zlacker

>>gregor+(OP)
This is exactly the direction I expect AI-assisted coding to go in. Not software engineers being kicked out and some business person pressing a few buttons to have a fully functional app (as is playing out in a lot of fantasies on LinkedIn & X), but rather experienced engineers using AI to generate bits of code and then meticulously reviewing and testing them.

The million dollar (perhaps literally) question is – could @kentonv have written this library quicker by himself without any AI help?

>>paxys+A6
> Not software engineers being kicked out ... but rather experienced engineers using AI to generate bits of code and then meticulously reviewing and testing them.

But what if you only need 2 kentonv's instead of 20 at the end? Do you assume we'll find enough new tasks that will occupy the other 18? I think that's the question.

And the author is implementing a fairly technical project in this case. How about routine LoB app development?

>>gokhan+na
> But what if you only need 2 kentonv's instead of 20 at the end? Do you assume we'll find enough new tasks that will occupy the other 18? I think that's the question.

This is likely where all this will end up. I have doubts that AI will replace all engineers, but I have no doubt in my mind that we'll certainly need a lot less engineers.

A not so dissimilar thing happened in the sysadmin world (my career) when everything transitioned from ClickOps to the cloud & Infrastructure as Code. Infrastructure that needed 10 sysadmins to manage now only needed 1 or 2 infrastructure folks.

The role still exists, but the quantity needed is drastically reduced. The work that I do now by myself would have needed an entire team before AWS/Ansible/Terraform, etc.

>>theweb+8d
I don’t think we would need less engineers… the work to be done will increase instead. Example: now it takes 10 engineers to release a product in 10 months without AI. With AI it takes lets say 1 engineer to release the same product in 1 month. What’s the company gonna do now? Release 10 products in 10 months without AI 10 engineers (each using AI).

It’s an exaggeration I know, but you get the point.

>>tkiolp+ej1
> What’s the company gonna do now? Release 10 products in 10 months without AI 10 engineers (each using AI).

Software is often not the bottleneck. If instead of 10 engineers you just need the one, the company will shed headcount it doesn't need. This might mean, for example, that instead of 10 developers and a software testing engineer, now a team changes to perhaps add testers while firing half of the developers.