6 ms·

I have been writing software for over 40 years and have had a long time interest in and some work in AI over that time. I wouldn’t say this gives me any more pr

I have been writing software for over 40 years and have had a long time interest in and some work in AI over that time. I wouldn’t say this gives me any more prognosticating power about how all of this is ultimately going to go, but I believe we're soon nearing an area of plateauing; whether that's because the science itself is plateauing or the intervention of governments is going to force plateau it. So if things continue as they are today, I think in the near future, being a software developer is going to be more analogous to the medical field, where in the medical field you have different levels of professional expertise. Some will be like nurses, and some will be closer to a medic and a smaller set will be like doctors. Each with increasingly required knowledge and experience to fulfill a needed role. Those who used to be actual software developers are going to be (or have to become) more in the doctor role with years of internship and practical experience to be the architects guiding the overall AI implementation of software development in organizations. The medics are going to be people who are semi-technical, where they have some technical understanding but they don't dedicate themselves to it, like say product managers, where they jump in to help development along, but don't need to have many years of experience or very deep technical knowledge. At the nurse level, it's probably going to be similar to what people would do in the past with no code tools, where somebody in marketing who knows very little to nothing about coding at all is just going to directly converse with AI systems, but they'll never be likely to get anything more advanced than the tools they could think up for themselves. Of course, it's so hard to tell what the next big discovery or changes to the nature of world society might push things in one direction or another.

