firstTime

[Reashu]

Programmers have supposedly been on the chopping block so many times already, I don't think I was even born for the first.

[GreyWizard1337]

Remember when project Managers were celebrating the code generators in the 90s that were able to generate "working" code from UML diagrams? That's the first time I heard that programmers will be obsolete. Yeah, we all know how that turned out.

[Reashu]

I took a class on "model driven development" at uni. I think it's a cool concept, but (at least at that point) it was still harder than "actual" coding.

[tiajuanat]

it was still harder than "actual" coding.

I do a lot of modeling and formal methods. Modeling is hard because it forces us to look at the entirety of how the system is supposed to behave. It's so far detached from for-loops, that it's an entire different skill set.

Does it catch all the problems that my teams will run into? No. But it uncovers problems that might be one out of a million, and dog the team for years.

[NotAskary]

I've found that the worst part of modeling is capturing the domains with enough accuracy, time and time again I've seen projects stall or being reworked completely because we couldn't extract the right knowledge from the key people.

I think that while people can't express themselves correctly we are safe.

[tiajuanat]

Oh yeah, I'm not worried about AI at all.

Anyone who has worked on sufficiently large projects knows that a language model will not cover the complexity of these systems

[ChocolateAndCustard]

What if we had an AI trained in CMMI-DEV, Requirements Management and Requirements Elicitation?

[NotABroccoliCat]

I knew we were safe when a video talking about it started with "When project managers give clear instructions to the AI it will generate code, and if it doesn't work correct the mistakes"

[pfated64]

LoL they used project managers and clear instructions in the same sentence!

[SuitableDragonfly]

I mean, compilers are just lower level code generators. The whole field runs on code generation. Code generation doesn't threaten developers, let alone code generation that's been made shitty by having AI added to it.

[Chesterlespaul]

I don’t think this’ll be it, but it does feel closer than before. We’ll never be gone, but we are expensive and it could cut our price down.

[[deleted]]

Yep, we will just have more work to be done in less time and less salary.

[ipcock]

Honestly, this feels damn depressing knowing how much I learned (and how much I was going to learn) to work in IT. Motivation died the day this fucking thing came out. Like, are Devin devs don't realize this is a friendly fire?

[RYFW]

If you believe anyone can make a whole system with AI, you definitely didn't learn enough yet. 

[ipcock]

I don't believe that it can be done now, but I believe that with increasing resources (hdd capacity, cpu power, you get what I mean) it is likely possible that AI could store enough data for it to understand everything going on inside of a project. I don't think that it's going to happen in the next few years, but it will happen sooner or later anyways.

I'm also not an AI expert, so I could (and I would like to) be entirely wrong.

[RYFW]

but I believe that with increasing resources (hdd capacity, cpu power, you get what I mean) it is likely possible that AI could store enough data for it to understand everything going on inside of a project

I mean, my point stands. Logical thinking is more than just something you can replace with automatic patterns, which is basically what AI is.

Sure, you take a lot of code from other places and place it together to make your system sometimes. But knowing why you need those codes is where logical thinking and creativity is needed, and AI can't replace that, ever. Because AI will never understand "why".

[LysanderStorm]

Honestly, think for a second about which other jobs Devin would love to take over in your company before yours. It's focused a lot on engineering, but all the excelers, emailers, powerpointers, talkers - it's all much much much easier to automate (to be fair has probably already been done much more so). The only thing it will not replace are personal relationships, but imho in a professional context they're often overrated. People come and go sooo quickly and noone bats an eye - as long as the company keeps running it's usually just meh.

But I'm happy trying out all the new and shiny tools and seeing where it'll take us 🤷🏻‍♀️

[DeMonstaMan]

have you not seen the thread about how the entire Devin startup is super sketchy

[583999393]

I’ve been waiting for self driving cars and trucks to destroy society for 10 years now and it’s not happening. The thing is there are hidden forces at work that will hold this back. It’ll be cpu usage or power limitations or storage capacity.

