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What evidence do we have that AI is actually replacing programmers already? The article treats messaging on this as a forgone conclusion, but I strongly suspect

What evidence do we have that AI is actually replacing programmers already? The article treats messaging on this as a forgone conclusion, but I strongly suspect it's all hype-cycle BS to cover layoffs, or a misreading of "Meta pivots to AI" headlines.

emseetech 2y ago
Even if it is a cover, many smaller companies follow the expressed reasoning of the larger ones.
makerofthings 2y ago
Part of my work is rapid prototyping of new products and technology to test out new ideas. I have a small team of really great generalists. 2 people have left over the last year and I didn't replace them because the existing team + chatGPT can easily take up the slack. So that's 2 people that didn't get hired that would have done without chatGPT.
3s 2y ago
For a lot of tasks like frontend development I’ve found that a tool like cursor can get you pretty far without much prior knowledge. IMO (and experience) many tasks that previously required to hiring a programmer or designer with knowledge of the latest frameworks can now be replaced by one motivated “prompt engineer” and some patience
- daveguy 2y ago
  The deeper it gets you into code without prior knowledge the deeper it gets you into debug hell. I assume the "motivated prompt engineer" would have to already be an experienced programmer at this point. Do you think someone who has only had an intro to programming / MBA / etc could do this right now with tools like cursor?
- goosejuice 2y ago
  I love cursor, but yeah no way in hell. This is where it chokes the most and I've been leaning on it for non trivial css for a year or more. If I didn't have experience with frontend it would be a shit show. If you replaced a fe/designer with a "prompt engineer" at this stage it would be incredibly irresponsible. Responsiveness, cohesive design, browser security, accessibility and cross browser compatibility are not easy problems for LLMs right now.
SirFatty 2y ago
Zuckerberg said it. https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/mark-zuckerberg-plans-to-replace-some-coders-with-ai-which-might-prove-tricky/91140118#:~:text=Lead-,Mark%20Zuckerberg%20Plans%20to%20Replace%20Some%20Coders%20With%20AI%2C%20Which,wrinkle%20on%20an%20old%20story. https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/mark-zuckerberg-plans-to-repla...
- causal 2y ago
  Planning to and succeeding at are very different things
  - SirFatty 2y ago
    I'd be willing to bet that "planning to" means the plan is being executed. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/meta-starts-eliminating-jobs-in-shift-to-find-ai-talent/ar-AA1yLTKo https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/meta-starts-eliminatin...
- icepat 2y ago
  Zuckerberg, as always, is well known for making excellent business decisions that lead to greater sector buy in. The Metaverse is going great.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    On the other hand, Instagram has been called one of the greatest acquisitions of all time only below the Apple/Next acquisition.
    - arrowsmith 2y ago
      That was 13 years ago. How are things going more recently?
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        $53 million in 2012 and $62.36 billion in profit last year…
chubot 2y ago
We'll probably never have evidence either way ... Did Google and Stack Overflow "replace" programmers? Yes, in the sense that I suspect that with the strict counterfactual -- taking them AWAY -- you would have to hire 21 people instead of 20, or 25 instead of 20, to do the same job. So strictly speaking, you could fire a bunch of people with the new tools. --- But in the same period, the industry expanded rapidly, and programmer salaries INCREASED So we didn't really notice or lament the change I expect that pretty much the same thing will happen. (There will also be some thresholds crossed, producing qualitative changes. e.g. Programmer CEOs became much more common in the 2010's than in the 1990's.) --- I think you can argue that some portion of the industry "got dumber" with Google/Stack Overflow too. Higher level languages and tech enabled that. Sometimes we never learn the underlying concepts, and spin our wheels on the surface Bad JavaScript ate our CPUs, and made the fans spin. Previous generations would never write code like that, because they didn't have the tools to, and the hardware wouldn't tolerate it. (They also wrote a lot of memory safety bugs we're still cleaning up, e.g. in the Expat XML parser) If I reflect deeply, I don't know a bunch of things that earlier generations did, though hopefully I know some new things :-P
- TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
  Google Coding is definitely a real problem. And I can't believe how wrong some of the answers on Stack Overflow are. But the real problems are managerial. Stonks must go up, and if that means chasing a ridiculous fantasy of replacing your workforce with LLMs then let's do that!!!!111!! It's all fun and games until you realise you can't run a consumer economy without consumers. Maybe the CEOs have decided they don't need workers or consumers any more. They're too busy marching into a bold future of AI and robot factories. Good luck with that. If there's anyone around a century from now trying to make sense of what's happening today, it's going to look like a collective psychotic episode to them.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    I don't think this is anyone's plan. It's the biggest argument against why it won't be the plan: who'll pay for all of it? Unless we can Factorio the world, it seems more likely we just won't do that.
ActionHank 2y ago
There is little evidence that AI is replacing engineers, but there is a whole lot of evidence that shareholders and execs really love the idea and are trying every angle to achieve it.
- only-one1701 2y ago
  If the latter is the case, then it's only a matter of time. Enshitification, etc.
- chubot 2y ago
  The funny thing is that "replacing engineers" is framed as cutting costs But that doesn't really lead to any market advantage, at least for tech companies. AI will also enable your competitors to cut costs. Who thinks they are going to have a monopoly on AI, which would be required for a durable advantage? --- What you want to do is get more of the rare, best programmers -- that's what shareholders and execs should be wondering about Instead, those programmers will be starting their own companies and competing with you
  - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
    If this works at all, they'll be telling AIs to start multiple companies and keeping the ones that work best. But if that works, it won't take long for "starting companies" and "being a CEO" to look like comically dated anachronisms. Instead of visual and content slop we'll have a corporate stonk slop. If ASI becomes a thing, it will be able to understand and manipulate the entirety of human culture - including economics and business - to create ends we can't imagine.
    - chubot 2y ago
      I would bet money this doesn't work The future of programming will be increasingly small numbers of highly skilled humans, augmented by AI (exactly how today we are literally augmented by Google and Stack Overflow -- who can claim they are not?) The idea of autonomous AIs creating and executing a complete money-making business is a marketing idea for AI companies --- Because if "you" can do it, why can't everyone else do it? I don't see a competitive advantage there Humans and AI are good at different things. The human+AI is going to outcompete AI only FOR A LONG time I will bet that will be past our lifetimes, for sure
zwnow 2y ago
Another issue is that the article assumes companies will let go of all programmers. They will make sure to keep some in case the fire spreads. Simple as that.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
It'll happen gradually over time, with more pressure on programmers to "get more done". I think it's useful to look at what has already happened at another, much smaller profession -- translators -- as a precursor to what will happen with programmers. 1. translation software does a mediocre job, barely useful as a tool; all jobs are safe 2. translation software does a decent job, now expected to be used as time-saving aid, expectations for translators increase, fewer translators needed/employed 3. translation software does a good job, translators now hired to proofread/check the software output rather than translate themselves, allowing them to do 3x to 4x as fast as before, requiring proportionally fewer translators 4. translation software, now driven by LLMs, does an excellent job, only cursory checks required; very few translators required mostly in specialized cases
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  I actually know a professional translator and while a year ago he was full of worry, he now is much more relaxed about it. It turns out that like art, many people just want a human doing the translation. There is a strong romantic element to it, and it seems humans just have a strong natural inclination to only want other humans facilitating communication.
  - arrowsmith 2y ago
    How do they know that a human is doing the translation? What's to stop someone from just c&ping the text into an LLM, giving it a quick proofread, then sending it back to the client and saying "I translated this"? Sounds like easy money, maybe I should get into the translation business.
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      I mean, they don't, but I can assure you there are far more profitable ways to be deceptive than being a faux translator haha
    - skydhash 2y ago
      The fact that the client is actually going to use the text and they will not find it funny when they're being laughed at. Or worse, being sued because of some situation caused by a confusion. I read Asian novels and you can quickly (within a chapter) discern if the translators have done a good job (And there's so many translation notes if the author relies on cultural elements).
anarticle 2y ago
Feels like C-suite thinks if they keep saying it, it will happen. Maybe! I think more likely programmers are experiencing a power spike. I think it's a great time to be small, if you can reap the benefits of these tools to deliver EVEN FASTER than large enterprise than you already are. Aider and a couple Mac minis and you can have a good time!
giantg2 2y ago
I'm feeling it at my non-tech company. They want more people to use Copilot and stuff and are giving out more bad ratings and PIPs to push devs out.
Workaccount2 2y ago
I can say my company stopped contracting for test system design, and we use a mix of models now to achieve the same results. Some of these have been running without issue for over a year now.
- aksosnckckd 2y ago
  As in writing test cases? I’ve seen devs write (heavily mocked) unit tests using only AI, but these are worse than no tests for a variety of reasons. Our company also used to contract for these tests…but only because they wanted to make the test coverage metric to up. They didn’t add any value but the contractor was offshore and cheap. If you’re able to have AI generate integration level tests (ie call an API then ensure database or external system is updated correctly - correctly is doing a lot of heavy lifting here) that would be amazing! You’re sitting on a goldmine, and I’d happily pay for these kind of tests.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    Amazingly, there is industry outside tech that uses software. We are an old school tangible goods manufacturing company. We use stacks of old grumbling equipment to do product verification tests, and LLMs to write the software that synchronizes them and interprets what they spit back out.
iainctduncan 2y ago
I can tell you from personal experience that investors are feeling pressure to magically reduce head count with AI to keep up with the joneses. It's pretty horrifying how little understanding or information some of the folks making these decisions have. (I work in tech diligence on software M&A and talk to investment committees as part of the job)
throwaway290 2y ago
There were massive layoffs in 2024 and continuing this year. No one will scream they are firing people for LLMs

emseetech 2y ago

Even if it is a cover, many smaller companies follow the expressed reasoning of the larger ones.

makerofthings 2y ago

Part of my work is rapid prototyping of new products and technology to test out new ideas. I have a small team of really great generalists. 2 people have left over the last year and I didn't replace them because the existing team + chatGPT can easily take up the slack. So that's 2 people that didn't get hired that would have done without chatGPT.