p-e-w 2mo ago
> So if things continue as they are today, I think in the near future, being a software developer is going to be more analogous to the medical field, where in the medical field you have different levels of professional expertise. The medical field is also going to change though. Massively. Because people are going to realize you don’t need to pay someone $400k per year to hand out advice about moderate exercise and which antibiotic is appropriate for a sneeze-cough with yellow mucus. Regulation isn’t going to prevent this. AI is already way too easily accessible to ever rein it in again. Not to mention that the US now has serious competition from a hostile country, so they can regulate their own AIs all they want without it making a difference in practice.
- oenton 2mo ago
  [dead]
- zerobees 2mo ago
  > Because people are going to realize you don’t need to pay someone $400k per year to hand out advice about moderate exercise and which antibiotic is appropriate for a sneeze-cough with yellow mucus. Who is going to realize that? The same forces that prevent you from walking into a pharmacy and asking for antibiotics based on what you found on WebMD will prevent you from doing it with a ChatGPT printout in hand. Lawyers and doctors are the best-known examples of industries that are in control of who gets admitted to practice the profession.
  - hattmall 2mo ago
    It's basically a formality now to get a prescription for what you read on WebMD. Every Insurance has telemedicine, you just call, read the symptom list and get the prescription. Some even let you just email. There's a doctor or at least person with subscribing ability in the loop, but they are barely doing more than rubber stamping hundreds of requests per day.
    - sarchertech 2mo ago
      Only for less regulated drugs and for drugs with minimal side effects, or drugs that are relatively cheap. Mostly for drugs that should probably be OTC anyway. Try doing that for a narcotic, or for an expensive biologic. You could always lie to a doctor about your symptoms.
      - Forgeties79 2mo ago
        Idk man I was in the EU recently as a US citizen. One 15min call about my sore throat and dude gave me not just Tylenol and antibiotics (not too wild) but also oral steroids which was beyond overkill for what I had - very rare moment where I didn’t do what the doctor ordered. I was very surprised to see that prescribed. They didn’t even recommend nexium or anything to protect my stomach.
SoftTalker 2mo ago
Tech work has been organized and divided this way for decades.
esafak 2mo ago
Why would the government force the technology to plateau when the Chinese won't? Outdoing the Chinese is the Trump admin's biggest hobby.
- goatlover 2mo ago
  Could have sworn it was trying to convince Iran to accept a peace plan after killing their former leaders who would have committed to one.
  - pferde 2mo ago
    [flagged]
langs 2mo ago
That’s a good analogy, but I think the reason we currently need the "nurse" role is the need to interact with the physical world. Most software products don't require this step, so the demand for “nurses” or "doctors" will likely decrease. If robotics technology continues to advance, the number of nurses in real world will also decrease in the foreseeable future.
- fragmede 2mo ago
  The demand for nurses and doctors is only going to go up. Not just int their current roles, but everything adjacent to them as well. Everything involved with running trials of health care products. Humans aren't going away, and they need to be taken care of.
- rwyinuse 2mo ago
  Nurses will likely be one of the last professions to be significantly impacted by robotics. Drivers, factory, warehouse, agriculture workers, cashiers etc will be automated away way before them. It's just hard to design robots that can handle patients that may be simultaneously fragile, mentally handicapped and aggressive in a way that doesn't hurt them and respects their rights. It can take multiple human nurses to do a seemingly simple thing like changing a diaper.
neitherboosh 2mo ago
I think what's actually happening is that the "threshold" of technical understanding required to be more productive than average is increasing, and other non-technical skills are becoming more important. Those below the threshold are not able to provide value over anyone else, even if they have a lot of technical experience. For example, I think today a strong PM with no technical ability can produce higher quality technical output compared to a mediocre frontend developer with no project management ability.
- jimbob45 2mo ago
  For example, I think today a strong PM with no technical ability can produce higher quality technical output compared to a mediocre frontend developer with no project management ability. Wishful thinking by the managerial class. At best they can vibe code but they can’t verify that what was written is correct.
  - NitpickLawyer 2mo ago
    > Wishful thinking by the managerial class. Heh. I wouldn't be so fast in calling this one, yet. It might go either way, or a combination of the two, who knows... Things are moving and progressing fast enough to at least be wary of, and keeping an eye on things. I wouldn't be surprised of any outcome, tbh. On the one hand, PMs get to hone in a set of skills that include lots of juggling resources, bridging the gap between stake holders and people that execute, work with different layers of technical expertise, lots of back and forth and so on. Having to "call" a thing after talking to 5 people from 6 different PoVs is interestingly something that could make them quite good at using "AI". They're already used to working with "jagged expertise" so to say. And that's really close to what "agents" do today. You might get a session where claude/gpt/gemeni turns out a brilliant piece of technical artefact, or you might get an average piece of content that misses key important aspects that a "human" could see from a mile away. On the other hand, LLMs do one thing quite well: they raise the floor of what "minimum effort" in a thing gets you. So things like language barriers, basic processes, procedures, etc. get elevated to a level where you can use these tools and be better off than not using these concepts at all. So a very talented engineer that previously had these issues, could now use LLMs to get better at auxiliary but "unimportant" aspects of integrated that technical experience into other places. In a "90% of the time people expect this to work like this" way, but with the floor being raised. One quick example of this would be a technically sound piece of software that now has bare-minimum ux/ui from this century, instead of "engineer GUI" aspect :) Who knows where this all goes. Yesterday there was an article here about someone taking a bunch of languages, asking an agent to mix concepts from all of them and slop a "new uber language" design. Is it the ultimate language that many have tried before? 99% sure it's not. Or at least this one won't be. But there's a chance, with how many people can now prompt their way to a PoC quite quickly, that we eventually get something cool. No idea how that'd look like, but it's likely the "you'll know it when you see it" kind of thing.
