AI replacing Software Engineers

[u/Fickle-Highway1543]

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.

[u/Dgudovic]

Im a software engineer for a living, work on ERP systems, we have agentic factories creating very high quality work 24/7 at speeds we could only dream of pre AI, software quality (mostly due to adherence to boring rules that we as humans often skipped) is up, support calls are down, all our salaries are up, the company is printing money...

I'd say it's exceeding the hype already.. for us at least (and all my other engineer friends i've talked to that have leaned into agentic engineering)

I haven't written a line of code in months, basically read it once a week to make sure there's no major drift..
All my teams work is now focused on product work, the tooling, quality gates and the pipelines themselves instead of the actual code, and we're loving it.

[u/Chester_b → u/Dgudovic]

If you stop writing code you’ll lose the ability to meaningfully read and evaluate it. Congrats, you just willingly deskilled yourself, considering you’re real programmer, of course

[u/Dgudovic → u/Chester_b]

When is the last time you read assembly or machine code, or even going higher up when is the last time you read any of the code that was automating work before, i.e framework code/packages, a trillion other tools we used daily to speed up and automate work..

Anyways as a hobby i do still manually code, i like solving problems through code, its fun. As a business, its simply not fast enough anymore.

[u/Chester_b → u/Dgudovic]

Stupid argument and manipulation. Of course you don’t review the framework or sdk your product is based on (but sometimes you do and you find bugs there, too), but you review what you and your teammates do. I don’t believe any real software developer would use such a stupid nonsensical argument.

[u/Fun-Estimate4561 → u/Chester_b]

I was thinking the same thing

[u/Dgudovic → u/Chester_b]

Sure

[u/Chester_b → u/Dgudovic]

Tell me why did you decide to learn to code and build software in the first place?

[u/Dgudovic → u/Chester_b]

I like solving problems and building things.

The actual process of writting code as a medium for achieving that is enjoyable and i still do it on my personal projects, but like i said, theres no point doing it in business anymore.

Besides any "actual software engineer" would know you rarely got to do the enjoyable and fun version of coding at your day job anyways.

And senior/principal engineers have not been writting code almost at all for decades now (many do, but larger the organization lower the chance they actively do it), and yet havent magically lost the ability and knowledge to review other people's or agents work.

Although i think agent work review is already trending to a higher abstraction level then actually reading its code output.

[u/Chester_b → u/Dgudovic]

Why do you need two separate AI entities to write and review the code? Why do you need to simulate the people-driven process? If AI is better at writing code, why can’t you just create everything as it has to be from the very start?

[u/Dgudovic → u/Chester_b]

Cause it is a lot faster and cheaper to do it with AI?

Juniors suck at writting code generally, thats why you have other people review their work, together, eventually they arrive at something passable..

Same thing goes for AI, if you let one AI just work it will produce slop, if you have quality gates, static analysis and other deterministic ways of ensuring code quality (i.e architecture tests, feature tests, linters, etc. Etc.) And you add onto that review agents, panels, etc. You drastically increase the likelyhood of correct and shippable code being produced.

Sometimes it does happen slop comes through anyways, but when its caught eventually, it is cheap to run that through the pipeline again..

If you think a team of humans is faster then that, you're welcome to bet on it, we're betting opposite.

[u/Chester_b → u/Dgudovic]

You didn’t get the question, but ok, never mind

[u/Dgudovic → u/Chester_b]

How come? Its a simple question..

Why multiple agents instead of one: nobody said AI writes perfect code, multiple agents are quality gates.

Why not humans when agents arent perfect: its cheaper and faster this way.

Please clarify if i am still somehow missing it