6 ms·

Small ot, but it's quite interesting that the highest decisive impact generative AI is having right now is on tech workers and software developers in particular

Small ot, but it's quite interesting that the highest decisive impact generative AI is having right now is on tech workers and software developers in particular. I'm more and more convinced that we're on the edge of a major shake up in the industry with all these tools. Not getting replaced, but at this rate of improvements I can't unsee major changes. A recent junior I have in my team built his first app entirely with chatgpt one year ago, he still didn't know how to code, but could figure out how to fix the imperfect code by reasoning, all of it as a non coder, and actually release something that worked for other people.

devjab 2y ago
I think a lot of developers will get replaced by AI. I’ve worked in digitalisation and automation for a couple of decades now and I’ve gone into a role which specialises in helping start-ups grow their IT into something will will actually work as they transition into enterprise organisations. I think almost all the work I replace or optimise will be done without developers in a few years (or maybe in a decade). This is everything related to data transformation, storage and transportation - to applications and websites. In the organisation I currently work, we’re already seeing rather large amounts of digitalisation done by non-developers. This is something organisations have tried to do for a long time, but all those no-code tools, robot process automation and so on quickly require some sort of software developer despite all their lofty promises. This isn’t what I’m seeing with AI. We have a lot of people building things that automate or enhance their workflows, we’re seeing api usage and data warehouse work done from non-developers in ways that are “good enough” and often on the same level or better than what software developers would deliver. They’ve already replaced their corporate designers with AI generated icons and such, and they’ll certainly need fewer developers going forward. Possibly relying solely on external specialists when something needs to scale or has too many issues. I also think that a lot or “standard” platforms are going to struggle. Why would you buy a generic website for your small business when you can rather easily develop one yourself? All in all I’d bet that at least 70% of the developer jobs in my area aren’t going to be there in 10 years and so far they don’t seem to open up new software development jobs. So while they are generating new jobs, it’s not in software development. I’m not too worried for myself. I think I’m old enough that I can ride on my specialty in cleaning up messes, or if that fails transition into medical software or other areas where you really, really, don’t want the AI to write any code. I’d certainly worry if I was a young generalist developer, especially if a big chunk of my work relies on me using AI or search engines.
EZ-E 2y ago
Am I the only one not seeing it? AI is very useful assistant, boosts productivity, and makes coding easier, but ultimately in real life scenarios beside POCs, it cannot replace a human. You quickly reach a threshold where explaining and getting the AI to do what you want is actually harder than doing it. What happens if your LLM built app has a bug and the AI does not "get" it?
- Bloedcoins 2y ago
  You need to ask 'when'. ChatGPT shows a clear path forward. Feedback loop (consistent improvement), tooling which leverages all of llms powers, writing unit tests automatically and running code (chatgpt can run python already, when will it able to run java and other langauges?) And its arleady useful today for small things. Copilot is easier and more integrated than googling parameters or looking up documentation. UIs/IDEs like curser.ai are a lot more integrated. What you see today is just the beginning of a something, potentially big.
  - EZ-E 2y ago
    I respect your opinion and you could be right, but I don't buy it so far. While integrations have improved, for the LLM models everything relies on, we don't see major advances anymore. Compare the jump from GPT3.5 to 4, vs the next iterations, it still suffers from the same limitations LLMs have (context length, overconfidence, hallucinations). Maybe I'm too impatient.
    - Bloedcoins 2y ago
      From a research point of view, context length got a lot better in the last year and continues to become better. Chatgpt just released new voice mode. It took over a year to get GitHub Copilot rolled out in my very big company. People work left and right to make it better. Every benchmark shows either smaller models or faster models or better models. This will not stop anytime soon. Flux for Image generatin came out of nowhere and is a lot better with faces and hands and image description than anything before it. Yes the original jump was crazy but we are running into capacity constrains left and right. Alone how long it takes for a company to buy enough GPUs, building a platform, workflows, transition capacity into it, etc. takes time. When i say AI will change our industry, i don't know how long it takes. I guess 5-10 years but it makes it a lot more obvious HOW and the HOW was completly missing before GPT3. I couldn't came up with an good idea how to do something like this at all. And for hallucinations, there are also plenty of people working left and right. The reasoning of o1 is the first big throw of a big company to start running a model longer. But for running o1 for 10 seconds and longer, you need a lot more resources. Nvidias chip production is currently a hard limit in our industry. Even getting enough energy into Datacenters is a hard limit right now. Its clearly not money if you look how much money is thrown at it already.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
metaltyphoon 2y ago
That is legit frightening
- paulcole 2y ago
  Why exactly?
boodleboodle 2y ago
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced developers will be the "first to go" when AGI takes over. Before bloggers and youtubers. Because programming is an activity that requires the least amount of "grounding to reality" among all human activities. We made sure of this with layers and layers of convenient abstraction. What about developers that code the AI systems? Well.. I am sure AGI will come from other "bootsrapping AIs" just like we see with compilers that compile themselves. When I see Altman and Sutskever talking about AGI being within reach, I feel they are talking about this bootstrapping AI being within reach.