Fordec 2mo ago
Welcome to the current day difference between being an Accredited Engineer and being a Developer. The only thing that's happening is that the Developer side are getting a wake up call.
shshsjsj 2mo ago
[flagged]
ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
Just FYI, if you know much about the medical field, nurses tend to do most of the actual work, with highly experienced nurses actually taking up the mantle for many duties often done by doctors. Nurses are in far higher demand, than doctors. Your analogy isn’t necessarily wrong, but it might ignore the extreme importance of nurses. Many medical facilities are only staffed with permanent nurses, with doctors helicoptering in, from time to time, to take care of specific duties that may require certain licenses, or provide specific advice. So lots of jobs for nurses.
- Metricon 2mo ago
  I completely agree with you, and I certainly meant no offense to anyone who's a practicing nurse. I spent some time in the military, and my expression of medics and nurses are mostly derived from that experience, where I'm referring to a nurse as just any warm body who is able to provide aid. For professional nurses who might work in hospitals, I'm sure that many of them have significant knowledge and experience to be very effective in providing medical assistance.
- sarchertech 2mo ago
  > Many medical facilities are only staffed with permanent nurses, with doctors helicoptering in, from time to time, to take care of specific duties that may require certain licenses, or provide specific advice. Maybe for a very loose definition of medical facilities that includes assisted living facilities. But for example in an ER, nurses come and go with very rapid turnover and it’s common to staff with temporary travel nurses. > nurses tend to do most of the actual work Techs, environmental services, phlebotomists, respiratory therapists, CNAs etc. probably do more of the “work” than nurses. > highly experienced nurses actually taking up the mantle for many duties often done by doctors Only if they go back to school and become a Nurse Practitioner or CRNA, but in that case they are no longer functioning as a nurse. Even then they are general operating under the direct supervision of a physician. > Nurses are in far higher demand, than doctors. Only in absolute numbers. It’s far harder to hire a doctor than it is a nurse. I know an ex-NFL player who works as a physician recruiter.
  - 2mo ago
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
strange_quark 2mo ago
Bad take. What you're describing already exists. > Some will be like nurses, and some will be closer to a medic and a smaller set will be like doctors. Each with increasingly required knowledge and experience to fulfill a needed role. Nursing and being a physician aren't really the same thing at all, and they require different skill sets, it's not just "having more knowledge". Just because someone is an amazing surgeon doesn't mean they would also make a good nurse. > Those who used to be actual software developers are going to be (or have to become) more in the doctor role with years of internship and practical experience to be the architects guiding the overall AI implementation of software development in organizations. I think you just described a staff swe > The medics are going to be people who are semi-technical, where they have some technical understanding but they don't dedicate themselves to it, like say product managers, where they jump in to help development along, but don't need to have many years of experience or very deep technical knowledge. These people already exist. They are the business analysts who know SQL and maybe Python, R, or VBA. Marketing people who work on Wordpress landing pages. People doing systems integration, the IT department, sales engineers, and on, and on, and on. > At the nurse level, it's probably going to be similar to what people would do in the past with no code tools, where somebody in marketing who knows very little to nothing about coding at all is just going to directly converse with AI systems, but they'll never be likely to get anything more advanced than the tools they could think up for themselves. You said it, no code/low-code has existed forever.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
somenameforme 2mo ago
If LLMs reach a point of sufficiently high competence to the point that they're capable of producing usable software from vague, and sometimes contradictory instructions - the same software engineers have to regularly deal with, then at that point software will simply be an expectation of ability in any job. So I think it would be more comparable to something like literacy. There was a time when that was a fairly uncommon and highly valued skill. Now the guy flipping burgers or pouring a cup of coffee is also almost certainly fully literate. And in fact many jobs have evolved in a way such that it became mandatory, but only because it was already ubiquitous. I expect to see the same thing with software. The industry of producing software that do fairly simple tasks will probably die, but in its place will be a vast array of heavily customized and oft iterated software for companies and people achieving their own stuff. The mobile industry is a perfect example of where this will be massive shift. Right now there's a million mobile apps to execute extremely basic functionality on phones, but it's loaded with advertising, begging, and general annoyances. As are the app stores themselves. When you can make software that does that in a few minutes with a single prompt, and people realize this (as we're already practically at this point), then that will be the end of those apps. This is because the one thing LLMs have shown is that natural language interfaces are way less friction than using search, whether on the web or an app store. And so there will be a time when it will be lower friction to simply just quickly build your own app to do [whatever] than dealing with somebody trying to monetize an alarm clock.
