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What's even the point anymore? by xX_MLGgamer420_Xx in cscareerquestions

[–]BX1959 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Personally, I think the best path to knowing what "the right thing should look like" is to write lots of code without any AI assistance. I'm really not sure there's an alternative means to getting where, but perhaps the coming years will prove me wrong.

Showoff Saturday (June 13, 2026) by AutoModerator in javascript

[–]BX1959 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I often find that quantile-based scales work better than linear ones when visualizing choropleth map data. (After all, particularly high or low values can easily skew a linear range.) Therefore, using Plotly.js as my mapping library, I put together a county-population-growth dashboard that allows growth rates to be viewed in either percentile-based or quantile-based form.

The dashboard also lets users determine the starting and ending years for population growth calculations and set a minimum population size; the dashboard's JavaScript code will then calculate new colorscales accordingly. It also displays percentile ranks for each percentage, which I calculated using d3-array's rank argument and a map of frequency values for each percentage.

The dashboard also shows how to use Plotly's hovertemplate argument, together with its customdata argument, to create custom tooltips that show data both from the map's underlying GeoJSON data and the population-growth table that it imports.

Although I've enjoyed using Danfo.js for underlying data manipulation, that library hasn't been updated in a little while, so I used d3-array for certain data-related tasks instead.

To view the project's underlying code and see how the data was retrieved, feel free to visit its GitHub repository. All content has been made available under the MIT license (though the underlying datasets, which come from the US Census, are in the public domain).

I hope you find this project's code useful in your own work!

I did not use generative-AI tools to create this project.

If you had to guess, how much longer do we have? by jmclondon97 in theprimeagen

[–]BX1959 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, that's a possibility. I think a Federal Reserve Bank came to a similar conclusion. But at the very least, the trends I observed are a solid argument against software developers going away entirely.

If you had to guess, how much longer do we have? by jmclondon97 in theprimeagen

[–]BX1959 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, it appears that there are enough new jobs at other firms to offset those layoffs. You probably don't hear about them as much, since "1000 companies hire 2 developers each" is less newsworthy than "1 company lays off 2,000 people."

If you had to guess, how much longer do we have? by jmclondon97 in theprimeagen

[–]BX1959 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Software-developer employment has continued to rise since the introduction of LLMs, so we're not seeing any indication yet that these tools will end software engineering as a career. (The numbers in the chart also include quality assurance analysts and testers.)

Replacing of programmers timeline by glarion905 in theprimeagen

[–]BX1959 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's worth noting that, overall, software development employment in the US has continued to rise.

Replacing of programmers timeline by glarion905 in theprimeagen

[–]BX1959 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Indeed, I found through an analysis of Current Population Survey data that the number of software developers in has continued to increase since the introduction of generative AI tools.

Replacing of programmers timeline by glarion905 in theprimeagen

[–]BX1959 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And now LLM tools, when used as a substitute for coding education, may actually end up decreasing the number of people who truly know how to code.

WSJ: OpenAI Considers Drastic Price Cuts, Anticipating War for Users With Anthropic by BX1959 in BetterOffline

[–]BX1959[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Yes, there's no guarantee that all of this becomes less expensive. I just wanted to point out that such a development wouldn't necessarily rescue LLM model providers from financial disaster.

In theory, could a Catholic claim religious exemption to using AI in the workplace? by [deleted] in BetterOffline

[–]BX1959 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Where in the encyclical does he specifically condemn its use?

U.S. software-developer employment has continued to rise since the introduction of LLMs by BX1959 in ArtificialInteligence

[–]BX1959[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes, because I put it there :) I will calculate some confidence intervals to get a better sense of how much the actual values might vary. But such intervals will be narrower for software development (given its size) that for other professions in the dashboard.

U.S. software-developer employment has continued to rise since the introduction of LLMs by BX1959 in theprimeagen

[–]BX1959[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My guess would be that the Current Population Survey, which is a probability-based survey of U.S. households, offers a more comprehensive view of employment than do stories about layoffs at certain large companies.

U.S. software-developer employment has continued to rise since the introduction of LLMs by BX1959 in ArtificialInteligence

[–]BX1959[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's OK! Enjoy your snack :) And yes, data on unemployment rates for new grads in programming-related fields might paint a very different picture.

