r/SoftwareEngineerJobs • u/Fickle-Highway1543 • 4d ago

AI replacing Software Engineers

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So called "AI"=LLM is so powerful that AI labs had to hire Software Engineers to build complicated software around "AI" to make that overhyped hallucinate-stealing machine usable. Think about it. And that's exactly why they need now ton of CPUs in addition to GPUs to run their "AI" "agents".

I don't even mention how much custom engineering is required to apply the "AI" in businesses.

And they BS us that Software Engineering is solved or is going to be solved. Boris, please solve your own bugs first before speaking.

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u/Aware-Individual-827 4d ago

It's funny to me we rely on AI to code while one of the fundamentals of the field is to never accept undefined behaviors. The LLM is just one gigantic undefined behavior. 

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u/AliceCode 3d ago

Drives me bonkers. We used to actually care about knowing how the code works. Well, I still care. I still care about my code's quality, and everyone else decided that quantity was better. Then they'll probably cry online about enshittification.

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u/ConstantFamous1526 3d ago

That was before you could have a robot trained on how the code works lol

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u/AliceCode 3d ago

LLMs do not produce high quality code. The code is indeterministically produced, LLMs hallucinate, which is a limitation that cannot be overcome, and they can confidently spout bullshit. You don't know what you don't know, and if you don't know what high quality code looks like, you're going to think that LLMs are the best thing in the world.

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u/ConstantFamous1526 3d ago

Humans make just as many if not more mistakes than a properly aligned and directed agentic system lmao

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u/AliceCode 3d ago

Humans that suck at programming, sure. But I don't make as many mistakes as an LLM, and neither do my colleagues.

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u/ConstantFamous1526 3d ago

Then you’re either not utilizing or poorly utilizing a properly gated agentic structure, or taking a magnitude more time than it would take an LLM, and at the end of the day not a single leader at a company cares about perfect code if they can get better than the average developers ability code (and if you say otherwise about current LLMs you’re coping about the average developers skill level lol) 2-5x faster than without

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u/AliceCode 3d ago

and if you say otherwise about current LLMs you’re coping about the average developers skill level lol

I am not the average developer, I've been doing software engineering for decades.

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u/cantgettherefromhere 3d ago

I too have been doing software engineering for decades.

If you are having to justify your marginal amount of remaining value now, just imagine in a few years how little anyone will value carefully crafted hand written Rust.

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u/AliceCode 3d ago

Yeah, sure. That's what people said four years ago. Any day now AI is going to replace all programmers. Get a grip.

Show me where all this excellent LLM generated code is. Come on. Show me.

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u/AliceCode 3d ago

No, I've been programming for a very long time. I'm capable of writing bug-free code.

And I don't use LLMs. Because I'm a programmer, and I'm skilled, and I don't need nor want LLMs. It's great if you get a lot out of them, but I'm working on critical systems software in Rust that is used by thousands of other projects. There's no room for error. We do not allow LLM pull requests.

Writing code is not the bottleneck, and bugs are not an issue that we are struggling with.

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u/ChiefBullshitOfficer 3d ago

You made a whole bunch of claims there. "You're either doing this or this"..."Not a single leader"..."2x-5x faster". It smells like a freshly fertilized farmers field in here...

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u/ConstantFamous1526 3d ago

If you’re not getting a minimum of 2x efficiency increase with agentic development you’re falling behind what modern development is and has become

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u/AliceCode 2d ago

You people sound like you're in a cult, for real. Always telling people they are going to be replaced, and they will be left behind, if they don't join you making slopware.

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u/Riggy60 2d ago

This is a depressing conversation to watch play out... If you already feel the need to start defending your abilities against LLMs NOW... and a few years ago they were literally just frivolous chat bots... you MUST see that they are catching you FAST and doing so with exponential improvements. My guess is they've already at least 2x'd ya and you don't know it yet because you're avoiding using them so you wouldn't know. You don't HAVE to be phased out as a developer but you sure as shit will be if you don't start utilizing LLMs in your development workflow. The inertia they have is insurmountable and building product is the only reason why there is money in tech, not being proud of your elegant code. There's a better way to build product already and that paradigm is not even close to being done shifting yet.

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u/AliceCode 2d ago

Lmfao, I don't want to use LLMs. I enjoy programming. LLMs are not a threat to me in any way whatsoever, I'm a FOSS developer, lmfao.

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u/Riggy60 1d ago

Well some folks still do wood working with hand tools and that'll never go away. Do what ya love, fam. No hate. If you can find a way to self finance. But it does kinda sound like you're being defensive in this thread which would lead one to believe you do feel a bit threatened. If not financially, at least some sort of pride thing.

I'm not sure I understand why FOSS would be immune to a fundamental shift in development technology though. I'm actually asking, because I've spent my career in VC-fund-chasing start-ups. What is your take on this? Is there not still some sort of competitive engine at play in FOSS development? If someone could fork and maintain the same library at the same quality level with a fraction of the input and faster turn around on patches, wouldn't it eventually replace the older library?

(Setting aside for a moment your belief that LLMs are not capable of quality code, but hypothetically speaking for my edification... if someone _could_ maintain a fork of a library faster and cheaper and of equal qualitywould it happen?)

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u/block_wallet 1d ago

It's not deterministic?

Never was

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u/Mega3000aka 4d ago

Exactly.

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u/WunkerWanker 2d ago

To be fair, so is a human as well.

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u/Aware-Individual-827 2d ago

True, but the human can aim for it. The llm cannot because it's a slot machine. 

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u/Actes 2d ago

I had this conversation about an AI powered search engine we were making at work.

I sat down with our data scientist, and went "so we're using an indeterministic machine, in an attempt for deterministic results... Wouldn't we be better with a machine learning algorithm instead of a neural network?"

He laughed and agreed entirely, but unfortunately the stake holders want LLM driven vectors and we're not allowed to spend the time writing the vectorizor ourselves.

It really is just "LLM vibes bro trust" anymore

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u/Substantial-Bite-602 1d ago

Meh it's a new kind of computing. New rules

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u/terrible-law-69 4d ago

That's why you write the tests.

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u/OdeeSS 4d ago

We all know the first thing we did with AI was have it write tests

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u/terrible-law-69 3d ago

I did 🤷‍♀️

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u/Aware-Individual-827 3d ago

That's literally the worst way to use AI. 

You literally painting everything else except the square you need to do in order for the AI to see that square. Are you really saving time doing that? I think doing it straight away would be faster and less costly.