- Toutouxc 2mo ago
  > If LLMs reach a point of sufficiently high competence to the point that they're capable of producing usable software from vague, and sometimes contradictory instructions - the same software engineers have to regularly deal with, then at that point software will simply be an expectation of ability in any job. I don’t understand how people can say this and then continue talking about software. So we’re saying machines can now casually do complex and cognitively demanding jobs like software development (or 90% of all white-collar jobs out there) and we’re NOT worried about the lynching mob going door to door and hanging IT people on lampposts? And I’m being serious, the impact this would have on societies would be unprecedented.
root_axis 2mo ago
In such a future where LLMs hypothetically dominate the SDLC, the trade would be much more like pottery than medicine - i.e. a commodity in such obscene abundance that its functional utility would be entirely divorced from its creation. In such a future there would be a handful of lucky well paid artisans, a healthy community of hobbyists, and the overwhelming population of the planet who would be perfectly content to delegate their entire software diet to generative superplatforms that script themselves to perform any arbitrary software function. The idea of paying for individual bespoke software programs would become an anachronism for an era where software was so difficult to produce that entire teams spent years painstakingly tweaking programs to spec.
- Aeolun 2mo ago
  I think the big difference is that the only thing anyone ever needs a pot to do is hold fluids (or soil). It's a lot easier to spec out than a modern software product.
  - NitpickLawyer 2mo ago
    > anyone ever needs a pot to do is hold fluids Yes, but this might also be a counter-point to your position. In a world of rising baselines, having a "pot but without all the bells and whistles" might be a thing people need. Instead of having a pot that holds fluids at every conceivable angle with 20 temperature thresholds, 5 versions that hold liquid in a cloud for you, with monthly subscriptions, having the ability to get a "like a pot but make it left handed and only holds sand because this is what I need" could turn out to be something that people want/need/end up chasing. In other words spec down, not up, and base + my particular kind of a pot.
    - CatMustard 2mo ago
      > a pot that holds fluids at every conceivable angle with 20 temperature thresholds, 5 versions that hold liquid in a cloud for you, with monthly subscriptions, having the ability to get a "like a pot but make it left handed and only holds sand because this is what I need" Ah I see you're familiar with PowerPot by Atlassian(TM) Very powerful potware, pity about how much soil it leaks.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
threethirtytwo 2mo ago
This is like the most idealized future. I think many people will wish it was like this. But when AI becomes so capable that a nobody who doesn't understands computers a well as a "doctor" uses AI to create something BETTER or superior or just as good then employers will think... why am I paying that "doctor" more than that nobody? See right now everything is fine, because AI is not that good yet. But if it gets better. Well. The future will be one where we trust AI more and more.
thisisit 2mo ago
Current discussions is like deja vu. One time there was hype around of no code/low code development using PowerApps, Zapier etc. The sell was - Creating your apps was easier than before. You don't need to know any programming language. You don't need IT. You have a GUI and just drag and drop and visual your apps. Just fill the fields and voila your app is ready. The criticism of the approach was that low codes apps might not be secure, unsuitable for large scale and critical apps, and lead to increase in unsupported apps by "shadow IT". The same reasoning exists today for AI coding. Anyone can create apps, its not great for complex and mission critical apps, might not be secure etc. And lots of discussion like your post parsing the future too closely. Low/no code apps have continue to grow. But many of the low/no code tool users are developers who use it to make their jobs easier. While some might say - this time it is different. I believe we are currently we are the beginning of the cycle so everyone is excited to use their PowerApps shaped Claude Code/Codex to make their 100th budget tracking app but as time passes and edge cases are figured out the biggest users for AI are going to be software developers (and I believe they currently are the biggest users). As for software engineering jobs just like before engineers will be expected to output more and faster. This has happened with every innovation from assembly compiler to IDE to low/no code ways of building. The different levels of expertise exists even today and it will remain so.
- andeee23 2mo ago
  i don't think it's the same exact conversation. with low code tools you still need to poke around, figure out what you want, what to do, etc. with the latest agents, you can even be vague and they'll probably do an ok job if it's not something super complicated. some models are also pretty good at stopping to let you know about stuff you haven't thought about and ask for clarification. so you can outsource thinking now, not just the doing part.
  - thisisit 2mo ago
    > you still need to poke around, figure out what you want, what to do, etc. Is it different? because then: > you can even be vague, and they'll probably do an ok job if it's not something super complicated That's lot of qualifiers to say maybe, should be possible - how does someone who is not a software engineer know what is complex, vague or ok. There are lot of assumptions to say - This time it is different. It is entirely possible it is different but I am yet to find a convincing argument.

