5 ms·

> If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer. If

> If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer. If you can't code by hand professionally anymore, what are you being paid to do? Bring the specs to the LLMs? Deal with the customers so the LLMs don't have to?

woeirua 8mo ago
Every engineer in the next two years needs to prepare themselves for this conversation to play out (from Office Space): > Bob Slydell: What you do at Initech is you take the specifications from the customer and bring them down to the software engineers? > Tom Smykowski: Yes, yes that's right. > Bob Porter: Well then I just have to ask why can't the customers take them directly to the software people? > Tom Smykowski: Well, I'll tell you why, because, engineers are not good at dealing with customers. > Bob Slydell: So you physically take the specs from the customer? > Tom Smykowski: Well... No. My secretary does that, or they're faxed. > Bob Porter: So then you must physically bring them to the software people? > Tom Smykowski: Well. No. Ah sometimes. > Bob Slydell: What would you say you do here? The agents are the engineers now.
- hirako2000 8mo ago
  And that "ah sometimes" costs what? Not forgetting you are also paying for tokens. It's a bit like eating junk food everyday and ah sometimes I go see the doctor he keep saying I should eat more healthy and lose some weight.
- falloutx 8mo ago
  PMs can always keep their jobs because they appear to be working and they keep contact with the execs directly. They have taken a bigger and bigger part of the tech pie over the years and soon they finally take it all.
  - superb_dev 8mo ago
    And when they’re actually good at their job, they’re invaluable in my opinion
    - jlarocco 8mo ago
      Yeah, the best way to learn the value of project management is to work somewhere without it.
  - siva7 8mo ago
    That's not what i am seeing being played out at a big corp. In reality everyone gets thrown under the bus, no matter if c-level or pleb if they don't appear to know how to drive the ai metrics up. Just being a PM won't save your job any more than that of the dev who doesn't know how to acquire and use new skills. On the contrary, jobs of the more competent devs are safer than those of some managers here who don't know the tech.
sgarland 8mo ago
This is what I don’t understand: why highly-paid SWEs seem to think that their salaries will remain the same (if they even still have a job) if their role is now a glorified project manager.
- xnx 8mo ago
  Salaries might remain the same, but they'll be expected to produce a lot more.
  - GiorgioG 8mo ago
    We produce way more than the punch-card wielding developers of yesteryear and we’re doing just fine (better even).
    - direwolf20 8mo ago
      And we get paid less.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- aurareturn 8mo ago
  Recently, I had to do an integration with a Chinese API for my company. I used Codex to do the whole thing. Yet, there is no way a product manager without any coding experience could have done it. First, the API needed to communicate to the main app correctly such as formatting, correcting data. This required human engineer guidance and experience working with expected data. AI was lost. Second, the API was designed extremely poorly. You first had to make a request, then retry a second endpoint over and over again while the Chinese API did its thing in the background. Yes, I had to poll it. I then had to do load testing to make sure it was reliable (it wasn't). In the end, I gave a recommendation that we shouldn't rely on this Chinese company and back out of the deal before we send them a huge deposit. A non-technical PM couldn't have done what I did... for at least a few more years. You need a background and experience in software development to even know what to prompt the AI. Not only that, in the last 3 years, I developed an intuition on where LLMs fail and succeed when writing code. I still have a job. My role has changed. I haven't written more than 10 lines of code in a day for months now. Yes, it's kind of scary for software devs right now but I'm honestly loving this as I was never the kind of dev who loved the code, just someone who needed to code to get what I wanted.
panzi 8mo ago
Vibe coders being: https://images.kinorium.com/movie/shot/129136/h280_39185160.jpg https://images.kinorium.com/movie/shot/129136/h280_39185160....
mlaretallack 8mo ago
I am currently doing 6 projects at the same time, where before I would only of doing one at a time. This includes the requirements, design, implementation and testing.
- queenkjuul 8mo ago
  Sounds awful
rdiddly 8mo ago
I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people!
cmiles74 8mo ago
When the cost of defects and of the AI tooling itself inevitably rises, I think we are likely to see a sudden demand for the remaining employed developers to do more work "by hand".
- FeteCommuniste 8mo ago
  "Dang, the AI really screwed up this time. Call in the de-sloppers."
Aperocky 8mo ago
Code IS spec. Your code in $INSERT_LANGUAGE is no less of a spec to machine code than english is to $INSERT_LANGUAGE. Spec is still needed, spec is the core problem of engineering. Too much specialization have made job titles like $INSERT_LANGUAGE engineer, which deviated too far from the core problem, and it is being rectified now.
FpUser 8mo ago
>"If you can't code by hand professionally anymore" Then you are simply fucked. The code you deliver will contain bugs which LLM sometimes will be able to fix and sometimes will be not. And as a person who has no clue you will have no idea how to fix it when LLM can not. Also even when LLM code is correct it can and sometimes does introduce gross performance fuckups, like using patterns that employ N-square complexity instead of N for example. Again as a clueless person you are fucked. And if one goes to areas like concurrency, multithreading optimizations one gets fucked even more. I can go on and on on way more particular reasons to get screwed. For a person who can hand code AI becomes amazing tool. For me - it helps immensely.

