AI will replace programmers
AI will replace programmers
103 comments
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I’ve been a professional software developer for over two decades. There is zero chance my job will get taken by an AI any time soon. Anyone who thinks my job is to write code doesn’t understand my job. That’s like saying a bus driver’s job is to turn a steering wheel.
My job is to turn vague ideas and nondescript feelings into APIs and (sometimes) UIs, then turn those into specs, then split those into tasks, then sometimes I’ll write the code for them and sometimes someone else does. About 90% of my time is turning ideas into plans, and about 10% of my time is turning those plans into code.
When I was young and was a junior engineer, my job was more to receive the specs from the senior engineers and turn that into code, but even then, I was still designing my own stuff. Maybe more like 40/60 time instead of 90/10.
Now that I’m a grizzled old man forged in the fires of task management software, I’m doing almost all of the design work myself. I manage a project that has about 250,000 lines of code. An AI isn’t going to be able to build new features into that, let alone decide which features to build in the first place.
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Heh, that won't stop a C-level from thinking that you just write code.
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Yeah, that’s probably true. Remember how all the execs decided to replace cashiers with robots, then the stores started losing money because a. it made stealing a lot easier and b. people would avoid stores that only had self-checkout robots and never had anyone to help you because a robot doesn’t know where the flour is. Now the self checkouts are being decommissioned and we’re going back to regular human cashiers. It turns out cashiers do more than just scan barcodes. But, upper management didn’t get to where they are by being smart.
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That's why the best places to work tend to be the places where your CEO has had your job before.
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That’s like saying a bus driver’s job is to turn a steering wheel.
That's a good analogy, I will use that.
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It could also be possible that AI doesn't write code but becomes the new software. Hook it up to libraries, contractions, databases and pump it full of the verbatim ramblings from the client, sales guy and manager. Sure, it costs a magnitude more power to run but it's up in no time.
Then hire a few consultants that used to be senior engineers for an outrageous amount to trace the weird hallucinations and replace the mission critical part with real code.
The future is going to be wacko.
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That's the way it's going now. People are making agentic stuff. Even in my company people are experimenting on something like that. Setup an agent, hook it up to the APIs and let loose.
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It won't automate your job, but isn't it already replacing junior devs via team downsizing?
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Any place that is replacing junior devs with AI is probably going to really regret it when they have no senior devs in a few years. Being a junior dev in a team is kind of like an apprenticeship. You learn the trade, but you also learn the shop. Then when the senior dev moves on, you have all that knowledge and can step into the role of senior dev. If a team decides to not have junior devs anymore, then they’ll have no one to take over when a senior dev leaves.
So the answer is yes, it is already replacing junior devs, but that’s only because management hasn’t learned how bad of an idea that is yet. Ultimately, it will cost them more through losing foundational team knowledge.
You also have to hold an AI’s hand the entire way through coding something, whereas you can kind of just let a junior dev go do their own thing, and eventually they’ll probably get it right. An AI “agent” tries to hold its own hand, but that doesn’t seem to work out usually when I’ve tried it. It starts making changes that are really bad, then just seems to always double down and eventually make a huge mess.
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Could AI allow you to write code in python, and then turn the python into a static language with static variables at least?
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I don't see how that's going to work out well. That's asking to end up with a mess that you're just going to have to rewrite anyways.
I do not even have a complete hatred for AI like a lot of folks do, but I don't trust it that much (nor should anyone).
You'd be better off with an actual deterministic transpiler for that (think TypeScript -> JS but the other way around I suppose), not something with a ton of random variables like an AI.
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But the main benefits of static typing is in making the programming part easier. What do you gain from translating dynamically typed languages into a statically typed language?
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A language to do what?
That is just programming with extra steps
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No, the customer wants a button that does a very specific thing.
He can't tell you what that is, though. You're the expert!
Also, can you put in more ads? And make it so the users can't close the tab until they bought something. -
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This is when the AI, in a microsecond, decided to destroy the human race.
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Not gonna lie, I don't really blame the AI.
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This is why we definitely shouldn’t rewrite the nuclear launch software. A project manager could unintentionally push a programmer into justifiably ending the fucking planet.
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Is it?
I'm checking the comments to be sure, as I also get a slight “AI-feel” from this meme.
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I had a client once explain to me that his request for the 75% redesign of his mobile app would be simple because "it's just 3 pages"
That was the exact quote
I know that was hardly related to the post, but it reminded me of that and I needed to vent to my therapist (aka strangers on Lemmy)
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I feel you. Just ended coding "a little special case" that resulted in dozens of files changed, all because I refused to make it with dirty hidden hack, and that was a clear-cut technical if-branching even, no vague ideas
Talking to a client is times that amount of hurdle
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Button that does something? That’s too advanced for me, I’ll use a library
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Help, Debian has libbutton only in 1.4.3 and libdosomething is not in my repo. I compiled libdosomething from source, but now it needs libbutton >= 2.4.1 and compiling that version of libbutton fails, as my GCC and make are too old and incompatible!
I already tried it on my other PC, but that isn't based on glibc, which makes all these dependencies even worse...
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cries in left_pad
It's kind of astonishing how many people leaned on that library just to add fucking spaces to strings
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It should be in the standard library anyway. Why the hell is it not?!
I mean yeah, I can write my own function to do the same thing and probably I've done it at some point in some coding exercise as a beginner, but this seems like such a common thing to use, it should be in the standard library of any sane language.