p-e-w 2mo ago

> So if things continue as they are today, I think in the near future, being a software developer is going to be more analogous to the medical field, where in the medical field you have different levels of professional expertise. The medical field is also going to change though. Massively. Because people are going to realize you don’t need to pay someone $400k per year to hand out advice about moderate exercise and which antibiotic is appropriate for a sneeze-cough with yellow mucus. Regulation isn’t going to prevent this. AI is already way too easily accessible to ever rein it in again. Not to mention that the US now has serious competition from a hostile country, so they can regulate their own AIs all they want without it making a difference in practice.

oenton 2mo ago
[dead]
zerobees 2mo ago
> Because people are going to realize you don’t need to pay someone $400k per year to hand out advice about moderate exercise and which antibiotic is appropriate for a sneeze-cough with yellow mucus. Who is going to realize that? The same forces that prevent you from walking into a pharmacy and asking for antibiotics based on what you found on WebMD will prevent you from doing it with a ChatGPT printout in hand. Lawyers and doctors are the best-known examples of industries that are in control of who gets admitted to practice the profession.
- hattmall 2mo ago
  It's basically a formality now to get a prescription for what you read on WebMD. Every Insurance has telemedicine, you just call, read the symptom list and get the prescription. Some even let you just email. There's a doctor or at least person with subscribing ability in the loop, but they are barely doing more than rubber stamping hundreds of requests per day.
  - sarchertech 2mo ago
    Only for less regulated drugs and for drugs with minimal side effects, or drugs that are relatively cheap. Mostly for drugs that should probably be OTC anyway. Try doing that for a narcotic, or for an expensive biologic. You could always lie to a doctor about your symptoms.
    - Forgeties79 2mo ago
      Idk man I was in the EU recently as a US citizen. One 15min call about my sore throat and dude gave me not just Tylenol and antibiotics (not too wild) but also oral steroids which was beyond overkill for what I had - very rare moment where I didn’t do what the doctor ordered. I was very surprised to see that prescribed. They didn’t even recommend nexium or anything to protect my stomach.

SoftTalker 2mo ago

Tech work has been organized and divided this way for decades.

esafak 2mo ago

Why would the government force the technology to plateau when the Chinese won't? Outdoing the Chinese is the Trump admin's biggest hobby.

goatlover 2mo ago
Could have sworn it was trying to convince Iran to accept a peace plan after killing their former leaders who would have committed to one.
- pferde 2mo ago
  [flagged]

langs 2mo ago

That’s a good analogy, but I think the reason we currently need the "nurse" role is the need to interact with the physical world. Most software products don't require this step, so the demand for “nurses” or "doctors" will likely decrease. If robotics technology continues to advance, the number of nurses in real world will also decrease in the foreseeable future.

fragmede 2mo ago
The demand for nurses and doctors is only going to go up. Not just int their current roles, but everything adjacent to them as well. Everything involved with running trials of health care products. Humans aren't going away, and they need to be taken care of.
rwyinuse 2mo ago
Nurses will likely be one of the last professions to be significantly impacted by robotics. Drivers, factory, warehouse, agriculture workers, cashiers etc will be automated away way before them. It's just hard to design robots that can handle patients that may be simultaneously fragile, mentally handicapped and aggressive in a way that doesn't hurt them and respects their rights. It can take multiple human nurses to do a seemingly simple thing like changing a diaper.

