Thread

Software Engineering Is Dead. Long Live Product Engineering

27 points · 14 comments · cliffclimber

betteryet · 1791139757 · focus · HN ↗
Software Engineering is not dead, damn it. Anything research and original is not dead. Are these things fantastic at connecting concepts, producing digital work products, and putting out derivate hypotheses? Sure. But proper original thought is still firmly in the realm of humans. Though speed of propagation of new ideas probably did change massively.
1. flowerlad · 1791140111 · focus · HN ↗
  > Anything research and original is not dead.
  Even if you are right here (and I think you are), software engineering can still be dead. 95% of software engineers are not doing research or doing anything original.
2. almogo · 1791140125 · focus · HN ↗
  In a way, many “novel” ideas are mathematical restructurings of existing ideas. I think we’ve seen a fair number of examples by now, especially in the realm of mathematics, of LLMs producing these novel ideas. I’d imagine Lee Se-dol would agree.
  1. flowerlad · 1791140310 · focus · HN ↗
    > LLMs producing these novel ideas
    We haven't seen that in software development though. Chris Lattner, inventor of the Swift programming language recently took a look at a compiler entirely written by Claude AI. Lattner found nothing innovative in the code generated by AI [1]. And this is why humans will be needed to advance the state of the art.
    [1] <a href="https://www.modular.com/blog/the-claude-c-compiler-what-it-reveals-about-the-future-of-software" rel="nofollow">https://www.modular.com/blog/the-claude-c-compiler-what-it-r...
    bewareofscams · 1791140675 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    ranger_danger · 1791140879 · focus · HN ↗
    Was said Claude AI prompted to even attempt to look for anything "innovative" or just make more of the same? The same can be said of humans if one isn't already intentionally trying to do something different.
    almogo · 1791142094 · focus · HN ↗
    That is a useful data point. I think there’s interesting points in both directions, but probably what’s the most important is that it’s a field of humans have been researching and optimizing very heavily for a while. Whatever fruits there are to reap our probably quite difficult to find.
3. ranger_danger · 1791140768 · focus · HN ↗
  > But proper original thought is still firmly in the realm of humans
  Copying isn't just how design works, it's how everything works. Humans are imitation machines.
  We create new things by collecting, regurgitating and mutating stuff we experience, just like LLMs. In a vacuum man has no ideas outside of base impulses.
  Hence why originality is a novice belief. The closer you get to any field, the more you realize the stories around who made all the breakthroughs are BS media narratives. Most if not all steps forward in any field have hundreds of people clawing at similar ideas concurrently.
4. catunionist · 1791169359 · focus · HN ↗
  Software engineering isn't dead, but it's provocative to say it is.

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