Reading the code does not mean you understand the code. One lesson that experience in software gave me: I never understood the code. You think it works a certain way, until you find out that it doesn't.
What LLMs make possible is for me to say: find out all the ways this thing works. Analyze the different ways we can run this software, build a fuzzer, build property tests, and run this software in every scenario possible. Log full traces. Log all the outputs. Now, analyze each scenario for bugs. You can't do that by hand.
If we are committed to it, if we put the resources towards it and dedicate the time to it (and we could do this just by saying: it will take half as long as it used to take!), software built by llms in healthcare, finance, automotive, defense, power plans, aviation, manufacturing can all be made MORE reliable and better with LLMs... without ever reading a single line of code. The LLMS are very good at logic, by the way.
Anyway all of this reads like someone who is not actually using LLMs to build software or hasn't tried them in a while. I felt the same way in 2025. I've written 100s of thousands of lines of difficult code. You, the person reading this, has probably interacted with software I've written. For a time you would've interacted with it every time you made a debit card transaction in the united states, for example. I understand code, and care about quality, and that's why I'm all in on LLMs for code.
> Your debit card transactions for example worked.
I've built payment rails. Six nines SLA, high capacity, resilient distributed systems.
I haven't written a single line of code since February, and I don't think I ever will again. These systems are incredibly good at replacing much of our work. They're only going to get better.
Rather than debating if these models are good (they are), we should be trying to figure out if most of us will still be around in three years. You don't need a two pizza team anymore.
"Look to the person to your left and to your right. Only one of you will remain by graduation" kind of energy. I'm not sure all of us is going to be in this career much longer. We'll have to see what the demand side looks like.
Most of developing good code is not code. I think the person to my left and right will both be here in 3 years despite us all using LLMs. We will spend even more time figuring out requirements, testing to ensure the code meet them and such. Those things were always most of the effort, and while LLMs help with that too there is so much work to be done that we will still be used.
On the other, my local pool company is hiring a software engineer and hardware engineer because with AI, they can replace a 2 pizza team as you so succinctly put it. So no two pizza teams but that doesn't mean all the pizzas are gone, they're maybe going to be spread out and not concentrated in CA, between orgs you might not have thought as "tech" before.
Does it? First line of defense is now an LLM with the runbook in its context and the human in the loop being woken up at 3 am, half asleep, just needs to make sure it doesn't rm -rf something.
Just yolo all the development and maintenance, and ops. There shouldn't be any problems, right? Coding is solved. Models are basically perfect at this point according to Astra's one shot performance on creating stuff in Blender, so...
>I haven't written a single line of code since February, and I don't think I ever will again. These systems are incredibly good at replacing much of our work. They're only going to get better.
Ah, so you're still a few months out from the "yeah, maybe I don't really love this and maybe it won't ever actually work as well as I thought" turning point.
efficax · · focus · HN ↗
What LLMs make possible is for me to say: find out all the ways this thing works. Analyze the different ways we can run this software, build a fuzzer, build property tests, and run this software in every scenario possible. Log full traces. Log all the outputs. Now, analyze each scenario for bugs. You can't do that by hand.
If we are committed to it, if we put the resources towards it and dedicate the time to it (and we could do this just by saying: it will take half as long as it used to take!), software built by llms in healthcare, finance, automotive, defense, power plans, aviation, manufacturing can all be made MORE reliable and better with LLMs... without ever reading a single line of code. The LLMS are very good at logic, by the way.
Anyway all of this reads like someone who is not actually using LLMs to build software or hasn't tried them in a while. I felt the same way in 2025. I've written 100s of thousands of lines of difficult code. You, the person reading this, has probably interacted with software I've written. For a time you would've interacted with it every time you made a debit card transaction in the united states, for example. I understand code, and care about quality, and that's why I'm all in on LLMs for code.
12ag5a · · focus · HN ↗
This sounds like a typical testimonial whose mind has become captive to Claude. It is like Scientology.
echelon · · focus · HN ↗
I've built payment rails. Six nines SLA, high capacity, resilient distributed systems.
I haven't written a single line of code since February, and I don't think I ever will again. These systems are incredibly good at replacing much of our work. They're only going to get better.
Rather than debating if these models are good (they are), we should be trying to figure out if most of us will still be around in three years. You don't need a two pizza team anymore.
"Look to the person to your left and to your right. Only one of you will remain by graduation" kind of energy. I'm not sure all of us is going to be in this career much longer. We'll have to see what the demand side looks like.
319286 · · focus · HN ↗
bluGill · · focus · HN ↗
nullsanity · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
ModernMech · · focus · HN ↗
On the other, my local pool company is hiring a software engineer and hardware engineer because with AI, they can replace a 2 pizza team as you so succinctly put it. So no two pizza teams but that doesn't mean all the pizzas are gone, they're maybe going to be spread out and not concentrated in CA, between orgs you might not have thought as "tech" before.
whateveracct · · focus · HN ↗
on-call still exists. have fun round robin'ing that with 3 engineers.
fragmede · · focus · HN ↗
latentsea · · focus · HN ↗
whateveracct · · focus · HN ↗
wonnage · · focus · HN ↗
latentsea · · focus · HN ↗
Ah, so you're still a few months out from the "yeah, maybe I don't really love this and maybe it won't ever actually work as well as I thought" turning point.
dolmen · · focus · HN ↗
Note that AI hasn't yet solved making pizzas.