neitherboosh 2mo ago

I think what's actually happening is that the "threshold" of technical understanding required to be more productive than average is increasing, and other non-technical skills are becoming more important. Those below the threshold are not able to provide value over anyone else, even if they have a lot of technical experience. For example, I think today a strong PM with no technical ability can produce higher quality technical output compared to a mediocre frontend developer with no project management ability.

jimbob45 2mo ago
For example, I think today a strong PM with no technical ability can produce higher quality technical output compared to a mediocre frontend developer with no project management ability. Wishful thinking by the managerial class. At best they can vibe code but they can’t verify that what was written is correct.
- NitpickLawyer 2mo ago
  > Wishful thinking by the managerial class. Heh. I wouldn't be so fast in calling this one, yet. It might go either way, or a combination of the two, who knows... Things are moving and progressing fast enough to at least be wary of, and keeping an eye on things. I wouldn't be surprised of any outcome, tbh. On the one hand, PMs get to hone in a set of skills that include lots of juggling resources, bridging the gap between stake holders and people that execute, work with different layers of technical expertise, lots of back and forth and so on. Having to "call" a thing after talking to 5 people from 6 different PoVs is interestingly something that could make them quite good at using "AI". They're already used to working with "jagged expertise" so to say. And that's really close to what "agents" do today. You might get a session where claude/gpt/gemeni turns out a brilliant piece of technical artefact, or you might get an average piece of content that misses key important aspects that a "human" could see from a mile away. On the other hand, LLMs do one thing quite well: they raise the floor of what "minimum effort" in a thing gets you. So things like language barriers, basic processes, procedures, etc. get elevated to a level where you can use these tools and be better off than not using these concepts at all. So a very talented engineer that previously had these issues, could now use LLMs to get better at auxiliary but "unimportant" aspects of integrated that technical experience into other places. In a "90% of the time people expect this to work like this" way, but with the floor being raised. One quick example of this would be a technically sound piece of software that now has bare-minimum ux/ui from this century, instead of "engineer GUI" aspect :) Who knows where this all goes. Yesterday there was an article here about someone taking a bunch of languages, asking an agent to mix concepts from all of them and slop a "new uber language" design. Is it the ultimate language that many have tried before? 99% sure it's not. Or at least this one won't be. But there's a chance, with how many people can now prompt their way to a PoC quite quickly, that we eventually get something cool. No idea how that'd look like, but it's likely the "you'll know it when you see it" kind of thing.

Fordec 2mo ago

Welcome to the current day difference between being an Accredited Engineer and being a Developer. The only thing that's happening is that the Developer side are getting a wake up call.

shshsjsj 2mo ago

[flagged]

ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago

Just FYI, if you know much about the medical field, nurses tend to do most of the actual work, with highly experienced nurses actually taking up the mantle for many duties often done by doctors. Nurses are in far higher demand, than doctors. Your analogy isn’t necessarily wrong, but it might ignore the extreme importance of nurses. Many medical facilities are only staffed with permanent nurses, with doctors helicoptering in, from time to time, to take care of specific duties that may require certain licenses, or provide specific advice. So lots of jobs for nurses.

