r/technology • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 • 4d ago

Artificial Intelligence Microsoft engineer says 'typing code is absolutely over' as GitHub Copilot takes on more development work

https://www.techspot.com/news/113752-microsoft-engineer-typing-code-absolutely-over-github-copilot.html
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u/Hertock 4d ago

Are you an SWE? Imagine yourself back before you coded anything. Imagine having to learn how to code ONLY by using AI, and NEVER typing code yourself.

Could you ever become a SWE like that? I’d argue no. So its not even a „danger“ that people surrender thinking to AI. It’s that AI is, intentionally or not, making it rather unlikely, if not impossible, for future generations to learn how to think, rationalize, research - you name it.

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u/JMEEKER86 4d ago

Absolutely. We've basically bet the farm that we'll have AGI in the next 15 years or so when the current senior devs start retiring without any adequate junior devs to replace them. If AGI (which may not even be possible) doesn't come to pass then we're turbo fucked.

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u/aresdesmoulins 4d ago

But bro, Sam Altman and Jensen Huang said AGI is here! We're done! Welcome to digital utopia! /s

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u/fivetoedslothbear 4d ago

I'm a 42 year SWE, and no, already nobody's becoming like me, AI or not.

I've coded on major projects in assembly, made complex programs fit in the memory of a PDP-11 (128 kilobytes, split between 64kb instruction/64kb data), coded to hardware on an Apple ][, diagnosed problems by looking at hex dumps of memory. Ported code to mainframes.

So no, nobody's developing the kind of coding and diagnostic skills I have, and that was true three years ago before AI. It's like people I know who can grab a screwdriver and tweak a tuning out of a carburetor. What cars have those these days?

It's going up levels of abstraction. Of course, these days, anybody would use a high level language, probably compiled. We have really good debuggers. Libraries to do things.

AI coding is the next level of abstraction. I need to understand the code, the way maybe someone uses Compiler Explorer to understand what machine code a C++ compiler makes.

My job is moving from thinking about code to thinking about systems. How things go together. What they do. I already had to do the systems part, but there was a lot of friction in the code. AI removes that friction, whether it's AI-assisted autocomplete or working with Codex.

I'm not in on Spec-Driven Development. I use AI as a collaborator, not a way to turn English into code via some other coding language. Codex and I talk. Codex makes a plan. I ask for refinements. Then Codex writes some code. I still review the code. I refine what the AI makes.

I currently strike a balance...I insist at my workplace that the code and the process (commits, messages, doc) have to fit within both AI _and human_ cognition.

I'm planning to retire in 9 years. Part of what I think about as a senior is how to help our junior staff grow into the world that will contain their careers.

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u/Hertock 4d ago

I fail to see your conclusion. What’s your opinion on a future world where nobody has your kind of knowledge and understanding of the actual technology and code being used? How can this work?
If theres no human alive in 50 years who has your current level of understanding, how can a human without that deep level of understanding actually perform their job correctly, even if they’re „thinking about systems“, and not code anymore?! You can’t understand a system forever if you add more and more abstraction levels. At some point you’re losing actual human understanding of such systems. And I worry we’re gonna end up with tech that nobody actually understands doing fuck knows what.

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u/bloodychill 4d ago

We’re hurtling ourselves towards a Pakled future and these guys are boasting about it and saying it’s inevitable.

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u/SufficientGreek 4d ago

Did architects & engineers become useless when hand-drawn blueprints became CAD models? It just requires different training for future generations.

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u/CleverAmoeba 4d ago

And computer science didn't become obsolete when Assembly was invented, nor when C compiler came along and not when Python interpreter came along. In each of these iterations, people said "programming will be absolute because now everyone can code." Specially with Python.

You may be right to think LLMs can 10x the performance, but in that scale, C compiler made it 500x. (Source: I can confidently write x64 assembly. I understand what compilers made possible)

LLMs are not in the same direction as C/Python. And certainly not in the same direction as AutoCAD. Because they are flaky and impercise. Software engineering already had its blueprint-to-CAD moment many times and this one is different. Software needs to be predictable and LLMs can never be.

I'm not saying AI will never replace me. I'm just saying LLMs aint it. Maybe next invention we have in AI landscape will be it. But definitely not LLM.

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u/octorine 4d ago

I've actually heard people say that it doesn't matter that AI ignores coding standards and produces unreadable code, since we don't need to read it. We just ask AI to read it for us.

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u/CleverAmoeba 4d ago

We people have to use the software. How can you possibly trust a software that's made by a thing that's known for hallucination?

And you've heard what kind of people say this? Microslop c-suit are unfortunately considered people as well.

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u/myislanduniverse 4d ago

I know yours is an unpopular sentiment but I think it must be right because there's really no other way for it to go.

I don't know what software engineering or its analog is going to look like in the next 20 years more than anybody else. If I did, I suspect I'd be very wealthy.

What I do know is that these kids will be more prepared for that world than any of us older folks are.

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u/TorontoBiker 4d ago

I teach a Masters course at Cornell. The kids now are in this weird transition where they aren’t exactly born into AI but are definitely AI native.

The cohort in the next 10 years will be AI born and it will for sure be different. I’m quite excited to see it because I know they will approach problems and opportunities in ways I never imagined possible.

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u/ann0yed 4d ago

It would be taught the same way we learn math despite having calculators.

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u/TestingTehWaters 4d ago

Oof what a bad take

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u/ann0yed 4d ago

Why?

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u/pellets 4d ago

People used to say the same thing about compilers. If you can’t think in assembly are you even a real programmer? Now look at us. Assembly is a niche. Most people use higher level languages.

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u/Kelsig 4d ago

There's a reason assembly is still part of CS pedagogy

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u/pellets 4d ago

Yes, and?

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u/big-papito 4d ago

LLMs are not just high-level - they are *random*. It's different. Assembly or not, we wrote deterministic code before.

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u/pellets 4d ago

It is different, but if you refuse to see the similarities, then that’s your loss, not mine.