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points by adventured 2 days ago | 0 comments

GPT 3.5 is 2022. In the past ~18 months the majority of all human software development has been wiped out and the models keep getting better rapidly. AI has already radically overdelivered and the biggest returns are in the next 10, 20, 50 years.

It's 1987: The PC is underdelivering.

It's 2000: the Internet is underdelivering.

It's 2010: smartphones are underdelivering.

[–] afpx 2 days ago

Models are finally good enough that I'm confident that I can repeatably build pretty much any software reliably in less than 2% of the time that I could before 2022. I wouldn't have made that claim 6 months ago.

Even quantized local models like Qwen3.8 are good enough to handle a lot of drudgery. For example, I hooked my wife's computer up to a local model, and now she finally has a clean desktop. She just drops spreadsheets or powerpoints or whatever on her desktop and automation takes care of everything.

The caveat is that I developed software for 30 years, so I understand most of what it produces and can guide it to make fewer mistakes and fix what it can't do. The biggest challenge has been keeping my requirements focused - it's very easy to gold plate everything and prematurely optimize.

The biggest question I ask myself is why am I even still doing this. The smart people are probably already trying to figure out how to pipe raw matter and energy to their homes to build replicators.

The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.

[–] adventured 2 days ago

Build experiences that are user dependent. The value isn't in the software it's in the users. That's the ultimate moat. It's what isn't properly grasped about GPT's position, insofar as they don't mess up big: they have captured a zillion users, they're Kleenex. Ask GPT = Google it.

You don't want to be in the CD selling or radio business with the Internet & digital & streaming & smartphones & iPods bearing down on you. Go for concerts. Notice that humans are spending more than ever on live concerts. Disney World and Disneyland still command extraordinary pricing power, despite everybody hiding inside on their phones.

LLM clones of eg Photoshop will end up being worthless, like ideas generally. The software will be worthless for the same reason ideas are: they're too easy. Users are hard, software will be (relatively) easy.

Is the value in McDonalds in the food? Everybody knows it's not. McD captured consumers, their heft is extraordinarily difficult to displace. Ie habits, brand awareness, location, etc.

[–] reeredfdfdf 2 days ago

"LLM clones of eg Photoshop will end up being worthless, like ideas generally. The software will be worthless for the same reason ideas are: they're too easy. Users are hard, software will be (relatively) easy."

I doubt that. If a clone out there offers all the Photoshop's features for free or much lower cost, without additional learning curve, then many professionals will switch to save money.

McDonalds would be gone too if somebody opened a restaurant chain serving similar food for free or 80% lower price. But that's impossible to do profitably, while freeware software has existed for a long, long time.

[–] adventured 1 day ago

Photoshop users could switch to GIMP tomorrow. They don't want to.

The many professionals are the ones that could most easily understand how to switch to GIMP, which is free to use. They could save enormous amounts of money. They prefer to spend money and stick with Photoshop instead. That has persisted for a very long time now.

[–] eudamoniac 2 days ago

Making your engineers use AI with little to no measurable improvement, but with very measurable high cost, is not delivering

[–] adventured 2 days ago

Astra, Fable, Opus 5.5 are drastically beyond the capabilities of the median software developer. It's not remotely close.

The bottom 2/3 of the human market is entirely dead. Their jobs are gone (AI-shored) they just haven't all gotten the forced retirement or pink slips yet, while they click a few more prompts for a few more pay checks. The frontier pushing forward will knock out most of the remaining top 1/3 without breaking a sweat over the next few years. The really good developers will graduate into babysitting AI as managers.

It is legitimately sad, it's millions of high paying jobs just in the US alone. It's going to be brutal on the housing market. Automation came for another field.

[–] mkotlikov 2 days ago

Software engineering isn't unique, if this is true then it's 99% of all white collar work. Those same software engineers are going to help automate every other job on their way out.

[–] imtringued 2 days ago

Correct. Everything will disappear, even hardware jobs and the trades but the people responsible with the automation jobs (software developers) will be the last to go.

[–] yeeeloit 2 days ago

Do you, personally, have a plan for the future? Like what are you doing about this, or are you hoping to be in the 1%?

[–] adventured 2 days ago

My income is not dependent on LLMs not taking all the software etc jobs from humans.

My suggestion to anybody staring this down is: do something for yourself while you can, while we're in the early going. Most people still have no understanding of AI, most tech employees are doing absolutely nothing interesting with it other than prompt prompt prompt prompt while at work and effectively doodling at home.

Go high value and go for the users. Do things that don't scale, that actually rings more true now than ever. Focus on areas of tech where it's really hard to get the users, where you have to practically hand acquire them to get started. Users are the moat.

It's not build the software and they will come. That's what nearly everybody has wrong about what is going on right now. The value is not in the software. Users, users, users, users - they should be your primary focus.

Also consider looking at software more as a layer related to something else you do, not as The Thing you do. Related to another service you offer, improving that service.