Metricon 2mo ago
I completely agree with you, and I certainly meant no offense to anyone who's a practicing nurse. I spent some time in the military, and my expression of medics and nurses are mostly derived from that experience, where I'm referring to a nurse as just any warm body who is able to provide aid. For professional nurses who might work in hospitals, I'm sure that many of them have significant knowledge and experience to be very effective in providing medical assistance.
sarchertech 2mo ago
> Many medical facilities are only staffed with permanent nurses, with doctors helicoptering in, from time to time, to take care of specific duties that may require certain licenses, or provide specific advice. Maybe for a very loose definition of medical facilities that includes assisted living facilities. But for example in an ER, nurses come and go with very rapid turnover and it’s common to staff with temporary travel nurses. > nurses tend to do most of the actual work Techs, environmental services, phlebotomists, respiratory therapists, CNAs etc. probably do more of the “work” than nurses. > highly experienced nurses actually taking up the mantle for many duties often done by doctors Only if they go back to school and become a Nurse Practitioner or CRNA, but in that case they are no longer functioning as a nurse. Even then they are general operating under the direct supervision of a physician. > Nurses are in far higher demand, than doctors. Only in absolute numbers. It’s far harder to hire a doctor than it is a nurse. I know an ex-NFL player who works as a physician recruiter.
- 2mo ago

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

strange_quark 2mo ago

Bad take. What you're describing already exists. > Some will be like nurses, and some will be closer to a medic and a smaller set will be like doctors. Each with increasingly required knowledge and experience to fulfill a needed role. Nursing and being a physician aren't really the same thing at all, and they require different skill sets, it's not just "having more knowledge". Just because someone is an amazing surgeon doesn't mean they would also make a good nurse. > Those who used to be actual software developers are going to be (or have to become) more in the doctor role with years of internship and practical experience to be the architects guiding the overall AI implementation of software development in organizations. I think you just described a staff swe > The medics are going to be people who are semi-technical, where they have some technical understanding but they don't dedicate themselves to it, like say product managers, where they jump in to help development along, but don't need to have many years of experience or very deep technical knowledge. These people already exist. They are the business analysts who know SQL and maybe Python, R, or VBA. Marketing people who work on Wordpress landing pages. People doing systems integration, the IT department, sales engineers, and on, and on, and on. > At the nurse level, it's probably going to be similar to what people would do in the past with no code tools, where somebody in marketing who knows very little to nothing about coding at all is just going to directly converse with AI systems, but they'll never be likely to get anything more advanced than the tools they could think up for themselves. You said it, no code/low-code has existed forever.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

somenameforme 2mo ago

If LLMs reach a point of sufficiently high competence to the point that they're capable of producing usable software from vague, and sometimes contradictory instructions - the same software engineers have to regularly deal with, then at that point software will simply be an expectation of ability in any job. So I think it would be more comparable to something like literacy. There was a time when that was a fairly uncommon and highly valued skill. Now the guy flipping burgers or pouring a cup of coffee is also almost certainly fully literate. And in fact many jobs have evolved in a way such that it became mandatory, but only because it was already ubiquitous. I expect to see the same thing with software. The industry of producing software that do fairly simple tasks will probably die, but in its place will be a vast array of heavily customized and oft iterated software for companies and people achieving their own stuff. The mobile industry is a perfect example of where this will be massive shift. Right now there's a million mobile apps to execute extremely basic functionality on phones, but it's loaded with advertising, begging, and general annoyances. As are the app stores themselves. When you can make software that does that in a few minutes with a single prompt, and people realize this (as we're already practically at this point), then that will be the end of those apps. This is because the one thing LLMs have shown is that natural language interfaces are way less friction than using search, whether on the web or an app store. And so there will be a time when it will be lower friction to simply just quickly build your own app to do [whatever] than dealing with somebody trying to monetize an alarm clock.

Toutouxc 2mo ago
> If LLMs reach a point of sufficiently high competence to the point that they're capable of producing usable software from vague, and sometimes contradictory instructions - the same software engineers have to regularly deal with, then at that point software will simply be an expectation of ability in any job. I don’t understand how people can say this and then continue talking about software. So we’re saying machines can now casually do complex and cognitively demanding jobs like software development (or 90% of all white-collar jobs out there) and we’re NOT worried about the lynching mob going door to door and hanging IT people on lampposts? And I’m being serious, the impact this would have on societies would be unprecedented.

root_axis 2mo ago

In such a future where LLMs hypothetically dominate the SDLC, the trade would be much more like pottery than medicine - i.e. a commodity in such obscene abundance that its functional utility would be entirely divorced from its creation. In such a future there would be a handful of lucky well paid artisans, a healthy community of hobbyists, and the overwhelming population of the planet who would be perfectly content to delegate their entire software diet to generative superplatforms that script themselves to perform any arbitrary software function. The idea of paying for individual bespoke software programs would become an anachronism for an era where software was so difficult to produce that entire teams spent years painstakingly tweaking programs to spec.

