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The Citizen Developer
- blueboo 1mo agoA rising tide lifts all boats. It doesn’t mean the sea is made of boats
- asj1786 1mo agoYes comrade, we are all equalizing for three people to become multi-trillionaires. The level of propaganda reaches Maoist proportions.
- netsharc 1mo agoAh yeah, if I ask a company to design and build me a bridge, I'm a bridge engineer!
- camgunz 1mo agoAnyone can buy a table saw. Doesn't make you a carpenter and it doesn't mean you can/should build anything.
- tptacek 1mo agoIn case you yourself do not own a table saw, I should point out that table saws don't rip, cut, or mill stock for you. It's like saying "buying a hammer doesn't make you a carpenter".
- Avicebron 1mo agoAt what point does whacking something together yourself with a hammer make you a carpenter? You would think that even with carpentry there is a spectrum from ignorant rube to master craftsman. If you fire and forget a LLM agent at a problem, where does that land you on the spectrum?
- tptacek 1mo agoIt doesn't, it's just that people keep making comparisons between AI and basic tools of specific trades, but none of those tools work the way AI does. (I mean, I guess as soon as you start whacking things together with a hammer, you technically sort of are being a carpenter, but that's not the point.)
- fc417fc802 1mo agoTools can be more or less automated. Using a CNC for example doesn't necessarily mean that I qualify as an aspiring machinist. Similar to AI a CNC happily carries out a course of action largely independent of the operator. I think whacking things together with a hammer is the act of building (however inexpertly) whereas carpenter (and other titles) convey something about expertise, mindset, or the intent to hone skills. The DIYer might or might not qualify as an amateur carpenter/electrician/plumber/whatever.
- tptacek 1mo agoSo far the closest analogy I've come up with to coding agents is a 3D printer. Captures the amount of effort and the quality of the outputs.
- tomwheeler 1mo agoOr, in the words of Morris Day, "It takes more than a hat to call yourself a chef." More people have the capability now, but not necessarily the experience or understanding.
- tptacek 1mo agoThe hat : chef analogy is even less apposite than the table saw! At least the table saw serves an important function in that trade.
- cuttysnark 1mo agoCulinary hats serve the important purpose of helping catch stray hairs, not unlike a hairnet.
- tptacek 1mo agoWalk into a fine dining restaurant kitchen and count the number of chefs hats you see.
- b112 1mo agoCapability? I have to push back on that (AI sounding joke, yes). Point is, if I give a person a calculator, it doesn't even make them the tiniest bit of a mathematician. Nor if I give them a pencil, either. The tool never, ever makes the tradesperson. Whatever's happening with LLMs, it's not making people programmers. It's how you use the tool, which validates that.
- stackghost 1mo ago>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I think it's pretty obvious what parent poster was implying. Pedantic nitpicks add nothing to the discussion. edit: sigh, fucking rate limits are such a dumb mechanic if you want quality long-form discussion. By the time I can reply nobody will be looking at their replies. anyways LLMs might displace "programmers" in the way that 3D CAD software replaced draftsmen, but software engineering, the actual design and architecture skill, isn't going anywhere. I can use carpentry tools to build a bridge over a creek but I'm not qualified to build a bridge carrying Interstate traffic.
- tptacek 1mo agoIt is obvious what the parent poster is saying, and it's substantively wrong. Give someone a table saw and they're essentially no closer to being a woodworker. It's tricky to use a table saw (trickier still to use it safely). These tool analogies are self-soothing for programmers who see agents is simple tools of their trade. But the point of articles like this is that AI agents are more like spreadsheets --- only more so. They're devices that allow normal people without training or aptitude to do things with computers that only programmers were doing before. They displace programmers. In that sense, the closest physical analogy to a coding agent is probably a 3D printer. But: a really good 3D printer, into which hundreds of billions of dollars had been invested entirely for the purpose of making the printer work weirdly well even for people who have no interest in the different kidns of filament spools.
