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There are plenty of engineers that couldn't work without a modern IDE or in languages without memory management. Or without the ability to use a library from G

There are plenty of engineers that couldn't work without a modern IDE or in languages without memory management. Or without the ability to use a library from GitHub / their package manager. It doesn't feel THAT much different to me. "Engineer" as a term might drift. There are "web developers" that can only use webflow / wordpress.

bpye 6mo ago
At least today, it isn't practical for most people to run these models locally- I think adding a dependency on a cloud service is different enough to some local (possibly open source) tool like an IDE.
- jasonjmcghee 6mo ago
  Slack, GitHub, Figma, AWS, etc Lots of people use firebase, supabase etc. Many people's jobs are centered around using Salesforce It all makes me uncomfortable- I want to be able to work without internet. But it's getting more difficult to do it
- StrauXX 6mo ago
  Self hosting at a reasonable scale is much cheaper than people think. I am running clusters of DGX Spark machines with BiFrost load balancers in our company and for client projects. They work flawlessly! 128 GB unified memory, Nvidia chip and ARM CPU for just around 3k€ net. They easily push ~400 input and ~100 output tokens per second per device on say gpt-oss-120b. With two devices in a cluster, thats enough performance for >20 concurrent RAG users or >3 "AI augmented" developers. And they don't even pull that much power.
  - byzantinegene 6mo ago
    factor in depreciation and energy costs, and a subscription might just be cheaper.
    - StrauXX 6mo ago
      It is definetly cheaper now. What I want to say with this, is that token costs rising so dramatically that AI usage becomes uneconomical is not a high probability future. Even if AI subscriptions were sold heavily below cost (which is also unlikely, after R&D).
torben-friis 6mo ago
The huge difference is that we don't know the cost we're going to end up with. Will you have AI at the cost of a slack subscription? At the cost of a teammate? Will it not be available and you'll have to hire anthropic workers with AI access?
- heipei 6mo ago
  Local AI models are already more than capable enough writing code that surpasses the ability of any bad or even mediocre engineer. That is not something we need to worry about. In a way, this is less of a cost issue than the fact that some/many engineers do not seem to be willing or able to host things themselves anymore and will happily outsource every part of their stack to managed services, be it CDN, hosting, databases, etc. I don't know why that's not more alarming than the LLMs.
  - guelo 6mo ago
    Thank goodness for China or Silicon Valley capitalists would be locking us down into an unimaginably awful dystopia. Though they're not done trying.
  - girvo 6mo ago
    Qwen 3.6 27B is shockingly good, just to add to your point.
Jcampuzano2 6mo ago
Engineer as a term has already drifted vastly since nobody in the field of "Software Engineering" is actually an Engineer if we go by a strict definitions. Engineers are accredited and in some countries even come with a title.
- jjtheblunt 6mo ago
  i think you accidentally overlooked accredited engineers who happen to be writing software
  - Jcampuzano2 6mo ago
    Of course there are engineers who write software, I'm just speaking about the majority of roles where thats not the case.
- lkmill 6mo ago
  as an actual engineer i just feel sad. i should probably feel happy but i like solving problems. fml i have becomea luddite.
  - therealdrag0 6mo ago
    I get it. But there’s plenty of engineering to do in any serious system. I am in a very AI forward company using AI for everything, but I still am solving engineering problems every day.
- keeda 6mo ago
  > ... nobody in the field of "Software Engineering" is actually an Engineer if we go by a strict definitions. This is a pet peeve of mine, so while I understand what you mean, I will challenge you to come up with a strict definition that excludes software engineering! And since I've had this discussion before, I'll pre-emptively hazard a guess that the argument boils down to "rigor", and point out that a) economic feasibility is a key part of engineering, b) the level of rigor applied to any project is a function of economics, and c) the economics of software projects is a very wide range. Put another way, statistically most devs work on projects where the blast radius of failure is some minor inconvenience to like, 5 users. We really don't need rigor there, so I can see where you're coming from. But on the other extreme like aviation software, an appropriately extreme level of rigor is applied.
vict7 6mo ago
IDEs are free. Libraries are free. Languages are free. This is becoming more like an internet subscription where you’re at the mercy of Anthropic the same way you may be at the mercy of Comcast. I’m sure you can see the difference between a garbage collector and a nondeterministic slop generator But it feels good to equivocate, so here we are.
- thunky 6mo ago
  Not all IDEs are free. Not all LLMs are subscriptions.
  - vict7 6mo ago
    > Not all is doing a lot of work to avoid engaging with the actual argument.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
  > IDEs are free. Libraries are free. Languages are free. This is becoming more like an internet subscription where you’re at the mercy of Anthropic the same way you may be at the mercy of Comcast. Ollama/llamafile/vllm/llama.cpp are free. Qwen/kimi/deepseek are free. Pi.dev/OpenCode are free. If you're using a SaaS AI subscription that's fine, but that's hardly the only option.
  - c-hendricks 6mo ago
    How much does the hardware to run them on cost? Especially to get decently sized models running at decent speeds.
  - folkrav 6mo ago
    The comparison to me sounds like "you dont have to take a plane to travel between countries, paddle boats exist".
ares623 6mo ago
"What kind of engineer are you" - Jesse Plemons wearing bright-red sunglasses
embedding-shape 6mo ago
> couldn't work "Couldn't", or "wouldn't"? Early in my career I'd be happy doing anything basically, not much I "couldn't" do, given enough time. But nowadays, there is a long list of things I wouldn't do, even if I know I could, just because it's not fun.
- themafia 6mo ago
  It should probably be "would initially struggle to be as efficient without them." This is not a binary.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
adamddev1 6mo ago
All those examples are fundamentally different because those are hard-coded, deterministic programs/algorithms/libraries.

