As a software engineer who uses AI agents daily, let me tell you: now is as good a time as any to learn to code. LLMs won't replace any developers.
Well the job market for developers is still pretty tight at the moment. I don't have the insight to say for sure why (though I have some guesses), but I know that for me and every junior developer I know it's rough out there.
As a junior dev with prior working experience, currently not working as a programmer, yeah. I can only agree.
We might understand AI won't actually solve the same problems we are able to solve, but the people deciding budgets dont understand that.
They don't understand a lot. For whatever reason, higher management still thinks things are like a factory, and you just build your software like building a car.
Why? Because that's the only way they know in the world of MBAs. They can't speak any other language than "product."
Having been around for a few decades now I can tell you that the job market comes and goes. Things have been tight before, and there has been more openings than people to work them many times in the past. I can't tell you when things will turn around, but odds are they will. (this is sadly not helpful if you are one of those currently needing a job)
I don't have the insight to say for sure why (though I have some guesses),
In the USA, there's a tax break for research teams expiring this year. Supposedly it made software develoent team salaries fully tax deductable.
In the USA, I suspect this is the real motive for using the AI hype train to justify layoffs.
I'm willing to admit "Most CEOs are stupid" also has merit, of course.
LLMs are going to replace some developers, the companies that do that will fold because their product doesn't work, the developers will get jobs elsewhere.
The market can stay irrational for longer than you can afford not to eat
As a graduate from good university in computer science who is struggling to find a job. Go learn something that can be aided by code, but don't make code the center of your career...
"any developers?" bad choice of words. I can promise you with absolute certainty that SOME developers WILL be made redundant because of AI.
not all, not lots, not the majority, but some
We are still a long ways away from AI being able to replace programmers. The amount of sheer bullshit code and wrong stuff it writes currently will cripple any information system currently keeping economies up and running.
I think a lot of the crunch in the labor market for programmers is "monkey see monkey do" thinking at the big tech companies. It might even be somewhat calculated, though I hesitate to call something a conspiracy when it could simply be due to stupidity on the part of senior management.
Large tech companies tend to have a lot of flexibility and their total headcount because they have a wide variety of departments and tasks that they can set aside for an extended period before it causes any problems. Those problems will eventually catch up with them, though, as will a code base written by somebody who doesn't understand what they're trying to accomplish.
So I think the pendulum is going to swing back to a labor crunch at some point. My guess is at least another 6 months before we see any hint of that, though. I don't think it will be as bad as it was before the advent of LLMs, though. They really are a productivity enhancing tool, particularly for software developers who know what they're doing.
Learn code anyway. LLMs can't code worth a shit, so there will be plenty of jobs available to clean up their mess.
LLMs can’t code worth a shit yet. But techbros are determined to change that. The sad reality is that code is just a form of language, and LLMs are good at learning languages. They can’t code worth shit right now, but the progress likely will improve them.
We’ll still need experienced debuggers who can actually code. But in a decade, the broad strokes will likely be done by LLMs, which will vastly shrink the demand for experienced coders.
The sad reality is that code is just a form of language, and LLMs are good at learning languages.
This is debatable. LLMs are prediction machines.
What use is prediction when you are trying to code something new?
The vast majority of coding isn't making something new, it's using existing patterns and tools and arranging them to fit a specific use case.
Llms may not be able to create a new framework or design pattern, but neither will most coders in there day to day.
The vast majority of coding isn’t making something new, it’s using existing patterns and tools and arranging them to fit a specific use case.
I would argue that arranging something to fit a specific use case is making something new.
Ask any designer how difficult it is to get a spec sheet from a client and meet their expectations. We're expecting LLMs to suddenly solve this problem.
Llms may not be able to create a new framework or design pattern
Until they can do this, there is little threat to designers. There will be less grunt work, of course.
Lmfao the hardest part of building a product is understanding customer wants and needs. LLMs are incapable of understanding
LLMs can recite code when asked properly, with a lot of errors. Trying to put code together with it without understanding how said code works is a greater insanity, than making random numbers with mathematics.
The real reason why there's a downtick in coding jobs is due to Xitter not imploding immediately after the mass firings. Now coders are working overtime with skeleton teams on the same problems, while being overburdened and making more mistakes.
I think AI is a component of the decline.
For decades, companies have operated under the misunderstanding that more software developers equals more success, despite countless works explaining that's not how it works. As a result many of these companies have employed an order of magnitude more than they probably should have and got worse results than they would have. However the fact they got subpar results with 10x a good number just convinced them that they didn't hire enough. Smaller team produce better results made zero sense.
So now the AI companies come along and give a plausible rationalization to decrease team size. Even if the LLM hypothetically does zero to provide direct value, the reduced teams start yielding better results, because of mitigating the problems of "make sure everyone is utilized, make sure these cheap unqualified offshored programmers are giving you value, communicate and plan, reach consensus along a set up people who might all have viable approaches, but devolved into arguments over which way to go".
AI gives then a rationalization to do what they should have done from the onset.
The Learn To Code hype was being driven by employers to create a work surplus to drive wages down. Now those same employers think they can use AI instead.
The code will break and they will be back. People are buying into the bullshit until they realize its just marketing and has no practical application
Doubtful. The oligarch class only needs a handful of good developers to make working code for rich people use. The rest of us are being stuck with half-assed AI slop. They're trying to carve 99% of us out of the economy (the parts that pertain to them) and relegate us to backbreaking wage slavery. Killing middle class jobs is the point, they think.
