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"I firmly believe that AI will not replace developers, but a developer using AI will replace a developer who does not." Ugh, anyone who says that and really be

"I firmly believe that AI will not replace developers, but a developer using AI will replace a developer who does not." Ugh, anyone who says that and really believes it can no longer see common sense through the hype goggles. It's just stupid and completely 100% wrong, like saying all musicians will use autotune in the future because it makes the music better. It's the same as betting that there will be no new inventions, no new art, no works of genius unless the creator is taking vitamin C pills. It's one of the most un-serious claims I can imagine making. It automatically marks the speaker as a clown divorced from basic facts about human ability

atonse 1y ago
I disagree. While there are developers that truly build new technology and invent novel solutions, the overwhelming majority of developers who are paid for their work daily do pretty mundane and boring software development. They are implementing business logic, building forms, building tables, etc. And AI already excels at building those sorts of things faster and with cleaner code. I’ve never once seen a model generate code that’s as ugly and unreadable as a lot of the low quality code I’ve seen in my career (especially from Salesforce “devs” for example) And even the ones that do the more creative problem solving can benefit from AI agents helping with research, documentation, data migration scripts, etc.
- conartist6 1y ago
  I'm one working on novel tech, without AI. I've never been doing more valuable work or been more in command of my craft. Yet the blanket statement is that I will fail and be replaced, and in fact that people like me don't exist! So heck yeah I'll come clap back on that.
  - jennyholzer 1y ago
    Continuing to develop my craft in the 4th straight year of numbskulls claiming that Chat GPT is the end of history has made me extraordinarily confident in my ability to secure lucrative developer work for the rest of my life.
    - cindyllm 1y ago
      [dead]
    - atonse 1y ago
      It is not productive to call people numbskulls and make straw-man arguments just because you don't agree with their statements, or may not have observed the same benefits that they have. There is absolutely something real here, whether you choose to believe it or not. I'd recommend taking a good faith and open minded look at the last few months of developments. See where it can benefit you (and where it still falls way short). So even if you may have arrived at your conclusion years ago, I assure you that things continue to improve by the week. You will be pleasantly surprised. This is not all or nothing, nor does it have to be.
      - jennyholzer 1y ago
        [flagged]
  - infecto 1y ago
    Your interpretation of the original quote is so far off that I would question your interpretation of the world. Sure novel stuff is being built but the vast majority of code at all sizes of companies has been written before in some iteration. Even for the novel work being done, it’s being surrounded by layers of code that has probably being written before. Are engineers going anywhere? No. But I also don’t think it’s far fetched to see a possible near term of competent engineers who use AI tools being more productive than the ones who don’t. I am not talking about copy and pasting but rather thoughtful use of tooling.
    - conartist6 1y ago
      But "more productive" is a wording I also take issue with. Code is like law. The goal isn't to have a lot of it. Come to me when by "more productive" you actually mean that the person using the LLM deleted more lines of code than anyone else around them while preserving the stability and power of the system
      - infecto 1y ago
        [flagged]
        jennyholzer 1y ago
        I thought you were supposed to be boosting AI? Why are you so bitter? You aren't going to sell any snake oil with this venomous strategy.
        conartist6 1y ago
        I think I started the bitterness. I'm sorry. Everyone has genuine hurt. People who have bought the AI product are hurt because they're weakened and vulnerable by their dependence on buying their own productivity back from a reseller who is now raising the prices. I get cheesed off cause the AI people disrespect hard work and try to devalue its rewards, and that message is just toxic to anyone trying to learn. You can't master a musical instrument by paying an assistant to practice it for you.
  - atonse 1y ago
