5 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg Announces the "Beginning of the End" for Programmers

33 points by xgstation 2y ago

WheelsAtLarge 2y ago
From what I've experienced I have to agree. "However, this transition presents a paradox: who will oversee and correct AI-generated code? Even the most advanced AI models are prone to errors, necessitating human oversight to ensure reliability and security." I see a new role for programmers. The ex-coders will oversee quality control and step in as needed in the future. Programmers will probably have a few more years -less than 10yrs- but long term their role will radically change.
- klooney 2y ago
  The future of programming is SRE work for an engineering team of robots.
  - fullshark 2y ago
    AI augmented coders from India rather
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    Future? Hmmm... Would it really be so different from what we've been doing for several decades? A great many once-manual tasks have already been delegated to a bajillion logic gates and libraries, and a rather large part of the job is managing them to play together.
readyplayernull 2y ago
Another metaversish prediction. Someone proposed this nice project AI will fail at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43120035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43120035
colesantiago 2y ago
If everyone is a programmer / coder since they have an AI software engineer on hand, I'm hoping that they would be comfortable with long term maintenance. As entropy marches on with more AI generated lines of code in the codebase and software, APIs, tooling have breaking changes, will these new class of "vibe coder" / "creator coder" have the means and time to maintain their massive codebase? I think AI is good for MVP's but if we're talking 10-30M lines of code then it might not be the best tool for this.
mediumsmart 2y ago
He probably meant enshittification industry employed programmers.
gunian 2y ago
larry elon and bill are all on cool aura quests can we petition to get zuck to clean up bots before anything else?
- pipeline_peak 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - gunian 2y ago
    lol theres a time and a place ...
    - pipeline_peak 2y ago
      I'm a bit of an HN pariah :^)
      - gunian 2y ago
        no worries im an all around existence pariah :)
ddmma 2y ago
This guy should focus more on fixing the ai generated plague that is currently waving his social media network, but instead seems “not to care too much” as long it keeps users busy.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pipeline_peak 2y ago
It feels like the only thing AI doesn’t have on us (yet) is the ability to drill into legacy code bases. Of course those code bases were written by humans during a time when coding was more expensive because we didn’t have AI to do it for us. Because of that, I wonder if legacy code bases will be less common in the future. The only prediction I’m confident in is that it’s a bleak future for devs whose skillset consists of languages rather than interests. I’m one of those devs.
tw1231728 2y ago
The programmers can become copyright lawyers and sue Meta into oblivion. In the EU they can block Meta. But how would Zuckerberg know, he has never written anything special.
- pipeline_peak 2y ago
  >how would Zuckerberg know, he has never written anything special. That’s the whole point, why even bother if AI does it faster? Do you buy hand crafted furniture? Probably not because even if it’s better, it’s way more expensive.
  - tw1231278 2y ago
    Ok, I did not know that this was a forum where software engineers want to get unemployed by amplifying and normalizing their masters' lies about "AI".
    - pipeline_peak 2y ago
      I didn’t know this was a forum where engineers cry about the future moving past them instead of learning to adapt and evolve.
      - twb129381289 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - StefanBatory 2y ago
        Nobody likes to lose their jobs, especially when it seems that it is the entire industry that will crash.
        pipeline_peak 2y ago
        If a machine can replace your job, then your job no longer has impact or meaning. Doesn’t matter if you work in a call center or as an attorney. What’s the point in doing something a machine can replace? I know it’s harsh, but that type of thinking is what’ll help you, not this thread of nervous wallowing.
niemandhier 2y ago
The solution to every problem in programming is another rlayerbof abstraction. For me programming was always about expressing my intend. I don’t think about the instructions the compiler generates. I also rarely think about the expanded form of a template expression. If ai just acts as an it remediate between me and the compiler by adding jet-another- abstraction between me and the generated instruction, why should I care? I will still have to somehow explain the machine what it is that I want.
- archagon 2y ago
  An AI is not a layer of abstraction. It’s not deterministic, it’s frequently wrong, and its scope cannot be clearly defined.
DandyDev 2y ago
I don't understand why so many people subscribe to this "prediction". It seems unsubstantiated hyperbole to me. There are a few reasons why I don't believe AI will replace programmers anytime soon: 1. The job of a developer/engineer entails so much more than writing code. Figuring out what the business wants, turning that into a good (system) design, etc. takes up more time than the actual coding itself. Unless of course you take "programmer" literally, but I have not seen many companies that still hire programmers in the most narrow sense, that only focus on writing code. 2. Support and maintenance is a huge part of the job that I don't see AI doing. Theoretically you could let humans focus on that part, but I believe support and maintenence will become much more costly if the people doing they job have no familiarity with the code because they didn't write it. 3. As evidenced by many comments in the thread elsewhere on HN about the announcement of Claude Sonnet 3.7 AI still routinely makes mistakes that are super easy to spot and verify. As long as that remains the case, it's going to be detrimental to the success of you company if you give AI too much autonomy. I know people will argue that AI is evolving so fast that the above will be solved soon. But I think all three aspects I mentioned are such fundamental roadblocks that they won't be solved soon. What I do believe in is engineers becoming so much more productive as AI evolves.
- truculent 2y ago