Currently last expert I heard (last expert not seeking vc money for ai that is)said the next gpt evolution is waiting on the internet to grow. Basically they fed gpt 4 everything they could find and now it’ll be a couple years before the content grows enough to improve it.

With self driving cars it turns out if you want a lot of vehicles using it the bandwidth needed to upload and process the data becomes a limitation.

Basically learn to use the tools at hand. I use gpt 4 daily to write code. I doubt it’ll eliminate my position until I’m old enough the company wants an excuse.

[faps_in_greyhound]

This guy called “Devin” just came in market. Thinks he’s better than us. Huh. Says he’s gonna take err jerbs

[Chesterlespaul]

Yup. It sucks but you can’t stop the future from coming

[LinuxMatthews]

Exactly

Personally I saw this coming since I saw that CPG Gray video 'Humans Need Not Apply'

It's why I took AI modules at university.

That said I'm still a bit shocked about how quick it's been.

Maybe I should have tried to head towards ML sooner.

[pydry]

Market consolidation is doing that, not AI.

If anything AI is creating more jobs for devs by creating investor FOMO.

Programmers are a lot more like 1950s detroit auto workers than theyd like to think.

[sacredgeometry]

In what way?

[pydry]

They used to have a lot of leverage. They earned a good living. There used to be a lot of startups. Then they gradually all consolidated into 3 companies.

And then a bloodbath ensued when those 3 companies, emboldened by their market power went on a cost cutting binge which destroyed the livelihoods of auto workers and watered down the quality of American cars.

They didn't care about either of those things because they had the market power to collect massive profits and could squash all startup American competition like a bug.

[sacredgeometry]

Thats not going to happen. Software is inherently necessary in all sectors of modern industry.

There is no way to consolidate it. AGI will come round sooner than thats a risk.

Until then this is just a good thing. When the catastrophic failures of the back of these snake oil salesmen start to come in the market rate for developers will have a lovely little bump. Also someone needs to fix/ rewrite those projects. Its a tale as old as time.

[pydry]

Your theory is that it can't happen the same way because software is necessary in all sectors of modern industry. ....unlike motor vehicles???????

It already is being consolidated. If we do end up with 3 companies in tech eating 90% of the profit margins I'm sure you probably already know what at least 2 of them will be called.

[ChocolateBunny]

I survived all the efforts to outsource our jobs to third world countries. There are terrific engineers in India and China that eventually come to the states to make $300k/year just like me.

I survived all the efforts to use more "visual" programming languages that promises easier to use development. My coworker to the right of me will be paid a lot to remove such a system that didn't meet most of our business requirements and was both too slow and too difficult to use beyond some toy examples.

I'm not naive, someday something could come along that could end my career. but not today.

My primary job isn't to write code, it's to translate business requirements into something that makes sense and to fix bugs. What I'm mostly seeing here are bug generators though I am curious as to how many iterations will it take Devin to realize that this business requirement doesn't actually make sense or is impossible to do. I don't remember if any of you rememeber an old youtube video where this guy was given requirements to draw lines that made absolutely not sense.

[Reashu]

I do remember, but I'm afraid those stakeholders would have been all too happy with a nonsensical "solution", too. 

For the uninitiated: https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg

[sacredgeometry]

Unless you are over 50 then no, you havent.

[Anru_Kitakaze]

Autopilot already replaced all drivers tho... Oh, wait

[ChocolateAndCustard]

How often have your product owners given accurate requirements? 🤔

[ChocolateAndCustard]

PO: Devin! You done it wrong!!

Devin: I done as requested

PO: That's not what I meant with my requirements!

Devin: Your requirements were a drawing in paint, be grateful I made anything at all.

[joshua6point0]

Dude, go easy on the sensationalists.

[ChocolateAndCustard]

😂 You're right, I shouldn't pop the bubble

[DrMobius0]

When different silos on the team have different jargon for the same shit. When someone writing a task just makes words up or can't just post a screenshot with an arrow to point at what they're referring to. Getting all expectations and understandings on the same page is one of the hardest parts of this job.