- torginus 2y ago
  I think there's a lot of evidence out there that supports your theory. - There's the biggest/most high quality training corpus that captures all aspects of dev work (code, changes, discussions about issues, etc.) out there with open source hosting sites like GitHub - Synthetic data is easy to generate and verify, you can just run unit tests/debugger in a loop until you get it right. Try doing that with contracts or tax statements. - Little to no regulatory protections.
- raincole 2y ago
  When AGI comes, who are the first to go is solely decided by regulation. Nothing else.
- kristopolous 2y ago
  It's the same thing that happened with mechanical looms. Programming will go from an artisan craft to the sweatshops and software programming will become low paying precarious gig work. This is all about labor and capital. When people toss hundreds of billions at something it almost always is. The social relationship doesn't have to be this way. Technological improvement could help us instead of screw us over. But we'd first have to admit that profit exploitation isn't absolutely the best thing ever and we'll never do that. Soooo here we are.
- probably_wrong 2y ago
  > Because programming is an activity that requires the least amount of "grounding to reality" among all human activities. Maybe once you're deep into APIs that talk to other APIs, but near the surface where the data is collected there's nothing but "grounding to reality". As my professor of Software Engineering put it: when building a system for counting the number of people inside a room most people would put a turnstile and count the turns. Does this fulfill the requirement? No - people can turn the wheel multiple times, leave through a window, give birth inside the room, etc. Is it good enough? Only your client can say, and only after considering factors like "available technology" and "budget" that have nothing to do with software.
fervor 2y ago
I would like to see the app prompted by junior dev in question.
aussieguy1234 2y ago
As an engineer I've spoken to a couple of different designers who are building out prototypes of their startup ideas using LLM assistance with the coding. While no actual engineer is involved at that stage, if they got funded then I'm sure their next step will be to hire a real engineer to do it all properly.
- Kostchei 2y ago
  <insert manic laughter> I mean that might happen, but why get funding? Why not move to market immediately? Without debt. Get in the thick of it. Just do. You want a wage or do you want a product that does the thing. Because sometimes, with the llm, you can just build the thing. The marketing, the compliance, you might hire for that, or you might also out-source to the llm. Why would you hire? Either it works- in the sense of does the job and is cost effective- or it is not. Is there a situation where paying 100's of k of wages makes a thing suddenly a good idea? I have doubts.
  - aussieguy1234 2y ago
    Let's see if your little app can handle millions of daily users without an actual engineer. Your average application will fall over before that. It'll be some time before an AI will be able to handle this scenario. But by then, your job, my job and everyone else's job will be automated, it's entirely possible the current economic system will collapse in this scenario.
frankdenbow 2y ago
I envision lots of solo coders now able to compete with bigger companies, creating more niche software that meets peoples need better than generic solutions. Truly exciting time to be in software.
- deergomoo 2y ago
  I have the exact opposite concern. Software is/was one of the few industries where a solo person can already compete with big companies, or at least live comfortably alongside. Just look at the market for niche or boutique software that does stuff like calendars or emails or task management in a particular way. To me the current direction LLMs are headed seems like it will just further entrench the power of the trillion dollar megacorps because they’re the only people that can fund the creation and operation of this stuff.
- mark_l_watson 2y ago
  I agree, and want to add: AI will make it possible to inexpensively produce small tailored applications that only support locally required functionality. The advantage to this is very small code bases that are easier to understand. In other words, it makes it possible to avoid huge mega apps that any particular user might use a small percentage of the functionality. Also, is it possible that smaller focused apps will have few edge cases and be more reliable?
- subtlesoftware 2y ago
  [dead]
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  Yes, this is more or less my life. I run a small bootstrapped startup and do some consulting on the side. I have a few decades of experience. So it's not like I can't do things myself. But chat GPT has enormously enhanced my output. It's rarely perfect but I can bridge the gap usually by completing the job. My role is increasingly directing changes and telling it what needs doing next. Canvas sounds useful. I'll be playing with that as soon as I can access it. Another useful thing in chat gpt that I've been leveraging is its memory function. I just tell it to remember instructions so I don't have to spell them out the next time I'm doing something.
NomDePlum 2y ago
I'm sure that's true but I've also seen non-developers build systems using Access or solve complex critical business problems using excel and similar. I've seen a lot of junior developers tinker with apps and do great work from reading docs and tutorials. I was one of those myself a long time ago. For some problems this is a perfect solution. For a lot it's a short term fix that turns into a long term issue. I've been on many a project that's had to undo these types of setups, for very valid reasons and usually at a very high cost. Often you find them in clusters, with virtually no one actually having a full understanding of what they actually do anymore. Building the initial app is only a very small part of software engineering. Maintaining and supporting a service/business and helping them evolve is far harder, but essential. My experience is that complexity builds very quickly to a point it's unsustainable if not managed well. I fear AI could well accelerate that process in a lot of situations if engineering knowledge and tradeoffs are assumed to included in what it provides.
