You can hardly get online these days without hearing some AI booster talk about how AI coding is going to replace human programmers. AI code is absolutely up to production quality! Also, you’re all…
To be honest, so many of the comments in this thread are just cope.
It’s true that ai isn’t a replacement for good coders …YET.
But it will be. You all can be as mad as you want, publish as many articles about how much ai sucks as you want. but it won’t stop anything from happening.
I say this as someone who has just started to learn to code myself.
The reason you all are mad is because you suddenly feel unsafe and unappreciated. And you’re right.
Ai is still gonna happen though. It will take away a lot of your jobs (especially starting with jr coders just getting into the market). It will lower your pay. You can yell about it, or you can adapt. Sucks, but it is what it is.
Think of it this way: what do you think the market is gonna be like in 5 years? Then 10? Brah, start preparing now. Right fucking now. Cuz it ain’t gonna get easier for you. I promise.
It happened with blue-collar factory works in the midwest regions of the US because of automation and offshoring. People bitched and tried to stop it. Lots of snooty white-color workers yelled, “learn to code!” But none of that saved their jobs.
And you guys won’t stop it happening with your jobs either. I don’t like the idea of AI taking over everything either. But it will. Adapt or die.
I’ve just started to learn to code. I am enjoying it. But in no way, shape, or form am I thinking it’s going to lead to a job for me.
EDIT: To copy what some else said, much better than me:
The idea that AI will some day be good at coding isn’t the issue. The issue is that some people in management think it’s already well on the way to being a good substitute, and they’re trying to do more with fewer coders to everyone’s detriment.
To be honest, you sound like you’re only just starting to learn to code.
Will coding forever belong to humans? No. Is the current generative-AI technology going to replace coders? Also no.
The reaction you see is frustration because it’s obvious to anyone with decent skill that AI isn’t up to the challenge, but it’s not obvious to people who don’t have that skill and so we now spend a lot of time telling bosses “no, that’s not actually correct”.
Someone else referenced Microsoft’s public work with Copilot. Here’s Copilot making 13 PRs over 5 days and only 4 ever get merged you might think “30% success is pretty good!” But compare that with human-generated PRs and you can see that 30% fucking sucks. And that’s not even looking inside the PR where the bot wastes everyone’s time making tons of mistakes. It’s just a terrible coworker and instead of getting fired they’re getting an award for top performer.
Didn’t look through all the issues but there were things like
The agent was blocked by configuration issues from accessing the necessary dependencies to successfully build and test. Those are being fixed and we’ll continue experimenting.
Been out less than a week, let’s see how it’s doing in a year.
To be honest, you sound like you’re only just starting to learn to code.
I definitely am. But I have no doubts that ai is going to take a lot of entry-level type jobs soon, and eventually higher end jobs.
We’ll always need good, smart coders. Just not as many as we have now.
but it’s not obvious to people who don’t have that skill and so we now spend a lot of time telling bosses “no, that’s not actually correct”.
I get it. But those clueless people are gonna be the people in charge of hiring, and they’ll decide to hire less, and expect current staff to do more. I’ve seen in hundreds of time in industries, and it’s already happening now in yours.
For context, I’m old. So I’ve seen your arguments in many different industries.
And to your point, they’ll have ai replacing good people, long before ai is good enough to. But you’re approaching the issue with logic. Corporate lacks a lot of logic.
I’m already seeing it in your industry. Plenty of reddit/Lemmy posts talking about how coders have been laid off, and having a much much more difficult time getting another job than at any point in their careers.
Again, I’m saying AI is a good solution. I’m saying management will think that. Just like they did when they offshored jobs to much less skilled, yet way more inexpensive workers.
To copy what someone else in this thread said:
The idea that AI will some day be good at coding isn’t the issue. The issue is that some people in management think it’s already well on the way to being a good substitute, and they’re trying to do more with fewer coders to everyone’s detriment.
If I say, “now we have robots that can build a car from scratch!” the automakers will be salivating. But if my robot actually cannot build a car, then I don’t think it’s going to cause mass layoffs.