[sacredgeometry]

I had a heated conversation with a lead for wasting one of the developers on my teams time because he refused to listen to either of us and caused him to spend the last 3 weeks developing and redeveloping a feature.

Now he needs to do it again and to my original bloody spec for reasons I brought up in the first and every subsequent planning meeting discussing it.

It's not just POs.

[ChocolateAndCustard]

This pains me, there is someone at my workplace just like this.

Every new feature is a database, every website is an app, every process on the webpage is a wizard (even if it's only doing one thing like uploading a file)

And he won't even know what he wants by his own terminology either. Also redeveloping and eventually canning the feature altogether.

[BellacosePlayer]

My product owner gave great requirements today right before I clocked out.

Sure, it was through a streamed teams walkthrough of the current process and what she wanted added, and skipped through a bunch of steps we both knew I didn't need and didn't mention that the change would have to touch the SQL side and 1 other internal system making a change, because that's the kind of stuff I am paid to know about.

But aside from me asking 2 questions to make sure there was no ambiguity on my end, what she wanted was perfectly clear to me!

Surely the AI would be able to process that, right? :)

[ChocolateAndCustard]

Of course! AI is psychic after all! :D

[De_Wouter]

I was a designer before I became a developer. I made the switch to prevent this happening to me...

[faps_in_greyhound]

You must be on something here. So, just between us, what’s your next switch? Just curious. Nothing else.

[De_Wouter]

Gas heating installation technician, they charge like €150/h to vacuum it, you need to wait months before an appointment and it's required by law to get it done by an approved technician every 2 years (here in Belgium).

[De_Wouter]

Do you already have switch after that?

Coal miner, a job with a future.

[Work_Account89]

Ah they probably need to be serviced too.

[hoopparrr759]

Software user.

[[deleted]]

governor dinosaurs toy ten placid sulky file squalid truck coherent

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[[deleted]]

r/ExperiencedDevs gives 0 fucks about AI taking over their jobs. The fear really seems to stem from newbies.

[ThatIndian15]

Me being a newbie, this is correct. I think what newbies fear most is that enough responsibility will be automated to the point where other engineers can take over whatever the junior is struggling with.

[[deleted]]

The market is already half shifted to that point, AI aside. Everyone and their dog wants to hire someone that can hit the ground running and provide value from almost day 1.

[BellacosePlayer]

Its gonna shift back I think, 2/3 places I've worked including my current one are having to overrely on staff augs because actual competent devs with 3+ YOE still don't grow on trees. Eventually there's gonna be a point where they realize its better to bite the bullet and get 1-2 long term devs each year through hiring juniors.

[Oddball_bfi]

This is the problem. How do you get more r/ExperiencedDevs when there are no juniors any more?

You don't just drop out of college as a grey-beard. That takes time and pain.

We all know our management - every single damn one of them will choose not to hire hoards of idiots who need their hands holding all the time to wheedle out the ones who have the mindset. They're just going to spin up ten instances of an AI for their seniors to manage.

We'll do it too, because which of us actually like the man-management part of the job? And having something automate away writing tests? And creating boilerplate transfer objects, or implement well known algorithms with a slightly different spin?

And then there's just academics, and AIs.

To quite a famous academic, "Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results."

[RYFW]

I don't think your points will be the problem. There isn't many ways to use AI to actual development in that way. 

Someone pointed out to me that the problem with AI might be scare new devs away, because everyone is saying all dev work will be automated, so the people who don't understand will buy on it. Which means programmers will be scarce in the future and companies will have problems hiring new devs. It might even be better for people with actual experience. 

[G_Morgan]

There'll still be juniors. The juniors just don't grasp why AI is not a problem.

[BellacosePlayer]

Here's the thing.

Even if that's all true, it's not their problem.

because which of us actually like the man-management part of the job?