- sanp 2y ago
  I think in 4-5 years’ time there will be huge demand for fixing / maintaining these LLM-built apps. Perhaps the LLMs that follow can do it.
faitswulff 2y ago
I know a similar non-coding founder who was using LLMs to create a full fledged TypeScript based SaaS product and regularly comes to me with high level architecture questions, but also doesn't know or care to figure out what HTTP methods are, variable names are a mishmash of whatever case the LLM decided to generate that day, and there are no tests whatsoever. It's held together by sheer force of manual QA. ...but. It does work.
- Bloedcoins 2y ago
  Yeah until you realize that a lot of small scale companies do the same thing with avg/bad developers for ages and ... It does work. IF you don't have a central security team like in big companies or the need for an audit, what you don't know is what you don't care for. Obviously until its too late but holy shit i have seen too much garbage just working for waaaay to long.
- Kostchei 2y ago
  This my technique- test the output, make sure it works (in the sense of outputs) the way I want. Test the input edge cases, move on. Occasionally when I can't get it to do what I want the llm suggests things like logging of output between functions etc- in which case they get added, but at the end I ask it to take out all the logging and make the code more concise. And sometimes it breaks in ways I can't fix - so rolling back or picking a new patch from a know break point becomes important. 16 hours for my first azure pipeline, auto-updates from code to prod, static app including setting up git, vscode, node, azure creds etc. I chose a stack I have never seen at work (mostly see AWS) and I am not a coder. Last code was Pascal in the 1980s. 3rd app took 4 hours. Built things I have wanted for 30 years. But yes- no code understanding, brute force.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    This is how you end up with software full of vulnerabilities.
  - mark_l_watson 2y ago
    re: “Built things I have wanted for 30 years.” +1 same for me. A few times a month I now build something I have wanted in the past but now I can afford the time to build. I have always prided myself at being pretty good at working with other human developers, and now I feel pretty good at using LLM based AI as a design and coding assistant, when it makes sense to not just do all the work myself.
dzhiurgis 2y ago
Regulating either developer credentials (ie are you certified for this type of solution) or outputs (formal validation of each release) comes to mind. It’s gonna sound like gatekeeping but letting people without any experience to build impactful software is risky.
- latentsea 2y ago
  Even letting people with experience is risky.
vlunkr 2y ago
It’s hardly the first time someone has shipped an app within a year of starting to code. It’s impressive, but not revolutionary.
- epolanski 2y ago
  Nono, he has shipped an app before learning to code. The fact that he liked and enjoyed coding was what actually prompted him into learning to code after that first experience.
  - vlunkr 2y ago
    So he’s a naturally talented developer who learned to code as he created his first app. Maybe he didn’t understand specifics, but you have to be able to intuit a lot to string a bunch of AI snippets into an app.
- brailsafe 2y ago
  I also wonder what the person would have been hired for... maybe QA? I was doing this with random relevant scripts nearly 20 years ago but wasn't given a job where code would be relevant for the task until loooooong after I could comprehend what I was doing
fnordpiglet 2y ago
I think that’s probably more that programmers are early adopters of new technologies and the people building the technologies are programmers. There are lots of roles that are more easy to automate completely with an LLM as they improve, but are harder to make inroads with. I expect as the initial waves of LLM startups mature and winnow we will some fields almost entirely automate. For instance medical coding feels totally ripe since it’s basically a natural language classification exercise easily fine tuned.
jen729w 2y ago
I'm a solo business owner who knows enough JS/TS/HTML/CSS to get by -- my product is a website full of information -- but I've never been 'a developer'. ChatGPT et. al. is a miraculous boost to my productivity. This morning I needed a function to iterate over some JSON and do stuff with it. Fairly mundane, and I could have written it myself. Doing so would have been boring, routine, and would have taken me at least an hour. I asked ChatGPT 4o and I got exactly what I wanted in 30 seconds. I can only hope that these tools enable more people like me to build more cool things. That's how it's affected me: I never would have hired another dev. No job is lost. I'm just exponentially better at mine.
- Timber-6539 2y ago
  This is the killer app for gen AI. Everything else said about AI e.g replacing workers is just building castles in the air.
- justinbaker84 2y ago
  I have had a similar experience. I build wordpress websites and ChatGPT has allowed me to extend their functionality a great deal without needing to learn how to code PHP.
- genericacct 2y ago
  it needs to be said that web dev is by far the area in which LLMs are more versed , i suppose due to the incredible amount of training data available. Other languages produce more allucinations for now.
  - authorfly 2y ago
    A good way to work with this is to use different agents Aider is pretty biased towards Python, for example (it's sample prompts largely use and test on Python)
m3kw9 2y ago
With how easy it is to do until functions, there is gonna be a new baseline in functionality and speed of development for what people expect of software in general. It’s gonna ramp up from here till we get to generative UIs
ijidak 2y ago
In sci-fi, they'll often show a single super developer create a virtual world that realistically no single human would have the time to create. Ready Player One comes to mind. Maybe Tron Legacy. But, with AI productivity, it looks like AI will allow such super developers to create monstrously large worlds. I can't wait to see this generation's Minecraft or the next Linus.