woeirua 8mo ago

Every engineer in the next two years needs to prepare themselves for this conversation to play out (from Office Space): > Bob Slydell: What you do at Initech is you take the specifications from the customer and bring them down to the software engineers? > Tom Smykowski: Yes, yes that's right. > Bob Porter: Well then I just have to ask why can't the customers take them directly to the software people? > Tom Smykowski: Well, I'll tell you why, because, engineers are not good at dealing with customers. > Bob Slydell: So you physically take the specs from the customer? > Tom Smykowski: Well... No. My secretary does that, or they're faxed. > Bob Porter: So then you must physically bring them to the software people? > Tom Smykowski: Well. No. Ah sometimes. > Bob Slydell: What would you say you do here? The agents are the engineers now.

hirako2000 8mo ago
And that "ah sometimes" costs what? Not forgetting you are also paying for tokens. It's a bit like eating junk food everyday and ah sometimes I go see the doctor he keep saying I should eat more healthy and lose some weight.
falloutx 8mo ago
PMs can always keep their jobs because they appear to be working and they keep contact with the execs directly. They have taken a bigger and bigger part of the tech pie over the years and soon they finally take it all.
- superb_dev 8mo ago
  And when they’re actually good at their job, they’re invaluable in my opinion
  - jlarocco 8mo ago
    Yeah, the best way to learn the value of project management is to work somewhere without it.
- siva7 8mo ago
  That's not what i am seeing being played out at a big corp. In reality everyone gets thrown under the bus, no matter if c-level or pleb if they don't appear to know how to drive the ai metrics up. Just being a PM won't save your job any more than that of the dev who doesn't know how to acquire and use new skills. On the contrary, jobs of the more competent devs are safer than those of some managers here who don't know the tech.

sgarland 8mo ago

This is what I don’t understand: why highly-paid SWEs seem to think that their salaries will remain the same (if they even still have a job) if their role is now a glorified project manager.

xnx 8mo ago
Salaries might remain the same, but they'll be expected to produce a lot more.
- GiorgioG 8mo ago
  We produce way more than the punch-card wielding developers of yesteryear and we’re doing just fine (better even).
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    And we get paid less.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
aurareturn 8mo ago
Recently, I had to do an integration with a Chinese API for my company. I used Codex to do the whole thing. Yet, there is no way a product manager without any coding experience could have done it. First, the API needed to communicate to the main app correctly such as formatting, correcting data. This required human engineer guidance and experience working with expected data. AI was lost. Second, the API was designed extremely poorly. You first had to make a request, then retry a second endpoint over and over again while the Chinese API did its thing in the background. Yes, I had to poll it. I then had to do load testing to make sure it was reliable (it wasn't). In the end, I gave a recommendation that we shouldn't rely on this Chinese company and back out of the deal before we send them a huge deposit. A non-technical PM couldn't have done what I did... for at least a few more years. You need a background and experience in software development to even know what to prompt the AI. Not only that, in the last 3 years, I developed an intuition on where LLMs fail and succeed when writing code. I still have a job. My role has changed. I haven't written more than 10 lines of code in a day for months now. Yes, it's kind of scary for software devs right now but I'm honestly loving this as I was never the kind of dev who loved the code, just someone who needed to code to get what I wanted.

panzi 8mo ago

Vibe coders being: https://images.kinorium.com/movie/shot/129136/h280_39185160.jpg https://images.kinorium.com/movie/shot/129136/h280_39185160....

mlaretallack 8mo ago

I am currently doing 6 projects at the same time, where before I would only of doing one at a time. This includes the requirements, design, implementation and testing.

queenkjuul 8mo ago
Sounds awful

rdiddly 8mo ago

I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people!

cmiles74 8mo ago

When the cost of defects and of the AI tooling itself inevitably rises, I think we are likely to see a sudden demand for the remaining employed developers to do more work "by hand".

FeteCommuniste 8mo ago
"Dang, the AI really screwed up this time. Call in the de-sloppers."

Aperocky 8mo ago

Code IS spec. Your code in $INSERT_LANGUAGE is no less of a spec to machine code than english is to $INSERT_LANGUAGE. Spec is still needed, spec is the core problem of engineering. Too much specialization have made job titles like $INSERT_LANGUAGE engineer, which deviated too far from the core problem, and it is being rectified now.

FpUser 8mo ago

>"If you can't code by hand professionally anymore" Then you are simply fucked. The code you deliver will contain bugs which LLM sometimes will be able to fix and sometimes will be not. And as a person who has no clue you will have no idea how to fix it when LLM can not. Also even when LLM code is correct it can and sometimes does introduce gross performance fuckups, like using patterns that employ N-square complexity instead of N for example. Again as a clueless person you are fucked. And if one goes to areas like concurrency, multithreading optimizations one gets fucked even more. I can go on and on on way more particular reasons to get screwed. For a person who can hand code AI becomes amazing tool. For me - it helps immensely.