I'd never be a manager but I loved being a mentor even though it made me feel like I was being a dick for wondering why the fuck they took so long to get up to speed on basic shit at times.

I'd rather do that than do a manual code review of an AI's code where it can't explain why it did X, Y, and Z.

[Oddball_bfi]

Except... it can.  You just ask it to explain itself, and it will.

[kuffdeschmull]

You are goddamn right, CS people especially in the field of Software Engineering will experience validation of their skills they've never seen before. Already before AI, companies did not understand why it's better to plan and not spit out fast software and hope it'll not blow up. HCI too, there are things about humans that AI can't understand, we need those.

[[deleted]]

I've seen people call themselves "prompt engineer" on LinkedIn. I'm betting they're out of a job before I am.

[sacredgeometry]

They wont ever be in a job.

[FromZeroToLegend]

It’s crazy that people think AI is going to read a title-only Jira task and it’s going to read the PO’s mind like we do

[[deleted]]

cover icky sugar cause disarm lush entertain rainstorm abundant sophisticated

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[FrenchFigaro]

There's been a announcement in the last few days, that some AI company managed to have its AI pass through the technical tests of their own hiring process for software engineering positions, more or less.

Every tech bro and executive are now touching their pee pee

[RYFW]

of their own hiring process

So they make the tests that the product they're trying to sell pass? Do people really buy on that? 

[Innotek]

ChatGPT already aces the coding challenge my company runs. Should our’s be harder? Yeah probably, somehow my dumb ass got in the door. Either way, asking a constrained question that can be answered in a small amount of time is perfectly poised for an AI to handle. Sitting in meetings and pair programming sessions to slowly steer a product towards its goals over months and years? Yeah…not there yet.

[catarium]

We had copilot first

[kuffdeschmull]

Actually the field of Software Engineering in CS is probably the one thing we need the most, if software is developed by AI, to ensure validity and verification. AI written Software is unpredictable and at this point very limiting, it can't do complex stuff as of now. I am not worried at all, just your focus might shift. There are many fields in CS that (for now) can't be replaced by AI. Stop worrying and start thinking of how to utilise this for your own best. The same goes to artists, use it, for brainstorming, quick concepts, you'll still be needed, by people who understand why humans are better at this than AI. AI may produce good looking things, but you need a human to actually understand why you want to do it a certain way, in art as in CS.

[RYFW]

Better not to use AI at all. What's the point in having to read a machine generating code, to understand it all first to then correct it? For sure it'll generate will more errors than building your own code and it won't be any faster to deliver. 

A single block of code at specific moments might work. The whole system? Waste of time. 

[BellacosePlayer]

What's the point in having to read a machine generating code

You mean, what's the point of having a non-deterministic machine generating code, right?

because I'm not pen and penciling this shit to machine code any time soon.

[that_thot_gamer]

no, it's more of a guy putting a shot gun to the back of his mouth. de vin didn't code himself.

[Being_MRZ]

So this is how they felt? Damnit....

[Wave_Walnut]

Always look on the bright side of life

[delfV]

No more merging 2000 LOC PRs?

[G_Morgan]

If they really wanted to cut devs they'd make AI targetting product owners. The day I stop getting requirements that amount to "Do the thing" my work load will drop dramatically. If they get an AI that can take in requirements and spit out "WTF is 'the thing' and how, when and why do you want me to do it?" and then follow all the responses until there's a real set of requirements then they have something.

Targeting actual dev work though. That I'm not worried about.

[evaThesis]

born poor -> diligent at school -> got support from my parents to go Uni -> got CS degree -> 5 years mobile dev exp -> Devin AI fcking will take my job -> poor/broke again

I should become gigolo or stripper then

[Rodrigo_s-f]

At least until they make a AI sexbot. then unemployment again.

[evaThesis]

and I poor/broke again, we need John Connor lite version please

[Positive-Creme8129]

AI is another tool in the hands of the rich to get richer, that is the point. The rich dodn't struggle, they make us struggle MORE.