3s 2y ago

For a lot of tasks like frontend development I’ve found that a tool like cursor can get you pretty far without much prior knowledge. IMO (and experience) many tasks that previously required to hiring a programmer or designer with knowledge of the latest frameworks can now be replaced by one motivated “prompt engineer” and some patience

daveguy 2y ago
The deeper it gets you into code without prior knowledge the deeper it gets you into debug hell. I assume the "motivated prompt engineer" would have to already be an experienced programmer at this point. Do you think someone who has only had an intro to programming / MBA / etc could do this right now with tools like cursor?
goosejuice 2y ago
I love cursor, but yeah no way in hell. This is where it chokes the most and I've been leaning on it for non trivial css for a year or more. If I didn't have experience with frontend it would be a shit show. If you replaced a fe/designer with a "prompt engineer" at this stage it would be incredibly irresponsible. Responsiveness, cohesive design, browser security, accessibility and cross browser compatibility are not easy problems for LLMs right now.

SirFatty 2y ago

Zuckerberg said it. https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/mark-zuckerberg-plans-to-replace-some-coders-with-ai-which-might-prove-tricky/91140118#:~:text=Lead-,Mark%20Zuckerberg%20Plans%20to%20Replace%20Some%20Coders%20With%20AI%2C%20Which,wrinkle%20on%20an%20old%20story. https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/mark-zuckerberg-plans-to-repla...

causal 2y ago
Planning to and succeeding at are very different things
- SirFatty 2y ago
  I'd be willing to bet that "planning to" means the plan is being executed. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/meta-starts-eliminating-jobs-in-shift-to-find-ai-talent/ar-AA1yLTKo https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/meta-starts-eliminatin...
icepat 2y ago
Zuckerberg, as always, is well known for making excellent business decisions that lead to greater sector buy in. The Metaverse is going great.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  On the other hand, Instagram has been called one of the greatest acquisitions of all time only below the Apple/Next acquisition.
  - arrowsmith 2y ago
    That was 13 years ago. How are things going more recently?
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      $53 million in 2012 and $62.36 billion in profit last year…

chubot 2y ago

We'll probably never have evidence either way ... Did Google and Stack Overflow "replace" programmers? Yes, in the sense that I suspect that with the strict counterfactual -- taking them AWAY -- you would have to hire 21 people instead of 20, or 25 instead of 20, to do the same job. So strictly speaking, you could fire a bunch of people with the new tools. --- But in the same period, the industry expanded rapidly, and programmer salaries INCREASED So we didn't really notice or lament the change I expect that pretty much the same thing will happen. (There will also be some thresholds crossed, producing qualitative changes. e.g. Programmer CEOs became much more common in the 2010's than in the 1990's.) --- I think you can argue that some portion of the industry "got dumber" with Google/Stack Overflow too. Higher level languages and tech enabled that. Sometimes we never learn the underlying concepts, and spin our wheels on the surface Bad JavaScript ate our CPUs, and made the fans spin. Previous generations would never write code like that, because they didn't have the tools to, and the hardware wouldn't tolerate it. (They also wrote a lot of memory safety bugs we're still cleaning up, e.g. in the Expat XML parser) If I reflect deeply, I don't know a bunch of things that earlier generations did, though hopefully I know some new things :-P

TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
Google Coding is definitely a real problem. And I can't believe how wrong some of the answers on Stack Overflow are. But the real problems are managerial. Stonks must go up, and if that means chasing a ridiculous fantasy of replacing your workforce with LLMs then let's do that!!!!111!! It's all fun and games until you realise you can't run a consumer economy without consumers. Maybe the CEOs have decided they don't need workers or consumers any more. They're too busy marching into a bold future of AI and robot factories. Good luck with that. If there's anyone around a century from now trying to make sense of what's happening today, it's going to look like a collective psychotic episode to them.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I don't think this is anyone's plan. It's the biggest argument against why it won't be the plan: who'll pay for all of it? Unless we can Factorio the world, it seems more likely we just won't do that.