devjab 2y ago

I think a lot of developers will get replaced by AI. I’ve worked in digitalisation and automation for a couple of decades now and I’ve gone into a role which specialises in helping start-ups grow their IT into something will will actually work as they transition into enterprise organisations. I think almost all the work I replace or optimise will be done without developers in a few years (or maybe in a decade). This is everything related to data transformation, storage and transportation - to applications and websites. In the organisation I currently work, we’re already seeing rather large amounts of digitalisation done by non-developers. This is something organisations have tried to do for a long time, but all those no-code tools, robot process automation and so on quickly require some sort of software developer despite all their lofty promises. This isn’t what I’m seeing with AI. We have a lot of people building things that automate or enhance their workflows, we’re seeing api usage and data warehouse work done from non-developers in ways that are “good enough” and often on the same level or better than what software developers would deliver. They’ve already replaced their corporate designers with AI generated icons and such, and they’ll certainly need fewer developers going forward. Possibly relying solely on external specialists when something needs to scale or has too many issues. I also think that a lot or “standard” platforms are going to struggle. Why would you buy a generic website for your small business when you can rather easily develop one yourself? All in all I’d bet that at least 70% of the developer jobs in my area aren’t going to be there in 10 years and so far they don’t seem to open up new software development jobs. So while they are generating new jobs, it’s not in software development. I’m not too worried for myself. I think I’m old enough that I can ride on my specialty in cleaning up messes, or if that fails transition into medical software or other areas where you really, really, don’t want the AI to write any code. I’d certainly worry if I was a young generalist developer, especially if a big chunk of my work relies on me using AI or search engines.

EZ-E 2y ago

Am I the only one not seeing it? AI is very useful assistant, boosts productivity, and makes coding easier, but ultimately in real life scenarios beside POCs, it cannot replace a human. You quickly reach a threshold where explaining and getting the AI to do what you want is actually harder than doing it. What happens if your LLM built app has a bug and the AI does not "get" it?