Many of the big software companies are doing mass layoffs. It’s not because AI has taken over the jobs. They always hired extra people as a form of anti-competitiveness. Now they’re doing layoffs to drive salaries down. That sucks and tech workers would be smart to unionize (we won’t). But I don’t see any radical shift in the industry.
Do you think there’s any reason to believe that these tools are going to continue their breakneck progress? It seems like we’ve reached a point where throwing more GPUs and text at these things is not yielding more results, and they still don’t have the problem solving skills to work out tasks outside of their training set. It’s closer to a StackOverflow that magically has the answers to most questions you ask than a replacement for proper software engineering. I know you never know if a breakthrough is around the corner, but it feels like we’ve hit a plateau for the foreseeable future.
Not sure what you mean, we are seeing results at an increasing pace if anything. A lot more complexity going into it than ‘increasing text/GPUs’ though.
We also applied AlphaEvolve to over 50 open problems in analysis , geometry , combinatorics and number theory , including the kissing number problem.
In 75% of cases, it rediscovered the best solution known so far.
In 20% of cases, it improved upon the previously best known solutions, thus yielding new discoveries
AlphaEvolve discovered a new scheduling heuristic for Google’s Borg cluster management system, recovering an average of 0.7% of global compute resources that were previously stranded due to resource fragmentation.
Google’s annual capital expenditures in the tens of billions, this efficiency translates to hundreds of millions of dollars saved annually
I think the biggest difference between this and blue-collars workers losing their jobs, though, is that the same people losing their jobs are also placed very to benefit from the technology. Blue collared workers losing manufacturing jobs couldn’t, because they were priced out of obtaining that mafacturing hardware themselves, but programmers can use AI on an individual basis to augment their production. Not sure what the industry will look like in 10 years, but I feel like there will be plenty of opportunities for people who build digital things.
That being said, people who were looking to be junior developers exactly right now… uhhh… that’s some extrememly unlucky timing. I wish you luck.
Well I’m old, so not looking for a job, I am just learning programming because i want to. But to your point, I am seeing LOTS of developers who have been laid off and finding another job is proving more challenging than ever before. It’s rough out there and I feel for them.
To copy what someone else in this thread said:
The idea that AI will some day be good at coding isn’t the issue. The issue is that some people in management think it’s already well on the way to being a good substitute, and they’re trying to do more with fewer coders to everyone’s detriment.
Oh layoffs are definitely happening. I’m just not sure if it’s caused by AI productivity gains, or if it’s just the latest excuse (the pandemic, then soft layoffs of “back to office” enforcement, and now AI). Esp since the companies most talking about AI productivity gains are the same companies that benefit from AI adoption…
What I wanted to explain is just that the skills to program actually translate pretty well. At my old company, we used to say “you know someone’s a staff engineer, because they only make PowerPoint presentations and diagrams, and don’t actually write any code”. And those skills directly translate to directing an AI to build the thing you need. The abstracted architect role will probably increase in value, as the typing value decreases.
My biggest concern is probably that AI is currently eating junior dev jobs, since what it excels at is typically the kind of work you’d give to a junior engineer. And I think that more gruntwork kinda tasks are the way that someone develops the higher level skills that are important later; you start to see the kinds of edge cases first hand, so it makes them memorable. But I feel like that might just be a transition thing; many developers these days don’t know bare code down to the 1s and 0s. The abstraction might just move up another level, and people will build more things. At least, this is the optimistic view. 🤷 But I’m an optimistic guy.
My biggest concern is probably that AI is currently eating junior dev jobs, since what it excels at is typically the kind of work you’d give to a junior engineer.
Yeah, def gonna be rough for people graduating from college right now.
They could now, because big “AI” companies sell their product on a loss.
The individual programmer is already outpriced when it comes to training those kind of models themselves. Once the companies want to turn a profit, the just laid off worker is outpriced as well. If an LLM can really do as good as a human programmer, who costs 70-100k, nothing stops the LLM provider to charge 35-50k easily. Try to augment your productivity at that price point, especially without a job.
