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Look, maybe AI for professional programming is overhyped, but for the huge number of professionals who need to program as a part of their job, but programming i

Look, maybe AI for professional programming is overhyped, but for the huge number of professionals who need to program as a part of their job, but programming is decidedly NOT their job, but who do not have programmers available to them, LLM's are.monunmental. For these people, these LLMs are huge productivity enhancers. We shouldn't be measuring productivity gain by professional programmers, but by the larger population of professionals who are required to wear many different hats.

atomicnumber3 11mo ago
The thing is, the main reason the hype for software engineers is because they're the main cost of extremely lucrative SAAS companies. If you could do software without the engineers, that's basically just a VC's wet dream of extremely low cost of revenue. On top of very low marginal costs, typically 0 delivery costs (compared to shipping), often unencumbered by things like tariffs. So like, 2-10xing the productivity of someone who gets paid <<< a software engineer? And who is more 1:1 with the profit from each widget? They don't care that much. But juicing an already extremely juicy fruit? Now that's worth 70x ARR.
- unsnap_biceps 11mo ago
  What's the end game? Why pay that SAAS paycheck if the AI can do it directly for the clients?
  - techblueberry 11mo ago
    It can’t.
  - bee_rider 11mo ago
    Maybe they think the LLMs will never be able to do sales or… I don’t know… make vision boards (or whatever it is CEOs do).
- flashgordon 11mo ago
  Except now you have over supply (assuming it is really that fullfiling). Even with steady demand basic economics says it will just prices down. So where are thr vcs making their returns?
techblueberry 11mo ago
lol and Chamath is over here saying vibe coding is overhyped: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoCodeSaaS/comments/1mvb3tm/chamath_says_you_cant_vibe_anything_useful_right/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoCodeSaaS/comments/1mvb3tm/chamath... Professional coders are the only ones who can get anything real out of llms(well, maybe a 19% decrease in productivity but it’s not fake. Do you have a source on that “impact is monumental for non developers”? Because most of what I’ve been reading is that group is mostly vaporware.
- SubiculumCode 11mo ago
  There is a big gulf between the know-nothing vibe-coding and a professional programmer using a LLM, with lots and lots of people somewhere in the middle, who can code, but is slow at it because they are always learning on the fly, coding just a few hours a week, targeted at small goals, like data wrangling in a pipeline, small applications to replace clunky and error prone Excel books. No, I don't have a study to back it up, just my own experiences in how much I have done this last year. Maybe it doesn't apply to corps with a lot of top down beuraceacy, but in small to medium-sized enterprises, I am convinced it is an engine of agile innovation
  - sixtyj 11mo ago
    Differences in LLM usage are common, so I guess we'll just "argue" here :) Yesterday I was discussing with the head of a company that has been developing software for 30 years, and he told me that they had some old assembly code left, the original programmer retired years ago, so they converted the code with the help of LLM... I use LLM to create scripts for various manipulations and data extraction from documents, once I managed to create a working "Wikipedia" after several attempts to make prompt as accurate as possible... The question is not whether I could have done it, but how long it would have taken me without LLM. But looking for bugs in "someone else's" code I created is a scary, frustrating job, especially when LLM hallucinates extensively somewhere in the middle of the work :)
    - soco 11mo ago
Terr_ 11mo ago
> For these people, these LLMs are huge productivity enhancers. Yes, it allows them to solve their desperate need to combine spreadsheets, creating one big merged spreadsheet with pockets of corrupted data and fake last-names. It either lies undiscovered until clients complain, or I notice and have to redo the work for them properly, without an LLM. :p
anothernewdude 11mo ago
As a contractor who cleans up slop projects, I couldn't be happier.
Yizahi 11mo ago
Look, maybe low-code for professional programming is overhyped, but for the huge number of professionals who need to program as a part of their job, but programming is decidedly NOT their job, but who do not have programmers available to them, low-code is monumental. For these people, these low-code systems are huge productivity enhancers. We shouldn't be measuring productivity gain by professional programmers, but by the larger population of professionals who are required to wear many different hats. Meanwhile my company has finally shut down last low code instance this year, after 10 years of struggling with maintaining a mountain of unmanageable slow-ass code, all the while paying through the nose for the licenses. Spoiler alert - literally zero non-programmers in my company have ever constructed even a single low-code "thing", as was advertised initially. Every person who worked with it was a programmer or QA who could program (aka SDET) and they simply had to suffer with all the limitations of low code platform while gaining none of the supposed benefits. I suspect it will end up this way with LLM generated code. At most managers would generate some non-operational prototype of some app and then throw it to the dev team who will have to spend time deconstructing it and then rewriting from scratch (with or without LLM assistance).
pyeri 11mo ago
Learning coding is easier than ever today, it's no longer the domain of few elite nerds sitting behind desks in large offices. It takes less than two days to learn python from free online resources like Youtube and SoloLearn; surely a small price to pay compared to lifetime of limping with LLM crutches?
- soupfordummies 11mo ago
  While I agree with the sentiment that tech workers should know how to code at least a bit, I think "2 days" is quite a bit of an exaggeration unless someone already has a lot of prerequisite knowledge.

