6 ms·

Beautifully written, a joy to read but, sadly, it feels like something from a bygone era. Nobody chants "Developers! Developers! Developers!" anymore now that e

by iqp 9mo ago

Beautifully written, a joy to read but, sadly, it feels like something from a bygone era. Nobody chants "Developers! Developers! Developers!" anymore now that everything is dominated by AI, and the joy of coding is gone too. People like Steve Yegge, who I used to aspire to be like back in 2006, when I started my career as a developer, now writes about how he uses 10+ concurrent LLM agents to code, review, and ship & doesn't even bother to even look at the code being produced anymore. Just today, I implemented 2 features using Cursor & GPT-5.1 Codex-Max & I didn't have to write a single line of code myself. But it felt wrong. It makes me think, "What am I even doing here - Why not just let the product manager prompt the LLM?".

nemosaltat 9mo ago
Same, I got so much fomo from reading the gas town post I think you’re alluding too. Someone else can link it but it’s not “worth the read” in the way this was communicates so many ideas and captures/distills the zeitgeist of that time. I guess the gas town one does capture our moment, but embracing YOLO spaghetti-o with reckless abandon, is a) depressing, even though I also feel like a middling programmer and b) actually seems to be dazzling these newer beleaguered bureaucrats precisely because they think they could just talk to the LLM instead of TMitTB. Anyway, if that post and its ilk leave a bad taste, this was mouthwash for me. Lucky 10,000 I know, but I had never seen this (or felt so seen, as they say). I had to go check that he wasn’t wrong about PHP being Personal Home Page. I somehow never picked up that the recursive naming thing is a backcroynm.
Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
> It makes me think, "What am I even doing here - Why not just let the product manager prompt the LLM?". It feels different if you replace "LLM" with "outsourcing". Thing is, instructing a team of software engineers what you want is a lot more work (they need a lot more handholding), a lot more expensive, and a lot slower. But I'd argue that the work is the same - writing specifications, adjusting accordingly. Minus the human factor. LLM coding agents won't kill software development as a job, but it will affect outsourcing and agencies as an industry. Of course, outsourcing companies will / are using it too.
- bossyTeacher 9mo ago
  >LLM coding agents won't kill software development as a job They won't same as the industrial revolution didn't kill farming as a job but it sure did ate up most of the farming roles. Most of the people you have ever met are people who would have been farmers had they been born before the revolution. Developers without much leverage, underpaid, overworked and competing with hundreds of experienced devs for a single role is likely to be the eventual future of most software development thus gradually becoming similar to other stem roles in terms of pay, competition and negotiation power.
- wiseowise 9mo ago
  The difference is that before nobody forced you to be the manager of outsourced team, either you're fired or you're still working with code. Now you'll be expected to generate everything and oversee 10 agents.
christoph-heiss 9mo ago
Why are you using LLMs then, if you enjoy the actual process of thinking about a problem and solving it by writing code? It's definitely a more enjoyable world this way.
- tjr 9mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46424585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46424585
  - christoph-heiss 9mo ago
    Fortunately, at least in Europe, there are definitely companies still around who either don't force the usage of slop machines or even have a culture of rejecting them completely (yes, that's a thing, and I'm glad to be working at such a company). So no, this isn't universally true.
    - wiseowise 9mo ago
      It's because you're working in a retirement home (I do too), Europe lags a couple of years before US. Give it time.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
- shawnz 9mo ago
  I used to think this, until I tried it. Now I see that it effectively removes all the tedium while still letting you have whatever level of creative control you want over the output. Just imagine that instead of having to work off of an amorphous draft in your head, it really creates the draft right in front of you in actual code. You can still shape and craft and refine it just the same, but now you have tons more working memory free to use for the actually meaningful parts of the problem. And, you're way less burdened by analysis paralysis. Instead of running in circles thinking about how you want to implement something, you can just try it both ways. There's no sunk cost of picking the wrong approach because it's practically instantaneous.
danieltanfh95 9mo ago
Why not just let the product manager use some no-code tool? I think software engineers are having an identity disconnect from their roles as engineers vs coders. Engineering is about solving problems via tools and knowledge through constraints. An engineer is not diminished by having other engineers or better tooling as assistants. If you are having problems understanding your role in the problem, frankly you need to review your skillset and adjust.
- vacuity 9mo ago
  You are correct in the abstract, but concretely I contest how useful LLMs are for producing software. I don't doubt their usefulness in prototyping or, say, writing web apps, but I truly do not think they are revolutionary for me, or for software development as a whole.

