It is the last narrative that some of Wall Street believes and has enough mediocre or senile coders to promote it.

That narrative will implode like Sora later this year.

No, AI is truly useful in software engineering. I was a skeptic until I started using it. No, it isn’t going to solve every problem out there, but it’s a force multiplier.

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rf15 an hour ago | parent [-]

You pay understanding for speed. How much this trade is acceptable is up to you and the task you have in front of you. I cannot recommend it as a general solution.

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elktown an hour ago | parent [-]

This field doesn’t do well on long-term thinking. Even if all this turns out to be a net loss, it will be reinterpreted as a win and just an opportunity for even more of the same solution. There are numerous examples of this, e.g. the OOP craze. Tech is a stock market of ideas and HN is a trading floor. The “line goes up” logic applies - not merit.

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pjc50 40 minutes ago | parent [-]

Describing OOP as a "craze" is incredibly out of touch. It's been a thing for, what, three decades?

	▲	the-smug-one 3 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There certainly was an OOP craze, that's not out of touch to talk about.
	▲	elktown 15 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'm sure I'm not the first person you've seen hinting at OOP (and all that came with it) having been hyped up beyond its merits.

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skwirl 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is wild that people are still posting this kind of thing in 2026. Some folks really are living in a different world.

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wolvoleo 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I liken it to VR. That was a big hype before AI and while I really love the tech (I have 5 headsets) I could have told anyone that the expectations were insane. The investors truly believed that in 2-3 years time everyone would be doing everything with a big headset on. It was dragged into lots of situations where it didn't belong.

Then of course the hype collapsed and now even the usecases where VR shines are deemed a flop. But no, it's exceptionally good at simulation (racing/flight) and visualising complex designs while 3D designing.

I see the same with generative AI and LLM. It's really good with programming. It's definitely good at making quick art drafts or even final ones for those who don't care too much about the specifics of the output. I use it a lot for inspiration.

But it's not good for everything that it's trying to be sold as. Just like the VR craze they're dragging it by the hairs into usecases where it has no business being. A lot of these products are begging to die.

For example an automation tool using real world language. For that it's a disaster, it's inconsistent and constantly confuses itself. It's the reason openclaw is a foot bazooka. It's also not very great at meeting summaries especially those where many speakers are in a room on the same microphone.

I don't think AI will disappear but a realignment to the usecases where it actually adds value, yes I hope that happens soon.

	▲	utopiah 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ugh... a balanced take, this isn't appropriate for social media! /s

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SecretDreams 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To be fair, LLMs are exceptional at coding and they very well could displace some jobs. But you'll always need people at the helm who know what they're doing too.

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drdeafenshmirtz 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Also that developers make for good early adopters for tech

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k3k3 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

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bigstrat2003 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> To be fair, LLMs are exceptional at coding

No they aren't. Any decently skilled human blows them out of the water. They can do better than an untrained human, but that's not much of an achievement.

	▲	volkercraig 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The thing is, LLM's produce better quality one-shots than any of the products that get returned from overseas ultra-budget contractors in India or SEA. I don't know what that means for Western devs, but I can tell you that the fortune 500 I work for is dialing back on contracting and outsourcing because domestic teams can do higher-quality work faster.

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bpodgursky 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's because programmers are willing to pay thousands of dollars a month for a product commensurate with the value to provides, aka AI coding.

Generating pointless AI videos for pocket change or ad revenue is a loser in comparison.