I mean, society came through the change of the first and second work sector, we could reap the new productivity gains for the benefit of all, but, alas here we are at the beginning of a new crisis 😅
mmm so I’ve only used the online models for agent coding, since I’m on a laptop and lack the hardware, but my understanding is that local models like devstral and llama are relatively competitive and can be used on like… a gaming rig? I don’t think they’d be able to push the price that much.
But I don’t disagree that big companies will try their darnedest to.
To be honest, so many of the comments in this thread are just cope.
It’s true that ai isn’t a replacement for good coders …YET.
But it will be. You all can be as mad as you want, publish as many articles about how much ai sucks as you want. but it won’t stop anything from happening.
I say this as someone who has just started to learn to code myself.
The reason you all are mad is because you suddenly feel unsafe and unappreciated. And you’re right.
Ai is still gonna happen though. It will take away a lot of your jobs (especially starting with jr coders just getting into the market). It will lower your pay. You can yell about it, or you can adapt. Sucks, but it is what it is.
Think of it this way: what do you think the market is gonna be like in 5 years? Then 10? Brah, start preparing now. Right fucking now. Cuz it ain’t gonna get easier for you. I promise.
It happened with blue-collar factory works in the midwest regions of the US because of automation and offshoring. People bitched and tried to stop it. Lots of snooty white-color workers yelled, “learn to code!” But none of that saved their jobs.
And you guys won’t stop it happening with your jobs either. I don’t like the idea of AI taking over everything either. But it will. Adapt or die.
I’ve just started to learn to code. I am enjoying it. But in no way, shape, or form am I thinking it’s going to lead to a job for me.
EDIT: To copy what some else said, much better than me:
To be honest, you sound like you’re only just starting to learn to code.
Will coding forever belong to humans? No. Is the current generative-AI technology going to replace coders? Also no.
The reaction you see is frustration because it’s obvious to anyone with decent skill that AI isn’t up to the challenge, but it’s not obvious to people who don’t have that skill and so we now spend a lot of time telling bosses “no, that’s not actually correct”.
Someone else referenced Microsoft’s public work with Copilot. Here’s Copilot making 13 PRs over 5 days and only 4 ever get merged you might think “30% success is pretty good!” But compare that with human-generated PRs and you can see that 30% fucking sucks. And that’s not even looking inside the PR where the bot wastes everyone’s time making tons of mistakes. It’s just a terrible coworker and instead of getting fired they’re getting an award for top performer.
Been a few months since I used co-pilot, but they use a model that’s worse than GPT-4/4o which is a big step down from the reasoning models.
Try out Cline, aider, or one of the tools devs actually use with the latest models from Anthropic/Google/OpenAI.
https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/
Didn’t look through all the issues but there were things like
Been out less than a week, let’s see how it’s doing in a year.
I definitely am. But I have no doubts that ai is going to take a lot of entry-level type jobs soon, and eventually higher end jobs.
We’ll always need good, smart coders. Just not as many as we have now.
I get it. But those clueless people are gonna be the people in charge of hiring, and they’ll decide to hire less, and expect current staff to do more. I’ve seen in hundreds of time in industries, and it’s already happening now in yours.
For context, I’m old. So I’ve seen your arguments in many different industries.
And to your point, they’ll have ai replacing good people, long before ai is good enough to. But you’re approaching the issue with logic. Corporate lacks a lot of logic.
I’m already seeing it in your industry. Plenty of reddit/Lemmy posts talking about how coders have been laid off, and having a much much more difficult time getting another job than at any point in their careers.
Again, I’m saying AI is a good solution. I’m saying management will think that. Just like they did when they offshored jobs to much less skilled, yet way more inexpensive workers.
To copy what someone else in this thread said:
I don’t understand how you think this works.
If I say, “now we have robots that can build a car from scratch!” the automakers will be salivating. But if my robot actually cannot build a car, then I don’t think it’s going to cause mass layoffs.
Many of the big software companies are doing mass layoffs. It’s not because AI has taken over the jobs. They always hired extra people as a form of anti-competitiveness. Now they’re doing layoffs to drive salaries down. That sucks and tech workers would be smart to unionize (we won’t). But I don’t see any radical shift in the industry.
