I don't know if this is the end of programming, but i can clearly observe the gradual end of expertise in my company - people slowly forgetting architecture, principles, and how stuff works in general, in favor of code delivery speed.

And without expertise you end up asking stupid things to a token producer machine, however godlike it can be.

It's hard not to extrapolate...

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kodoman 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I really do think that people who rely on AI to make architectural dissensions will simply have a bad time later down the road when it turns out that the AI made a stupid decision.

I have noticed myself a 3 months or so ago sometimes asking AI questions for things that I knew the answer to (but had to think about) and my solution would have been better. Once I realized it I realized how despite always telling my self to think about the result I was still allowing myself to hand over some of my thinking to the AI.

What I have started doing is still doing lots of things without AI and trying to not lose those skills because I think they are still needed but AI can lull you into handing over your prefrontal cortex, which is scary.

	▲	andhuman 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Also, handing over the work to AI robs you of learning and understanding. Let’s say you write a ticket for a feature and that description is good enough that an AI agent can implement it from start to finish. The AI will then discover things while implementing the feature, and will use those learning to make the feature work. That learning will then be discarded once the AI is done. No one will be able to partake or share the knowledge with others. Sure, some of it can be saved in form of comments, but not everything.
	▲	cafebabbe 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Same mental state i'm now, back from holidays. AI-free diet for a while. Nothing scarier than realizing that "smart" laziness was simply hiding the beginning of incompetence.

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k3nt0456 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I guess in most industries speed was always the primary concern. Things like architecture and principles were there only to prevent things slowing down to a crawl. A way to protect that speed

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djantje 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is about functionality.

Functionality iterations or adaptations are just faster with good architecture and principles.

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

No, it was to build things that were good enough. I am watching initiative after initiative fail after a rapid PoC phase, the more in depth the LLM dependence the quicker the codebase becomes unmanageable.

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

And who will fix the slop? Not Silicon Valley programs being paid $200K or whatever. We stand on the verge of a golden age of outsourcing in software which will make all previous phases of outsourcing look like trial runs.

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hannofcart 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I live in what's probably the outsourcing capital of the world (though I thankfully don't work in those body shops).

I don't think there's going to be a rush to outsource. In fact, I suspect that it's quite the opposite scenario going to play out.

Primarily because now that the cost to produce the boring/mundane stuff that is the stuff of outsourcing (internal tooling, dashboards, ERP, integrations, QA etc.), it will likely be much more cost effective to hire 3 devs in the US and give them hefty token budgets and have much easier coordination and communication loops than outsourcing to a Bangalore body shop that will try and bill you 15 engineers for the same work.

In fact, word on the street here is that there's a significant correction in the Bangalore realty market for the first time in history thanks to the IT salaries drying up. [1]

I suspect LLMs are going to have a global worldwide deflationary effect what with white collar salaries at risk. The only counter acting force might be the distortions caused by recent wars and tariff shenanigans of the US government.

But even having said all of that I am hopeful for the eventual benefits human beings can reap from the advent of LLMS. The only thing that keeps me up at night is my lack of faith in the aging gerontocracy (worldwode phenomenon) that all our futures are in the hands of that seems to be ill equipped to handle this period of what is most likely massive upheaval and uncertainty.

[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/real-estate/news/housing...

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

Project "Death by a thousand cuts"

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

I come to conclusion that software source code will be kind of ephemeral output, like binaries are today. If you are not happy about slop accumulation, you take still valid functional requirements, docs, API contracts, test cases, some selection of still valid prompt history, and let better agent rewrite everything from scratch. Even if the session costs $200K one time - that is very cheap even for SMEs.

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Ekaros 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I really worry about "regressions" in that model. If you regenerate everything all the time. Do you keep issues fixed or constantly end up introducing new issues. Well it might work with absolute total test coverage. Which seems to be very high bar to reach.

	▲	imhoguy an hour ago \| parent [-]
		In fairly complex system fixing issues in-place still introduces regressions. Exactly, tight E2E test coverage and obviously manual functional verification to seal the coverage gaps will be needed even more.

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

Won't this mean that a lot of developers in Silicon Valley will find themselves out of a job? If the competition (AI operators) can sit 8000 miles away and be paid peanuts.

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ohyes 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The whole point is that we’re TikToking the software industry and no one will know what to tell the ai to get the software written in a way that works. It’s in principle the same as idiocracy where no one knows how to make burrito covers anymore because shit won’t grow

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xboxnolifes 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe we need to start cryofreezing some of our best engineers as a precaution. Or even just a bunch of average ones.

	▲	sgt 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Imagine being Guido van Rossum typing away and then the cryo-freeze squad (new ICE) comes knocking.

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sgt 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe a super smart AI will take over the part of telling the smaller AI's what to do.

Humanity can then relax in floating chairs drinking soft drinks and consuming AI generated entertainment.

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glimshe 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Probably the other way around. The idea behind outsourcing is that you move the generic labor abroad and keep coordination and control onshore. AI can now do the generic labor for even less, so you'll likely see small onshore teams using AI instead.

AI won't end silicon valley, but could still shrink it significantly.

	▲	sgt 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Unless, of course, new opportunities arise and the economy grows. This is not even unlikely as we've seen amazing growth the last 25 years, even. In which case your sentiment is probably correct. And now that I think of it, this is potentially very bad news for the outsourcing companies in countries like India. They also have less money to spend on tokens.

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BSVogler 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is cope. There is no going back to artisan programming. Any issues will also be fixed by ai agents.

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mechazawa 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sufficiently complex software is something agents still struggle a lot with

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

Patching over the architectural nightmares LLMs pour out is I think the opposite of artisan programming.

	▲	BSVogler 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		it does not have to be patching over the existing system. Of course you need someone experience in the loop, but it is not that someone needs to manually refactor everything by typing every line. One approach that works quite well is like this. "give me all the specs in a list" -> "which architectural changes would simplify the implementation based of these specs" -> delete everything -> "implement the new specs"

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6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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

Which speed in which industry? Speed of having the idea, speed of creating a early mockup, speed of creating the prototype, speed of proof, speed of creating the process to replicate at scale, speed of mass production, speed of maintenance and evolution tasks, speed of support, speed of dismantlement, speed of keeping track of all the damn conflicting priorities between all speeds?

In building/construction industry, certainly one might expect delivery speed to matter, and humanity have literally millennia of experience in the domain, and yet it’s notoriously known to go through the roof all the time.

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otabdeveloper4 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's zero evidence to support the notion that LLMs help deliver software quicker.

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

If you care about architecture and principles, the AI is excellent in architecting around that goal too and/or helping you articulate your own intuitions. You just need to be willing to sacrifice code delivery speed. It's far from an either/or.

	▲	kodoman 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I have found different, often even when doing something like coming up with a database schema, the solution it chooses is not the best and and can be even terrible sometimes. It could be I suck at prompting.

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mastermage 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I do see this as good... for my personal future career. Currently AI has caused a massive hiring stop in Consulting which is the area I want to go into. However the more terrible AI decisions there are in the future the more need for a human that can scrutinize those decision there is again. Aka Consulting will boom in a few years. (Is my hope)