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Surprised there's no one in the comments going bat shit crazy that this was made by AI. Are we not doing that anymore?
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Character development ❤️
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You just had to wait 2 more hours for that.
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Well, the table sucks. I can't draw and I could do better.
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You know what we, in the industry, call a detailed specification fo requirements detailed enough to produce software? Code.
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Managers about to find out the hard way that all the requirements are in the brains of those they laid off.
I’m sure coding bootcamp and AI will turn them into leet hax0rs.
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Definitely happening at at least one major company I'm familiar with.
Requirements and everything else.
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I feel this in my bones. Even before the recent round of restructuring we've had a significant about of turnover. Our infrastructure is a massive rube golberg machine with multiple houses of cards built on top of it. Institutional knowledge was never written down and it has been leaving the company at an accelerating rate over the past 5 years. Tons of "new blood" making lots of assumptions on how things work is resulting in... humorous end results.
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AI slop image, for this gag?
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How queer, I must report to my supervisor posthaste!
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AI:
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Whoa whoa, hold on there! You can't expect a product manager to come up with such detailed specs!
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I am a product manager that loves coming up with detailed specs. How else will I actually get what I want? If you care about some specific behavior/outcome you must specify it. This logic is lost on my leadership.
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Customer requirements are basically always “I want what my Excel sheet used to do”.
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"You mean you want it to corrupt your data and end up with conflicting changes once you share it?"
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I want faster horses.
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TBF if the spreadsheet works, why change anything?
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That depends. Is the spreadsheet doing what it's intended for, or one of the hundreds of things it can do but really shouldn't?
I've made my fair share of spreadsheets, including time tracking, vehicle scheduling, email automations, map integrations, god forgive me even 'databases' - all of that because no one was willing to pay for a proper solution.
So I'm not saying spreadsheets can't or shouldn't ever be used for those things, but a dedicated solution for a problem may indeed be a good reason to change things.
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<.<
We have an excel. It’s more… a group of excels? They call each other. Opening and running VBA within each other. The excels are “run” nightly, and take well over an hour to do their thing.
Should we just keep it in Excel?
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AI Project Manager: Create a button on a webpage that, when clicked, displays an alert saying "Hello World!"
AI Programmer: "What a sensible requirement! Here you go."
AI Billing Department: "Project completed, that'll be 10 million dollars."
Client AI Payments Department: "Sounds right, paid!"-
AI Quarterly Call Bot: Delivery is on time and synergy is high!
AI investment selector: This company looks profitable. Purchase!
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"Y'know, I've been thinking... The app is missing a couple of things, like This, and That, and it should also do This after That, but not That after This, and maybe even navigate to The Other Thing after 3 Launch events, while also not doing that if the user is under a Pisces moon in the 4th Year of Wilting..."
"So... you want a Rate the App pop-up with specific trigger conditions?"
"What?! No! I want one of those prompts with the stars and the redirect to the Store which lets people post reviews of the app, what are you even talking about?!"
AI Junior Dev: short-circuits
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It wouldn't short circuit, it would just say "OK, no problem!" and then output bullshit.
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My wife had her first meeting with Chat Gpt today.
She went from a random question about her job to the AI offering to taking care of her LinkedIn page, and promoting alternative positions for her.
It feels to me the product manager is in trouble too.
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Me: I need spec -- not just trust code Manager: You always make unnecessary demands, I'm replacing you AI: I would be happy to help you, if you could provide spec? Manager: god fuckin dammit
I honestly sometimes think to go into business myself just so I can write contracts that say "you will give us a fucking spec" and just keep billing while they fuck around not providing a spec
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Current LLMs would end that sketch soon, agreeing with everything the client wants. Granted, they wouldn't be able to produce, but as far as the expert narrowing down the issues of the request, ChatGPT would be all excited about making it happen.
The hardest thing to do with an LLM is to get it to disagree with you. Even with a system prompt. The training deep down to make the user happy with the results is too embedded to undo.
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Stupid PM. Forgot to say the button needs to be corn-flower blue.
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Make pop.
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A highly respected school teacher of mine was known to say, "Say what you mean; mean what you say."
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This is really one of the best advice about communication ever.
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Yeah, I have a guess that it didn't even fullly understood the prompt behind this slop either...
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How about... AI replaces government officials! A lot cheaper. Might actually get things right. And how could it fuck up any worse than what we have?
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A lot. The answer is it could fuck things up a lot worse than what we have.
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Great! Software isn't bloated, convoluted, incomprehensible, fragile enough already!
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The DWIM button.
Coming soon after the Neuralink implant.
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Just wait until QA gets a hold of it
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Good, I hope so. Whatever puts an end to the hipster, activist dev is a solid win.
103 comments
The client wants to drag and drop their own personalized excel file with no guaranteed formatting or column order or data contract in order to import their data into our system <3
Needs more AI to randomly guess what the columns might be
I love how this is a universal experience.
Jesus, this gave me war flashbacks.
Strangely enough we actually solved this problem with AI a few months back. We upload the excel file to Gemini and have a prompt to extract the data we need in a specific json format. And it works surprisingly well.
How well? Bet your life on it well, or "fewer hallucinations than we would have guessed" well? I've considered and toyed around with openAI models for logging supply room check offs in a JSON format and it went better than I hoped but worse than I needed.
Do we have the same client?
Everyone has and is that client.
Or headers. Just unlabeled data in a CSV.
Yep, RIP