4 ms·

The agents are like ants, and ants build like crazy until the resources run out in winter. AI winter is going to be interesting, to say the least.

bpodgursky 1mo ago
I don't say this to be mean, but you need to plan for a world where it's always summer. Maybe the valuations will collapse with OSS models but programming is never going back to normal.
- zx8080 1mo ago
  > but programming is never going back to normal. Are you telling it's shit now? I'm just curious.
  - echelon 1mo ago
    You're not going to get your old job back. You're a prompt engineer or you're fired. Programming will never go back to what it was before 2026.
    - thothless 1mo ago
      You're living in a corporate bubble, drowning in the kool-aid, along with half this forum.
      - anonzzzies 1mo ago
        You are saying programming IS going to go back to what it was? If yes, great! But how exactly? Why would anyone do that and why would companies want that?
        RealityVoid 1mo ago
        I think Op did not claime that "programming is going back to what it was" because even the point we should be going back to is not agreed where it should be. It's a profession always in flux. On the other hand, "you're a prompt engineer or you're fired" just reeks of psychosis. Things will change, they will never be the same, perhaps the profession will contract. But there sure as hell will still be people thinking deeply about their code and crafting it.
        echelon 1mo ago
        The models got good at this seven months ago. Your hypothesis that your job is secure because the models hit a ceiling is based on seven months of observational history. We've been watching the models get progressively better for years now. It's not going to stop in place. In some amount of time from now, these models will absolutely require less hand holding. It's as though everyone with your perspective isn't looking at the overall trend line. You're laser focused on just these last few months.
        RealityVoid 1mo ago
        And if it comes, it comes. I have no doubt a model can be as good or better than humans. I don't think humans are the peak of possibly. I just don't think the current crop of models will get there. And I do not think fast takeoff will happen. In the meantime, I keel hearing psychotic chants of "don't even read the code anymore, bro!" While the code these things output is severely lacking. At this point, it _is_ cool-aid.
        echelon 1mo ago
        > I keel hearing psychotic chants of "don't even read the code anymore, bro!" In just these seven months since Claude got good, I'm at $5M annualized at 65% MoM growth with 30% margins and plenty of opportunity to take that to 70%+. As a dev team of essentially one. You're in a new game. Stop thinking with preconceived notions and take full advantage of it. There are going to be a lot of winners and losers with this disruption. Don't lock yourself into the old regime because you grew up on newspaper.
      - brabel 1mo ago
        [dead]
    - eloisius 1mo ago
      If the job is now being a promoter, how can you not see that it’s a low skill, low pay job anyway? There are a billion capable promoters in LCOL countries that can prompt as good as someone in the Bay. Might not be worth stressing so hard to be a promptmaxxer. Could just become a bus driver or some other skilled profession if you want to keep earning a living.
      - black_knight 1mo ago
        I don’t think this is actually true, though. In fact, I believe the opposite. My experience with LLM assisted coding is that I need a technical hand on the steering wheel to get something workable out it. Otherwise, what comes out is a brittle, non-functional mess that only in the most tenuous way resembles what I had in mind. The job was never to type the code out. The job was always to take a problem in the real world, and shape it into a model which can be implemented in software. What LLMs do not do is to architect a system of suitable complexity to the scope of the problem. If you give a low skill worker the job of writing the prompts you will first get a prototype. Then a prototype with more features tacked on. Then a prototype with so many features tacked on that it breaks under its own weight. Software engineers know system design, and can adapt the system design to the scope of the problem. Are we creating a single piece which will eventually expand into a big system, we need to design completely differently from if we are creating a robust stand-alone thing, which just needs to do one thing and do that one thing really well. If anything, we will need stricter skill requirements for software engineers. Just because anyone can produce code which runs now, does not mean we should let anyone loose on creating the critical software infrastructure of our society.
        skydhash 1mo ago
        > The job was never to type the code out. The job was always to take a problem in the real world, and shape it into a model which can be implemented in software. "Typing" the code was never the whole job, and it can be the easiest part. But "the code" is very much the artifact that is used to generate values. It being correct and easy to maintain lower the associated costs and MAY raise its value. It being brittle and hard to maintain raise the associated costs and WILL lower its value. So being good at system design is how you target the first case.
