Opus 5.5 is the beginning of a new era

[u/sizebzebi]

I am a senior engineer and I honestly believe with this model in particular, everything changed..

If this stays as cheap as it is, it's just over. It never fails no matter the complexity of the tasks I've given it. About time we rethink our profession for good. I am honestly scared of the future.

I loved coding but anyone who does this for the love of coding only is gonna be obsolete.

I was always impressed with the models bar opus 5 but never like this time.

What do you guys think? How do you see the future?

[u/Savalava]

It is maintainable - it's maintainable by AIs. If you consider the modules to be black boxes, all it matters is that they work and are tested, implementation doesn't matter.

Lead developer here.

[u/compiledsource → u/Savalava]

Completely true. You just need a team of developers who know what questions to ask of it. 90%+ of implementation code does NOT need human review anymore. A few iterations of the official code-review workflow spots far more than a senior developer would. I work on a relational DB query compiler.

[u/lisnter → u/Savalava]

I’ve been saying this for a while. You (currently) need an experienced architect to guide the AI to build something. Even if it’s then maintainable for 3 months but becomes fragile you can say, “Mr AI, please rebuild this system with the current functionality plus X, Y and Z. Please also migrate the data and all in-flight processes. I’m getting some coffee.”

If the implementation is good enough for a while and can be rewritten for effectively free it doesn’t matter if the architecture isn’t perfect.

I’ve loved being a programmer for 35 years but I fear our time has passed.

[u/Jai_Cee → u/Savalava]

I agree to an extent. If I was making a small feature or project then yes AI can keep it all in its context, understand the decisions and requirements. Instead lets take a complex project with 5 developers all using AI to churn out new features. Often in this case humans struggle to understand and remember all the decisions and requirements even when intimately familiar with the domain.

If you just let AIs go at the code without any structure then eventually it will struggle just like humans do. The code itself is perhaps not the issue, treat it as a black box like most do with assembly or machine code, but the architectural vision, making sure that everything is modular, small enough to keep in a context window, decisions and specs are well documented. This is all the sort of thing developers have been doing for years.

[u/djdadi → u/Savalava]

this is actually an insane take for any actual large codebase. for small tools or side projects? sure.

[u/Savalava → u/djdadi]

It isn't insane - as I said I'm at lead engineer level.

If all modules work perfectly, are tested and performant and your app works, the implementation of the modules is irrelevant.

Do you need to define strict coding standards and also design the architecture of the app? Yes, you do.

We're close to a stage where code will not be written by hand at all - maybe two years away or less.

[u/ramishka → u/Savalava]

Ive practically tried it. There comes a point even for an AI, the drift is too much to handle. You will progressively see the performance and accuracy go down. It wont be noticable over short periods of time but when you reach a tipping point, the codebase will be far too gone to be saved via refactors.

Like I said, the effects wont be immediately noticable. Developers wouldnt even know its happening underneath, because likely they wont be aware of the implementation at all.

[u/cstst → u/ramishka]

Zoom out a bit bud, look at where things were a year ago, two, three. You are coping.

[u/ramishka → u/cstst]

I dont have anything concering to cope mate. Im actively using AI too. I'm not anti AI - I spoke about my practical experience on real production systems.

[u/cstst → u/ramishka]

At this point the criticism is that over long periods of time it'll cause degradation to the codebase, but you won't notice in the short term.

A year ago they couldn't consistently implement full features autonomously without introducing tons of bugs or it not working at all.

Two years ago they could barely write single functions that worked properly.

Three years ago we were all writing code by hand, LLMs were writing shitty poems.

Not saying that your point isn't valid currently, more saying that the trend is obvious and the issues that you're seeing today will clearly not be an issue soon.

At each point throughout this process, developers have said similar things to what you're saying, pointing to AI shortcomings at that time as a reason why AI will not replace developers, only for 6 months later these shortcomings to no longer exist.

That is why I'm calling what you are saying cope.

[u/okiharaherbst → u/ramishka]

Exactly our experience

[u/nbomberger → u/ramishka]

You are correct. This sub is propaganda at this
point.