Comment by d4mi3n
2 hours ago
I find this to be an incredibly myopic viewpoint. Software engineering is not defined by a single tool or technology, but rather how we design, implement, and maintain processes of value we want to automate or scale.
LLMs will certainly be an aide, but assuming adoption of them is required across a whole _field_ ignores whole classes of problems, domains, and constraints the production of software covers.
Rather, we should be wary of allowing our skills and hard-earned knowledge to atrophy by over reliance on new technology that is far from perfect, reliable, or even universally available. These tools more than any before suffer from the junk-in-junk-out problem and I’d much rather work with someone who knows their fundamentals than someone who knows their way around a the LLM of the month.
On the contrary, taken at face value I find the GP comment to be spot on.
They aren't saying LLM adoption is required across 100% of the field. They are pointing out that LLMs have reached an impressively capable state, and someone insufficiently inclined to test new tooling that they still dismiss LLMs as "just fancy autocomplete" is exactly who gets left behind when technology advances.
Two things can be true at the same time, 1) that LLMs are not required across a whole field, and 2) that software engineers unwilling to acknowledge their utility have as much a place in the future as the software engineers of 50 years ago who refused to use a compiler.
Can you elaborate on how someone would get "left behind"? Isn't the whole point of LLMs that they use natural language and require less effort?
If they're so easy to use, wouldn't the opposite be true? i.e. people who over rely on LLMs become weaker at the core competency? Nobody gives a rat's ass if you did something in an hour or took all night. The deadline is still next week because of all the meetings. What's the point? Anyone at any point in human history can tell you that doing too much too early has extremely high odds of failure. You're much better off thinking about the business concerns at hand instead of getting lost in the weeds playing with the code.
There's also zero chance of the cadence speeding up because software engineers were never the bottleneck, and LLMs don't work so well for everyone else's job.
If you can't pull rabbits out of hats when the time is right without an LLM, you're already at a disadvantage compared to everyone else who can (anyone who isn't a junior dev today).
> people who over rely on LLMs become weaker at the core competency
What if what people become weaker at, is no longer the core competency? Then people who maintain their skills at what used to be the core competency, at the expense of what is actually the core competency, will be left behind.
The rest of your comment, re: nothing taking less than a week because of meetings and software never being the bottleneck, is not something generally true across the industry. I'm sorry that that has been your experience; it does not sound pleasant.
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