Aeolun 2mo ago
I think the big difference is that the only thing anyone ever needs a pot to do is hold fluids (or soil). It's a lot easier to spec out than a modern software product.
- NitpickLawyer 2mo ago
  > anyone ever needs a pot to do is hold fluids Yes, but this might also be a counter-point to your position. In a world of rising baselines, having a "pot but without all the bells and whistles" might be a thing people need. Instead of having a pot that holds fluids at every conceivable angle with 20 temperature thresholds, 5 versions that hold liquid in a cloud for you, with monthly subscriptions, having the ability to get a "like a pot but make it left handed and only holds sand because this is what I need" could turn out to be something that people want/need/end up chasing. In other words spec down, not up, and base + my particular kind of a pot.
  - CatMustard 2mo ago
    > a pot that holds fluids at every conceivable angle with 20 temperature thresholds, 5 versions that hold liquid in a cloud for you, with monthly subscriptions, having the ability to get a "like a pot but make it left handed and only holds sand because this is what I need" Ah I see you're familiar with PowerPot by Atlassian(TM) Very powerful potware, pity about how much soil it leaks.

deleted 2mo ago

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threethirtytwo 2mo ago

This is like the most idealized future. I think many people will wish it was like this. But when AI becomes so capable that a nobody who doesn't understands computers a well as a "doctor" uses AI to create something BETTER or superior or just as good then employers will think... why am I paying that "doctor" more than that nobody? See right now everything is fine, because AI is not that good yet. But if it gets better. Well. The future will be one where we trust AI more and more.

thisisit 2mo ago

Current discussions is like deja vu. One time there was hype around of no code/low code development using PowerApps, Zapier etc. The sell was - Creating your apps was easier than before. You don't need to know any programming language. You don't need IT. You have a GUI and just drag and drop and visual your apps. Just fill the fields and voila your app is ready. The criticism of the approach was that low codes apps might not be secure, unsuitable for large scale and critical apps, and lead to increase in unsupported apps by "shadow IT". The same reasoning exists today for AI coding. Anyone can create apps, its not great for complex and mission critical apps, might not be secure etc. And lots of discussion like your post parsing the future too closely. Low/no code apps have continue to grow. But many of the low/no code tool users are developers who use it to make their jobs easier. While some might say - this time it is different. I believe we are currently we are the beginning of the cycle so everyone is excited to use their PowerApps shaped Claude Code/Codex to make their 100th budget tracking app but as time passes and edge cases are figured out the biggest users for AI are going to be software developers (and I believe they currently are the biggest users). As for software engineering jobs just like before engineers will be expected to output more and faster. This has happened with every innovation from assembly compiler to IDE to low/no code ways of building. The different levels of expertise exists even today and it will remain so.

andeee23 2mo ago
i don't think it's the same exact conversation. with low code tools you still need to poke around, figure out what you want, what to do, etc. with the latest agents, you can even be vague and they'll probably do an ok job if it's not something super complicated. some models are also pretty good at stopping to let you know about stuff you haven't thought about and ask for clarification. so you can outsource thinking now, not just the doing part.
- thisisit 2mo ago
  > you still need to poke around, figure out what you want, what to do, etc. Is it different? because then: > you can even be vague, and they'll probably do an ok job if it's not something super complicated That's lot of qualifiers to say maybe, should be possible - how does someone who is not a software engineer know what is complex, vague or ok. There are lot of assumptions to say - This time it is different. It is entirely possible it is different but I am yet to find a convincing argument.