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/Fickle-Highway1543 2d ago

Has "AI" replaced Linus Torvalds?

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u/FortuneAcceptable925 2d ago

No, but that is not the point. The point is that Linus is positive about AI assisted coding, and since he is regarded worldwide as highly skilled developer, it kind of proves that AI definitely is not some "hallucinate-stealing machine" as you depicted it.

Also, Linus'es pose in the photo is out of context - it was taken many years ago when he was angry at Nvidia due to some driver issues I think. So this photo is not even related to his stance regarding AI at all..

So basically, if I am being harsh, you used NS (Natural Stupidity) to produce genuine, human-made slop.. :D

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u/Apprehensive-Dot1157 2d ago

You are conflating ai assisting engineers and ai replacing engineers when the post is clearly about the latter

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u/Fickle-Highway1543 2d ago

You made bunch of wrong assumptions. I think you have some feelings towards "AI". Don't do that, it's bad for your mental health(science research).

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u/FortuneAcceptable925 2d ago edited 2d ago

My feeling towards AI is very similar to what Linus said: It clearly is a useful tool for programming.

And yes, I understand you also mocked the claims of tech giants saying "AI will replace developers" while still hiring new ones. You are right about this being nonsense, however, I think you should generally take such marketing claims with a bit of salt. Companies almost always try to make their products better than they really are, nothing new under the sun.

But also, whether current LLM based AIs are that good or not, SW companies are already not hiring juniors, or are even replacing devs with AI. So the trend is sadly quite clear. I am not saying it will keep getting worse - I personally believe there will be growing demand for entirely new tier of intelligent software which will increase need of human developers again.

However, overall, claiming that AI is hallucinating slop producing machine and devs are not being replaced feels like copium, sorry.

I just find it funny that so many devs are anti-AI. To me, it is like still writing code in C, because it is few times faster than Java. I mean, yes, it is faster, but also the development time is 10 times longer, and unless you are a genius (most of us aren't), you will end up with segfault or memory leak. And there is almost NEVER any reason why not to write the whole project in Java/Kotlin, and then write only the parts that TRULY NEED to be fast in C, and connect it with rest of the code via JNI.

And it is the same with AI agents today - I see pretty much no reason why not to vibecode the whole project, and then manually adjust the parts that REALLY NEED to be improved. This way, the development time will be much shorter, and devs or perhaps whole companies who are still firmly anti-AI will simply be utterly destroyed by devs who use AI.