    - grey-area 1mo ago
      Many programmers still just write programs, using tools where it is useful. Of course programming never stands still. I don’t think anyone thinks it will rewind. But your second sentence is very odd. Your extraordinary claim may reflect life in certain companies in SV in the grip of AI Psychosis, but most companies are evaluating these tools objectively - they are certainly not ready to perform as agents or replace humans, and it is debateable whether they are providing much efficiency boost in the case where you try to replace humans writing code entirely - there are definitely significant downsides - loc inflation, lack of context, incorrect code which appears correct, wasted time, burnout of supervising humans having to read the output etc etc. All the thought leaders like this article jumping to the shining future of independent agents cooperating under light human supervision are vastly premature - LLMs are nowhere near intelligent or independent enough for that.
- sebastiennight 1mo ago
  > plan for a world where it's always summer The difficulty in adopting this belief lies in the fact we have multiple points of reference in the past, of visionaries claiming that "this time is different" and we reached the end of history... and well, the rest is history.
  - wahnfrieden 1mo ago
    But the models are useful now and Inference is profitable. At most we must worry that the latest is not actually useful, or that they won’t get better.
    - disgruntledphd2 1mo ago
      > Inference is profitable Let's wait for Anthropic's S-1 to see if this is actually true. Fundamentally, if Anthropic ain't profitable with all the investment and usage they get, then it's possible that it may not be economical to train new models in the future (I agree that inference for already trained models makes money, but the real question is if this money will pay for the cost of training & employees).
  - bpodgursky 1mo ago
    I hear you, but this time is different and history doesn't tell us what happens next. They were wrong those times. They would be correct today. I don't have any clever argument to justify this, you just have to look at the ways the world is changing today and decide for yourself whether there is a clean historical analog.
  - kaashif 1mo ago
    It's a pun on AI winter - if there's not going to be a winter, then it's always summer. But things won't be static. It is in fact normal for new technologies to be adopted, and for there to be no cycle where the technology just disappears. There was no Internet winter or railroad winter, not in the same way there was an AI winter where AI just went away. Those technologies had valuation bubbles but the technologies themselves stuck around and changed the world beyond recognition. If someone sees the rate of change and thinks it'll stop for...some reason, then they're the ones who believe things are different this time.
- 0123456789ABCDE 1mo ago
  okay, ignoring the oxymoron with which you end you comment, what do you think folks plan for when they put on a life jacket to enter a recreational boat?
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
jatora 1mo ago
Continual gains that have not stopped and there is clearly much gain to be had even if model intelligence stopped scaling. I find it borderline nasty how so many people are positively hoping for a bubble to pop or an AI winter to come so that they can feel like they can cope with the evolving world...despite all evidence to the contrary that any of these things will happen very soon at all.
- thin_carapace 1mo ago
  currently unfettered ai spending is reducing qol for more individuals than it is increasing. why should the avg joe be happy about reduced qol?
  - jatora 1mo ago
    who is it reducing qol for? I get that SWE get far higher benefit than maybe everyone else, but who is it actively reducing QoL for?
    - ThrowawayR2 1mo ago
      Massive price increases for any electronics that contains RAM, SSDs, etc. has hurt everyone. The GPU supply crunch has hurt a smaller swath but hardly zero.
    - jamesfinlayson 1mo ago
      As a software engineer I don't think my quality of life has been improved - I now get gigantic patches to review (and I know the people writing them haven't reviewed or tested their own patches so even worse) and my tester is now drowning in big garbage patches that are taking longer to test, so my work isn't progressing either.
      - jatora 1mo ago
        Yikes. Sounds like your workflow needs a ton of work if your SWE QoL hasnt improved. that's pretty wild that youd not be optimizing
tjwebbnorfolk 1mo ago
There will, at some point, be a capex winter. Companies are splurging on a huge buildout and aren't going to buy GPUs at this rate forever. That does not mean we're all going back to artisanally hand-crafting software. That's never going to happen.
- lelanthran 1mo ago
  Not sure what they are doing with the GPUs anyway, nvidia is on track to produce more GPUs than can be physically used, because the DCs don't exist, and won't for another 18 months, and the power plants needed likewise don't exist.
  - mitjam 1mo ago
    It’s like De Beers: control supply to control the price.

