Maybe I've just given up, or maybe I'm a realist? But I fully believe AI will just...catch up with everything?
There's so much money in it right now. There's such a momentum. There are zero incentives to slow down for those that are in charge.
I've accepted that in 5-10 years, the vast majority of human devs. and engineers will not touch a single line of code. It'll be small increments, with a couple of big ones here and there.
And there will not be any triumph for those that hold steadfast to the principle of human coding. They'll be tiny boutique shops that do custom stuff, in the same way cobblers are to the mega shoe factories.
> I've accepted that in 5-10 years, the vast majority of human devs. and engineers will not touch a single line of code.
Why would companies employ human engineers then? What is the value addition to justify high human salaries. If AI is going to get so good (and I am not saying it won’t happen, that’s a separate debate), why can’t AI figure out the prompts itself?
That is where a lot of people in tech believe things are headed, executives in particular. Fully autonomous AI-driven codebases. “Dark factories.” One agent generating a plan, one writing the code, one responsible for testing and validating, and one to orchestrate the rest.
The idea is software development will follow in the footsteps of physical manufacturing and eventually become fully automated. I think one huge flaw with this belief/comparison is that the automated assembly line is deterministic. LLMs and AI agents are not. Every Tacoma made on the Toyota assembly line is made from the same blueprint. There are no robots deciding on-the-fly whether to use a laser weld or an adhesive, what material to use for a specific component, etc. Now think about how LLMs build software. No matter how strict a harness or detailed spec you give it, it will always make decisions. That is what makes it “agentic” after all.
I've fully automated the software development part in my company. With production apps, no code has been written by hands, no requirement written by hand. Everything is fully automated except the testing part. And testing means the human testable parts are still performed by hands. The resule, with less people we produce more, actually way more. Our cost has gone down, quality has improved litrally. The code is being produced with AI is of higher quality, we employ multiple agents during planning phase and then different agents during execution phase. Sometimes some tasks has to be redone because some agents are better than others. Our release cycle is reduced from 2 weeks to 2 days.
We'll probably get there, once frontier labs RL the fuck out of AI agents sitting in meetings and interpreting incoherent ramblings of business majors into actionable requirements. That's the biggest value human devs currently provide.
Yes, AI for now has significant code quality issues, but that's mostly because it lacks agency to take care of code quality unless you explicitly tell it to. It is good at refactoring its own messes when you even vaguely ask for it. So while something like Astra still needs supervision to produce decent code, I expect that in a year or two it will be unnecessary.
TrackerFF · · focus · HN ↗
There's so much money in it right now. There's such a momentum. There are zero incentives to slow down for those that are in charge.
I've accepted that in 5-10 years, the vast majority of human devs. and engineers will not touch a single line of code. It'll be small increments, with a couple of big ones here and there.
And there will not be any triumph for those that hold steadfast to the principle of human coding. They'll be tiny boutique shops that do custom stuff, in the same way cobblers are to the mega shoe factories.
samuraijack · · focus · HN ↗
Why would companies employ human engineers then? What is the value addition to justify high human salaries. If AI is going to get so good (and I am not saying it won’t happen, that’s a separate debate), why can’t AI figure out the prompts itself?
draftsman · · focus · HN ↗
tegeek · · focus · HN ↗
NichoPaolucci · · focus · HN ↗
Aozora7 · · focus · HN ↗
Yes, AI for now has significant code quality issues, but that's mostly because it lacks agency to take care of code quality unless you explicitly tell it to. It is good at refactoring its own messes when you even vaguely ask for it. So while something like Astra still needs supervision to produce decent code, I expect that in a year or two it will be unnecessary.