Bloedcoins 2y ago
You need to ask 'when'. ChatGPT shows a clear path forward. Feedback loop (consistent improvement), tooling which leverages all of llms powers, writing unit tests automatically and running code (chatgpt can run python already, when will it able to run java and other langauges?) And its arleady useful today for small things. Copilot is easier and more integrated than googling parameters or looking up documentation. UIs/IDEs like curser.ai are a lot more integrated. What you see today is just the beginning of a something, potentially big.
- EZ-E 2y ago
  I respect your opinion and you could be right, but I don't buy it so far. While integrations have improved, for the LLM models everything relies on, we don't see major advances anymore. Compare the jump from GPT3.5 to 4, vs the next iterations, it still suffers from the same limitations LLMs have (context length, overconfidence, hallucinations). Maybe I'm too impatient.
  - Bloedcoins 2y ago
    From a research point of view, context length got a lot better in the last year and continues to become better. Chatgpt just released new voice mode. It took over a year to get GitHub Copilot rolled out in my very big company. People work left and right to make it better. Every benchmark shows either smaller models or faster models or better models. This will not stop anytime soon. Flux for Image generatin came out of nowhere and is a lot better with faces and hands and image description than anything before it. Yes the original jump was crazy but we are running into capacity constrains left and right. Alone how long it takes for a company to buy enough GPUs, building a platform, workflows, transition capacity into it, etc. takes time. When i say AI will change our industry, i don't know how long it takes. I guess 5-10 years but it makes it a lot more obvious HOW and the HOW was completly missing before GPT3. I couldn't came up with an good idea how to do something like this at all. And for hallucinations, there are also plenty of people working left and right. The reasoning of o1 is the first big throw of a big company to start running a model longer. But for running o1 for 10 seconds and longer, you need a lot more resources. Nvidias chip production is currently a hard limit in our industry. Even getting enough energy into Datacenters is a hard limit right now. Its clearly not money if you look how much money is thrown at it already.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

metaltyphoon 2y ago

That is legit frightening

paulcole 2y ago
Why exactly?

boodleboodle 2y ago

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced developers will be the "first to go" when AGI takes over. Before bloggers and youtubers. Because programming is an activity that requires the least amount of "grounding to reality" among all human activities. We made sure of this with layers and layers of convenient abstraction. What about developers that code the AI systems? Well.. I am sure AGI will come from other "bootsrapping AIs" just like we see with compilers that compile themselves. When I see Altman and Sutskever talking about AGI being within reach, I feel they are talking about this bootstrapping AI being within reach.

torginus 2y ago
I think there's a lot of evidence out there that supports your theory. - There's the biggest/most high quality training corpus that captures all aspects of dev work (code, changes, discussions about issues, etc.) out there with open source hosting sites like GitHub - Synthetic data is easy to generate and verify, you can just run unit tests/debugger in a loop until you get it right. Try doing that with contracts or tax statements. - Little to no regulatory protections.
raincole 2y ago
When AGI comes, who are the first to go is solely decided by regulation. Nothing else.
kristopolous 2y ago
It's the same thing that happened with mechanical looms. Programming will go from an artisan craft to the sweatshops and software programming will become low paying precarious gig work. This is all about labor and capital. When people toss hundreds of billions at something it almost always is. The social relationship doesn't have to be this way. Technological improvement could help us instead of screw us over. But we'd first have to admit that profit exploitation isn't absolutely the best thing ever and we'll never do that. Soooo here we are.
probably_wrong 2y ago
> Because programming is an activity that requires the least amount of "grounding to reality" among all human activities. Maybe once you're deep into APIs that talk to other APIs, but near the surface where the data is collected there's nothing but "grounding to reality". As my professor of Software Engineering put it: when building a system for counting the number of people inside a room most people would put a turnstile and count the turns. Does this fulfill the requirement? No - people can turn the wheel multiple times, leave through a window, give birth inside the room, etc. Is it good enough? Only your client can say, and only after considering factors like "available technology" and "budget" that have nothing to do with software.

fervor 2y ago

I would like to see the app prompted by junior dev in question.

aussieguy1234 2y ago

As an engineer I've spoken to a couple of different designers who are building out prototypes of their startup ideas using LLM assistance with the coding. While no actual engineer is involved at that stage, if they got funded then I'm sure their next step will be to hire a real engineer to do it all properly.