    Right, I chose my words carefully when I said the "overwhelming majority" – and not "every single developer"
- apwell23 1y ago
  > the overwhelming majority of developers who are paid for their work daily do pretty mundane and boring software developmet So are musicians. We think of them as doing creative stuff but a vast majority is mundane.
  - staunton 1y ago
    Most musicians (i.e. non-famous ones) get most of their income from teaching students. I don't think such a model makes sense for developers (though who knows, maybe at some time in the future there will be significant numbers of people programming as a hobby and wanting to be coached by a human...)
    - hecanjog 1y ago
      It really depends. I think if there's a majority trend, it's just to have another job of any kind.
- myko 1y ago
  > and with cleaner code I use AI pretty extensively and encourage my folks to use it as well but I've yet to see this come directly from an LLM. With human effort after the fact, sure, but LLMs tend to write inscrutable messes when left to their own devices.
Kim_Bruning 1y ago
A surprisingly large number of musicians do use things like written music (a medieval invention, but came into its own in the renaissance) or amplifiers (a modern one).
- conartist6 1y ago
  Sure but that's different than saying "if you don't use those things you are worthless and will fail"
  - Kim_Bruning 1y ago
    Ah, I personally read it as "Use of good tools makes you more competitive", but you're right that "I firmly believe that AI will not replace developers, but a developer using AI will replace a developer who does not." could have multiple other readings too.
    - boleary-gl 1y ago
      Author and Kilo Code team member here - yes your interpretation is what I meant...but to be fair as you mention it could be read multiple ways. Let's be fair - I made it intentionally a little provocative :)
      - conartist6 1y ago
        Haha I'm glad to hear it, because I do the same of course. What I might not have mentioned is that I've spent the last 5 years and 20,000 or so hours building an IDE from scratch. Not a fork of VSCode, mind you, but the real deal: a new "kernel" and integration layer with abilities that VSCode and its forks can't even dream of. It's a proper race and I'm about to drop the hammer on you.
  - shepherdjerred 1y ago
    This is true for 99% of developers who aren't particularly talented or driven, e.g. the average engineer who treats their job as a job and not their passion.
jennyholzer 1y ago
[flagged]
aeon_ai 1y ago
AI isn't a stylistic preference or minor enhancement, but cognitive augmentation that allows developers to navigate complexity at scales human cognition wasn't designed for. Just as the developer who refused to adopt version control, IDEs, or Stack Overflow eventually became unemployable, those who reject tools that fundamentally expand their problem-solving capacity will find themselves unable to compete with those who can architect solutions across larger possibility spaces on smaller teams. Will it be used for absolutely every problem? No - There are clearly places where humans are needed. But rejecting the enormous impact this will have on the workforce is trading hype goggles for a bucket of sand.
- catmanjan 1y ago
  Maybe somehow this will be true in the future, but I am finding that as soon as you work on a novel or undocumented or non internet available problem it is just a hallucinating junior dev
  - mcny 1y ago
    The dirty secret is most of the time we are NOT working on anything novel at all. It is pretty much a CRUD application and it is pretty much a master detail flow.
    - jennyholzer 1y ago
      I work on novel technologies.
      - catmanjan 1y ago
        Yeah me too, better off buying something if it already exists
    - NoGravitas 1y ago
      Even for completely uninteresting CRUD work, you're better off with better deterministic tooling (scaffolding for templates, macros for code, better abstractions generally). Unfortunately, past a certain low level, we're stuck rolling our own for these things. I'm not sure why, but I am guessing it has to do with them not being profitable to produce and sell.
jennyholzer 1y ago
[flagged]
- alt227 1y ago
  Typical opinion of someone who has not yet tried developing with ai. When you finally give it a go you will feel stupid for having this opinion. I did.
- TrackerFF 1y ago
