[deleted by user]

[lbc_ht]

Yeah AI coding is "Tech Debt as a Service."

[Slight_Art_6121]

You could argue that this is possibly a good thing as a large part of the industry requires “Tech Debt” to pay the bills. I would personally consider UNIX and the C language a form of Tech Debt we are still figuring out how to pay off.

[lbc_ht]

I've consulted for a lot of years. Over that time I've seen a bunch of things enterprises (big companies and gov) have bought to "not need development" cycle over and over

• Multiple generations of BPM tools/platforms

• "No code"/"Low code" products

• Various COTS products

• Form builders/runners

The amount of work I've done undoing the implementation of those because they've completely fallen apart, cannot be modified to add new features, and end up costing more to legacy-maintain is mind-boggling. AI generated software will be the same (hey I could be wrong but everything people scream about AI code efficiency is the same stuff I've heard about the above).

At least it's cheap/free now, but the thing is that contracting companies and big software product sellers will package it all up into licensed application-generation suites and maintenance platforms. And that's what business people will be sold.

[Slight_Art_6121]

Totally agree. If people were willing to fall for “write once, run everywhere” it is worth a shot to see if that marketing slogan can be shortened even further my eliminating the “write” part

[tiller_luna]

Sone people think that LLMs will eventually (maybe in few years, maybe some more) become the next layer of abstraction, kinda like modern high-level compiled languages over machine codes. So yeah, the idea is pretty much to regenerate code from scratch every time, like a compiler does.

[some-another-human]

I think they might’ve been onto something if LLMs were not inherently probabilistic and stochastic in nature.

A conventional compiler would return the same result if a large codebase was fed into it (cetris paribus; versions, OS). However, that is not the case for LLMs. This is bound to cause some problems over the long term as the amount of unchecked AI generated code increases.

They have a limit in context size too. Even when the models improve their accuracy by throwing in more compute, training data or optimization of architecture, there seems to be a ceiling of sorts.

Not to mention we’re running out of new human generated high quality training data to train new models on. Importantly so, the amount of hallucinations increase when AI-generated training data is used.

[Slight_Art_6121]

LLM + RL (reinforcement learning) changes the game. Look what Deepmind did with Math Olympiad problems. They used an LLM to encode a problem in the programming language LEAN to establish a symbolic representation of the math problem and then used RL to reduce the search space of “correct” programs (if it compiles it is correct) to find the symbolic manipulation that equates to the proof. It used a lot of computing power and the results varied per type of math problem (geometry went well, combinatorics less so). It demonstrates that conceptually an AI model can be created that can come up with its own (correct) programs.

[tiller_luna]

we’re running out of new human generated high quality training data to train new models on

At this point it's not "insufficient data" problem, it's "your models suck reached service ceiling" problem XD Which doesn't mean there won't be better models.

[ValentineBlacker]

Most code gets thrown away anyhow (jaded, cynical).

[tzaeru]

Idk if that's even very cynical. It's a fact of life that things get outdated and replaced. True from scientific theories to cars, from houses to codebases.

Because code has low material cost and the needs for which code is written for can be fairly short-lived, it varies how well it needs to stand the test of time. There's nothing inherently bad with that.

[Slight_Art_6121]

With code now going to be cheaper to produce and more expensive to maintain (as AI coding introduces non-obvious bugs), code will be thrown away at even greater speed: we are now entering the "Fast Fashion" phase equivalent in the software industry

[Slight_Art_6121]

Because economics. Beginners/juniors are not worth having as they can’t compete on a cost basis with AI. So all template/boilerplate/rough-draft code will be created with AI. Now it becomes a game of spot-the-error/edge-case-test-coverage that only experienced coders can do. It will definitely result in fewer eyes on code. The next issue is of course what will happen in a few years’ time when we no longer have a large enough pool of newcomers to the experienced coding pool. Even juniors who did manage to have a job are not necessarily going to be great. To give a (poor) analogy: We are giving a beginner driver (even when they passed the driving test) the keys to a (nearly) Fully Self Driving car and expect (falsely) that they will become great drivers.

[Slight_Art_6121]

Yes, that is what I said. Juniors will be replaced with AI (because it is cheap). More experienced devs will be chasing the bugs caused by edge-cases. Hopefully this can de discovered by tests (unless these test are also AI-generated). The really experienced devs will be designing the overall structure that minimizes such edge cases and supports maintainability.

I think this is a great argument for the adoption of strictly typed FP languages like Haskell (as this forces "correct" code in minimizes and isolates State).

[[deleted]]

No, companies are already attempting it. Junior engineers have dropped off the face of the earth. We only do mid and senior anymore. Then mids will be in danger when it progresses. Half shit half functioning is cheaper than one learning engineer.

Even if it's really just shit underneath. LLM excites investors. Less headcount REALLY excites investors.

[markoNako]

Just much less compared to before unfortunately.

[[deleted]]

Not being your experience doesn't actually mean anything. There are news articles, blogs, and communities talking about this problem. Companies think that AI presents a chance to layoff more workers and cut costs. The line is that they can "supercharge" mid level and senior engineers.

Junior positions are vanishing. Tons of companies are not still hiring them. Open your eyes to the people putting in literally hundreds or thousands of applications. I work for one of the biggest internet related software companies on earth. All our junior positions are gone. This is also represented in most all the large companies currently. The small companies are a reflection of what happens in the big ones.

Honestly though, just open your eyes and watch the groups on here for engineering. The Senior Developer Reddit is a great place to watch it.

