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LLMs can build anything. The real question is what is worth building, and how it’s delivered. That is what is still human. LLMs, by nature of not being human, c
by borski 7mo ago
LLMs can build anything. The real question is what is worth building, and how it’s delivered. That is what is still human. LLMs, by nature of not being human, cannot understand humans as well as other humans can. (See every attempt at using an LLM as a therapist)
In short: LLMs will eventually be able to architect software. But it’s still just a tool
- silisili 7mo agoWhat is the use of software eng/architect at that point? It's a tool, but one that product or C levels can use directly as I see it?
- borski 7mo agoYes, for building something But for building the right thing? Doubtful. Most of a great engineer’s work isn’t writing code, but interrogating what people think their problems are, to find what the actual problems are. In short: problem solving, not writing code.
- mattmanser 7mo agoWhere's this delusion come from recently that great engineers didnt write code? What a load of crap. All you're doing is describing a different job role. What you're talking about is BA work, and a subset of engineers are great at it, but most are just ok. You're claiming a part of the job that was secondary, and not required, is now the whole job.
- borski 7mo agoI never said great engineers didn’t write code. But writing the code was never the point. The point has always been delivering the product to the customer, in any industry. Code is rarely the deliverable. That’s my point.
- wiseowise 7mo ago> But writing the code was never the point. Is that why most prestigious jobs grilled you like a devil on algos/system design? > The point has always been delivering the product to the customer, in any industry. Code is rarely the deliverable. That’s just nonsense. It’s like saying “delivering product was always the most important thing, not drinking water”.
- staticassertion 7mo agoIt's well understood that programming interviews are a pretty shitty tool. They're a proxy for understanding if you have basic skills required to understand a computer. Notably, most companies don't rely on these alone, they have behavioral questions, architecture questions, etc. Have you ever done an interview at these companies you're talking about? They're 8 hours lol maybe 1 is spent programming. But it's just very obvious to any software engineer worth anything that code is just one part of the job, and it's usually somewhere in the middle of a process. Understanding customer requirements, making technical decisions, maintaining the codebase, reviewing code changes/ providing feedback, responding on incidents, deciding what work to do or not to do, deciding when a constraint has to be broken, etc. There are a billion things that aren't "typing code" that an engineer does every day. To deny this is absurd to anyone who lives every day doing those things.
- borski 7mo agoYeah, this is precisely what I meant.
- staticassertion 7mo agoI'm genuinely blown away at the attitude lately that developers spend their time programming/ our primary value is code. I guess because we tend to be organizationally isolated people just have no idea? But like... it's so absurd to anyone who does the job. It's like thinking that PM's primary role is assigning tickets, just so obviously false. I think there's some resentment. I've seen repeatedly now people essentially celebrating that "tech bros" are finally going to see their salaries crash or whatever, it's pretty sick but I've noticed this quite a lot.
- 0xbadcafebee 7mo agoA software engineer will be a person who inspects the AI's work, same as a building inspector today. A software architect will co-sign on someone's printed-up AI plans, same as a building architect today. Some will be in-house, some will do contract work, and some will be artists trying to create something special, same as today. The brute labor is automated away, and the creativity (and liability) is captured by humans.
- wiseowise 7mo ago> It's a tool, but one that product or C levels can use directly as I see it? Wait, I thought product and C level people are so busy all the time that they can’t fart without a calendar invite, but now you say they have time to completely replace whole org of engineers?
- roncesvalles 7mo agoFWIW I find LLMs to be excellent therapists. The commercial solutions probably don't work because they don't use the best SOTA models and/or sully the context with all kinds of guardrails and role-playing nonsense, but if you just open a new chat window in your LLM of choice (set to the highest thinking paid-tier model), it gives you truly excellent therapist advice. In fact in many ways the LLM therapist is actually better than the human, because e.g. you can dump a huge, detailed rant in the chat and it will actually listen to (read) every word you said.
- borski 7mo agoPlease, please, please don’t make this mistake. It is not a therapist. At best, it might be a facsimile of a life coach, but it does not have your best interests in mind. It is easy to convince and trivial to make obsequious. That is not what a therapist does. There’s a reason they spend thousands of hours in training; that is not an exaggeration. Humans are complex. An LLM cannot parse that level of complexity.
- roncesvalles 7mo agoYou seem to think therapists are only for those in dire straits. Yes, if you're at that point, definitely speak to a human. But there are many ordinary things for which "drop-in" therapist advice is also useful. For me: mild road rage, social anxiety, processing embarrassment from past events, etc. The tools and reframing that LLMs have given me (Gemini 3.0/3.1 Pro) have been extremely effective and have genuinely improved my life. These things don't even cross the threshold to be worth the effort to find and speak to an actual therapist.
- borski 7mo agoI never said therapists were only for those in crisis; that is a misreading of my argument entirely. An LLM cannot parse the complexity of your situation. Period. It is literally incapable of doing that, because it does not have any idea what it is like to be human. Therapy is not an objective science; it is, in many ways, subjective, and the therapeutic relationship is by far the most important part. I am not saying LLMs are not useful for helping people parse their emotions or understand themselves better. But that is not therapy, in the same way that using an app built for CBT is not, in and of itself, therapy. It is one tool in a therapist’s toolbox, and will not be the right tool for all patients. That doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful. But an LLM is not a therapist. The fact that you can trivially convince it to believe things that are absolutely untrue is precisely why, for one simple example.
- staticassertion 7mo ago> LLMs can build anything. This is only possibly true if one of two things are true: 1. All new software can be made up of of preexisting patterns of software that can be composed. ie: There is no such thing as "novel" software, it's all just composition of existing software. 2. LLMs are capable of emergent intelligence, allowing them to express patterns that they were not trained on. I am extremely skeptical that either of these is true.
- borski 7mo agoFair enough; I can see the exaggeration. It is not impossible, however, that an LLM could run enough “random” tests to find new ways of doing something, but I hear you. Let me restate that to “An LLM can build most anything…” and I stand by the rest of my comment.
- staticassertion 7mo agoI think that makes sense, the rest of your comment is definitely true.