  I think it is great to take pride in ones craft, but in the end it comes down to this: We create software for users. If the user can't feel any difference in quality between human made software, or AI made software, then it does not mater. It is that easy. If AI makes better software, at lower prices, human developers will become obsolete. It is the natural way of life. Once we had telephone operators, now we don't. Once you had to be a good tradesman with good knowledge in how to use a mallet/hammer, axe, chisel, etc. to build a house - now you don't. You don't get awarded for being old-fashioned.
  - jennyholzer 1y ago
    I make better software because I don't think like this.
    - danielbln 1y ago
      That's wonderful, I hope someone will continue to pay you for it, and not go for the 80% solution that is 1000x cheaper. If you're a deeply specialized IC, you're probably good. If you write the perfect, elegant, hand-set code to do CRUD or implement run-of-the-mill business logic, probably not.
      - jennyholzer 1y ago
        Your code is slop. Your coworkers can tell that Chat GPT wrote your PR.
bubblyworld 1y ago
Lol, I think making confident claims in either direction is total copium at this point. It's abundantly obvious that LLM-based tools are useful, it's just a question of what we'll settle on using them for and to what degree. Nobody knows how this will play out yet. Reality does not care about your feelings, unfortunately.
- theshrike79 1y ago
  Just completely ignoring LLMs is like not wanting to use autocomplete or language servers, preferring to hand-craft everything. But on the other hand there is the other end who think AGI coming in a few months and LLMs are omniscient knowledge machines. There is a sweet spot in the middle.
  - chuckadams 1y ago
    There's certainly room for debate, but I've taken to just ignoring the people who proclaim that AI is merely a passing fad or a useless parlor trick. I can't predict much, but I can confidently say I won't be the only one ignoring them.
  - NoGravitas 1y ago
    For me, the sweet spot seems to be "keep an eye on LLM developments, but don't waste work time trying to use them yet".
    - bubblyworld 1y ago
      Yeah, that makes sense to me for a lot of reasons. Recently decide to take the plunge and start introducing AI tools in my startup. Fairly cheap experiment, all things considered - three months of giving it a try as a team and then we'll make a call. Time will tell!
    - theshrike79 1y ago
      I'd suggest using LLMs as "Autocomplete on steroids" and see how that goes. If online models aren't your thing twinny.dev + ollama will make it fully local.
mark_l_watson 1y ago
+1, even though I mildly disagree with you. I pay For Gemini Pro by the year, and even though I don’t use it often, it is still high value. There are obvious things like generating a Bash shell script quickly - and other things I rarely do, are simple, and I save 5 minutes here and there. Sometimes code generation can be useful, in moderation. But the big thing is using AI to learn new things, explain some tricky math in a paper I am reading, help brain storm, etc. The value of AI is in improving ourselves.
- jennyholzer 1y ago
  > explain some tricky math in a paper I am reading To me this seems to be the single most valuable use case of newer "AI tools" > generating a Bash shell script quickly I do this very often, and to me this seems to me the second most valuable use case of newer "AI tools" > The value of AI is in improving ourselves I agree completely. > help brain storm This strikes me as very concerning. In my experience, AI brainstorming ideas are exceptionally dull and uninspired. People who have shared ideas from AI brainstorming sessions with me have OVERWHELMINGLY come across as AI brained dullards who are unable to think for themselves. What I'm trying to say is that Chat GPT and similar tools are much better suited for interacting with closed systems with strict logical constraints, than they are for idea generation or writing in a natural language.
  - mark_l_watson 1y ago
    For brainstorming: when I write out a plan for a writing or coding project, I like to ask questions for ‘what am I missing or leaving out?’, etc. Really, it is like students using AI: some are lazy and expect it to do all the work, some just use it as a tool as appropriate. Hopefully I am not misunderstanding you and others here, but I think you are mainly complaining about lazy use of AI.
NiloCK 1y ago
Do the people in this corner use compilers? Would they agree that programmers who don't use them* have been replaced by those that do? *: I'm aware of cases like the recent ffmpg assembly usage that gave a big performance boost. When talking about industrial trend lines, I'm OK with admitting 0.001% exceptions. (Apologies if it comes across as snarky or pat, but I honestly think the comparison is reasonable.)