Do you think I am the only one that thinks like this? You don’t think middle and upper management thinks like I do?
Oh, I’m saving this comment. Dude, go into any CSjobs forum and you tell me that there’s not a shift in the industry. lol
I’ll say this. I hope you’re right. (but you’re not)
Do you think there’s any reason to believe that these tools are going to continue their breakneck progress? It seems like we’ve reached a point where throwing more GPUs and text at these things is not yielding more results, and they still don’t have the problem solving skills to work out tasks outside of their training set. It’s closer to a StackOverflow that magically has the answers to most questions you ask than a replacement for proper software engineering. I know you never know if a breakthrough is around the corner, but it feels like we’ve hit a plateau for the foreseeable future.
Not sure what you mean, we are seeing results at an increasing pace if anything. A lot more complexity going into it than ‘increasing text/GPUs’ though.
https://arcprize.org/leaderboard
AlphaEvolve recently achieved what you are after.
AlphaEvolve discovered a new scheduling heuristic for Google’s Borg cluster management system, recovering an average of 0.7% of global compute resources that were previously stranded due to resource fragmentation.
Google’s annual capital expenditures in the tens of billions, this efficiency translates to hundreds of millions of dollars saved annually
I think the biggest difference between this and blue-collars workers losing their jobs, though, is that the same people losing their jobs are also placed very to benefit from the technology. Blue collared workers losing manufacturing jobs couldn’t, because they were priced out of obtaining that mafacturing hardware themselves, but programmers can use AI on an individual basis to augment their production. Not sure what the industry will look like in 10 years, but I feel like there will be plenty of opportunities for people who build digital things.
That being said, people who were looking to be junior developers exactly right now… uhhh… that’s some extrememly unlucky timing. I wish you luck.
Well I’m old, so not looking for a job, I am just learning programming because i want to. But to your point, I am seeing LOTS of developers who have been laid off and finding another job is proving more challenging than ever before. It’s rough out there and I feel for them.
To copy what someone else in this thread said:
Oh layoffs are definitely happening. I’m just not sure if it’s caused by AI productivity gains, or if it’s just the latest excuse (the pandemic, then soft layoffs of “back to office” enforcement, and now AI). Esp since the companies most talking about AI productivity gains are the same companies that benefit from AI adoption…
What I wanted to explain is just that the skills to program actually translate pretty well. At my old company, we used to say “you know someone’s a staff engineer, because they only make PowerPoint presentations and diagrams, and don’t actually write any code”. And those skills directly translate to directing an AI to build the thing you need. The abstracted architect role will probably increase in value, as the typing value decreases.
My biggest concern is probably that AI is currently eating junior dev jobs, since what it excels at is typically the kind of work you’d give to a junior engineer. And I think that more gruntwork kinda tasks are the way that someone develops the higher level skills that are important later; you start to see the kinds of edge cases first hand, so it makes them memorable. But I feel like that might just be a transition thing; many developers these days don’t know bare code down to the 1s and 0s. The abstraction might just move up another level, and people will build more things. At least, this is the optimistic view. 🤷 But I’m an optimistic guy.
Yeah, def gonna be rough for people graduating from college right now.
They could now, because big “AI” companies sell their product on a loss.
The individual programmer is already outpriced when it comes to training those kind of models themselves. Once the companies want to turn a profit, the just laid off worker is outpriced as well. If an LLM can really do as good as a human programmer, who costs 70-100k, nothing stops the LLM provider to charge 35-50k easily. Try to augment your productivity at that price point, especially without a job.
I mean, society came through the change of the first and second work sector, we could reap the new productivity gains for the benefit of all, but, alas here we are at the beginning of a new crisis 😅
mmm so I’ve only used the online models for agent coding, since I’m on a laptop and lack the hardware, but my understanding is that local models like devstral and llama are relatively competitive and can be used on like… a gaming rig? I don’t think they’d be able to push the price that much.
But I don’t disagree that big companies will try their darnedest to.