atomicnumber3 11mo ago

The thing is, the main reason the hype for software engineers is because they're the main cost of extremely lucrative SAAS companies. If you could do software without the engineers, that's basically just a VC's wet dream of extremely low cost of revenue. On top of very low marginal costs, typically 0 delivery costs (compared to shipping), often unencumbered by things like tariffs. So like, 2-10xing the productivity of someone who gets paid <<< a software engineer? And who is more 1:1 with the profit from each widget? They don't care that much. But juicing an already extremely juicy fruit? Now that's worth 70x ARR.

unsnap_biceps 11mo ago
What's the end game? Why pay that SAAS paycheck if the AI can do it directly for the clients?
- techblueberry 11mo ago
  It can’t.
- bee_rider 11mo ago
  Maybe they think the LLMs will never be able to do sales or… I don’t know… make vision boards (or whatever it is CEOs do).
flashgordon 11mo ago
Except now you have over supply (assuming it is really that fullfiling). Even with steady demand basic economics says it will just prices down. So where are thr vcs making their returns?

techblueberry 11mo ago

lol and Chamath is over here saying vibe coding is overhyped: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoCodeSaaS/comments/1mvb3tm/chamath_says_you_cant_vibe_anything_useful_right/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoCodeSaaS/comments/1mvb3tm/chamath... Professional coders are the only ones who can get anything real out of llms(well, maybe a 19% decrease in productivity but it’s not fake. Do you have a source on that “impact is monumental for non developers”? Because most of what I’ve been reading is that group is mostly vaporware.

SubiculumCode 11mo ago
There is a big gulf between the know-nothing vibe-coding and a professional programmer using a LLM, with lots and lots of people somewhere in the middle, who can code, but is slow at it because they are always learning on the fly, coding just a few hours a week, targeted at small goals, like data wrangling in a pipeline, small applications to replace clunky and error prone Excel books. No, I don't have a study to back it up, just my own experiences in how much I have done this last year. Maybe it doesn't apply to corps with a lot of top down beuraceacy, but in small to medium-sized enterprises, I am convinced it is an engine of agile innovation
- sixtyj 11mo ago
  Differences in LLM usage are common, so I guess we'll just "argue" here :) Yesterday I was discussing with the head of a company that has been developing software for 30 years, and he told me that they had some old assembly code left, the original programmer retired years ago, so they converted the code with the help of LLM... I use LLM to create scripts for various manipulations and data extraction from documents, once I managed to create a working "Wikipedia" after several attempts to make prompt as accurate as possible... The question is not whether I could have done it, but how long it would have taken me without LLM. But looking for bugs in "someone else's" code I created is a scary, frustrating job, especially when LLM hallucinates extensively somewhere in the middle of the work :)
  - soco 11mo ago

Terr_ 11mo ago

> For these people, these LLMs are huge productivity enhancers. Yes, it allows them to solve their desperate need to combine spreadsheets, creating one big merged spreadsheet with pockets of corrupted data and fake last-names. It either lies undiscovered until clients complain, or I notice and have to redo the work for them properly, without an LLM. :p

anothernewdude 11mo ago

As a contractor who cleans up slop projects, I couldn't be happier.

Yizahi 11mo ago

Look, maybe low-code for professional programming is overhyped, but for the huge number of professionals who need to program as a part of their job, but programming is decidedly NOT their job, but who do not have programmers available to them, low-code is monumental. For these people, these low-code systems are huge productivity enhancers. We shouldn't be measuring productivity gain by professional programmers, but by the larger population of professionals who are required to wear many different hats. Meanwhile my company has finally shut down last low code instance this year, after 10 years of struggling with maintaining a mountain of unmanageable slow-ass code, all the while paying through the nose for the licenses. Spoiler alert - literally zero non-programmers in my company have ever constructed even a single low-code "thing", as was advertised initially. Every person who worked with it was a programmer or QA who could program (aka SDET) and they simply had to suffer with all the limitations of low code platform while gaining none of the supposed benefits. I suspect it will end up this way with LLM generated code. At most managers would generate some non-operational prototype of some app and then throw it to the dev team who will have to spend time deconstructing it and then rewriting from scratch (with or without LLM assistance).

pyeri 11mo ago

Learning coding is easier than ever today, it's no longer the domain of few elite nerds sitting behind desks in large offices. It takes less than two days to learn python from free online resources like Youtube and SoloLearn; surely a small price to pay compared to lifetime of limping with LLM crutches?

soupfordummies 11mo ago
While I agree with the sentiment that tech workers should know how to code at least a bit, I think "2 days" is quite a bit of an exaggeration unless someone already has a lot of prerequisite knowledge.