- tzumaoli 1y ago
  When Fortran came out, I don't think a lot of people yelled at the assembly programmers and told them "learn Fortran or be replaced".
  - pklausler 1y ago
    If the assembly programmers were struggling with correctly optimizing loops for optimal performance on several distinct target machines, I would hope that their management would want them to try this new Fortran thing and see how well it worked. (And it did, and it enabled new companies like CDC to win customers from IBM.)
- wat10000 1y ago
  There are technologies that become de facto requirements for work in a field. For software, compilers and version control both qualify. But... what else? These things are rare. It’s not like there’s a new thing that comes along every few years and we all have to jump on or be left behind, and LLMs are the latest. There’s definitely a new thing that comes along every few years and people say we have to jump on or be left behind, but it almost never bears out. Many of those ended up being useful, but not essential. I see no indication that LLMs or associated tooling are going to be like compilers and version control where you pretty much can’t find anyone making a living in the field without them. I can see them being like IDEs or debuggers or linters where they can be handy but plenty of people do fine without them.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Compilers were invented pretty early on in things… I wouldn’t be they shocked if the population of assembly programmers has remained constant. Where would you put the peak? Fortran was invented in the 50’s. The total population of programmers was tiny back then…
tirumario 1y ago
Full disclosure, I'm on the Kilo Code team, but I read your analogy, and I have to respectfully disagree. Musicians don't all use autotune, because autotune is a specalized technology used to elicit a specific result. BUT, MOST musicians use technology; either to record their work, or mix their tracks, or promote their work. You could definitely say "A musician who doesn't post online to a platform or save their work in certain audio formats at the studio are going to be replaced by musicians who do." Are there musicians who still release their work on vinyl or cassette tapes and prefer the sound of an stage with no microphones? Sure. But to dismiss the overarching influence of technology on the process would be ignoring where the progress is going. I'd argue that people who use Kilo Code don't just "autotune" their code, they're using it as a tool that augments their workflow and lets them build more, faster. That's valuable to an employer. Where the engineer is still vital is in their ability to know what to ask for, how to ask for it, and how to correct the tool when it's wrong, because it'll never been 100% right. It's just not hype, it's inevitable.
- conartist6 1y ago
  I actually agree with you that LLM assistance is inevitable. The fact that we can have small local models is what convinces me that the tech won't go away. Even if things are going the direction you say, though, Kilo is still just a fork of VSCode. Lipstick on a pig, perhaps. I would bet that I know the strengths and weaknesses of your architecture quite a lot better than anyone on the Kilo team because the price of admission for you is not questioning any of VSCode's decisions, while I consider all of them worthy of questioning and have done so at great length in the process of building something from scratch that your team bypassed.
delfinom 1y ago
O no, it's not hype. The problem is the sentence is incomplete. a developer using AI in a low-cost region will replace any developer in a high cost region ;)
LeafItAlone 1y ago
I believe it. Maybe not replace 100%, but effectively replace it. I believe that at some point, AI will get good enough that most companies will eventually stop hiring someone that doesn’t utilize AI. Because most companies are just making crud (pun intended). It’ll be like specialized programming languages. Some will exist, and they may get paid a lot more, but most people won’t fall into that category. As much as we like to puff ourselves up, our profession isn’t really that hard. There are a relative handful of people doing some really cool, novel things. Some larger number doing some cool things that aren’t really novel, just done very nicely. And the majority of programmers are the rest of us. We are not special. What I don’t know is the timing. I don’t expect it to be within 5 years (though I think it will _start_ in that time), but I do expect it within my career.

