been and it never will be. The hard part is designing, understanding, verifying, and repairing complex systems. LLMs do not do this, even a little bit.

cedws 2y ago
Less time spent writing code is more time you can spend thinking about those hard parts, no?
- packetlost 2y ago
  Yes? But it's commonly understood that reading code is harder than writing code. So why force yourself into a reading-mostly position when you don't have to? You're more likely to get it wrong. There are other ways to decrease typing time.
  - cedws 2y ago
    >it's commonly understood that reading code is harder than writing code I don't know about that. Maybe for kernel code or a codec. But I think most people could read (and understand) a 100 line class for a CRUD backend faster than they could write one.
    - skydhash 2y ago
      php artisan make:controller There are code generators. Even with dealing with other languages library, I mostly copy-paste previous implementations and editing with Vim motions makes it faster.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    It's not harder unless you write hard to read code. > “Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.” - Robert C. Martin in Clean Code LLMs make exceptionally clean code in my opinion. They don't try to be fancy or "elegant", they just spit out basic statements that sometimes (or most of the time) do what you need. Then you _read_ what it suggests, with a skilled eye you can pretty much glance and see if it looks good and test it.
- jondwillis 2y ago
  Luckily, we have perfectly behaving, feature-rich software for every complex system already. /s
studenthrow3831 2y ago
I guess my worst fear is not "no more jobs because AI can code" but "no more junior jobs because AI can code under the supervision of a senior". SWE jobs will exist, but only seniors will have them and juniors are never hired. Maybe the occasional "apprentice" will be brought on, but in nowhere near the same amount. Where my blind hope lies more specifically is in networking into one of those "apprentice" roles, or maybe a third tech Cambrian explosion enabled by AI allows me to find work in a new startup. I don't want to give up just yet.
- packetlost 2y ago
  Unless there's some major breakthrough and AIs are able to gain judgement and reasoning capabilities, I don't think they'll be taking junior jobs any time soon.
- sqeaky 2y ago
  Might I suggest Andrei Alexandrescus's CppCon 2023 Closing Keynote talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J48YTbdJNNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J48YTbdJNNc The C++ standard library has a number of generic algorithms that are very efficient, like decades of careful revision from the C++ community efficient. With the help of ChatGPT Andrei makes major improvements to a few of them. At least right now these machines have a truly impressive ability to summarize large amounts of data but not creativity or judgement. He digs into how he did it, and what he thinks will happen. He isn't fearmongering he is just one coder producing results. He does lay out some concerns, but at least for the moment the industry needs junior devs.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
  IMHO juniors who rely on AI to write code will never learn. You need to make mistakes to learn, and AI never makes mistakes even when it’s wrong. As a senior, I write code 25% of the time, and it’s always to understand the intent of what I should fix or develop. This is something that AI will not be able to do for a long time since it cannot speak and understand what customers want. The last 75% of my time are spent refactoring this "intent" or making sure that the business is running, and I’m accountable for it. AI will never be accountable for anything, again for a long time. I’m scared for juniors that don’t want to learn, but I work with juniors who outsmart me with their knowledge and curiosity.
sqeaky 2y ago
I like the Primeagen's examples for the simple stuff. On stream he fires up an editor and copilot then writes the function signature for quick sort. Then copilot gets it wrong. It creates a sort function, but one worse than quick sort but not as bad as bubble sort. These LLMs will get better. But today they are just summarizing. They screw up fairly simple tasks in fairly obvious ways right now. We don't know if they will do better tomorrow or in 20 years. I would wager it will be just a few years, but we have code that needs to be written today. LLMs are great for students because they are often motivated and lacking broad experience, and a summarizer will such person very far.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  can't wait until they're good enough to screw up complex tasks in subtle ways after undercutting the pay of junior developers such that no one is studying how to program computers anymore
  - throwup238 2y ago
    In the future there won't be a Spacer Guild but a Greybeard Guild that mutates greybeard developers until they're immortal and forces them to sit at a terminal manipulating ancient Cobol, Javascript, and Go for all eternity, maintaining the software underpinnings of our civilization. The electrons must flow.
idan 2y ago
Absolutely. Copilot Workspace might not seem like it, but it's very much our first step towards tools to aid in comprehension and navigation of a codebase. I think a lot of folks have conflated "generative AI" with "writes code" when reading and understanding is a much larger part of the job
bossyTeacher 2y ago
I was looking for something like this. The only that might change is some of your toolset but LLMs won't change the nature of the job (which is what people seem to be thinking about)
kylestlb 2y ago
or getting engineers to communicate properly with each other :)
screye 2y ago
LLMs remove the most annoying bits, making it possible for 1 person to do 3 people's work. LLMs are also good at fixing minor bugs. So version upgrades, minor maintenence and finding the right API handshakes will soon be doable for big LLMs without user supervision. Lastly, LLMs are accelerating existing tailwinds towards software commodotization. If an LLM can create a good-enough website on a low code platform, how likely are you to hire a front end engineer for the last 10% of excellence ? Think about how many jobs are 'build a website', 'build an app' or 'manage this integration' style roles. They are all at risk of being replaced. > hardest part of software development is not writing code I agree, but you have to write a lot of code before you become good enough to think that clearly. If juniors don't get the opportunity to work their way up to a senior, then they might just never pick up the right skills. What's more like is is that CS education will undergo drastic changes, and masters/specialization might become a more degree requirement. But, those already on the market are in for a big shock.

