4 ms·
It's bittersweet, isn't it. Software is solved, but at a terrible cost.
by varjag 4mo ago
It's bittersweet, isn't it. Software is solved, but at a terrible cost.
- alecco 4mo agoWhy is it bittersweet? Carpenters probably didn't cry when their tools improved. It will be bittersweet when there's no human needed at the wheel but IMHO we are far, far from that. These models/agents are just mimicking human text and need guidance because they often get lost or stuck.
- varjag 4mo agoCarpenters would have cried if all their work was reduced to shoving the logs into CNC machines. Yes there is still human input but it requires comparatively no skill or depth and it gets easier by the month. If I were lobotimized today I'd still be able to function as half-assed architect to AIs anyway. When was the last time you read fighting distractions/getting "in the zone"/complaint about open space offices thread or comment? They used to be a weekly feature on HN frontpage.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago> Yes there is still human input but it requires comparatively no skill or depth and it gets easier by the month. If I were lobotimized today I'd still be able to function as half-assed architect to AIs anyway. Hard doubt, software engineering is so much more than just literal coding and typing. At least for many of us, the coding/typing part is the easy stuff, everything around that is where the actual engineering happens. If I were lobotomized, maybe I'd get ~10% done today as the day before, if I'm lucky. Even with my full mental capabilities, the agents end up on wild goose-chases unless I'm very specific with what I want, and even sometimes ignoring things if they're too complicated/takes too long, so a bit of thinking is still required to get the right prompts. And considering how subjective programming is, since it's a creative endeavour after all, I'm not that worried somehow all programmers will be unemployed in just some years. > When was the last time Frequency of something doesn't tell you how big of an issue something is, for all we know, HN community (or even the moderators) could have been tired of all the circular conversations where nothing new is being said, and downvote it. Doesn't really tell us much.
- varjag 4mo agoHonestly conflating coding with typing tells me your idea of coding is very different to what I used to do.
- embedding-shape 4mo agoUse whatever labels you want, apply charitable reading and I'm sure even you could understand what I mean here. Clearly there are at least two sorts of tasks (or used to anyways) in "software engineering" as a whole, one more mechanical and one more about thinking.
- antonvs 4mo ago> apply charitable reading and I'm sure even you could understand what I mean here. Beautiful burn.
- varjag 4mo agoIt just shows you haven't programmed computers much so your opinion is largely speculative.
- embedding-shape 4mo agoWhat exactly shows that? That I think thinking about code/design and typing code are two different activities? Maybe you disagree, around myself and my peers that'd be a minority perspective, but it's not speculative, based on real experience.
- skydhash 4mo agoCoding is literally writing code, instructions in plain text that control the behavior of computer. That implies knowing which instructions to write. But creating software is much more than that. Just like writing an essay involves more than just typing words. Other activities include: Architecture, Requirements analysis, Debugging, Testing, Integration,…
- alecco 4mo agoBut it's not like "shoving the logs into CNC machines". You have to understand what they are doing and point them into the right direction. LLMs very often lack common sense once you move out of easy things.
- varjag 4mo agoYes you have to understand when the log stuck in CNC machine, if you want to put the carpentry analogy to its extreme.
- brookst 4mo agoI love programming CNC machines; I am a terrible carpenter. Someone still has to tell the LLMs what to build, specify design constraints and goals, etc
- varjag 4mo agoYes, the easy part is still there.
- brookst 4mo agoFunny, working in product I think designing the right thing is far more difficult and interesting than just typing in source code.
- varjag 4mo agoYou're the second person itt using an expression "typing in code". Guys I understand your excitement now that you too finally can make computers do what you want but it's not how programming worked at all.
- brookst 4mo agoYeah I cut my teeth on 6502 assembly and know IDK how many languages. I get it. It’s still typing in code.
- voidUpdate 4mo agoI think carpenters might cry if a company went around shoving every single piece of carpentry they could find into a machine, and then when you press a button on that machine, a chair comes out, and then they go around saying that this machine will replace carpenters forever, and they made this machine with no help from other carpenters, and furniture makers all went "who needs carpenters anymore, lets just use the chair machine"
- pjc50 4mo agoThe real problem is we built the genie in the lamp or the monkey's paw: it's a machine that gives you what you ask for!
- rschiavone 4mo agoHow is it solved? LLMs cannot think new things, they can only cobble something together if it's in their training set.
- nashashmi 4mo agoI am not sure if claude had powerpc scripts in its training.
- tock 4mo agoNew things are made by cobbling together existing things.
- varjag 4mo agoThat "only" part used to be the hardest. Getting the ideas was never the hard part. I think someone here even wrote an essay on that.
- qsera 4mo agoIt does not think at all. It vibes based on its training and any additional bolted on constraints. It is a quite simple automation that only works by huge amount of existing data. Modern man has grown quite dumb. He only seems to be able to "invent" by massive scaling things that are decades or centuries old..
- jorisw 4mo agoSoftware isn't solved. 'Coding' is, according to the people of Claude. Coding (programming) is a tedious and expensive part of software engineering. There's other parts AI isn't doing, such as understanding and refining requirements, and delivery + accountability.
- skydhash 4mo ago> Coding (programming) is a tedious and expensive part of software engineering. Why is that? Coding, for me, is kinda relaxing, and the fun part of developing software. Gathering requirements, especially in a corporate settings, is the tedious part and the most time consuming.
- 1over137 4mo agoAccountability?!?! Outside medical software, and similar niches, I see little accountability in the software industry.
- boxed 4mo agoThe cost is not terrible, calm down.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- antonvs 4mo agoThis reminds me of the Go champion who announced he was giving up the game after a computer beat him. It’s as if a runner were to give up running when beaten by a horse or a car. It suggests they may have had unexamined and perhaps somewhat strange reasons for doing the activity in the first place. People have difficulty accepting just how significant their limitations actually are. We design our world to hide those limitations. As an example, it would be easy to make computer games that are unwinnable by humans because of our slow reaction times, low speed in general, and our cognitive limitations. But no-one makes such games, because few people would want to play them for very long. The “terrible cost” in this specific case seems to be related to discovering that we were fooling ourselves about how good we were at software development.
- varjag 4mo agoI'm not giving up the career. And I certainly don't feel left behind: I'm good at programming, and I still have a substantial edge over non-programmers here in meaningfully using agents (as of June 2026). The terrible cost refers to sucking all the joy of the process as the mechanized activity makes the actual intellectual part of the work redundant, if you can understand. Software development is now another fake job.