atonse 1y ago

I disagree. While there are developers that truly build new technology and invent novel solutions, the overwhelming majority of developers who are paid for their work daily do pretty mundane and boring software development. They are implementing business logic, building forms, building tables, etc. And AI already excels at building those sorts of things faster and with cleaner code. I’ve never once seen a model generate code that’s as ugly and unreadable as a lot of the low quality code I’ve seen in my career (especially from Salesforce “devs” for example) And even the ones that do the more creative problem solving can benefit from AI agents helping with research, documentation, data migration scripts, etc.

conartist6 1y ago
I'm one working on novel tech, without AI. I've never been doing more valuable work or been more in command of my craft. Yet the blanket statement is that I will fail and be replaced, and in fact that people like me don't exist! So heck yeah I'll come clap back on that.
- jennyholzer 1y ago
  Continuing to develop my craft in the 4th straight year of numbskulls claiming that Chat GPT is the end of history has made me extraordinarily confident in my ability to secure lucrative developer work for the rest of my life.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
  - atonse 1y ago
    It is not productive to call people numbskulls and make straw-man arguments just because you don't agree with their statements, or may not have observed the same benefits that they have. There is absolutely something real here, whether you choose to believe it or not. I'd recommend taking a good faith and open minded look at the last few months of developments. See where it can benefit you (and where it still falls way short). So even if you may have arrived at your conclusion years ago, I assure you that things continue to improve by the week. You will be pleasantly surprised. This is not all or nothing, nor does it have to be.
    - jennyholzer 1y ago
      [flagged]
- infecto 1y ago
  Your interpretation of the original quote is so far off that I would question your interpretation of the world. Sure novel stuff is being built but the vast majority of code at all sizes of companies has been written before in some iteration. Even for the novel work being done, it’s being surrounded by layers of code that has probably being written before. Are engineers going anywhere? No. But I also don’t think it’s far fetched to see a possible near term of competent engineers who use AI tools being more productive than the ones who don’t. I am not talking about copy and pasting but rather thoughtful use of tooling.
  - conartist6 1y ago
    But "more productive" is a wording I also take issue with. Code is like law. The goal isn't to have a lot of it. Come to me when by "more productive" you actually mean that the person using the LLM deleted more lines of code than anyone else around them while preserving the stability and power of the system
    - infecto 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - jennyholzer 1y ago
        I thought you were supposed to be boosting AI? Why are you so bitter? You aren't going to sell any snake oil with this venomous strategy.
        conartist6 1y ago
        I think I started the bitterness. I'm sorry. Everyone has genuine hurt. People who have bought the AI product are hurt because they're weakened and vulnerable by their dependence on buying their own productivity back from a reseller who is now raising the prices. I get cheesed off cause the AI people disrespect hard work and try to devalue its rewards, and that message is just toxic to anyone trying to learn. You can't master a musical instrument by paying an assistant to practice it for you.
- atonse 1y ago
  Right, I chose my words carefully when I said the "overwhelming majority" – and not "every single developer"
apwell23 1y ago
> the overwhelming majority of developers who are paid for their work daily do pretty mundane and boring software developmet So are musicians. We think of them as doing creative stuff but a vast majority is mundane.
- staunton 1y ago
  Most musicians (i.e. non-famous ones) get most of their income from teaching students. I don't think such a model makes sense for developers (though who knows, maybe at some time in the future there will be significant numbers of people programming as a hobby and wanting to be coached by a human...)
  - hecanjog 1y ago
    It really depends. I think if there's a majority trend, it's just to have another job of any kind.
myko 1y ago
> and with cleaner code I use AI pretty extensively and encourage my folks to use it as well but I've yet to see this come directly from an LLM. With human effort after the fact, sure, but LLMs tend to write inscrutable messes when left to their own devices.

Kim_Bruning 1y ago

A surprisingly large number of musicians do use things like written music (a medieval invention, but came into its own in the renaissance) or amplifiers (a modern one).

conartist6 1y ago
Sure but that's different than saying "if you don't use those things you are worthless and will fail"
- Kim_Bruning 1y ago
  Ah, I personally read it as "Use of good tools makes you more competitive", but you're right that "I firmly believe that AI will not replace developers, but a developer using AI will replace a developer who does not." could have multiple other readings too.
  - boleary-gl 1y ago
    Author and Kilo Code team member here - yes your interpretation is what I meant...but to be fair as you mention it could be read multiple ways. Let's be fair - I made it intentionally a little provocative :)
    - conartist6 1y ago
      Haha I'm glad to hear it, because I do the same of course. What I might not have mentioned is that I've spent the last 5 years and 20,000 or so hours building an IDE from scratch. Not a fork of VSCode, mind you, but the real deal: a new "kernel" and integration layer with abilities that VSCode and its forks can't even dream of. It's a proper race and I'm about to drop the hammer on you.
- shepherdjerred 1y ago
  This is true for 99% of developers who aren't particularly talented or driven, e.g. the average engineer who treats their job as a job and not their passion.

jennyholzer 1y ago

[flagged]

aeon_ai 1y ago

AI isn't a stylistic preference or minor enhancement, but cognitive augmentation that allows developers to navigate complexity at scales human cognition wasn't designed for. Just as the developer who refused to adopt version control, IDEs, or Stack Overflow eventually became unemployable, those who reject tools that fundamentally expand their problem-solving capacity will find themselves unable to compete with those who can architect solutions across larger possibility spaces on smaller teams. Will it be used for absolutely every problem? No - There are clearly places where humans are needed. But rejecting the enormous impact this will have on the workforce is trading hype goggles for a bucket of sand.