cedws 2y ago

Less time spent writing code is more time you can spend thinking about those hard parts, no?

packetlost 2y ago
Yes? But it's commonly understood that reading code is harder than writing code. So why force yourself into a reading-mostly position when you don't have to? You're more likely to get it wrong. There are other ways to decrease typing time.
- cedws 2y ago
  >it's commonly understood that reading code is harder than writing code I don't know about that. Maybe for kernel code or a codec. But I think most people could read (and understand) a 100 line class for a CRUD backend faster than they could write one.
  - skydhash 2y ago
    php artisan make:controller There are code generators. Even with dealing with other languages library, I mostly copy-paste previous implementations and editing with Vim motions makes it faster.
- theshrike79 2y ago
  It's not harder unless you write hard to read code. > “Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.” - Robert C. Martin in Clean Code LLMs make exceptionally clean code in my opinion. They don't try to be fancy or "elegant", they just spit out basic statements that sometimes (or most of the time) do what you need. Then you _read_ what it suggests, with a skilled eye you can pretty much glance and see if it looks good and test it.
jondwillis 2y ago
Luckily, we have perfectly behaving, feature-rich software for every complex system already. /s

studenthrow3831 2y ago

I guess my worst fear is not "no more jobs because AI can code" but "no more junior jobs because AI can code under the supervision of a senior". SWE jobs will exist, but only seniors will have them and juniors are never hired. Maybe the occasional "apprentice" will be brought on, but in nowhere near the same amount. Where my blind hope lies more specifically is in networking into one of those "apprentice" roles, or maybe a third tech Cambrian explosion enabled by AI allows me to find work in a new startup. I don't want to give up just yet.

packetlost 2y ago
Unless there's some major breakthrough and AIs are able to gain judgement and reasoning capabilities, I don't think they'll be taking junior jobs any time soon.
sqeaky 2y ago
Might I suggest Andrei Alexandrescus's CppCon 2023 Closing Keynote talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J48YTbdJNNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J48YTbdJNNc The C++ standard library has a number of generic algorithms that are very efficient, like decades of careful revision from the C++ community efficient. With the help of ChatGPT Andrei makes major improvements to a few of them. At least right now these machines have a truly impressive ability to summarize large amounts of data but not creativity or judgement. He digs into how he did it, and what he thinks will happen. He isn't fearmongering he is just one coder producing results. He does lay out some concerns, but at least for the moment the industry needs junior devs.
JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
IMHO juniors who rely on AI to write code will never learn. You need to make mistakes to learn, and AI never makes mistakes even when it’s wrong. As a senior, I write code 25% of the time, and it’s always to understand the intent of what I should fix or develop. This is something that AI will not be able to do for a long time since it cannot speak and understand what customers want. The last 75% of my time are spent refactoring this "intent" or making sure that the business is running, and I’m accountable for it. AI will never be accountable for anything, again for a long time. I’m scared for juniors that don’t want to learn, but I work with juniors who outsmart me with their knowledge and curiosity.

sqeaky 2y ago

I like the Primeagen's examples for the simple stuff. On stream he fires up an editor and copilot then writes the function signature for quick sort. Then copilot gets it wrong. It creates a sort function, but one worse than quick sort but not as bad as bubble sort. These LLMs will get better. But today they are just summarizing. They screw up fairly simple tasks in fairly obvious ways right now. We don't know if they will do better tomorrow or in 20 years. I would wager it will be just a few years, but we have code that needs to be written today. LLMs are great for students because they are often motivated and lacking broad experience, and a summarizer will such person very far.

jazzyjackson 2y ago
can't wait until they're good enough to screw up complex tasks in subtle ways after undercutting the pay of junior developers such that no one is studying how to program computers anymore
- throwup238 2y ago
  In the future there won't be a Spacer Guild but a Greybeard Guild that mutates greybeard developers until they're immortal and forces them to sit at a terminal manipulating ancient Cobol, Javascript, and Go for all eternity, maintaining the software underpinnings of our civilization. The electrons must flow.

idan 2y ago

Absolutely. Copilot Workspace might not seem like it, but it's very much our first step towards tools to aid in comprehension and navigation of a codebase. I think a lot of folks have conflated "generative AI" with "writes code" when reading and understanding is a much larger part of the job

bossyTeacher 2y ago

I was looking for something like this. The only that might change is some of your toolset but LLMs won't change the nature of the job (which is what people seem to be thinking about)

kylestlb 2y ago

or getting engineers to communicate properly with each other :)

screye 2y ago

LLMs remove the most annoying bits, making it possible for 1 person to do 3 people's work. LLMs are also good at fixing minor bugs. So version upgrades, minor maintenence and finding the right API handshakes will soon be doable for big LLMs without user supervision. Lastly, LLMs are accelerating existing tailwinds towards software commodotization. If an LLM can create a good-enough website on a low code platform, how likely are you to hire a front end engineer for the last 10% of excellence ? Think about how many jobs are 'build a website', 'build an app' or 'manage this integration' style roles. They are all at risk of being replaced. > hardest part of software development is not writing code I agree, but you have to write a lot of code before you become good enough to think that clearly. If juniors don't get the opportunity to work their way up to a senior, then they might just never pick up the right skills. What's more like is is that CS education will undergo drastic changes, and masters/specialization might become a more degree requirement. But, those already on the market are in for a big shock.