ActionHank 2y ago

There is little evidence that AI is replacing engineers, but there is a whole lot of evidence that shareholders and execs really love the idea and are trying every angle to achieve it.

only-one1701 2y ago
If the latter is the case, then it's only a matter of time. Enshitification, etc.
chubot 2y ago
The funny thing is that "replacing engineers" is framed as cutting costs But that doesn't really lead to any market advantage, at least for tech companies. AI will also enable your competitors to cut costs. Who thinks they are going to have a monopoly on AI, which would be required for a durable advantage? --- What you want to do is get more of the rare, best programmers -- that's what shareholders and execs should be wondering about Instead, those programmers will be starting their own companies and competing with you
- TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
  If this works at all, they'll be telling AIs to start multiple companies and keeping the ones that work best. But if that works, it won't take long for "starting companies" and "being a CEO" to look like comically dated anachronisms. Instead of visual and content slop we'll have a corporate stonk slop. If ASI becomes a thing, it will be able to understand and manipulate the entirety of human culture - including economics and business - to create ends we can't imagine.
  - chubot 2y ago
    I would bet money this doesn't work The future of programming will be increasingly small numbers of highly skilled humans, augmented by AI (exactly how today we are literally augmented by Google and Stack Overflow -- who can claim they are not?) The idea of autonomous AIs creating and executing a complete money-making business is a marketing idea for AI companies --- Because if "you" can do it, why can't everyone else do it? I don't see a competitive advantage there Humans and AI are good at different things. The human+AI is going to outcompete AI only FOR A LONG time I will bet that will be past our lifetimes, for sure

zwnow 2y ago

Another issue is that the article assumes companies will let go of all programmers. They will make sure to keep some in case the fire spreads. Simple as that.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

It'll happen gradually over time, with more pressure on programmers to "get more done". I think it's useful to look at what has already happened at another, much smaller profession -- translators -- as a precursor to what will happen with programmers. 1. translation software does a mediocre job, barely useful as a tool; all jobs are safe 2. translation software does a decent job, now expected to be used as time-saving aid, expectations for translators increase, fewer translators needed/employed 3. translation software does a good job, translators now hired to proofread/check the software output rather than translate themselves, allowing them to do 3x to 4x as fast as before, requiring proportionally fewer translators 4. translation software, now driven by LLMs, does an excellent job, only cursory checks required; very few translators required mostly in specialized cases

Workaccount2 2y ago
I actually know a professional translator and while a year ago he was full of worry, he now is much more relaxed about it. It turns out that like art, many people just want a human doing the translation. There is a strong romantic element to it, and it seems humans just have a strong natural inclination to only want other humans facilitating communication.
- arrowsmith 2y ago
  How do they know that a human is doing the translation? What's to stop someone from just c&ping the text into an LLM, giving it a quick proofread, then sending it back to the client and saying "I translated this"? Sounds like easy money, maybe I should get into the translation business.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    I mean, they don't, but I can assure you there are far more profitable ways to be deceptive than being a faux translator haha
  - skydhash 2y ago
    The fact that the client is actually going to use the text and they will not find it funny when they're being laughed at. Or worse, being sued because of some situation caused by a confusion. I read Asian novels and you can quickly (within a chapter) discern if the translators have done a good job (And there's so many translation notes if the author relies on cultural elements).

anarticle 2y ago

Feels like C-suite thinks if they keep saying it, it will happen. Maybe! I think more likely programmers are experiencing a power spike. I think it's a great time to be small, if you can reap the benefits of these tools to deliver EVEN FASTER than large enterprise than you already are. Aider and a couple Mac minis and you can have a good time!

giantg2 2y ago

I'm feeling it at my non-tech company. They want more people to use Copilot and stuff and are giving out more bad ratings and PIPs to push devs out.

Workaccount2 2y ago

I can say my company stopped contracting for test system design, and we use a mix of models now to achieve the same results. Some of these have been running without issue for over a year now.

aksosnckckd 2y ago
As in writing test cases? I’ve seen devs write (heavily mocked) unit tests using only AI, but these are worse than no tests for a variety of reasons. Our company also used to contract for these tests…but only because they wanted to make the test coverage metric to up. They didn’t add any value but the contractor was offshore and cheap. If you’re able to have AI generate integration level tests (ie call an API then ensure database or external system is updated correctly - correctly is doing a lot of heavy lifting here) that would be amazing! You’re sitting on a goldmine, and I’d happily pay for these kind of tests.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Amazingly, there is industry outside tech that uses software. We are an old school tangible goods manufacturing company. We use stacks of old grumbling equipment to do product verification tests, and LLMs to write the software that synchronizes them and interprets what they spit back out.

iainctduncan 2y ago

I can tell you from personal experience that investors are feeling pressure to magically reduce head count with AI to keep up with the joneses. It's pretty horrifying how little understanding or information some of the folks making these decisions have. (I work in tech diligence on software M&A and talk to investment committees as part of the job)

throwaway290 2y ago

There were massive layoffs in 2024 and continuing this year. No one will scream they are firing people for LLMs