catmanjan 1y ago
Maybe somehow this will be true in the future, but I am finding that as soon as you work on a novel or undocumented or non internet available problem it is just a hallucinating junior dev
- mcny 1y ago
  The dirty secret is most of the time we are NOT working on anything novel at all. It is pretty much a CRUD application and it is pretty much a master detail flow.
  - jennyholzer 1y ago
    I work on novel technologies.
    - catmanjan 1y ago
      Yeah me too, better off buying something if it already exists
  - NoGravitas 1y ago
    Even for completely uninteresting CRUD work, you're better off with better deterministic tooling (scaffolding for templates, macros for code, better abstractions generally). Unfortunately, past a certain low level, we're stuck rolling our own for these things. I'm not sure why, but I am guessing it has to do with them not being profitable to produce and sell.

jennyholzer 1y ago

[flagged]

alt227 1y ago
Typical opinion of someone who has not yet tried developing with ai. When you finally give it a go you will feel stupid for having this opinion. I did.
TrackerFF 1y ago
I think it is great to take pride in ones craft, but in the end it comes down to this: We create software for users. If the user can't feel any difference in quality between human made software, or AI made software, then it does not mater. It is that easy. If AI makes better software, at lower prices, human developers will become obsolete. It is the natural way of life. Once we had telephone operators, now we don't. Once you had to be a good tradesman with good knowledge in how to use a mallet/hammer, axe, chisel, etc. to build a house - now you don't. You don't get awarded for being old-fashioned.
- jennyholzer 1y ago
  I make better software because I don't think like this.
  - danielbln 1y ago
    That's wonderful, I hope someone will continue to pay you for it, and not go for the 80% solution that is 1000x cheaper. If you're a deeply specialized IC, you're probably good. If you write the perfect, elegant, hand-set code to do CRUD or implement run-of-the-mill business logic, probably not.
    - jennyholzer 1y ago
      Your code is slop. Your coworkers can tell that Chat GPT wrote your PR.

bubblyworld 1y ago

Lol, I think making confident claims in either direction is total copium at this point. It's abundantly obvious that LLM-based tools are useful, it's just a question of what we'll settle on using them for and to what degree. Nobody knows how this will play out yet. Reality does not care about your feelings, unfortunately.

theshrike79 1y ago
Just completely ignoring LLMs is like not wanting to use autocomplete or language servers, preferring to hand-craft everything. But on the other hand there is the other end who think AGI coming in a few months and LLMs are omniscient knowledge machines. There is a sweet spot in the middle.
- chuckadams 1y ago
  There's certainly room for debate, but I've taken to just ignoring the people who proclaim that AI is merely a passing fad or a useless parlor trick. I can't predict much, but I can confidently say I won't be the only one ignoring them.
- NoGravitas 1y ago
  For me, the sweet spot seems to be "keep an eye on LLM developments, but don't waste work time trying to use them yet".
  - bubblyworld 1y ago
    Yeah, that makes sense to me for a lot of reasons. Recently decide to take the plunge and start introducing AI tools in my startup. Fairly cheap experiment, all things considered - three months of giving it a try as a team and then we'll make a call. Time will tell!
  - theshrike79 1y ago
    I'd suggest using LLMs as "Autocomplete on steroids" and see how that goes. If online models aren't your thing twinny.dev + ollama will make it fully local.

mark_l_watson 1y ago

+1, even though I mildly disagree with you. I pay For Gemini Pro by the year, and even though I don’t use it often, it is still high value. There are obvious things like generating a Bash shell script quickly - and other things I rarely do, are simple, and I save 5 minutes here and there. Sometimes code generation can be useful, in moderation. But the big thing is using AI to learn new things, explain some tricky math in a paper I am reading, help brain storm, etc. The value of AI is in improving ourselves.

jennyholzer 1y ago
> explain some tricky math in a paper I am reading To me this seems to be the single most valuable use case of newer "AI tools" > generating a Bash shell script quickly I do this very often, and to me this seems to me the second most valuable use case of newer "AI tools" > The value of AI is in improving ourselves I agree completely. > help brain storm This strikes me as very concerning. In my experience, AI brainstorming ideas are exceptionally dull and uninspired. People who have shared ideas from AI brainstorming sessions with me have OVERWHELMINGLY come across as AI brained dullards who are unable to think for themselves. What I'm trying to say is that Chat GPT and similar tools are much better suited for interacting with closed systems with strict logical constraints, than they are for idea generation or writing in a natural language.
- mark_l_watson 1y ago
  For brainstorming: when I write out a plan for a writing or coding project, I like to ask questions for ‘what am I missing or leaving out?’, etc. Really, it is like students using AI: some are lazy and expect it to do all the work, some just use it as a tool as appropriate. Hopefully I am not misunderstanding you and others here, but I think you are mainly complaining about lazy use of AI.