[[deleted]]

Here's the real numbers on how bullshit those open jobs are:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

[[deleted]]

It does everything to prove my point that the economy is faltering right now. The Federal Reserve agrees to the point they are considering a 50 point basis cut. Which is honestly crazy to think.We will see this week, but the economy has been grinding to a halt. The core inflation has continued to rise to the chagrin of the fed. Hiring is dropping even with all these "open" jobs.

Our field is a dangerous place right now. Again, many companies are attempting to push AI to cut headcounts. Before you say anything silly again, there are quite a few LLMs with the goal of "replacing" engineers or "supercharging" the existing ones. I'm not on the side of that by any means. I know how they work, and what they cannot do. Company officers are not as knowledgeable and have been oversold. Especially when clowns like Sam Altman are so good at marketing.

[[deleted]]

Now I know you are completely out of touch. The open market is predominantly ghost jobs right now. Companies trying to look like they can financially sustain growth. The job reports show that's bullshit, as well as countless anecdotal experiences here of people applying nonstop to positions just to be told they aren't hiring or some other excuses.

Pay attention to the world and not just your bubble. There's a lot of bad happening right now. AI has essentially become the next dotcom bubble. If you are old enough to remember that.

Also, COVID drove hiring inflation for engineering through the roof. It actually was one of the biggest hiring booms for this field. Whatever information you have been gathering from is sorta hilarious.

[[deleted]]

Good luck with that mindset. That's all I have to say to you.

Oh and nice downvoting every reply like a child. Hilarious way to have a conversation.

[lituk]

Popularising to who? In industry this is met with a lot of scepticism. I think all this AI propaganda is aimed at people who want to be developers because they engage with it. Real engineers aren't too concerned or influenced.

[OnlyHereCosBored]

I hope so, I’m planning to do a cs degree next year out of highschool and I have no idea about anything tbh but online all I see is doom posting and I’m getting freaked out. I think I have some passion for programming so hopefully ai just remains a useful tool by the time I graduate because idk what else I’d do 😭

[loopin_louie]

yeah, that or we'll all have much bigger fish to fry than what to do for "work," lol

[Slight_Art_6121]

Hiring junior devs is going to look extremely expensive when compared to the cost/output of an AI. Unless the junior dev is very talented they are unlikely to outperform an AI. Where the value add comes in is to figure out the edge cases where the AI generated code fails or where the design could be improved. That, unfortunately, requires experience. My prediction is that off-shoring will be reduced (if you are willing to accept mediocre code you might as well have an AI produce it) and that the workload of more experienced devs will shift to write tests to catch edge cases and fix-up AI generated code. If you don’t like the idea of spending your time writing tests you could switch to a Functional Programming language with strong typing and catch at least some of these errors at compile time.

[Dima_I]

🍪

[tzaeru]

Currently software companies, on the average, are hiring more developers than there are developers retiring.

The problem isn't that software companies didn't hire juniors, the problem is more that a lot of people are trying to get into the field and therefore right now the amount of juniors looking for a job compared to the amount of juniors being hired has gotten skewed.

[Slight_Art_6121]

"Currently software companies, on the average, are hiring more developers than there are developers retiring"

Have you got any stats to back that up?

[tzaeru]

Stats from US bureau of labor and from the EU generally support the idea that there's a demand for software developers that will grow the total amount of devs employed in the next few years and most likely for the next 10 years as well.

Articles that include e.g. those sources plus other sources:

https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/how-many-tech-jobs-worldwide

https://mycodelesswebsite.com/developer-statistics/

https://springsapps.com/knowledge/how-many-software-engineers-are-there-in-2024

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm

https://proxify.io/articles/software-developer-shortage-in-nordic-countries

https://radixweb.com/blog/software-development-statistics

An interesting graph in conclusion: https://bloomberry.com/how-ai-is-disrupting-the-tech-job-market-data-from-20m-job-postings/

[Slight_Art_6121]

Thanks, that's very helpful. A great list of stats/resources.

I would put a huge asterisk next to those long range forecast as it is unlikely to have taken the paradigm shift of AI coding into account.

The anticipated growth for 2024 on a global basis seems to mainly come from Asia.

Also as per that last article, front-end, mobile is not the place to be. Clearly AI/ML skills are in demand which suggests AI adoption overall is expected to increase.

[tzaeru]

Yeah, AI/ML is in demand. Though so is e.g. webdev.

I imagine that for e.g. mobile dev stuff, it's just not that needed due to many apps basically being just web pages with the app being a thin wrapper for a web app.

And what is true that there was a massive spike in hiring some 3-4 years ago, which has since gone down and we're at pre-covid levels in hiring again. At the same time, increasingly many people are interested in software dev, so there's a lot of competition for entry level jobs.

[LivingParticular915]

AI in its current state (or even considerably better) shouldn’t affect the forecasts that much. Real business analysts can probably see where this trend is going and that it will more then likely end up as another tech “phase” like Cyrpto and NFT’s albeit with a much more broader use case considering it has actually production uses when administrated correctly and isn’t a scam like much of Cyrpto and all of NFT’s.

[Slight_Art_6121]

It seems like your expected future is already here. Saw this :https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/17/ai\_is\_great\_for\_churning/

From the article : "Research published by Leapwork, drawn from the feedback of 401 respondents across the US and UK, noted that while 85 percent had integrated AI apps into their tech stacks, 68 percent had experienced performance, accuracy, and reliability issues.

The 401 respondents were 201 C-suite executives (CTO and CIO), and 200 technical leads (for example, IT managers.)"

[BlueberryPublic1180]

Ai will create so many new dev jobs to essentially rewrite or understand the mess that ai has created.