Kostchei 2y ago
<insert manic laughter> I mean that might happen, but why get funding? Why not move to market immediately? Without debt. Get in the thick of it. Just do. You want a wage or do you want a product that does the thing. Because sometimes, with the llm, you can just build the thing. The marketing, the compliance, you might hire for that, or you might also out-source to the llm. Why would you hire? Either it works- in the sense of does the job and is cost effective- or it is not. Is there a situation where paying 100's of k of wages makes a thing suddenly a good idea? I have doubts.
- aussieguy1234 2y ago
  Let's see if your little app can handle millions of daily users without an actual engineer. Your average application will fall over before that. It'll be some time before an AI will be able to handle this scenario. But by then, your job, my job and everyone else's job will be automated, it's entirely possible the current economic system will collapse in this scenario.

frankdenbow 2y ago

I envision lots of solo coders now able to compete with bigger companies, creating more niche software that meets peoples need better than generic solutions. Truly exciting time to be in software.

deergomoo 2y ago
I have the exact opposite concern. Software is/was one of the few industries where a solo person can already compete with big companies, or at least live comfortably alongside. Just look at the market for niche or boutique software that does stuff like calendars or emails or task management in a particular way. To me the current direction LLMs are headed seems like it will just further entrench the power of the trillion dollar megacorps because they’re the only people that can fund the creation and operation of this stuff.
mark_l_watson 2y ago
I agree, and want to add: AI will make it possible to inexpensively produce small tailored applications that only support locally required functionality. The advantage to this is very small code bases that are easier to understand. In other words, it makes it possible to avoid huge mega apps that any particular user might use a small percentage of the functionality. Also, is it possible that smaller focused apps will have few edge cases and be more reliable?
subtlesoftware 2y ago
[dead]
jillesvangurp 2y ago
Yes, this is more or less my life. I run a small bootstrapped startup and do some consulting on the side. I have a few decades of experience. So it's not like I can't do things myself. But chat GPT has enormously enhanced my output. It's rarely perfect but I can bridge the gap usually by completing the job. My role is increasingly directing changes and telling it what needs doing next. Canvas sounds useful. I'll be playing with that as soon as I can access it. Another useful thing in chat gpt that I've been leveraging is its memory function. I just tell it to remember instructions so I don't have to spell them out the next time I'm doing something.

NomDePlum 2y ago

I'm sure that's true but I've also seen non-developers build systems using Access or solve complex critical business problems using excel and similar. I've seen a lot of junior developers tinker with apps and do great work from reading docs and tutorials. I was one of those myself a long time ago. For some problems this is a perfect solution. For a lot it's a short term fix that turns into a long term issue. I've been on many a project that's had to undo these types of setups, for very valid reasons and usually at a very high cost. Often you find them in clusters, with virtually no one actually having a full understanding of what they actually do anymore. Building the initial app is only a very small part of software engineering. Maintaining and supporting a service/business and helping them evolve is far harder, but essential. My experience is that complexity builds very quickly to a point it's unsustainable if not managed well. I fear AI could well accelerate that process in a lot of situations if engineering knowledge and tradeoffs are assumed to included in what it provides.

sanp 2y ago
I think in 4-5 years’ time there will be huge demand for fixing / maintaining these LLM-built apps. Perhaps the LLMs that follow can do it.

faitswulff 2y ago

I know a similar non-coding founder who was using LLMs to create a full fledged TypeScript based SaaS product and regularly comes to me with high level architecture questions, but also doesn't know or care to figure out what HTTP methods are, variable names are a mishmash of whatever case the LLM decided to generate that day, and there are no tests whatsoever. It's held together by sheer force of manual QA. ...but. It does work.