Let's say you started consolidating in the physical self-storage space ten years ago. You read that it was a very wide open field, where the market was not yet highly concentrated, 3/4 of the market was mom & pop operators. Over the next ten years you built up a lot of storage locations. LLMs can amplify your business, they can help you automate, layer better software on top of your physical business. You know what LLMs can't do? They can't build storage units, and humans love their storage space. That's just one example out of a zillion out there.

[–] fn-mote 2 days ago

I am improving my Spanish and staring at the massive savings that I have built up from my SV job. When my job goes and the industry is in flames, I am moving to Bolivia.

If you have a big mortgage and no savings, it’s going to be tough. Stop taking the Waymo now.

[–] eudamoniac 2 days ago

I don't get how anyone actively using AI can believe this. Astra sucks ass.

[–] malfist 2 days ago

> In the past ~18 months the majority of all human software development has been wiped out

What the hell does this even mean? Literally half of the code in operation I the world is still COBOL. The fuck is this nonsense wiped out

[–] adventured 2 days ago

It means in corporations across the globe, the majority of code is no longer being written by humans. That is over and it will only keep dwindling by the quarter.

[–] imtringued 2 days ago

Yes it means in corporations across the globe, the majority of code was no longer being written by humans long before the majority of code was no longer being written by humans.

Also remember, the majority of all human software development has been wiped out 18 months ago but the dwindling will keep going by the quarter until the majority of all human software development has been wiped out.

[–] malfist 2 days ago

Writing lines of code by hand is all of human software development? Pretty sure in all of those companies its still software engineers writing the code, even if they're using LLMs to do it.

Unless you're making the claim that software engineers aren't involved or that only writing code is software development.

[–] asadotzler 2 days ago

Nonsense. Nearly every software house in the world has just as many or nearly as many programmers as they did 7 years ago when GPT-2 was "too dangerous to release." You live in a very tiny bubble if you think most businesses are building software without humans. Total horse shit.

[–] adventured 2 days ago

Microsoft is laying off 60,000 people. That's just the early pin prick of the layoff gusher that is incoming.

One million software developers will lose their jobs in the US over the next ten years.

The big firing waves will begin when valuations decline as the initial AI boom slows. That has started already, although it's early. Companies like CoreWeave will basically collapse. Investors will demand & reward the layoffs, efficiency push, the end of rah rah times will prompt the inflection on employment in tech. And it'll never be like it was ever again.

[–] malfist 2 days ago

Microsoft isn't laying off 60,000 people. They offered voluntary separation agreements, but nobody was laid off.

For 1 million software engineers in the US to lose their job you'd have to shrink the industry by 62.5% and nobody is doing that. We employ more software engineers this year than last year, which was higher than the year before which was higher than a year before. Get off the social media and look at real statistics and news.

This gleeful nihilism isn't health friend

[–] adventured 1 day ago

Those 60,000 people are being eliminated from tech jobs. That's a gigantic number. Microsoft is pruning. They'll do it the hard way if they have to with literal firings. They'd like to avoid that if they can, and they're in a position currently where they can afford to. Most companies are not going to be so gentle.

HN is in denial. Just watch what happens over the next ~36 months.

[–] malfist 1 day ago

I'm disengaging from this conversation since you seem unwilling to engage with facts. 60,000 software engineers are not being laid off at microsoft, full stop.

[–] watwut 1 day ago

> HN is in denial. Just watch what happens over the next ~36 months.

In all likelihood, massive worldwide recession due to combination of oil issues and debt-ai bubble popping. That will be combined with instability due to democracies cracking up, wars popping up faster and faster all the while the richest and most powerful people are increasingly desperate to destroy democracies before it is too late for them.

[–] vanuatu 2 days ago

seems like the opposite is occurring, job postings are climbing and so is comp

software is easier to build -> the world builds more software

But yes, the act of translating spec into code as a 'programmer' is gone for good.

[–] ngc248 1 day ago

All companies are trimming fat by reducing headcount and the cover for that is "AI"

[–] p-e-w 2 days ago

> Literally half of the code in operation I the world is still COBOL.

There’s no way this is even remotely true. JavaScript alone is probably 90+%, considering it’s on almost every website.

[–] jcranmer 2 days ago

There is definitely an unanswered question as to what the metric, but no, JavaScript is not 90+% by any useful metric. Most code is not a website, and JavaScript penetration outside of the client-side code on a website and some GUI applications on various operating systems is almost nonexistent.

Remember that all of the code in operation includes code like the microcontroller in your mouse, the hundreds of chips in your car doing things like keeping the engine running or "window goes up when I push the button," the DVD menu (which is actually Java code), not to mention all of the staid systems responsible for things like writing your paycheck every other week.

[–] f1yght 2 days ago

Most of the web is php, so JavaScript isn’t even the primary language on the web.

[–] blacksmith_tb 2 days ago

To be fair, most of those Wordpress / LAMP etc. sites probably also do have at least some client-side js, so they'd count for both?