3 ms·

We're gonna get mini-milled. People with the attitude that real programmers are producing the high level product are going to get eaten slowly, from below, in

We're gonna get mini-milled. People with the attitude that real programmers are producing the high level product are going to get eaten slowly, from below, in the most embarrassing way possible. Embarrassing because they'll actually be right. LLMs aren't making the high quality products, it's true. But the low quality CRUD websites (think restaurant menus) will get swallowed by LLMs. You no longer need a guy to code up a model, run a migration, and throw it on AWS. You also don't need a guy to make the art. Advances in LLMs will feed on the money made from sweeping up all these crap jobs, which will legitimately vanish. That guy who can barely glue together a couple of pages, he is indeed finished. But the money will make better LLMs. They will swallow up the field from below.

dukeyukey 2y ago
> But the low quality CRUD websites (think restaurant menus) will get swallowed by LLMs. You no longer need a guy to code up a model, run a migration, and throw it on AWS. You also don't need a guy to make the art. To be fair those were eaten long ago by Wordpress and site builders.
- Macha 2y ago
  And even Facebook. I think the last time bespoke restaurant menu websites were a viable business was around 2010.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    That doesn't agree with my area at all. Most restaurants have menus or an app or both. Some have a basic website with phone number and link to an app. There seems to be some kind of app template many restaurants use which you can order from too.
    - jhanschoo 2y ago
      > I think the last time bespoke restaurant menu websites > There seems to be some kind of app template many restaurants use which you can order from too. I think you agree with the comment you are replying to, but glossed over the word bespoke. IME as a customer in a HCOL area a lot of restaurants use a white-label platform for their digital menu. They don't have the need or expertise to maintain a functional bespoke solution, and the white-label platform lends familiarity and trust to both payment and navigation.
  - nicksergeant 2y ago
    Have you personally tried? I have a business doing exactly that and have three restaurants paying between $300-400/month for a restaurant website -- and we don't even integrate directly with their POS / menu providers (Heartland).
Xelbair 2y ago
>But the low quality CRUD websites (think restaurant menus) will get swallowed by LLMs. You no longer need a guy to code up a model, run a migration, and throw it on AWS. You also don't need a guy to make the art. just like you don't need webmasters, if you remember that term. IF you are just writing CRUD apps, then yeah - you're screwed. If you're a junior, or want to get into the field? same, you're totally screwed. LLMs are great at soft tasks, or producing code that has been written thousand of times - boilerplate, CRUD stuff, straightforward scripts - but the usual problems aren't limited by typing speed, nor amount of boilerplate but by thinking and evaluating solutions and tradeoffs from business perspective. Also I'll be brutally honest - by the time the LLMs catch up to my generation's capabilities, we'll be already retired, and that's where the real crisis will start. No juniors, no capable people, most seniors and principal engineers are retired - and quite probably LLMs won't be able to fully replace them.
pdimitar 2y ago
Yeah, and it's always in the future, right? ;) I don't disagree btw. Stuff that is very easy to automate will absolutely be swallowed by LLMs or any other tool that's the iteration #13718 of people trying to automate boring stuff, or stuff they don't want to pay full programmer wages for. That much I am very much convinced of as well. But there are many other, rather nebulous shall we call them, claims, that I take issue with. Like "programming is soon going to be dead". I mean OK, they might believe it, but arguing it on HN is just funny.
0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
Who checks to see if the LLM swallowed it or not?
intelVISA 2y ago
Arguably you never really needed a SWE for those use cases, SWEs are for bespoke systems with specific constraints or esoteric platforms. "That guy who can barely glue together a couple of pages" was never going to provide much value as a developer, the lunches you describe were already eaten: LLMs are just the latest branding for selling solutions to those "crap jobs".
raxxorraxor 2y ago
I don't think they will vanish at all. A modern CRUD website (any software can be reduced to CRUD for that matter) is not trivially implemented and far beyond what current LLM can output. I think they will hit a wall before they will ever be able to do that. Also, configuration and infrastructure management is a large part of such a project and far out of scope as well. People build some useful tools for LLM to enable them to do anything besides outputting text and images. But it is quite laborious to really empower them to do anything still. LLM can indeed empower technical people. For example those working in automation can generate little Python or JavaScript scripts to push bits around, provided the endpoints have well known interfaces. That is indeed helpful, but the code still always needs manual review. Work for amateur web developers will likely change, but they certainly won't be out of work anytime soon. Although the most important factor is that most websites aren't really amateur land anymore, LLM or not.
throw09890989 2y ago
>> LLMs aren't making the high quality products, And who cares exactly? The only real criteria is whether the product is good _enough_ to bring in profit. And rightly so if you ask me. Also, far too many products build by human _experts_ are low quality. So, in a way we're more than ready for the LLM-quality products.

