3 ms·

I'm not so sure that's a missing point or just an actual point. I'm not convinced myself AI will have much impact on the developers landscape, beyond better au

I'm not so sure that's a missing point or just an actual point. I'm not convinced myself AI will have much impact on the developers landscape, beyond better autocompletion and doc generation. All these fancy AI developers are cute, but we have had the cheaper vs lower quality trade-off available for quite some time now with outsourcing to emerging countries. When I was in my studies, we heard all the predictions of the destruction of software engineers because of outsourcing, the need to become an architect instead of a developer or you'll be replaced, etc. I've seen none of that happen over the years, except for very low skilled automation / CRUD jobs.

mschuster91 2y ago
> When I was in my studies, we heard all the predictions of the destruction of software engineers because of outsourcing, the need to become an architect instead of a developer or you'll be replaced, etc. A lot of low level stuff has been outsourced to India over the last decades, and more if you count second or even third level support (won't even include first level support that's not required to be on-site). C-levels only see the expenses savings, but how their employees feel about internal support being utter dogshit can't be quantified in a language that beancounters speak...
haswell 2y ago
> I'm not convinced myself AI will have much impact on the developers landscape, beyond better autocompletion and doc generation. I’ve been a developer for 20 years. Using an LLM to generate context-specific prototypes has completely changed my productivity. It has allowed me to start and finish projects that were previously relegated to “maybe someday” (read: never). It’s not clear what the net result will be in the long run, but it’s already changing what and how I build things, and I’m not nearly as bearish as I was before a few successful projects. I don’t think AI is going to replace good engineers. It’s going to make good engineers better engineers. This alone will lead to some interesting outcomes I think.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  > It has allowed me to start and finish projects that were previously relegated to “maybe someday” (read: never). I.e. stuff that probably never needed to get done, otherwise it would have been a higher priority than what you were otherwise working on.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    That is not true, see "mental health disorders" which I do suffer from. Me not doing something does not mean it never needed to be done. The opposite is true, too. Something I have done does not mean it had to be done, if that makes sense.
  - haswell 2y ago
    I couldn't disagree more. The world is full of unsolved problems and many of them are just time-expensive to fix. Significantly lowering the activation energy and time investment required totally changes the calculus. I wrote about one concrete use case I built to help me solve a long-standing clutter problem in a comment on another thread [0]. Not only did this unblock a project I'd been trying to get going for awhile (declutter my place), it taught me about Linux Kernel Gadgets and started a cascade of new future project ideas. It also makes trying harder things lower risk, i.e. I can fail quickly vs. having to spend 20 hours to see if it's worth pursuing. Setting aside basic productivity, as a high functioning depressed person, activation energy is a huge deal. Having the ability to get an idea to a stage that I can actually see results and work on it is a game changer. - [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43314906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43314906
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      This kind of thinking is why we need cloud-connected apps to run our dishwashers now.
      - haswell 2y ago
        This seems like a very strange conclusion. In what way is "I can solve real problems faster than before" analogous or related to companies building frivolous/unnecessary cloud-connected features?
- johnisgood 2y ago
  This is my experience as well.

mschuster91 2y ago

> When I was in my studies, we heard all the predictions of the destruction of software engineers because of outsourcing, the need to become an architect instead of a developer or you'll be replaced, etc. A lot of low level stuff has been outsourced to India over the last decades, and more if you count second or even third level support (won't even include first level support that's not required to be on-site). C-levels only see the expenses savings, but how their employees feel about internal support being utter dogshit can't be quantified in a language that beancounters speak...

haswell 2y ago

> I'm not convinced myself AI will have much impact on the developers landscape, beyond better autocompletion and doc generation. I’ve been a developer for 20 years. Using an LLM to generate context-specific prototypes has completely changed my productivity. It has allowed me to start and finish projects that were previously relegated to “maybe someday” (read: never). It’s not clear what the net result will be in the long run, but it’s already changing what and how I build things, and I’m not nearly as bearish as I was before a few successful projects. I don’t think AI is going to replace good engineers. It’s going to make good engineers better engineers. This alone will lead to some interesting outcomes I think.

SoftTalker 2y ago
> It has allowed me to start and finish projects that were previously relegated to “maybe someday” (read: never). I.e. stuff that probably never needed to get done, otherwise it would have been a higher priority than what you were otherwise working on.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  That is not true, see "mental health disorders" which I do suffer from. Me not doing something does not mean it never needed to be done. The opposite is true, too. Something I have done does not mean it had to be done, if that makes sense.
- haswell 2y ago
  I couldn't disagree more. The world is full of unsolved problems and many of them are just time-expensive to fix. Significantly lowering the activation energy and time investment required totally changes the calculus. I wrote about one concrete use case I built to help me solve a long-standing clutter problem in a comment on another thread [0]. Not only did this unblock a project I'd been trying to get going for awhile (declutter my place), it taught me about Linux Kernel Gadgets and started a cascade of new future project ideas. It also makes trying harder things lower risk, i.e. I can fail quickly vs. having to spend 20 hours to see if it's worth pursuing. Setting aside basic productivity, as a high functioning depressed person, activation energy is a huge deal. Having the ability to get an idea to a stage that I can actually see results and work on it is a game changer. - [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43314906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43314906
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    This kind of thinking is why we need cloud-connected apps to run our dishwashers now.
    - haswell 2y ago
      This seems like a very strange conclusion. In what way is "I can solve real problems faster than before" analogous or related to companies building frivolous/unnecessary cloud-connected features?
johnisgood 2y ago
This is my experience as well.