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I think grief is appropriate for the part of the software engineering craft that has been lost, because it was genuinely fun and rewarding at times, and I don't

I think grief is appropriate for the part of the software engineering craft that has been lost, because it was genuinely fun and rewarding at times, and I don't think it'll ever come back. Sure, some of us will hack on things manually for fun here and there, but even that will likely become ever more niche, like doing your laundry with a washboard. And professionally, no one is going to be writing code without LLMs before long. That world is gone, and it's OK to mourn it.

xigoi 2mo ago
If using a washing machine required you to send your laundry to an evil corporation, the washboard would start to get some appeal…
- senordevnyc 2mo ago
  Yeah, I definitely don’t think all software engineers will be sending their codebase to OpenAI or Anthropic, but I think basically all of us will be using LLMs. I keep hearing about how open weight models are only six months behind, so presumably in a few years, it’ll be feasible for corporations to self-host very capable models. Still, I suspect most will just use the dominant labs, or something like Bedrock where you have stronger ZDR guarantees.
hn_submit 2mo ago
Not true. Many developers will keep writing their own code, possibly outside the corporations that force them to use LLMs to do so.
- senordevnyc 2mo ago
  A few, yes. Just like there are woodworkers who only use hand tools out of principle. But most engineers will use LLMs on their side projects, and virtually all will for professional work.
  - hn_submit 2mo ago
    I doubt that. The people I know who use LLMs write 85% of the code themselves. We might even see a "codepocalypse" where the companies using A.I. to write their code realize that the code is unmaintainable, developers that cannot maintain it are sacked and they desperately look for developers who never stopped writing code and maintained their proficiency.
    - senordevnyc 2mo ago
      I sincerely doubt we’ll see any such movement, but we’ll see!

xigoi 2mo ago

If using a washing machine required you to send your laundry to an evil corporation, the washboard would start to get some appeal…

senordevnyc 2mo ago
Yeah, I definitely don’t think all software engineers will be sending their codebase to OpenAI or Anthropic, but I think basically all of us will be using LLMs. I keep hearing about how open weight models are only six months behind, so presumably in a few years, it’ll be feasible for corporations to self-host very capable models. Still, I suspect most will just use the dominant labs, or something like Bedrock where you have stronger ZDR guarantees.

hn_submit 2mo ago

Not true. Many developers will keep writing their own code, possibly outside the corporations that force them to use LLMs to do so.

senordevnyc 2mo ago
A few, yes. Just like there are woodworkers who only use hand tools out of principle. But most engineers will use LLMs on their side projects, and virtually all will for professional work.
- hn_submit 2mo ago
  I doubt that. The people I know who use LLMs write 85% of the code themselves. We might even see a "codepocalypse" where the companies using A.I. to write their code realize that the code is unmaintainable, developers that cannot maintain it are sacked and they desperately look for developers who never stopped writing code and maintained their proficiency.
  - senordevnyc 2mo ago
    I sincerely doubt we’ll see any such movement, but we’ll see!