Comment by decimalenough

3 months ago

> That meeting that you spent an hour in to understand the requirements? You don't need that meeting if you're not writing the code.

How are you going to prompt the LLM or validate its output if you don't understand the requirements?

16 comments

decimalenough

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mikeyouse  3 months ago

In some number of cases, the business partner who would have passed you the requirements will just generate the code themselves.. I’m shocked shin some engineers don’t see a massive disruption coming..

  • claytongulick  3 months ago

    Oh, some of us see a massive disruption coming, just maybe not in the way you think.

    Talented, experienced devs leaving the field out of disgust would be pretty disruptive.

    Crumbling, faulty technical infrastructure with unmanageable heaps of AI slop that no one understands would definitely disrupt businesses.

    Skill atrophy, and an entire generation of "developers" that have never actually written code will be disruptive when something breaks and no one knows how to fix it (this isn't a hypothetical, I'm seeing this phenomenon in a lot of large enterprise groups).

    The total elimination of novel solutions, new ideas and new approaches to development and the resulting industry wide stagnation won't be disruptive, but will certainly be a drag.

    • griffiths  3 months ago

      You will have artisans or software SWAT teams on one side and code factories on the other. For most problems code factories will be good enough.

    • decimalenough  3 months ago

      > Crumbling, faulty technical infrastructure with unmanageable heaps of AI slop that no one understands

      Replace "AI slop" with "legacy code", and you've got basically any large enterprise today.

      The timescales are different though: it takes years if not decades to accumulate classic legacy cruft, while LLMs can spew up huge amounts of incomprehensible spaghetti in seconds.

  • camdenreslink  3 months ago

    Is this actually happening anywhere in a medium-large business with an established product and real customers?

  • blharr  3 months ago

    Sure, but why doesn't said business partner just give a requirement to the AI to do the business partner's own job? Since it is hypothetically superhuman at fulfilling requirements at such a point...

    PMs seem pretty easy to replace. In fact, given any single role to fixate on, it's probably replaceable

  • jurgenburgen  3 months ago

    > In some number of cases, the business partner who would have passed you the requirements will just generate the code themselves.. I’m shocked shin some engineers don’t see a massive disruption coming..

    It’s because you are engaging in first-order thinking. You imagine the immediate result which is that software engineers are replaced.

    If you engaged in second-order thinking you would realize that if software engineers can be replaced, _any_ work can eventually be automated. So why stress about it, we’ll figure out a replacement for capitalism. It seems like the world is starting the slow swing to the left so eventually the problem will be solved.

    Of course might be those engineers you mention are engaged in no thinking.

mkozlows  3 months ago

Your PM can write the ticket, and your QA can test the output.

  • qsera  3 months ago

    I think we would, at some point realize that the roles of PM and QA are best done by an LLM, while coding is left to humans.

    So an 180 from the current coding-automation frenzy..

  • AdieuToLogic  3 months ago

    >> How are you going to prompt the LLM or validate its output if you don't understand the requirements?

    > Your PM can write the ticket, and your QA can test the output.

    If your PM can write the ticket and your QA can test the output, why not cut out the middleman by having the PM write the coding agent prompt(s)?

    And if your PM can write the coding agent prompt(s), why not cut out the QA group by having the PM write the verification prompt(s)?

    And if your PM can write those prompts, why not cut out the PM and have your CSRs write the feature request/verification prompts?

    And if your CSRs can write the feature request/verification prompts, why not cut them out and have the organization's customers write the feature request along with acceptance prompts?

    And if customers can write those prompts, why would they pay you?