Can't read this every paragraph ends with it's not x it's y. Just give me the prompt so I can read the real insights you have and not the generated fluff.
You really learn how bad everyone's taste is, just how low the bar can be when it comes to the written word. LLMs really can teach us something about ourselves!
When you pay for anything you basically exchange money so that someone else take care of a problem you have. Obviously if you are paying you expect the result to be of good quality. Software is no different, AI won't change that fact and engineering is about creating robust solution at the cheapest price. Just my 2 cents.
I saw someone use the term "orchestration", which seems to be the word for building the software using LLM tools.
It made me think of the conductor, seemingly the most skillless job in the orchestra. All you do is wave the batton, no need to ever play a instrument. If LLMs are doing the hard part (writing code) then we can be the conductor waving the batton.
But of course the visuals are misleading. Being conductor doesn't take the least skill, it takes the most. He hears every instrument individually, he knows the piece intimately, and through his conducting brings a unique expression to a familiar work.
LLMs have made the musician part automated. They'll play whatever you want. No doubt a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled conductor. And a incredible tool for someone who can't play to generate music for themselves.
There's no shortage of "I built it and they won't come" posts here on HN, predating LLMs by decades. Because code has never been the hard part of "software as a business ". LLMs have driven this point home. Code has never been cheaper. Business has never been harder.
Conducting an orchestra is not a mechanical activity. In many/most cases, the conductor is doing a live mix of the piece. They control the tempo of the whole orchestea, the volume and accent of different sections and players. They cue in percussion and embellishments. A conductor must know and fully understand the entire score being played. That's upward of a dozen musical threads peing played by 20, 30 people all at once. A conductor's job is to hear each one of these threads individually and simultaneously to shape the music into the final performance they want.
If a conductor's job can be reduced to a metronome, why hasn't it? I've had a credit card sized metronome in my instrument case for 15 years. Most professional musicians carry metronomes. We've had perfectly accurate metronomes for something like 500 years, so why is "conductor" a profession at all?
Google, Apple, Meta, X, Bluesky, Shopify, Stripe and all the big software companies must be really shaking in their boots for disruption against the army of vibe coders. /s
Yes but not for the reason you think - more that those are the future customers. If you look closely most are pivoting slowly away from software and shifting more to AI + hardware. The slow layoffs and pivoting that capital to infra shows this. All that "vibed" software needs to run somewhere. Also the models that generate and also power all that software need compute which comes from somewhere.
If I can:
- Have large margin compute since GPU's, power, data centre, etc setup is expensive AND
- Models that outperform models you can have at home.
- Vibed software that derives a lot of functionality from the AI compute and wants to be hosted on compute.
The big companies are pivoting away from software to being more infrastructure like for the democratized software that is projected to be made. They will be fine but in 10 years they will be more cloud hyperscalers, AI compute agents, etc than software businesses. Any software they write will be more to package up their compute as higher margin products.
In other words, yes we have CNC machines and electric saws and whatnot, reliable to a certain degree (you can still injure yourself badly), but it doesn't remove the need of a carpenter, because a carpenter also knows how to make a hammer from scratch even if he doesn't make one in his entire life.
solving problem should be an obsession rather than building. AI have fueled way too many builders while edge cases and lifecycle maintainence of the code is more of an afterthought
The "barrier to entry for building software" has not collapsed, as it was never about "where engineering shifts from writing code to shaping systems". It has always been about understanding the problem to solve and doing so in a provably correct manner.
Another way to reify this is:
When making software, remember that it is a snapshot of
your understanding of the problem. It states to all,
including your future-self, your approach, clarity, and
appropriateness of the solution for the problem at hand.
Choose your statements wisely.
For the love of all that is holy, I cannot read another 5 page AI post that could've been like 200 words. Just make it a paragraph or two and write using your brain, people. Does everything have to be ran through an AI? I'm sure there's some decent ideas in here, but I'm not wasting my time reading this slop.
We are all fashion designers now. LLM can code the cloth, do the seams, put in zippers, and sow buttons. You pick what creature you are designing for. You study how it moves, where the limits of movement lie, where it needs ventilation, flexibility, extra reinforced knees, fire resistance, a cape for flare (or no cape for safety). We are all Edna Mode. And the best of us can turn the problems we are working on into superheroes.
You model inference provider and any intermediaries get to watch what you’re designing from behind the curtain and copy, train on, or sell the insights if you’re not paying attention.
Keep in mind a gaggle of CC/Opus 4.5 agents is the worst this tech will be. How long ago did we hail 3.5 as the best? ATM, we are counting in months and weeks and the frogs are still leaping, and for all the naysayers, this has not yet slowed down.
Will the bubble pop and wipe out progress? Will this be a boon or bust for humanity? Who knows. In any case, the future's so bright, I gotta wear shades ;).
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 43.2 ms ] threadIt made me think of the conductor, seemingly the most skillless job in the orchestra. All you do is wave the batton, no need to ever play a instrument. If LLMs are doing the hard part (writing code) then we can be the conductor waving the batton.
But of course the visuals are misleading. Being conductor doesn't take the least skill, it takes the most. He hears every instrument individually, he knows the piece intimately, and through his conducting brings a unique expression to a familiar work.
LLMs have made the musician part automated. They'll play whatever you want. No doubt a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled conductor. And a incredible tool for someone who can't play to generate music for themselves.
There's no shortage of "I built it and they won't come" posts here on HN, predating LLMs by decades. Because code has never been the hard part of "software as a business ". LLMs have driven this point home. Code has never been cheaper. Business has never been harder.
Really though? That seems completely wrong.
If a conductor's job can be reduced to a metronome, why hasn't it? I've had a credit card sized metronome in my instrument case for 15 years. Most professional musicians carry metronomes. We've had perfectly accurate metronomes for something like 500 years, so why is "conductor" a profession at all?
Google, Apple, Meta, X, Bluesky, Shopify, Stripe and all the big software companies must be really shaking in their boots for disruption against the army of vibe coders. /s
(They are actually laughing at all of them)
Yes but not for the reason you think - more that those are the future customers. If you look closely most are pivoting slowly away from software and shifting more to AI + hardware. The slow layoffs and pivoting that capital to infra shows this. All that "vibed" software needs to run somewhere. Also the models that generate and also power all that software need compute which comes from somewhere.
If I can:
- Have large margin compute since GPU's, power, data centre, etc setup is expensive AND
- Models that outperform models you can have at home.
- Vibed software that derives a lot of functionality from the AI compute and wants to be hosted on compute.
The big companies are pivoting away from software to being more infrastructure like for the democratized software that is projected to be made. They will be fine but in 10 years they will be more cloud hyperscalers, AI compute agents, etc than software businesses. Any software they write will be more to package up their compute as higher margin products.
None of this IMV gives any hope to current SWE's.
Another way to reify this is:
You model inference provider and any intermediaries get to watch what you’re designing from behind the curtain and copy, train on, or sell the insights if you’re not paying attention.
Even if, I would only trust local models.
Will the bubble pop and wipe out progress? Will this be a boon or bust for humanity? Who knows. In any case, the future's so bright, I gotta wear shades ;).
It looks like LLM-supported coding becomes the new SaaS. The more things change, the more they stay the same.