  I don’t understand why so many people are convinced that these newfangled automobiles will replace horses. It sounds like unsubstantiated hype to me. There are a few reasons why I don’t believe cars will replace horses anytime soon: 1. Riding and caring for a horse is about much more than just transportation. Horses have been an integral part of life for centuries—they provide companionship, work the land, and serve in countless roles beyond simple travel. Even if you consider only their use for getting from place to place, riding is a skill that people take pride in, and I don’t see that disappearing overnight. 2. The maintenance and upkeep of these machines seem like a nightmare. A horse may need food and care, but it doesn’t require expensive parts, specialized fuel, or constant repairs from trained mechanics. If a carriage breaks, any competent craftsman can fix it—but if one of these new engines fails, who will know how to repair it? 3. From what I’ve seen, these automobiles are still prone to frequent breakdowns and failures. They get stuck in mud, they require smooth roads (which hardly exist outside cities), and they are unreliable compared to a well-trained horse. If a machine fails, you’re stranded—whereas a horse will always find its way home. I know people will argue that these machines are improving rapidly and that soon they’ll overcome these issues. But I think these challenges are fundamental and won’t be solved anytime soon. What I do believe, however, is that for certain tasks, automobiles may assist in making travel more efficient. But replace the horse entirely? I just don’t see it happening.
bob1029 2y ago
The hard part is the customer, not the technology. Unless you are working on something very unusual, it should be straightforward to implement anything given perfect requirements. Much (most?) of my time as a software engineer has been spent poking absurd holes in customer stories such that they are compelled to provide the actual requirements. This edge case probing is what LLMs are infamously bad at. They are too eager to please. There's not an inner asshole with an aggressive aesthetic preference that was built up over months of interchange with the client. The constant here is "agency". LLMs inherently lack it. So, it has to come from somewhere. How many layers of abstraction do we need to put in between the will of the customer and the product they paid for? I think a viable solution could be to use the LLM as a direct bridge between your product and the customer. Tool calling with these new reasoning models is a hell of a drug. It's not that difficult to just write this code. 99% of it is string interpolation. You don't need copilot for this.
- falcor84 2y ago
  > The constant here is "agency". LLMs inherently lack it. So, it has to come from somewhere. I don't understand your use of "inherently" here. Even if you define LLMs as not having agency, I don't see any inherent limitation against tacking agency on top of them. As you alluded to even just a basic loop of `if (!goalAchieved()) {promptWithToolCalling()}` is arguably agency, no? You actually suggested connecting the LLM directly between the product and the customer, such that the customer specifies the goal. What's stopping tech from going in this direction?
  - moe091 2y ago
    I agree with the fact that LLM's inherently lack agency and I think it's a pretty subtle distinction but it's an extremely consequential one. AI cannot self-initiate anything, they are only able to produce an output as a response to input. The impetus for their action is always an idea that came from a humans mind, no matter how indirect that is. That much is inarguable imo, the possible point of contention is whether the same can be said about humans, and that's a very philosophical question but I am very convinced it's not the case(I won't get into my own philosophical beliefs here). Despite the fact that the distinction is very philosophical, I think the implications are very practical. Without it's own initiating energy everything an AI produces will be a response to an input, and it's response will be constrained by the bounds implied by that input. The specific type of dialectic between the programmer and the person giving requirements, which leads to creating the ACTUAL requirements, is impossible to happen with an AI, because a dialectic requires two opposed agents/forces while an AI is incapable of being an opposing force because it is only a derivative or product of whatever force is providing it's input; basically, it is constrained inside a box defined by the input it is given, and precisely what is needed for true synthesis(new ideas/thoughts, as opposed to an analytic breaking down of the already proposed ideas) is a whole separate box to interact with the one defined by the input. My explanation is extremely abstract and will probably only make sense to someone who almost agrees with me already, but that's the best I could do. I'm sure there is a more down-to-earth way to explain this but I guess my understanding isn't good enough to find it yet. In my defense I do think this particular issue of agency in AI is one of the most subtle and philosophical problems in the world right now that actual has practical implications.
rrgok 2y ago
What should I focus on from now on? If I want to change career path, what will pay me as good as a Software Engineer given that I’m 34 years old? Let’s I can take a break of 4 years to take another degree, what would be the wisest choice? I’m at lost honestly. If not 2025, it would 2030 or 2040. I fucking love software engineering.
- jdlshore 2y ago
  Ignore the hype. Every advancement in programming technology has been followed by an expansion in the need for programmers. This too shall pass.
  - falcor84 2y ago
    Every advancement in technology had for a long while been followed by an expansion in manufacturing roles, until it no longer did.
- androiddrew 2y ago
  Brother I am 39 and I am there with you. Increasingly the interview process in software has just become LeetCode standard to gate people. Did I personally build a tool that processed 120M in sales annually, sure. Can you balance a BST? No? Then fuck off. Personally, I see robotics as something worth moving towards. It’s the intersection of software, mechanics, electronics, and math. Maybe it’s just time to move into management…
- fullshark 2y ago
  Just keep getting better, the risk is there's going to be many more software engineers, using AI tools, which is going to lower wages more so than AI will make all software engineers obsolete. This nonsense is about recalibrating the SWE labor market and garnering hype for tech. The primary product the technology industry creates is company equities, and their primary customer is anxious CEOs/hedge/pension funds.
alsoforgotmypwd 2y ago
Maximum AI bubble hype. This is all about suppressing wages, laying off American engineers, and rationalizing many tens of billions wasted on building AI infrastructure no one needed and no one will use.
StefanBatory 2y ago
Seeing the progress in LLMs... I do believe it. One software engineer will do in the future what would take an entire team in the past. Now what to do? I have just finished my undergrad in software engineering and got admitted to Masters, but I feel that's a mistake. At the same time, I never knew what else to do in my life but programming.
zaphirplane 2y ago
Facebook is the f in FAANG paying at the top of range and he is carrying a grudge about the salaries.
fnqi8ckfek 2y ago
[dead]
beardyw 2y ago
Well AI could create machine code and not bother with languages. Then we can say programming is ended. Can't see that on any horizon.
wturner 2y ago
Market yourself as a developer that untangles the mess AI generates.
pb060 2y ago
> leaving only a small number of highly specialized positions available. Stupid question: how do you become a high level programmer if entry and mid level roles disappear?