bpodgursky 1mo ago

I don't say this to be mean, but you need to plan for a world where it's always summer. Maybe the valuations will collapse with OSS models but programming is never going back to normal.

zx8080 1mo ago
> but programming is never going back to normal. Are you telling it's shit now? I'm just curious.
- echelon 1mo ago
  You're not going to get your old job back. You're a prompt engineer or you're fired. Programming will never go back to what it was before 2026.
  - thothless 1mo ago
    You're living in a corporate bubble, drowning in the kool-aid, along with half this forum.
    - anonzzzies 1mo ago
      You are saying programming IS going to go back to what it was? If yes, great! But how exactly? Why would anyone do that and why would companies want that?
      - RealityVoid 1mo ago
        I think Op did not claime that "programming is going back to what it was" because even the point we should be going back to is not agreed where it should be. It's a profession always in flux. On the other hand, "you're a prompt engineer or you're fired" just reeks of psychosis. Things will change, they will never be the same, perhaps the profession will contract. But there sure as hell will still be people thinking deeply about their code and crafting it.
        echelon 1mo ago
        The models got good at this seven months ago. Your hypothesis that your job is secure because the models hit a ceiling is based on seven months of observational history. We've been watching the models get progressively better for years now. It's not going to stop in place. In some amount of time from now, these models will absolutely require less hand holding. It's as though everyone with your perspective isn't looking at the overall trend line. You're laser focused on just these last few months.
        RealityVoid 1mo ago
        And if it comes, it comes. I have no doubt a model can be as good or better than humans. I don't think humans are the peak of possibly. I just don't think the current crop of models will get there. And I do not think fast takeoff will happen. In the meantime, I keel hearing psychotic chants of "don't even read the code anymore, bro!" While the code these things output is severely lacking. At this point, it _is_ cool-aid.
        echelon 1mo ago
        > I keel hearing psychotic chants of "don't even read the code anymore, bro!" In just these seven months since Claude got good, I'm at $5M annualized at 65% MoM growth with 30% margins and plenty of opportunity to take that to 70%+. As a dev team of essentially one. You're in a new game. Stop thinking with preconceived notions and take full advantage of it. There are going to be a lot of winners and losers with this disruption. Don't lock yourself into the old regime because you grew up on newspaper.
    - brabel 1mo ago
      [dead]
  - eloisius 1mo ago
    If the job is now being a promoter, how can you not see that it’s a low skill, low pay job anyway? There are a billion capable promoters in LCOL countries that can prompt as good as someone in the Bay. Might not be worth stressing so hard to be a promptmaxxer. Could just become a bus driver or some other skilled profession if you want to keep earning a living.
    - black_knight 1mo ago
      I don’t think this is actually true, though. In fact, I believe the opposite. My experience with LLM assisted coding is that I need a technical hand on the steering wheel to get something workable out it. Otherwise, what comes out is a brittle, non-functional mess that only in the most tenuous way resembles what I had in mind. The job was never to type the code out. The job was always to take a problem in the real world, and shape it into a model which can be implemented in software. What LLMs do not do is to architect a system of suitable complexity to the scope of the problem. If you give a low skill worker the job of writing the prompts you will first get a prototype. Then a prototype with more features tacked on. Then a prototype with so many features tacked on that it breaks under its own weight. Software engineers know system design, and can adapt the system design to the scope of the problem. Are we creating a single piece which will eventually expand into a big system, we need to design completely differently from if we are creating a robust stand-alone thing, which just needs to do one thing and do that one thing really well. If anything, we will need stricter skill requirements for software engineers. Just because anyone can produce code which runs now, does not mean we should let anyone loose on creating the critical software infrastructure of our society.
      - skydhash 1mo ago
        > The job was never to type the code out. The job was always to take a problem in the real world, and shape it into a model which can be implemented in software. "Typing" the code was never the whole job, and it can be the easiest part. But "the code" is very much the artifact that is used to generate values. It being correct and easy to maintain lower the associated costs and MAY raise its value. It being brittle and hard to maintain raise the associated costs and WILL lower its value. So being good at system design is how you target the first case.
  - grey-area 1mo ago
    Many programmers still just write programs, using tools where it is useful. Of course programming never stands still. I don’t think anyone thinks it will rewind. But your second sentence is very odd. Your extraordinary claim may reflect life in certain companies in SV in the grip of AI Psychosis, but most companies are evaluating these tools objectively - they are certainly not ready to perform as agents or replace humans, and it is debateable whether they are providing much efficiency boost in the case where you try to replace humans writing code entirely - there are definitely significant downsides - loc inflation, lack of context, incorrect code which appears correct, wasted time, burnout of supervising humans having to read the output etc etc. All the thought leaders like this article jumping to the shining future of independent agents cooperating under light human supervision are vastly premature - LLMs are nowhere near intelligent or independent enough for that.
sebastiennight 1mo ago
> plan for a world where it's always summer The difficulty in adopting this belief lies in the fact we have multiple points of reference in the past, of visionaries claiming that "this time is different" and we reached the end of history... and well, the rest is history.
- wahnfrieden 1mo ago
  But the models are useful now and Inference is profitable. At most we must worry that the latest is not actually useful, or that they won’t get better.
  - disgruntledphd2 1mo ago
    > Inference is profitable Let's wait for Anthropic's S-1 to see if this is actually true. Fundamentally, if Anthropic ain't profitable with all the investment and usage they get, then it's possible that it may not be economical to train new models in the future (I agree that inference for already trained models makes money, but the real question is if this money will pay for the cost of training & employees).
- bpodgursky 1mo ago
  I hear you, but this time is different and history doesn't tell us what happens next. They were wrong those times. They would be correct today. I don't have any clever argument to justify this, you just have to look at the ways the world is changing today and decide for yourself whether there is a clean historical analog.
- kaashif 1mo ago
  It's a pun on AI winter - if there's not going to be a winter, then it's always summer. But things won't be static. It is in fact normal for new technologies to be adopted, and for there to be no cycle where the technology just disappears. There was no Internet winter or railroad winter, not in the same way there was an AI winter where AI just went away. Those technologies had valuation bubbles but the technologies themselves stuck around and changed the world beyond recognition. If someone sees the rate of change and thinks it'll stop for...some reason, then they're the ones who believe things are different this time.
0123456789ABCDE 1mo ago
okay, ignoring the oxymoron with which you end you comment, what do you think folks plan for when they put on a life jacket to enter a recreational boat?