dukeyukey 2y ago

Macha 2y ago
And even Facebook. I think the last time bespoke restaurant menu websites were a viable business was around 2010.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  That doesn't agree with my area at all. Most restaurants have menus or an app or both. Some have a basic website with phone number and link to an app. There seems to be some kind of app template many restaurants use which you can order from too.
  - jhanschoo 2y ago
    > I think the last time bespoke restaurant menu websites > There seems to be some kind of app template many restaurants use which you can order from too. I think you agree with the comment you are replying to, but glossed over the word bespoke. IME as a customer in a HCOL area a lot of restaurants use a white-label platform for their digital menu. They don't have the need or expertise to maintain a functional bespoke solution, and the white-label platform lends familiarity and trust to both payment and navigation.
- nicksergeant 2y ago
  Have you personally tried? I have a business doing exactly that and have three restaurants paying between $300-400/month for a restaurant website -- and we don't even integrate directly with their POS / menu providers (Heartland).

Xelbair 2y ago

>But the low quality CRUD websites (think restaurant menus) will get swallowed by LLMs. You no longer need a guy to code up a model, run a migration, and throw it on AWS. You also don't need a guy to make the art. just like you don't need webmasters, if you remember that term. IF you are just writing CRUD apps, then yeah - you're screwed. If you're a junior, or want to get into the field? same, you're totally screwed. LLMs are great at soft tasks, or producing code that has been written thousand of times - boilerplate, CRUD stuff, straightforward scripts - but the usual problems aren't limited by typing speed, nor amount of boilerplate but by thinking and evaluating solutions and tradeoffs from business perspective. Also I'll be brutally honest - by the time the LLMs catch up to my generation's capabilities, we'll be already retired, and that's where the real crisis will start. No juniors, no capable people, most seniors and principal engineers are retired - and quite probably LLMs won't be able to fully replace them.

pdimitar 2y ago

Yeah, and it's always in the future, right? ;) I don't disagree btw. Stuff that is very easy to automate will absolutely be swallowed by LLMs or any other tool that's the iteration #13718 of people trying to automate boring stuff, or stuff they don't want to pay full programmer wages for. That much I am very much convinced of as well. But there are many other, rather nebulous shall we call them, claims, that I take issue with. Like "programming is soon going to be dead". I mean OK, they might believe it, but arguing it on HN is just funny.

0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago

Who checks to see if the LLM swallowed it or not?

intelVISA 2y ago

Arguably you never really needed a SWE for those use cases, SWEs are for bespoke systems with specific constraints or esoteric platforms. "That guy who can barely glue together a couple of pages" was never going to provide much value as a developer, the lunches you describe were already eaten: LLMs are just the latest branding for selling solutions to those "crap jobs".

raxxorraxor 2y ago

I don't think they will vanish at all. A modern CRUD website (any software can be reduced to CRUD for that matter) is not trivially implemented and far beyond what current LLM can output. I think they will hit a wall before they will ever be able to do that. Also, configuration and infrastructure management is a large part of such a project and far out of scope as well. People build some useful tools for LLM to enable them to do anything besides outputting text and images. But it is quite laborious to really empower them to do anything still. LLM can indeed empower technical people. For example those working in automation can generate little Python or JavaScript scripts to push bits around, provided the endpoints have well known interfaces. That is indeed helpful, but the code still always needs manual review. Work for amateur web developers will likely change, but they certainly won't be out of work anytime soon. Although the most important factor is that most websites aren't really amateur land anymore, LLM or not.

throw09890989 2y ago

>> LLMs aren't making the high quality products, And who cares exactly? The only real criteria is whether the product is good _enough_ to bring in profit. And rightly so if you ask me. Also, far too many products build by human _experts_ are low quality. So, in a way we're more than ready for the LLM-quality products.