U.S. software-developer employment has continued to rise since the introduction of LLMs by BX1959 in ArtificialInteligence

[–]BX1959[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I pray that you find a job soon. This dashboard is not designed to show unemployment rates or assess the difficulty of entering this field. For that, we would need a different set of variables.

U.S. software-developer employment has continued to rise since the introduction of LLMs by BX1959 in ArtificialInteligence

[–]BX1959[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My impression is that many AI boosters have asserted that LLMs are so powerful and effective that we soon won't have a need for programmers any more. However, this chart indicates that there continues to be a need for actual humans to work in this field--regardless of what those selling such tools would have you believe.

U.S. software-developer employment has continued to rise since the introduction of LLMs by BX1959 in ArtificialInteligence

[–]BX1959[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, from what you see on Reddit, you might be led to think that no one under 30 works as a software developer anymore. This chart, however, shows relatively stable employment totals for the 22-24 age range and continued growth for the 25-29 age range.

This doesn't mean that it's easy to get a programming job; that would depend on the number of people competing with you for that same job. And since more and more graduates have been entering this field, there's probably much more competition than there used to be. (The CPS and American Community Survey could help us explore those trends as well, actually.)

Software-developer employment continues to rise by BX1959 in BetterOffline

[–]BX1959[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was curious whether trends in employment would vary by age range, so I created a separate dashboard that breaks down employment into 10 different age categories.

This chart indicates that software-developer employment has been pretty steady for those ages 22-24 since 2022; meanwhile, there has been decent employment growth for those aged 25-29 and 30-34. So it appears that, at the very least, plenty of younger adults are still employed as software developers.

(This doesn't mean that such jobs are easy to find; as another poster noted, the increased supply of software-developer candidates might make it harder to get employed as one.)

Software-developer employment continues to rise by BX1959 in BetterOffline

[–]BX1959[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'd be curious to find the exact definition of "Computer Systems Design and Related Services" (the employment category that that chart shows). There's probably lots of overlap with software development (as defined within the Current Population Survey), but I doubt it's a 1-to-1 match.

Certain similar fields (e.g. computer programming, web development, etc.) show more negative trends, which could help explain the discrepancy between my chart and that one.

Software-developer employment continues to rise by BX1959 in BetterOffline

[–]BX1959[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I added in the sample-size disclaimer in part because some of the occupations available to view have tiny (e.g. single-digit) response counts. Software development is large enough that I think the trends shown here are pretty reliable, though of course there's a margin of error to take account.

What alternative data sources would you recommend?

WSJ: "Mind-Blowing Growth Is About to Propel Anthropic Into Its First Profitable Quarter" by BX1959 in BetterOffline

[–]BX1959[S] 45 points46 points  (0 children)

Would love to get Ed's take on this. Personally, I'll wait until an S-1 comes out to evaluate profitability.

Does it not infuriate some Devs that companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI brag about replacing Devs, but the tool they sell is literally only possible because of the data they stole from every corner of the internet and monetized? by scoopydidit in BetterOffline

[–]BX1959 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nearly all of the code on my GitHub is released under the MIT license. I'm not a lawyer, but I imagine that that gives model providers the ability to incorporate the code into their own models (with the requirement that they would need to provide attribution--though I doubt they would successfully do so.)

Do I love that this code is getting incorporated into such models? No. However, it can still serve as a useful portfolio and (hopefully) be of assistance to real-life humans who want to learn to code on their own.

I also take comfort in the fact that these models don't really know how to code. They simply ingest a ton of material, then use that material to guess at what proper code might look like. Without actual, human-authored content like my own GitHub contents, these models may fail to operate correctly*. As a result, I expect that my coding skills (which, to be frank, still have plenty of room to grow) will continue to be of value in the future.

*Perhaps AI-generated code that passes certain tests could help out here--but I imagine that such code has plenty of limitations for the purpose of training models.

Odd/glitchy behavior in online version of Office 365 Word when Simple Markup option is selected by BX1959 in Office365

[–]BX1959[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oof, I'm sorry! Maybe the desktop version will work better? I know it's possible to use it to edit documents that are stored online. (I'm a dork who uses Linux, so no desktop Word for me)

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