by iqp 9mo ago

nemosaltat 9mo ago

Same, I got so much fomo from reading the gas town post I think you’re alluding too. Someone else can link it but it’s not “worth the read” in the way this was communicates so many ideas and captures/distills the zeitgeist of that time. I guess the gas town one does capture our moment, but embracing YOLO spaghetti-o with reckless abandon, is a) depressing, even though I also feel like a middling programmer and b) actually seems to be dazzling these newer beleaguered bureaucrats precisely because they think they could just talk to the LLM instead of TMitTB. Anyway, if that post and its ilk leave a bad taste, this was mouthwash for me. Lucky 10,000 I know, but I had never seen this (or felt so seen, as they say). I had to go check that he wasn’t wrong about PHP being Personal Home Page. I somehow never picked up that the recursive naming thing is a backcroynm.

Cthulhu_ 9mo ago

> It makes me think, "What am I even doing here - Why not just let the product manager prompt the LLM?". It feels different if you replace "LLM" with "outsourcing". Thing is, instructing a team of software engineers what you want is a lot more work (they need a lot more handholding), a lot more expensive, and a lot slower. But I'd argue that the work is the same - writing specifications, adjusting accordingly. Minus the human factor. LLM coding agents won't kill software development as a job, but it will affect outsourcing and agencies as an industry. Of course, outsourcing companies will / are using it too.

bossyTeacher 9mo ago
>LLM coding agents won't kill software development as a job They won't same as the industrial revolution didn't kill farming as a job but it sure did ate up most of the farming roles. Most of the people you have ever met are people who would have been farmers had they been born before the revolution. Developers without much leverage, underpaid, overworked and competing with hundreds of experienced devs for a single role is likely to be the eventual future of most software development thus gradually becoming similar to other stem roles in terms of pay, competition and negotiation power.
wiseowise 9mo ago
The difference is that before nobody forced you to be the manager of outsourced team, either you're fired or you're still working with code. Now you'll be expected to generate everything and oversee 10 agents.

christoph-heiss 9mo ago

Why are you using LLMs then, if you enjoy the actual process of thinking about a problem and solving it by writing code? It's definitely a more enjoyable world this way.

tjr 9mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46424585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46424585
- christoph-heiss 9mo ago
  Fortunately, at least in Europe, there are definitely companies still around who either don't force the usage of slop machines or even have a culture of rejecting them completely (yes, that's a thing, and I'm glad to be working at such a company). So no, this isn't universally true.
  - wiseowise 9mo ago
    It's because you're working in a retirement home (I do too), Europe lags a couple of years before US. Give it time.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
shawnz 9mo ago
I used to think this, until I tried it. Now I see that it effectively removes all the tedium while still letting you have whatever level of creative control you want over the output. Just imagine that instead of having to work off of an amorphous draft in your head, it really creates the draft right in front of you in actual code. You can still shape and craft and refine it just the same, but now you have tons more working memory free to use for the actually meaningful parts of the problem. And, you're way less burdened by analysis paralysis. Instead of running in circles thinking about how you want to implement something, you can just try it both ways. There's no sunk cost of picking the wrong approach because it's practically instantaneous.

danieltanfh95 9mo ago

Why not just let the product manager use some no-code tool? I think software engineers are having an identity disconnect from their roles as engineers vs coders. Engineering is about solving problems via tools and knowledge through constraints. An engineer is not diminished by having other engineers or better tooling as assistants. If you are having problems understanding your role in the problem, frankly you need to review your skillset and adjust.

vacuity 9mo ago
You are correct in the abstract, but concretely I contest how useful LLMs are for producing software. I don't doubt their usefulness in prototyping or, say, writing web apps, but I truly do not think they are revolutionary for me, or for software development as a whole.