bpye 6mo ago

At least today, it isn't practical for most people to run these models locally- I think adding a dependency on a cloud service is different enough to some local (possibly open source) tool like an IDE.

jasonjmcghee 6mo ago
Slack, GitHub, Figma, AWS, etc Lots of people use firebase, supabase etc. Many people's jobs are centered around using Salesforce It all makes me uncomfortable- I want to be able to work without internet. But it's getting more difficult to do it
StrauXX 6mo ago
Self hosting at a reasonable scale is much cheaper than people think. I am running clusters of DGX Spark machines with BiFrost load balancers in our company and for client projects. They work flawlessly! 128 GB unified memory, Nvidia chip and ARM CPU for just around 3k€ net. They easily push ~400 input and ~100 output tokens per second per device on say gpt-oss-120b. With two devices in a cluster, thats enough performance for >20 concurrent RAG users or >3 "AI augmented" developers. And they don't even pull that much power.
- byzantinegene 6mo ago
  factor in depreciation and energy costs, and a subscription might just be cheaper.
  - StrauXX 6mo ago
    It is definetly cheaper now. What I want to say with this, is that token costs rising so dramatically that AI usage becomes uneconomical is not a high probability future. Even if AI subscriptions were sold heavily below cost (which is also unlikely, after R&D).

torben-friis 6mo ago

The huge difference is that we don't know the cost we're going to end up with. Will you have AI at the cost of a slack subscription? At the cost of a teammate? Will it not be available and you'll have to hire anthropic workers with AI access?

heipei 6mo ago
Local AI models are already more than capable enough writing code that surpasses the ability of any bad or even mediocre engineer. That is not something we need to worry about. In a way, this is less of a cost issue than the fact that some/many engineers do not seem to be willing or able to host things themselves anymore and will happily outsource every part of their stack to managed services, be it CDN, hosting, databases, etc. I don't know why that's not more alarming than the LLMs.
- guelo 6mo ago
  Thank goodness for China or Silicon Valley capitalists would be locking us down into an unimaginably awful dystopia. Though they're not done trying.
- girvo 6mo ago
  Qwen 3.6 27B is shockingly good, just to add to your point.

Jcampuzano2 6mo ago

Engineer as a term has already drifted vastly since nobody in the field of "Software Engineering" is actually an Engineer if we go by a strict definitions. Engineers are accredited and in some countries even come with a title.

jjtheblunt 6mo ago
i think you accidentally overlooked accredited engineers who happen to be writing software
- Jcampuzano2 6mo ago
  Of course there are engineers who write software, I'm just speaking about the majority of roles where thats not the case.
lkmill 6mo ago
as an actual engineer i just feel sad. i should probably feel happy but i like solving problems. fml i have becomea luddite.
- therealdrag0 6mo ago
  I get it. But there’s plenty of engineering to do in any serious system. I am in a very AI forward company using AI for everything, but I still am solving engineering problems every day.
keeda 6mo ago
> ... nobody in the field of "Software Engineering" is actually an Engineer if we go by a strict definitions. This is a pet peeve of mine, so while I understand what you mean, I will challenge you to come up with a strict definition that excludes software engineering! And since I've had this discussion before, I'll pre-emptively hazard a guess that the argument boils down to "rigor", and point out that a) economic feasibility is a key part of engineering, b) the level of rigor applied to any project is a function of economics, and c) the economics of software projects is a very wide range. Put another way, statistically most devs work on projects where the blast radius of failure is some minor inconvenience to like, 5 users. We really don't need rigor there, so I can see where you're coming from. But on the other extreme like aviation software, an appropriately extreme level of rigor is applied.

vict7 6mo ago

IDEs are free. Libraries are free. Languages are free. This is becoming more like an internet subscription where you’re at the mercy of Anthropic the same way you may be at the mercy of Comcast. I’m sure you can see the difference between a garbage collector and a nondeterministic slop generator But it feels good to equivocate, so here we are.

thunky 6mo ago
Not all IDEs are free. Not all LLMs are subscriptions.
- vict7 6mo ago
  > Not all is doing a lot of work to avoid engaging with the actual argument.
yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
> IDEs are free. Libraries are free. Languages are free. This is becoming more like an internet subscription where you’re at the mercy of Anthropic the same way you may be at the mercy of Comcast. Ollama/llamafile/vllm/llama.cpp are free. Qwen/kimi/deepseek are free. Pi.dev/OpenCode are free. If you're using a SaaS AI subscription that's fine, but that's hardly the only option.
- c-hendricks 6mo ago
  How much does the hardware to run them on cost? Especially to get decently sized models running at decent speeds.
- folkrav 6mo ago
  The comparison to me sounds like "you dont have to take a plane to travel between countries, paddle boats exist".

ares623 6mo ago

"What kind of engineer are you" - Jesse Plemons wearing bright-red sunglasses

embedding-shape 6mo ago

> couldn't work "Couldn't", or "wouldn't"? Early in my career I'd be happy doing anything basically, not much I "couldn't" do, given enough time. But nowadays, there is a long list of things I wouldn't do, even if I know I could, just because it's not fun.

themafia 6mo ago
It should probably be "would initially struggle to be as efficient without them." This is not a binary.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

adamddev1 6mo ago

All those examples are fundamentally different because those are hard-coded, deterministic programs/algorithms/libraries.