NiloCK 1y ago

Do the people in this corner use compilers? Would they agree that programmers who don't use them* have been replaced by those that do? *: I'm aware of cases like the recent ffmpg assembly usage that gave a big performance boost. When talking about industrial trend lines, I'm OK with admitting 0.001% exceptions. (Apologies if it comes across as snarky or pat, but I honestly think the comparison is reasonable.)

tzumaoli 1y ago
When Fortran came out, I don't think a lot of people yelled at the assembly programmers and told them "learn Fortran or be replaced".
- pklausler 1y ago
  If the assembly programmers were struggling with correctly optimizing loops for optimal performance on several distinct target machines, I would hope that their management would want them to try this new Fortran thing and see how well it worked. (And it did, and it enabled new companies like CDC to win customers from IBM.)
wat10000 1y ago
There are technologies that become de facto requirements for work in a field. For software, compilers and version control both qualify. But... what else? These things are rare. It’s not like there’s a new thing that comes along every few years and we all have to jump on or be left behind, and LLMs are the latest. There’s definitely a new thing that comes along every few years and people say we have to jump on or be left behind, but it almost never bears out. Many of those ended up being useful, but not essential. I see no indication that LLMs or associated tooling are going to be like compilers and version control where you pretty much can’t find anyone making a living in the field without them. I can see them being like IDEs or debuggers or linters where they can be handy but plenty of people do fine without them.
bee_rider 1y ago
Compilers were invented pretty early on in things… I wouldn’t be they shocked if the population of assembly programmers has remained constant. Where would you put the peak? Fortran was invented in the 50’s. The total population of programmers was tiny back then…

tirumario 1y ago

Full disclosure, I'm on the Kilo Code team, but I read your analogy, and I have to respectfully disagree. Musicians don't all use autotune, because autotune is a specalized technology used to elicit a specific result. BUT, MOST musicians use technology; either to record their work, or mix their tracks, or promote their work. You could definitely say "A musician who doesn't post online to a platform or save their work in certain audio formats at the studio are going to be replaced by musicians who do." Are there musicians who still release their work on vinyl or cassette tapes and prefer the sound of an stage with no microphones? Sure. But to dismiss the overarching influence of technology on the process would be ignoring where the progress is going. I'd argue that people who use Kilo Code don't just "autotune" their code, they're using it as a tool that augments their workflow and lets them build more, faster. That's valuable to an employer. Where the engineer is still vital is in their ability to know what to ask for, how to ask for it, and how to correct the tool when it's wrong, because it'll never been 100% right. It's just not hype, it's inevitable.

conartist6 1y ago
I actually agree with you that LLM assistance is inevitable. The fact that we can have small local models is what convinces me that the tech won't go away. Even if things are going the direction you say, though, Kilo is still just a fork of VSCode. Lipstick on a pig, perhaps. I would bet that I know the strengths and weaknesses of your architecture quite a lot better than anyone on the Kilo team because the price of admission for you is not questioning any of VSCode's decisions, while I consider all of them worthy of questioning and have done so at great length in the process of building something from scratch that your team bypassed.

delfinom 1y ago

O no, it's not hype. The problem is the sentence is incomplete. a developer using AI in a low-cost region will replace any developer in a high cost region ;)

LeafItAlone 1y ago

I believe it. Maybe not replace 100%, but effectively replace it. I believe that at some point, AI will get good enough that most companies will eventually stop hiring someone that doesn’t utilize AI. Because most companies are just making crud (pun intended). It’ll be like specialized programming languages. Some will exist, and they may get paid a lot more, but most people won’t fall into that category. As much as we like to puff ourselves up, our profession isn’t really that hard. There are a relative handful of people doing some really cool, novel things. Some larger number doing some cool things that aren’t really novel, just done very nicely. And the majority of programmers are the rest of us. We are not special. What I don’t know is the timing. I don’t expect it to be within 5 years (though I think it will _start_ in that time), but I do expect it within my career.