hannah5d ago
Sound off 📣 Where do you all think tech careers/jobs/software development are going in the next ~5 years?
Show threadManfred5d ago

@h_thoreson software engineers will increasingly become systems builders. We're not going away but the job is going to change a lot.

With a few exceptions, it's going to be tough to make a career out of being an expert in the minutiae of $tech_stack. A good senior eng can use a coding agent to fluidly move between tech stacks they may not actually know very well.

Show threadhannah5d ago
@nocoursewalks that matches my current experiences pretty well actually
Show threadGary5d ago

@h_thoreson fully agree with @nocoursewalks. Yesterday I managed to add an incredibly complex feature to a Python app just using AI and a knowledge of coding practices.

The broad strokes will be enough to get most things done. I’m sure you’ll still get artisanal hand coders that will charge a premium, but the majority of developers will be doing some kind of assisted development.

I’m starting a new job next month, my first non-contract job since 2001, and I’m going to try and position myself as a team lead for small group working on agentic development. I think in five years time if you’re not working in some form with AI, then you’re not working.

Show threadDavid Anson5d ago
@gary_bbgames @h_thoreson @nocoursewalks What do you think are the chances that a complex feature implemented by someone with minimal knowledge of the target language/system/environment is implemented correctly? Honest question here. I assume AI will get the basics right, but there’s a lot of room around the edges. How do all those issues get found and fixed? Repeated application of AI? Do you think it won’t ever be necessary to understand what’s actually going on? Maybe, but it seems unlikely.
Show threadManfred

@DavidAnson @gary_bbgames @h_thoreson expertise still matters! And it's not like we live in a binary world where code is either hand rolled or vibe coded.

Most of my prompts are to reduce toil, like "rewrite this function to use <type> instead of <ugly type>" or to replace search like "this function has <issue>, suggest some fixes." It is faster and less effort and I don't get bogged in minutiae. I hand edit after each prompt as needed.

I was a hard skeptic three months ago, not anymore.

Jul 11 at 6:20pmWeb
Show threadManfred5d ago
@DavidAnson @gary_bbgames @h_thoreson it is a long way from doing anything big autonomously. The way I like to describe it is it has a very small context window compared to a human. The human still needs to bring all the massive system and business context to the work. But it can do the human equivalent of "search SO for this problem and apply the best practice fix" much faster than I can.
Show threadManfred5d ago
@DavidAnson @gary_bbgames @h_thoreson of course I have many concerns about copyright, the kind of society this leads towards, whether any of this is sustainable in a world where AI kills Stack Overflow. But as a tool the utility is incredible, and just based on how the world works given the power structures, these tools are not going away.
Show threadDavid Anson5d ago
@nocoursewalks @gary_bbgames @h_thoreson SO can be good for inspiration, but I never/rarely use what I find there as-is because of issues/oversights/incompleteness/etc.. Maybe that’s on me, but I don’t want something that takes the top-voted answer and jams it into the code. Even for little stuff, that creates technical debt. To be clear, I’m not arguing with anybody who finds this useful. But I AM constantly trying to understand where my approach seems inconsistent with others.
Show threadhannah5d ago
@DavidAnson @nocoursewalks @gary_bbgames what I find is that AI creates a massive incentive for people to estimate stuff like you will be using AI and unless you have the leverage to push back against it, you have to just do it. Sometimes you end up doing stuff that’s just literally not feasible in the amount of time people want it now without AI
Show threadGary4d ago
@h_thoreson @DavidAnson @nocoursewalks why I currently work (until next month) thankfully haven’t demanded more work in less time which has resulted in me just having more free time… this is the way I want it, although I’m sure Corporate America will screw it up for everyone.
Show threadSimon Richter4d ago
@gary_bbgames @h_thoreson @DavidAnson @nocoursewalks good companies understand that "more work in less time" leads to technical debt.
Show threadGary4d ago

@DavidAnson @nocoursewalks @h_thoreson this is the best attitude to have. Keep an eye on it, be wary and verify everything… but it’s a tool that has gone from little use to over half my time in the last 3 months.

The speed of improvements is scary.