Bloedcoins 2y ago
Yeah until you realize that a lot of small scale companies do the same thing with avg/bad developers for ages and ... It does work. IF you don't have a central security team like in big companies or the need for an audit, what you don't know is what you don't care for. Obviously until its too late but holy shit i have seen too much garbage just working for waaaay to long.
Kostchei 2y ago
This my technique- test the output, make sure it works (in the sense of outputs) the way I want. Test the input edge cases, move on. Occasionally when I can't get it to do what I want the llm suggests things like logging of output between functions etc- in which case they get added, but at the end I ask it to take out all the logging and make the code more concise. And sometimes it breaks in ways I can't fix - so rolling back or picking a new patch from a know break point becomes important. 16 hours for my first azure pipeline, auto-updates from code to prod, static app including setting up git, vscode, node, azure creds etc. I chose a stack I have never seen at work (mostly see AWS) and I am not a coder. Last code was Pascal in the 1980s. 3rd app took 4 hours. Built things I have wanted for 30 years. But yes- no code understanding, brute force.
- kortilla 2y ago
  This is how you end up with software full of vulnerabilities.
- mark_l_watson 2y ago
  re: “Built things I have wanted for 30 years.” +1 same for me. A few times a month I now build something I have wanted in the past but now I can afford the time to build. I have always prided myself at being pretty good at working with other human developers, and now I feel pretty good at using LLM based AI as a design and coding assistant, when it makes sense to not just do all the work myself.

dzhiurgis 2y ago

Regulating either developer credentials (ie are you certified for this type of solution) or outputs (formal validation of each release) comes to mind. It’s gonna sound like gatekeeping but letting people without any experience to build impactful software is risky.

latentsea 2y ago
Even letting people with experience is risky.

vlunkr 2y ago

It’s hardly the first time someone has shipped an app within a year of starting to code. It’s impressive, but not revolutionary.

epolanski 2y ago
Nono, he has shipped an app before learning to code. The fact that he liked and enjoyed coding was what actually prompted him into learning to code after that first experience.
- vlunkr 2y ago
  So he’s a naturally talented developer who learned to code as he created his first app. Maybe he didn’t understand specifics, but you have to be able to intuit a lot to string a bunch of AI snippets into an app.
brailsafe 2y ago
I also wonder what the person would have been hired for... maybe QA? I was doing this with random relevant scripts nearly 20 years ago but wasn't given a job where code would be relevant for the task until loooooong after I could comprehend what I was doing

fnordpiglet 2y ago

I think that’s probably more that programmers are early adopters of new technologies and the people building the technologies are programmers. There are lots of roles that are more easy to automate completely with an LLM as they improve, but are harder to make inroads with. I expect as the initial waves of LLM startups mature and winnow we will some fields almost entirely automate. For instance medical coding feels totally ripe since it’s basically a natural language classification exercise easily fine tuned.

jen729w 2y ago

I'm a solo business owner who knows enough JS/TS/HTML/CSS to get by -- my product is a website full of information -- but I've never been 'a developer'. ChatGPT et. al. is a miraculous boost to my productivity. This morning I needed a function to iterate over some JSON and do stuff with it. Fairly mundane, and I could have written it myself. Doing so would have been boring, routine, and would have taken me at least an hour. I asked ChatGPT 4o and I got exactly what I wanted in 30 seconds. I can only hope that these tools enable more people like me to build more cool things. That's how it's affected me: I never would have hired another dev. No job is lost. I'm just exponentially better at mine.

Timber-6539 2y ago
This is the killer app for gen AI. Everything else said about AI e.g replacing workers is just building castles in the air.
justinbaker84 2y ago
I have had a similar experience. I build wordpress websites and ChatGPT has allowed me to extend their functionality a great deal without needing to learn how to code PHP.
genericacct 2y ago
it needs to be said that web dev is by far the area in which LLMs are more versed , i suppose due to the incredible amount of training data available. Other languages produce more allucinations for now.
- authorfly 2y ago
  A good way to work with this is to use different agents Aider is pretty biased towards Python, for example (it's sample prompts largely use and test on Python)

m3kw9 2y ago

With how easy it is to do until functions, there is gonna be a new baseline in functionality and speed of development for what people expect of software in general. It’s gonna ramp up from here till we get to generative UIs

ijidak 2y ago

In sci-fi, they'll often show a single super developer create a virtual world that realistically no single human would have the time to create. Ready Player One comes to mind. Maybe Tron Legacy. But, with AI productivity, it looks like AI will allow such super developers to create monstrously large worlds. I can't wait to see this generation's Minecraft or the next Linus.