- camgunz 1mo agoMy thing got a little heat but I didn't see for a couple days, so I thought I'd just let it stand. But it's late and I'm reading through my old comments and, while it's necro, thought I'd do a reply here. I'm more than OK with people writing their own software, indeed the main thing I like about the free software movement is that it makes it much easier for people to do that. It's empowering. I don't have a 3D printer, but I like the idea. I think people should be able to build as much of their own stuff as they want. I have a caveat though, which I'll get to at the end. As far as my personal motivation, I--and most SWEs I know--don't really want to build the kinds of things people are using LLMs to build: audio players, billing software, whatever. I also don't think most backend apps, frontend apps, web frameworks, whatever should exist, and whether they were written by people or LLMs doesn't really factor in. More to the point, I think it's crazy that SWEs and tech workers generally make 8474x what other people make, and I think we've provided dubious value for that remittance, to say nothing of the investment, so knocking us down a peg would be putting things to rights. But, candidly, while I wouldn't love losing my job because of LLMs, I don't think that's happening writ large and I don't think it will happen to me specifically, at least not directly or any time soon. Maybe it matters to you that I don't make beaucoup bucks, maybe it doesn't. Anyway, do with all that what you will. Kara Swisher has this great line--dunno if it's originally hers--where some social media person is going on about citizen journalists opening up news and how great it is, and she says that makes about as much sense as citizen surgeons. In the same vein, I don't think a person unaccustomed to designing complex systems should try, just like I don't think someone inexperienced at building a house or a car or a plane should try. I still think this even if we have a one-button mystery machine that play-doh's out an object that seems like it may actually fly a couple of people one town over, and even usually safely does. I think we oughta slap a huge fucking label on the side of that machine that says "we have no idea how this works, and we vouch for it not at all" (I've not yet been goaded into reading the ToS for OpenAI or Anthropic, thank Dark Lord Satan, but I would put $5 down that they assume no liability for anything their models do). So my caveat, and the point of my post, curtly and regrettably expressed via analogy, is that people should feel free to build whatever they want, but they shouldn't build anything they'll seriously rely on. They won't know enough to verify that whatever they build is fit for purpose (and, sweet Satan give me strength, you can't just ask the LLM to verify it for you). Only experts can do that. Also for color, I do own a table saw, as well as some others, which I used very (very, holy shit) unsafely to do a terrible finishing carpentry job on my house and some other odd jobs. My warning to all readers is Google how table saws can fuck you up, and do not ever stand behind the wood you are sawing because the blade can literally shoot it into you, or IDK at least shoot it at you really fast.
- santadays 1mo agoIn case anyone missed it, tptacek is saying that ai is different than just a tool. Tool analogies are not good. A better analogy is, now you have what seems like an increasingly intelligent personal assistant that can do any cognitive work that you ask it to do, to increasingly better result, has retrograde amnesia, no accountability, entirely middle of the road morality, access to the internet... eh this isn't really a good analogy either.
- EA-3167 1mo agoDon't forget that when you're using it in your own domain you can at least catch its many mistakes and hallucinations, but "Citizen Devs" aren't going to have a knowledge base to do that.
- tptacek 1mo agoI often wonder whether computer programmer said these kinds of things about spreadsheets, and how mere office workers would never have the knowledge base to build serious programs with them. Remember, before Visicalc, every spreadsheet was a program built by a computer programmer.
- rascul 1mo ago> table saws don't rip, cut, or mill stock They actually do all of that
- santadays 1mo agoyou missed the "for you"
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- tptacek 1mo agoNot for you! You have to actually know how to do that, and physically push the stock through the blade. If you know zero about a table saw, you're more likely to turn a piece of wood into a projectile than to cross-cut it accurately. Again: not something you can say about a coding agent.
- rascul 1mo agoThe saw does them for you but it doesn't operate itself. Perhaps I read it too literally.
- miyoji 1mo agoOwning a slave that does all those things still doesn't make you a carpenter.
- 7bit 1mo agoThe first step in becoming a carpenter is to become a bad carpenter.
- arionhardison 1mo agoI cannot disagree here in theory; but to say that: "The first step to become a doctor is NOT to be a bad doctor, its to go to medical school"
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- pixl97 1mo agoBomb squad technician seems more pertinent here.
- 7bit 1mo agoDoctors different mate. There a shit ton of people who just bought a table saw and now are good carpenters. The claim I responded to was nothing but weak elitist gatekeeping. Such people should think really hard why they are how they are. It's ob obnoxious.
- kraken_cult 1mo agoRemember "Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers". There's a reason they go together..
- stackghost 1mo ago>There's a reason they go together.. They're all self-regulating professions with licensing bodies and professional standards?