33 points by xgstation 2y ago

From what I've experienced I have to agree. "However, this transition presents a paradox: who will oversee and correct AI-generated code? Even the most advanced AI models are prone to errors, necessitating human oversight to ensure reliability and security." I see a new role for programmers. The ex-coders will oversee quality control and step in as needed in the future. Programmers will probably have a few more years -less than 10yrs- but long term their role will radically change.

klooney 2y ago
The future of programming is SRE work for an engineering team of robots.
- fullshark 2y ago
  AI augmented coders from India rather
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Future? Hmmm... Would it really be so different from what we've been doing for several decades? A great many once-manual tasks have already been delegated to a bajillion logic gates and libraries, and a rather large part of the job is managing them to play together.

readyplayernull 2y ago

Another metaversish prediction. Someone proposed this nice project AI will fail at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43120035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43120035

colesantiago 2y ago

If everyone is a programmer / coder since they have an AI software engineer on hand, I'm hoping that they would be comfortable with long term maintenance. As entropy marches on with more AI generated lines of code in the codebase and software, APIs, tooling have breaking changes, will these new class of "vibe coder" / "creator coder" have the means and time to maintain their massive codebase? I think AI is good for MVP's but if we're talking 10-30M lines of code then it might not be the best tool for this.

mediumsmart 2y ago

He probably meant enshittification industry employed programmers.

gunian 2y ago

larry elon and bill are all on cool aura quests can we petition to get zuck to clean up bots before anything else?

pipeline_peak 2y ago
[flagged]
- gunian 2y ago
  lol theres a time and a place ...
  - pipeline_peak 2y ago
    I'm a bit of an HN pariah :^)
    - gunian 2y ago
      no worries im an all around existence pariah :)

ddmma 2y ago

This guy should focus more on fixing the ai generated plague that is currently waving his social media network, but instead seems “not to care too much” as long it keeps users busy.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pipeline_peak 2y ago

It feels like the only thing AI doesn’t have on us (yet) is the ability to drill into legacy code bases. Of course those code bases were written by humans during a time when coding was more expensive because we didn’t have AI to do it for us. Because of that, I wonder if legacy code bases will be less common in the future. The only prediction I’m confident in is that it’s a bleak future for devs whose skillset consists of languages rather than interests. I’m one of those devs.

