Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

GiorgioG

I learned BASIC, Pascal and x86 Assembly language by the age of 14-15. None of which I remember (nor care to). The strict instructions (aka language) we gave the compiler was not the point. Those experiences taught me how to think logically, and over time develop a taste/structure for how software should be built, as well as foot guns to avoid. I don't know how you teach that without coding, but the "coding expertise" was always a means to an end. LLMs are just another abstraction layer above programming languages, machine language, etc.

paul7986

Are engineers still making 100s of thousands a year still just for vibe coding while a nurse and other skilled / highly trained medical professionals working their butt off make half of that? Do we think there is going to be a correction for the vibe coders? Pardon I know such question is controversial but thinking ahead.

toenail

And math skills are going to collapse from calculator reliance.

add-sub-mul-div

I'm also concerned about people asking an opaque machine for an answer and stopping there instead of going to different sources, evaluating their credibility, exercising their own ability to construct their own worldview from disparate facts and opinions.

waffletower

Coding expertise is going to collapse from compiler reliance (1985 Turbo Pascal detractors)

rvz

Ah yes. Selling courses is the oldest grift in town, which is what the author here is doing.

randusername

Does anyone else feel like the web has become so "readable" it is illegible? I have such a hard time quickly reading pages like TFA. Headings, bullets, line-spacing, width, link hover animations, even the font. Even reader mode defaults aren't great for me. Compared to, for example, https://www.paulgraham.com/best.html

chojeen

I'm looking forward to having the same experience as COBOL engineers did after retirement: companies backing up the brinks truck to anyone with the skills to keep the lights on.

ryandvm

100% We're already seeing this at the enterprise level. Companies have dictates from leadership that "if you're writing code manually, you're doing it wrong." Okay, that kind of works for a while. We are indeed producing a shit-ton of code, but the reality is that engineers are pumping out code faster than the humans can understand and (honestly) review it. That sounds great until you realize that "hey Claude, read this Jira ticket and implement the feature in this code base" isn't really worth $200K/year. This is all complicated by the fact that we're also losing our grasp on reality from the other direction because we have leadership air dropping AI generated manifestos on the product owners and product owners having to use AI to transmute all that shit into 1,500 word Jira tickets that are 10% necessary feature work and 90% LLM boilerplate. So now you have software engineers whose job has changed radically to the point that the hardest part about being a software engineer is just filtering through AI generated artifacts from all directions just to try to get a feature out the door.

VCFundedGenYer

I'm seeing it happen in real time. I've seen several folks claim they "vibe-coded" something and upon review it's some seriously low quality garbage. Unfortunately it's just "functional enough" where it's encouraging the one who talked to the robot to continue thinking they can code for some reason. It is important to ensure that any LLM code is named and shamed.

LandoCalrissian

The snake eating it's own tail for llm software development has really been met with a shoulder shrug whenever it gets brought up. At best you might have a small cohort of developers that don't cook their brains with AI and their reward for that appears to be having to review terrible AI code written by people who have cooked their brains. Completely unsustainable.

causal

So far I think I have learned far more from LLMs than I've lost to them. I forget some syntax, definitely. But I now reach for a much wider range of tools that I have become familiar with because of LLMs. So, partly agree, partly disagree.

xyzelement

// The need for ongoing friction in long-term skill formation. The subtitle of the story tells it all. There are some people who seek out friction. Think about an athlete or a hardcore nerd. The best engineers are ones who were fascinated with computers and learning as kids and persued it at every opportunity. Found their own friction in other words. For those kinds of people, friction-seeking is the constant and what LLMs did is moved the point of where the friction occurs. For example - the best engineers I've worked with didn't necessarily have lots of experience coding in assembly because that kind of friction was no longer necessary. But they could solve hard problems (and if a problem really required assembly they could go learn it) What I think will be hit much harder by AI is the low tier engineer. Someone who was never truly curious and committed to it, for whom it was just a job. For example a typical offshore ticket pusher kind of person. That kind of person never went out to find friction and that's the kind of thing that's never going to fly again - if I want mediocre or average, the LLMs are sufficient

fechols

"Assembly expertise is going to collapse from compiler reliance".

aledevv

I strongly agree with the concept that cognitive friction is the engine of learning. First and foremost, it's an issue of "dependency": if you stop training the "muscle" of logic and reasoning, it gradually atrophies, just like unused physical muscles. You become dependent on external tools that replace a capability you once had yourself. A historical example that brought about a similar shift is this: when the production process moved from the craftsman's mind and hands to the Fordist factory (and the assembly line), the skill of building things shifted from human craftsmanship to anonymous, structured processes. Bit by bit, traditional artisans lost their knowledge and "know-how." Today, having a piece of furniture in our home depends on a massive production and supply chain; the "average" person no longer has the ability to build it themselves. The exact same thing is happening to software. We are the (now "former") software craftsmen.

phyzix5761

I'm still waiting to see how LLMs have made the world a better place because it honestly feels like its done the opposite.

01100011

TBH it was already pretty bad. There is a stark difference between the best and the average in my experience. The top, say, ten percent of coders are vastly better than anyone else when it comes to anything but boilerplate glue code(which is still needed and is better done by average coders anyway). This is speaking from my experience as a systems/c/c++ guy. If you are a js web frontend guy, python, or whatever I have no idea if this applies to you.

chris_money202

Most computer science programs don't teach "coding" though. There is pretty heavy emphasis on datastructures, algorithms, and system design. I don't think AI atrophies those skills / knowledge as much as the coding language and I think in many cases actually improves them, especially if you are reading the code that is produced and at least understanding the flow of it. I agree that AI reliance is hurting engineer's language understanding, but I don't know how much we should care.

not_the_fda

Writing code was never the job. It was a small part of the job that can now be delegated to AI. Eliciting the right requirements and user needs. Creating a sound architecture and design. Validating final product meets the requirements. Ensuring there is good test coverage. You know `Engineering`. Mechanical and Electrical engineers didn't go away because of CAD.

dan_ggggg

That's the whole scam. It's a ransom with more steps. First they fuck up your codebase with so much slop that no human does (or could) understand it. Now if you want to keep making bug fixes, you're on the hook for whatever Anthropic wants to charge you. The solution is to make AI developers the scapegoat. Fire the people at the top of the AI leaderboards, with malice. Otherwise, lazy AI-addict developers are going to destroy what remains of your company's IP.