- arionhardison 1mo agoAgreed, and I in no way meant to be pedantic. I think I did a bad job of articulating point of - where do we draw the line? How many tables did the "people who just bought a table saw" sell before they were "good carpenters". With AI, there are lots of people who think they are "good carpenters". Here in the US; the head of HHS and DOD decided that flu vaccines were no longer mandatory; until the flu exploded on military bases. I am not taking a position here because I genuinely do not know what the answer to this is but I do think it is as important as it is interesting. I many ways I think AI amplifies the "The Dunning-Kruger" by an order of magnitude; I think this could be one of the defining issue of our time.
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- rascul 1mo agoI'd recommend a battery powered circular saw instead of a table saw to get started.
- pjmlp 1mo agoYeah, right. That usually requires a 3 to 5 year degree, and possibly professional exam. Having the AI do the work doesn't make one an engineer. Just like one doesn't become a writer by owning a typewriter or a word processor.
- tptacek 1mo agoAmong other reasons, one doesn't become a writer by owning a typewriter because typewriters don't write for you.
- pjmlp 1mo agoDepends on the model.
- throwatdem12311 1mo agoAnd in civilized countries you need like 10 years of professional mentorship after the degree.
- sgt 1mo agoHow about owning a typewriter that types on its own?
- darthoctopus 1mo agoThat makes the typewriter the actual writer and you the credit-taker, just like in present ghostwriting arrangements
- KronisLV 1mo ago> the credit-taker Isn’t this what society already largely rewards? See the personality cults around CEOs and not even founders.
- soco 1mo agoNevertheless, those books aren't sold for the writing style, but because they're about the cult leader. So not the "writer" is prized (ghost or not) but the personality.
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- gustavus 1mo agoCOBOL Visual Basic Low-Code Power Platform Although AI substantially changes the situation the hard part of being an engineer was never the code. A technician is defined by the tools they work with, an engineer is defined by the problems they can solve. Taking a dozen different business processes and stakeholders and figuring out how to actually solve the problems they have is engineering.
- jauntywundrkind 1mo agoHack the planet! There's lots of caveats asterisks & limitations, sure sure sure: we hear you Technically Correct repliers, here to spread your Well Actually naysayings. But at the end of the day: heck yes. So much heck yes. Even if you are not engineering well, just the ability to have your agent go in and do reconissance of systems. "Reverse engineer this Bluetooth protocol for my device" or what I'm doing now, "reverse engineer my epaper display controller"... People have an incredibly powerful tool for assessing the world, for finding out. And I for one strongly believe that will beget the great virous circle of lovely lovely fucking around. A wheel that is humanity's best invention, best motivation, best traction, best side, and one that any self proclaimed Hacker if any spirit ought be out of their seats cheering raving with excitement happy for.
- jmchuster 1mo agoMy criteria is very simple, could you handwrite the code if you needed to. Could you write this code without the LLM writing it for you. Could you write this code without the IDE auto-completing it for you. You could take it all the way to, could you write the assembly if you needed to. Of course, the complexity of the ask and the timeline has to be commensurate with the power of your tooling at each level.
- panarky 1mo agoDo civil engineers need to be able to personally manufacture prestressed concrete? Or do they need to know the properties of materials and how to test their designs?
- archagon 1mo agoDo you think that programming is analogous to pouring concrete???
- lesostep 1mo agoAs a past civil engineer, I can't manufacture concrete. But I still could calculate and write an electrical design project and draw all necessary plans and schemes without touching PC once – if I have a ruler, few pens and enough time (I would have to reference standards, but I did have most standards in print version) I doubt your metaphor really fit. Was manufacturing ever an engineer job?
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- greyb 1mo agoI've noticed a near 1:1 overlap of people who advocate against shadow development, and people experiencing status anxiety about the fact that AI has proven that they barely pass the bar. Some arguments about shadow development and IT are valid, like security and who takes ownership after the original developers leave, but they don't really account for the reality that organizations expand constantly, business needs are perpetually exploding and most development shops are so mired in business requirements and bureaucracy that there's genuinely no value involved with interacting with them.
- sublinear 1mo agoYou do realize that you're making the exact same arguments as a dictator who just commandeered a tank, right? > business needs are perpetually exploding Ignorance is perpetually overthinking. If you want to be an engineer, you should quit your current role and reapply instead of ranting on here.
- fleischhauf 1mo agois it going to be like YouTube, where everyone was a video artist suddenly?
