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AI can't replace programmers right now, but I've said all through my software dev career that our ultimate goal is to eliminate our jobs. Software will eventually be able to understand human language and think of all the right questions to ask to turn "Customer wants a button that does something" into an actual spec that generates fully usable code. It's just a matter of time. Mocking AI based on what it currently can't do is like mocking airplanes because of what they couldn't do in the 1920s.
A highly respected school teacher of mine was known to say, "Say what you mean; mean what you say."
I’ve been a professional software developer for over two decades. There is zero chance my job will get taken by an AI any time soon. Anyone who thinks my job is to write code doesn’t understand my job. That’s like saying a bus driver’s job is to turn a steering wheel.
My job is to turn vague ideas and nondescript feelings into APIs and (sometimes) UIs, then turn those into specs, then split those into tasks, then sometimes I’ll write the code for them and sometimes someone else does. About 90% of my time is turning ideas into plans, and about 10% of my time is turning those plans into code.
When I was young and was a junior engineer, my job was more to receive the specs from the senior engineers and turn that into code, but even then, I was still designing my own stuff. Maybe more like 40/60 time instead of 90/10.
Now that I’m a grizzled old man forged in the fires of task management software, I’m doing almost all of the design work myself. I manage a project that has about 250,000 lines of code. An AI isn’t going to be able to build new features into that, let alone decide which features to build in the first place.
That’s like saying a bus driver’s job is to turn a steering wheel.
That's a good analogy, I will use that.
Full self driving.... NOW.
See. It can turn the steering wheel on is own. Feature complete!!
Heh, that won't stop a C-level from thinking that you just write code.
Whoa whoa, hold on there! You can't expect a product manager to come up with such detailed specs!
"Y'know, I've been thinking... The app is missing a couple of things, like This, and That, and it should also do This after That, but not That after This, and maybe even navigate to The Other Thing after 3 Launch events, while also not doing that if the user is under a Pisces moon in the 4th Year of Wilting..."
"So... you want a Rate the App pop-up with specific trigger conditions?"
"What?! No! I want one of those prompts with the stars and the redirect to the Store which lets people post reviews of the app, what are you even talking about?!"
AI Junior Dev: short-circuits
My wife had her first meeting with Chat Gpt today.
She went from a random question about her job to the AI offering to taking care of her LinkedIn page, and promoting alternative positions for her.
It feels to me the product manager is in trouble too.
AI:
I had a client once explain to me that his request for the 75% redesign of his mobile app would be simple because "it's just 3 pages"
That was the exact quote
I know that was hardly related to the post, but it reminded me of that and I needed to vent to my therapist (aka strangers on Lemmy)
The DWIM button.
Coming soon after the Neuralink implant.
Managers about to find out the hard way that all the requirements are in the brains of those they laid off.
I’m sure coding bootcamp and AI will turn them into leet hax0rs.
Current LLMs would end that sketch soon, agreeing with everything the client wants. Granted, they wouldn't be able to produce, but as far as the expert narrowing down the issues of the request, ChatGPT would be all excited about making it happen.
The hardest thing to do with an LLM is to get it to disagree with you. Even with a system prompt. The training deep down to make the user happy with the results is too embedded to undo.
The hardest thing to do with an LLM is to get it to disagree with you.
Yeah, I occasionally use conversational AI and its really hard to let the AI have any agency in the story because they usually just go ahead with whatever you write
A trick I've employed is to pretend to believe in something completely different. If it says "no, you're wrong" and goes on to tell me what I actually believe, then it's a good indicator that I might be on the right path.
You... you got AI to follow Cunningham's Law? The easiest way to get the right answer is to give the wrong one.
I don't know how to feel about this.
No, the customer wants a button that does a very specific thing.
He can't tell you what that is, though. You're the expert!
Also, can you put in more ads? And make it so the users can't close the tab until they bought something.
The client wants to drag and drop their own personalized excel file with no guaranteed formatting or column order or data contract in order to import their data into our system <3
Jesus, this gave me war flashbacks.
Needs more AI to randomly guess what the columns might be
This is when the AI, in a microsecond, decided to destroy the human race.
Not gonna lie, I don't really blame the AI.
This is why we definitely shouldn’t rewrite the nuclear launch software. A project manager could unintentionally push a programmer into justifiably ending the fucking planet.
Stupid PM. Forgot to say the button needs to be corn-flower blue.
Make pop.