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

jatora 1mo ago

Continual gains that have not stopped and there is clearly much gain to be had even if model intelligence stopped scaling. I find it borderline nasty how so many people are positively hoping for a bubble to pop or an AI winter to come so that they can feel like they can cope with the evolving world...despite all evidence to the contrary that any of these things will happen very soon at all.

thin_carapace 1mo ago
currently unfettered ai spending is reducing qol for more individuals than it is increasing. why should the avg joe be happy about reduced qol?
- jatora 1mo ago
  who is it reducing qol for? I get that SWE get far higher benefit than maybe everyone else, but who is it actively reducing QoL for?
  - ThrowawayR2 1mo ago
    Massive price increases for any electronics that contains RAM, SSDs, etc. has hurt everyone. The GPU supply crunch has hurt a smaller swath but hardly zero.
  - jamesfinlayson 1mo ago
    As a software engineer I don't think my quality of life has been improved - I now get gigantic patches to review (and I know the people writing them haven't reviewed or tested their own patches so even worse) and my tester is now drowning in big garbage patches that are taking longer to test, so my work isn't progressing either.
    - jatora 1mo ago
      Yikes. Sounds like your workflow needs a ton of work if your SWE QoL hasnt improved. that's pretty wild that youd not be optimizing

tjwebbnorfolk 1mo ago

There will, at some point, be a capex winter. Companies are splurging on a huge buildout and aren't going to buy GPUs at this rate forever. That does not mean we're all going back to artisanally hand-crafting software. That's never going to happen.

lelanthran 1mo ago
Not sure what they are doing with the GPUs anyway, nvidia is on track to produce more GPUs than can be physically used, because the DCs don't exist, and won't for another 18 months, and the power plants needed likewise don't exist.
- mitjam 1mo ago
  It’s like De Beers: control supply to control the price.