tw1231728 2y ago

The programmers can become copyright lawyers and sue Meta into oblivion. In the EU they can block Meta. But how would Zuckerberg know, he has never written anything special.

pipeline_peak 2y ago
>how would Zuckerberg know, he has never written anything special. That’s the whole point, why even bother if AI does it faster? Do you buy hand crafted furniture? Probably not because even if it’s better, it’s way more expensive.
- tw1231278 2y ago
  Ok, I did not know that this was a forum where software engineers want to get unemployed by amplifying and normalizing their masters' lies about "AI".
  - pipeline_peak 2y ago
    I didn’t know this was a forum where engineers cry about the future moving past them instead of learning to adapt and evolve.
    - twb129381289 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - StefanBatory 2y ago
      Nobody likes to lose their jobs, especially when it seems that it is the entire industry that will crash.
      - pipeline_peak 2y ago
        If a machine can replace your job, then your job no longer has impact or meaning. Doesn’t matter if you work in a call center or as an attorney. What’s the point in doing something a machine can replace? I know it’s harsh, but that type of thinking is what’ll help you, not this thread of nervous wallowing.

niemandhier 2y ago

The solution to every problem in programming is another rlayerbof abstraction. For me programming was always about expressing my intend. I don’t think about the instructions the compiler generates. I also rarely think about the expanded form of a template expression. If ai just acts as an it remediate between me and the compiler by adding jet-another- abstraction between me and the generated instruction, why should I care? I will still have to somehow explain the machine what it is that I want.

archagon 2y ago
An AI is not a layer of abstraction. It’s not deterministic, it’s frequently wrong, and its scope cannot be clearly defined.

DandyDev 2y ago

I don't understand why so many people subscribe to this "prediction". It seems unsubstantiated hyperbole to me. There are a few reasons why I don't believe AI will replace programmers anytime soon: 1. The job of a developer/engineer entails so much more than writing code. Figuring out what the business wants, turning that into a good (system) design, etc. takes up more time than the actual coding itself. Unless of course you take "programmer" literally, but I have not seen many companies that still hire programmers in the most narrow sense, that only focus on writing code. 2. Support and maintenance is a huge part of the job that I don't see AI doing. Theoretically you could let humans focus on that part, but I believe support and maintenence will become much more costly if the people doing they job have no familiarity with the code because they didn't write it. 3. As evidenced by many comments in the thread elsewhere on HN about the announcement of Claude Sonnet 3.7 AI still routinely makes mistakes that are super easy to spot and verify. As long as that remains the case, it's going to be detrimental to the success of you company if you give AI too much autonomy. I know people will argue that AI is evolving so fast that the above will be solved soon. But I think all three aspects I mentioned are such fundamental roadblocks that they won't be solved soon. What I do believe in is engineers becoming so much more productive as AI evolves.

truculent 2y ago
I don’t understand why so many people are convinced that these newfangled automobiles will replace horses. It sounds like unsubstantiated hype to me. There are a few reasons why I don’t believe cars will replace horses anytime soon: 1. Riding and caring for a horse is about much more than just transportation. Horses have been an integral part of life for centuries—they provide companionship, work the land, and serve in countless roles beyond simple travel. Even if you consider only their use for getting from place to place, riding is a skill that people take pride in, and I don’t see that disappearing overnight. 2. The maintenance and upkeep of these machines seem like a nightmare. A horse may need food and care, but it doesn’t require expensive parts, specialized fuel, or constant repairs from trained mechanics. If a carriage breaks, any competent craftsman can fix it—but if one of these new engines fails, who will know how to repair it? 3. From what I’ve seen, these automobiles are still prone to frequent breakdowns and failures. They get stuck in mud, they require smooth roads (which hardly exist outside cities), and they are unreliable compared to a well-trained horse. If a machine fails, you’re stranded—whereas a horse will always find its way home. I know people will argue that these machines are improving rapidly and that soon they’ll overcome these issues. But I think these challenges are fundamental and won’t be solved anytime soon. What I do believe, however, is that for certain tasks, automobiles may assist in making travel more efficient. But replace the horse entirely? I just don’t see it happening.

bob1029 2y ago

The hard part is the customer, not the technology. Unless you are working on something very unusual, it should be straightforward to implement anything given perfect requirements. Much (most?) of my time as a software engineer has been spent poking absurd holes in customer stories such that they are compelled to provide the actual requirements. This edge case probing is what LLMs are infamously bad at. They are too eager to please. There's not an inner asshole with an aggressive aesthetic preference that was built up over months of interchange with the client. The constant here is "agency". LLMs inherently lack it. So, it has to come from somewhere. How many layers of abstraction do we need to put in between the will of the customer and the product they paid for? I think a viable solution could be to use the LLM as a direct bridge between your product and the customer. Tool calling with these new reasoning models is a hell of a drug. It's not that difficult to just write this code. 99% of it is string interpolation. You don't need copilot for this.

