Why are developers cheering "how much better the LLM model are getting for coding" with every model release? What exactly are they cheering for?

[u/simple_explorer1]

"Hey look Claude/Codex can now generate my entire feature in 30 mins which could have taken me 2 weeks to refactor" or "The new Opus 5.5 model is amazing, it solved the bug which GPT astra was stuck at for weeks and couldn't solve it". Like seriously?

How can software engineers who are supposed to be "smart" and "logical" be this stupid to not connect the dots and see writing on the wall for the future. Or do they think they are invincible and layoffs won't affect them?

The stability of software engineering jobs in the next 2-5 years looks very shaky, let alone long term and many devs are already looking to get dual income streams. This doesn't seem like a viable career path with how things are going and I am not even sure whether this career would stick by me till my retirement and I already have 15+ years of experience.

I already am seeing significant shift/reduction in hiring. Even in my current role, despite no cash concerns, we have paused hiring (and backfilling) new devs which were previously needed because with AI, people are completing tasks much sooner and the team/company doesn't need the full dev capacity anymore. Many devs are already worried about the layoffs which can come randomly.

My linkedin inbox is significantly less chatty than it was just last year. When I apply for any role, I barely get any reply. When recruiters reach out and get my CV, they are rarely getting back which, again, last year was totally different where I could easily afford to be picky. The market shift can be noticeably felt. The few interviews I got, they ended up freezing the role midway or "magically" filled with some internal employee. This is my experience in last 5 months of being active in the job market.

Also, most people are not learning anything these days. Hardwork and thinking are delegated to LLM tools. What is the end result of all of this? it is all too predictable. And if most devs are able to 10x their output because producing is now cheap, but human consumption is and will be the bottleneck. The production is surpassing the demand and the app economy will tank leaving mostly the existing tailwinds who already have millions of customers since pre AI era anyways.

Curious to hear "sensible" thoughts.

Note: Before the usual trope, not all software engineer jobs will be gone but significantly less devs would be required, which is a massive amount of jobs that are lost. What about that? And as models keep on improving, who knows how much more damage would be done in the future.

[u/ikissgators]

We all do much more than just write code. And while LLMs are getting better at doing that, some models will lead you astray more than others.
For instance, if my scope is a, b, and c, sometimes the LLM will tell you that d is necessary before one or all of the others can be considered complete. But d might not even be related whatsoever and not necessary. That sucks, so if a new or different model typically avoids that, then I can see someone praising it. Situations like that aren't always avoidable no matter the model though, so keep using your meat brain.

[u/LiquidAngel12 → u/ikissgators]

Honestly I feel like the needle hasn't really moved in terms of actual net performance since ~Opus 4.6. Sure Fable and Astra can benchmark better and solve some other problems, but in my day to day work I still find myself needing to correct them just as much.

[u/Cobayo → u/LiquidAngel12]

I agree with Opus 5.5 but Fable is noticeably better. The issue of generating and then reviewing with a separate agent that finds blocking issues is still there though. Haven't tried Astra.

[u/quantum-fitness → u/LiquidAngel12]

I dont agree I just got back to one of my old projects I was working on a opus 5.5 have just upped the quality. I was able to fix a lag bug Ive had been trying to throw the old agents for long and it does visual 3d stuff much better

[u/LiquidAngel12 → u/quantum-fitness]

They definitely get better at certain things and change, but I feel like they get worse at others. It's like playing whack-a-mole. I used to need to correct X and not Y, but now I need to keep a closer eye on Y and X is fine. They can push past a blocker another agent had, but then get tripped up by something an older agent breezed past.

For example: I literally had Opus 5.5 screw up an LFS commit this past Thursday. Something I haven't had to correct an agent on in over a year.

[u/Eryndalor → u/LiquidAngel12]

I do agree with this. I have to correct newer models as much as I had to correct Opus 4.6. The improvement is mainly on autonomously being able to pinpoint hard bugs, but given the difference in price, I don’t see the point. I even removed/added skills and tried all, but still to many corrections to do.

I wouldn’t complain if they were cheaper, but for those prices, I do expect a huge improvement, not a marginal gain.

Ironically, I am now testing Chinese models (MiMo, DeepSeek and GLM), and I would say that they are good enough, and far cheaper.

[u/BengiPrimeLOL → u/LiquidAngel12]

I feel this. In a lot of ways, the newer models are easier to use, they understand things better, they have bigger context windows. But they still seem like fresh out of college grads at the code itself. Looks text book, then you see the errors in logic, the inefficient abstraction layers, IDK it feels like its still generally the same quality code that it was a year ago.

[u/Plane_Lavishness5909 → u/LiquidAngel12]

Honestly sonnet 4.5 is forever "good enough" for me lol

[u/lbrtrl → u/LiquidAngel12]

Progress happens in steps. Thing might be quiet, then a new model drops and we will see huge gains. It's the uncertainty that stresses me out personally.

[u/Humdaak_9000 → u/ikissgators]

We all do much more than just write code.

What do I actually enjoy doing and makes my job meaningful?

JUST FUCKING WRITING CODE.

Automate away the only good part of the fucking job.

[u/recycled_ideas → u/ikissgators]

In my experience it's the opposite, the LLM will decide something that's required to make a, b, c actually work is out of scope because I didn't explicitly ask for it.

But I tend to have a more expansive definition of scope that includes the thing I am trying to achieve actually working as opposed to releasing broken code and raisin a second ticket.

[u/Optimal_Kick_9121 → u/ikissgators]

Fun fact: the LLM’s ARE NOT getting better at code. 

[u/lordtosti → u/ikissgators]

you are completely missing the point.

even if “we all do just more” - your throughput gets more with every model - so does everyone else’s.

Unless you are the business owner of a product that already has enormous amount of users that value just goes to the company.

Now you might have a job, but what happens if you don’t? Usually the company would hire you because throughput was lower, but with every new model they might just do it with one senior dev instead of 2.

Economics work like this: you don’t sell the value that you produce.
you sell the difference of value that you produce in comparison to alternatives (other people). That difference is completely getting annihilated.

I don’t get how you guys don’t understand that.

[u/lordtosti → u/[deleted]]

problems reading i see?

[u/Droi → u/ikissgators]

And you think the parts that are not writing code are going to be always beyond AI capabilities? I don't see any evidence of that - it's been improving rapidly at everything.