Not saying it's a good plan, but it sure looks like what they're trying to do.
It's not so much we need manual labor but skilled technical labor. Like plumbing, electrical, working with pulse logic controllers, Mason, welder, Nursing, emergency room technicians. Etc
My dad is a master mason and can't find anyone at all who wants to do the job. It's hard, hard work. Unfortunately, it seems like he's going to have to retire with no apprentices to carry on all his incredible knowledge.
Maybe he should pay more?
Can he afford to?
Current trades are underpaid for what is expected from them.
Then he needs to charge more if he can't afford to pay his employees more.
Exactly. There is no such thing as a labor shortage, only activities that people don't think are worth the cost.
Remember when Biden told coal miners to learn to code
"My liberal friends were saying, 'You can't expect them to be able to do that,'" Biden told his New Hampshire audience. "Gimme a break! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program for God's sake."
These politicians and policy makers don’t know what they talk about when it comes to tech. Any one who tells you that programming jobs will be gone because of AI has never written a complex piece of software before. Also the trades pay well because there is a shortage of workers. If everyone starts going into the trades wages will crater. It’s just cycles. I remember when nobody wanted to go into the trades because it didn’t pay well. This created the shortage of workers. And since salaries are better now because of the shortage lots of people want to go into the trades This will create an oversupply of tradespeople and the cycle will repeat.
I remain deeply skeptical that AI can solve the types of complex problems that require human thought. AIs will never be able to abstract away details correctly or design sensible workflows for boutique problems.
They can't, this is the same shit that happened when the dipshit ceos sent dev jobs over seas to code farms. Devs lost their jobs, and the code went to shit. Then when shit started breaking, they magically rehired everyone again to spend years cleaning up the shit code. LLMs are this all over again, just quicker this time.
The problems start if it can take on a lot of the junior work. If nobody can enter the industry, nobody can get the experience required to do the real engineering.
Open-source and personal work may be the only way to enter the programming field in the next decade.
Now is the worst time to try to enter the field. We need to see the AI bubble burst much more spectacularly, and only then might it be more reasonable. You certainly don't want to try to get into a field when you have a lot of other choices when that field is already flooded with all of these people who have been laid off, combined with the increased availability of programmers in other countries, knowing that at the moment many domestic programmers are not smart enough to form strong unions to protect their own jobs.
The reactionary “learn to code” nonsense started a lot further back than a few years! Also, who told you there won’t be any software development positions in 10 years?
Anthropic for starters. What they don’t realize is everyone will be switching to cyber security jobs in 10 years when every vibe coded piece of software is riddle with security vulnerabilities.
Anthropic and others are over hyping their product so they can sell it. They are likely wrong.
And yeah your point stands.
I've been hearing that line for more than 20 years. Anytime there is a tech downturn you hear it loudly - this has happened several times since 2000. However the fact remains that most coders make far more money than most people in construction. The exceptions tend to be people who own their construction business - though if you do the paperwork construction is one of the easiest businesses to work for yourself in once you have skills.
When I began my career, other senior engineers said they had heard the line since the 1970s/1980s.
Typical pork cycle. By the time everybody was pushed towards IT/Coding and all the hundred ways to get into IT popped up, there were already too many people wanting an IT job. You were basically called stupid if you didn't "just learn to code" to get a well paid, stable job. It's your own fault for chosing a manual labor job instead of applying yourself and learning some coding skills! So everybody was pushed towards IT and made to feel stupid if they didn't try to learn coding.
I can think of no better way to train an AI to hate humanity enough to invent Skynet and kill us all, than to introduce them to MS Teams meetings with managers who all want things that are completely incompatible with what they asked for the last time, and require you to throw away about 40% of what you already wrote.
Well, anyone who knows anything about the current iteration of AI knows that it's not really happening.
Btw, people have been saying that since GPT-3 (which everyone nowadays admits was kinda shit if it wasn't for the novelty), so only 5 years left until my career is over.
Nah, it's just changed from
Learn to code
to
Learn to AI prompt engineer, bro!
The use of AI by non-developers to produce code will greatly increase the hourly rate I can charge.
The number of security holes produced is absolutely fabolous.
As soon as I graduated, 'too many people are fighting for IT jobs, depressing salaries, meanwhile we're paying plumbers $100/hour.'
That was 2001. Almost 25 years later, I recently paid a plumber $300/hour.
I'm fairly sure the "learn to code" thing was just a media campaign by corporations to assure an abundance of programmers, leading to decreased labor rates. Years earlier it was a push for electronic engineers and technicians.
If machine intelligence is indeed a different form of intelligence, then it can be observed and judged on the basis of its own merits, as opposed to a messianic waiting for a moment where it might equal or eclipse (weakly defined) human intelligence. This would even render obsolete the question as to whether or not machines can think—which in itself willfully glosses over the corresponding opposite question, “Can humans think?” posed by the former Fluxus artist (and Emmett Williams collaborator) Tomas Schmit in the year 2000 (Schmit et al. 2007, 18–19). — Crapularity Hermeneutics: Interpretation as the Blind Spot of Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Other Algorithmic Producers of the Postapocalyptic Present. Florian Cramer.
Showerthoughts
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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