falcor84 2y ago
> The constant here is "agency". LLMs inherently lack it. So, it has to come from somewhere. I don't understand your use of "inherently" here. Even if you define LLMs as not having agency, I don't see any inherent limitation against tacking agency on top of them. As you alluded to even just a basic loop of `if (!goalAchieved()) {promptWithToolCalling()}` is arguably agency, no? You actually suggested connecting the LLM directly between the product and the customer, such that the customer specifies the goal. What's stopping tech from going in this direction?
- moe091 2y ago
  I agree with the fact that LLM's inherently lack agency and I think it's a pretty subtle distinction but it's an extremely consequential one. AI cannot self-initiate anything, they are only able to produce an output as a response to input. The impetus for their action is always an idea that came from a humans mind, no matter how indirect that is. That much is inarguable imo, the possible point of contention is whether the same can be said about humans, and that's a very philosophical question but I am very convinced it's not the case(I won't get into my own philosophical beliefs here). Despite the fact that the distinction is very philosophical, I think the implications are very practical. Without it's own initiating energy everything an AI produces will be a response to an input, and it's response will be constrained by the bounds implied by that input. The specific type of dialectic between the programmer and the person giving requirements, which leads to creating the ACTUAL requirements, is impossible to happen with an AI, because a dialectic requires two opposed agents/forces while an AI is incapable of being an opposing force because it is only a derivative or product of whatever force is providing it's input; basically, it is constrained inside a box defined by the input it is given, and precisely what is needed for true synthesis(new ideas/thoughts, as opposed to an analytic breaking down of the already proposed ideas) is a whole separate box to interact with the one defined by the input. My explanation is extremely abstract and will probably only make sense to someone who almost agrees with me already, but that's the best I could do. I'm sure there is a more down-to-earth way to explain this but I guess my understanding isn't good enough to find it yet. In my defense I do think this particular issue of agency in AI is one of the most subtle and philosophical problems in the world right now that actual has practical implications.

rrgok 2y ago

What should I focus on from now on? If I want to change career path, what will pay me as good as a Software Engineer given that I’m 34 years old? Let’s I can take a break of 4 years to take another degree, what would be the wisest choice? I’m at lost honestly. If not 2025, it would 2030 or 2040. I fucking love software engineering.

jdlshore 2y ago
Ignore the hype. Every advancement in programming technology has been followed by an expansion in the need for programmers. This too shall pass.
- falcor84 2y ago
  Every advancement in technology had for a long while been followed by an expansion in manufacturing roles, until it no longer did.
androiddrew 2y ago
Brother I am 39 and I am there with you. Increasingly the interview process in software has just become LeetCode standard to gate people. Did I personally build a tool that processed 120M in sales annually, sure. Can you balance a BST? No? Then fuck off. Personally, I see robotics as something worth moving towards. It’s the intersection of software, mechanics, electronics, and math. Maybe it’s just time to move into management…
fullshark 2y ago
Just keep getting better, the risk is there's going to be many more software engineers, using AI tools, which is going to lower wages more so than AI will make all software engineers obsolete. This nonsense is about recalibrating the SWE labor market and garnering hype for tech. The primary product the technology industry creates is company equities, and their primary customer is anxious CEOs/hedge/pension funds.

alsoforgotmypwd 2y ago

Maximum AI bubble hype. This is all about suppressing wages, laying off American engineers, and rationalizing many tens of billions wasted on building AI infrastructure no one needed and no one will use.

StefanBatory 2y ago

Seeing the progress in LLMs... I do believe it. One software engineer will do in the future what would take an entire team in the past. Now what to do? I have just finished my undergrad in software engineering and got admitted to Masters, but I feel that's a mistake. At the same time, I never knew what else to do in my life but programming.

zaphirplane 2y ago

Facebook is the f in FAANG paying at the top of range and he is carrying a grudge about the salaries.

fnqi8ckfek 2y ago

[dead]

beardyw 2y ago

Well AI could create machine code and not bother with languages. Then we can say programming is ended. Can't see that on any horizon.

wturner 2y ago

Market yourself as a developer that untangles the mess AI generates.

pb060 2y ago

> leaving only a small number of highly specialized positions available. Stupid question: how do you become a high level programmer if entry and mid level roles disappear?