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- yahway 1mo agoIncluding software developers. Mathematicians tops unless the touch something outside code. An engine is literally multiple disciplines in one. I tired of SDs thinking they are engineers without touching hardware.
- wccrawford 1mo agoI've been using Claude to plan out some personal projects, and at first it seems like it can do anything! But as I've used it, I've noticed that it overcomplicates everything and often even forgets what it previously said, and makes decisions that contradict it. The AIs need a firm guiding hand, like a lead developer would give junior and mid-level programmers, and even occasionally to a senior developer that went off the rails for personal obsessions. For instance, I was just trying to have it make a simple shopping list app. I had Claude take my old shopping info from the Google Keep list we use (it keeps the old checked-off items) and get the latest grocery ad, and produce a list of suggestions. It was amazing! I decided I want to send that info to a server, have a checklist there, and then keep the info for later so the AI could do it again. After a lot of questioning (via Matt Pocock's skills, which are great) it was so complicated I finally yelled at it for overcomplicating everything, and told it how simple I wanted it to be, again. It kept insisting on IDs for products, IDs for stores, IDs for store sections... Even after I told it no IDs. I finally said it a few more times in different ways. It's finally getting back to the simple webapp that I imagined. It needed a lot of handholding to get it there. And it's the kind of thing I would see from devs that were inflexible and had to see things a certain way. I'm not ruling out that it could eventually get over this phase, but I have a feeling it'll always be something that needs handling. My other project right now was naturally complex, and needed a lot of that stuff, and things have been going better, but I still correct it rather a lot, even on things I'd previously told it.
- PostOnce 1mo ago"Everyone is an engineer" sounds like something you hear right before a building collapses and kills 300 people
- cadamsdotcom 1mo agoA vanishingly small percentage of the software in the world has failure modes that kill people. To say the analogy you're making is "only partly applicable" would be very generous..
- PostOnce 1mo agoNo, but a shocking amount of unappreciated software can cost a TON of money if it fails, even briefly, which is another disaster scenario. More software than you'd think can get people killed, though. And more software than you'd think is running inside a barely-understood SCADA package that runs user scripts, which can now be authored by AI the user doesn't understand, and that can result in either or both of the above outcomes. This is true in just about every city in the world, several times over.
- black6 1mo agoSoftware engineers have to understand that they aren't the only flavor of engineer, and even if "everyone is a [software] engineer" was the intended statement, it demonstrates excessive hubris. Many real engineers do work on systems with failure modes that kill people.
- xnx 1mo agoGood. IT broadly and unnecessarily adopted the complexity of mega-sites that serve hundreds of millions of users even when their actual user base was in the hundreds. AI allows competent and detail-oriented people with technical knowledge to again create useful internal tools in hours or day instead of the "never" timeline from gatekeeping developers.
- sublinear 1mo agoI don't want to be rude, but if you're retired by now you should stay retired. Your comment fits a pattern I see on HN all the time from the older crowd that was promoted to management way too early in their career. It's not helping.
- metal13 1mo agoFound this post super interesting. I've personally run into similar, and built a really lightweight k8s operator and claude skill that lets the citizen devs deploy to an eng/IT managed internal k8s cluster. Keeps things safe (non-public), and can update it as they get more advanced.
- CurbStomper 1mo ago[dead]
- mellosouls 1mo agoOoooh, a blast from the past from me in a discussion about No Code: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22034221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22034221 I was very anti it then - it was clearly Consultancy BS; but now non-devs really do have much more scope to create things that were only possible by software engineers before - and yes that creates challenges for us professionals. But I no longer sneer at "The Citizen Developer" as an idea; its time has come.
- waterTanuki 1mo agoNew person in sales joined my company a few months ago and on the very first introduction they handed me a vibe coded app and asked me to review it for them and put it into production. Haven't spoken to them since. They haven't proposed anything else since then either to engineering. You may think it harsh but they didn't even ask my name, what my specialization was, etc. Engineering to these folks is a one-and-done endeavour. You just prompt and fire it off and ride off into the sunset, leaving the mess for someone else to clean up. They never see the work that goes on after the launch party. The midnight debugging sessions, the database migrations, the DNS failures, debates over which auth provider to use, the list goes on. Until the "citizen developer" is willing to engage in the less "sexy" part of software engineering, the world will move on without them as well.
- lofaszvanitt 1mo agoWho wants to do business with Massdrivel after this?