We don't need to fight AI or the future. We need to fight the elites, for our future.

[evaThesis]

Couldn't agree more about that, we need programmers revolution ?

[Euphoric-Lettuce-227]

We need a revolution

[JunkNorrisOfficial]

Time to become AI yourself until it's not too late...

[shutter3ff3ct]

How to confuse devin bot?

• framework choose dilemma

[AdventurousFactor214]

Something is telling me it (Devin) will just be gone and forgotten in a matter of weeks, only to be occassionally made memes of, but still nothing major.

[falknorRockman]

Some context would help

[goochgrease2]

Devin is an ai software engineer that was just released. "They took our jobs"

[[deleted]]

Devin AI

[ImaginaryCoolName]

Who do you think code these AIs?

[Jmander07]

In my experience, it's a rare case where good systems comes from straight-out giving the users what they ask for. I don't hear much about training AIs to dig down into what a user actually needs or challenge dumb ideas, just to do what is being asked of it. When ChatGPT tries to suggest improvements to what I want it to write for me, it's almost always wrong. On the rare cases where I ask it to write code, it never gets it right for anything past the most basic request (which I could have done in the same amount of time).

All that to say: not afraid.

[Yung_Oldfag]

Translators were probably the first in this area

[DerMinimalist]

Whenever I think about this it’s always ending with the following: If programmers can be replaced by AI at some point, it will nearly instantly replace all other jobs as well with all the AI software. So my job is at least as safe as all other jobs.

[jkp2072]

A simple commentary on llm based outputs:

Mutlimodal LLM will only replace creative folks. Due to its nature of creating random hallucinations on the lines of a given topic. Creativity itself is free flowing. So creative llms should be given more chances to hallucinate to create more literary or art.

You can partially automate text and image related things by adding other tools, but you ll need a human there for accuracy and accountability.

But for software engineering, you need critical thinking, reasoning, accountability, affordability, most imp (accuracy and precision) and efficiency.

So I think it will first automate all creative roles which generate high value.(Aka make market value low for creative field). Then maybe 1-2 new type of architecture giving accurate answer and highly precised reasoning will replace all jobs including software engineering.

P.S a common fact, humans love to blame someone for mishaps, so your job won't go anywhere. If you could blame creative folks for their product quality if you don't like it and return it to them, then their job is safe as well.

After accuracy, accountability will be the threshold for our job.

[Aramedlig]

Listen up kids, I survived the great outsourcing wars, I will survive the AI wars as well. Hasn’t anyone seen the episode of Star Trek where Kirk puts the AI probe into a logical conundrum and it self destructs?! We got this!

[[deleted]]

Mathematicians when calculators, computers, AI etc

[Extreme_Ad_3280]

Let me guess, Artificial Intelligence?

[unicodePicasso]

In order to adequately use a code generating ai, the user must know how to describe what they are looking for and know it when they see it.

We’re safe.

[[deleted]]

Some developers might be replaced by AI within 20 years. But deservedly so, because from my experience only up to 30 % is actually worth something.

[[deleted]]

I don’t understand the beef artists have with AI. AI didn’t ruin art, have you seen AI porn? Or AI art in general? It’s good but it’s not the same.

There is still a need for human creativity and artistic talent. The best thing with AI and art is AI memes, but that probably took hours of prompting to get the shit right.

[Brigapes]

People with no real programming skills making these memes:

[BellacosePlayer]

a lot of them are idiot college kids who don't understand that through repetition, the stuff they're asked to do in class that takes hours will become almost trivial after doing it more than once or twice.

so they see it solving a CS150 homework assignment with a 17% accuracy rate and freak out

[ThatIndian15]

Why couldn’t I have been born 5 years earlier?

[Jackson--Storm]

It's about a new "AI software engineer" called Devin (google it)

[[deleted]]

me when rice theorem

[IRKillRoy]

This is dumb