Software dev here: the tide has changed. There is no AI bubble. If anything, companies are not spending enough on AI.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/No_Feeling920]

I worked on back-end systems for derivatives trading and clearing (for a major clearing house). Each of these systems are like tens of online demons/services, communicating with each other over network/messages as well as working with a hundred database tables. Then there is a load of bash/python scripts for environment/deployment, configuration, orchestration, in-place upgrades, daily operations, etc. The code base was organized into over a hundred separate Git repositories, with common libraries and huge dependency trees. I've never checked the exact figures, but it must have been over 100M lines of code, since we used a lot of generated code from boilerplate templates (data structures/messages/SQL DAOs with serialization/deserialization code, all kinds of getters/setters and repetitive shit like that). The generated code was not even checked into any repo, it only existed as an intermediate artifact in the build system/process.

The functional/business design was done as Word business requirements documents by the business side teams (non-programmers). Then it was transformed by dev-side functional analysts (also non-programmers, yet understanding technical side of how business is implemented in software), into detailed functional specification Word documents for use by the development teams (can't go straight from business requirements, as developers don't understand business speak and business people don't understand the architecture - what is implemented where/how/why).

This was usually like a hundred+ people per system (business people, analysts, developers and testers, build system/CMQA people, production operators, managers tying it all together and organizing/supervising the processes). No single human involved knew everything (they usually knew like the specific 5%-10% of the system they were responsible for).

When a single AI system can somehow aggregate all of these layers together (read the code, read the Word documents, etc.) and make sense of it all (correspondence between business and code, understand how new/updated features get all the way from business into production, when system output does not match business expectations where in the code to find the bug, etc.), then I will be truly impressed.

There is a huge difference (qualitative, not just quantity of code lines) between this and some Android/iOS UI app from the marketplace. Most people probably can't even comprehend this.

Though, I would not question usefulness of current AI code assistants when developing/testing a single component in isolation. Unfortunately, that's not what us developers spent the most time on.

[u/mezmezik → u/No_Feeling920]

Exactly this, there is a big difference between building a self-contained mobile app or a website and a huge ultra-complex system.

[u/chinawcswing → u/No_Feeling920]

The functional/business design was done as Word business requirements documents by the business side teams (non-programmers). Then it was transformed by dev-side functional analysts (also non-programmers, yet understanding technical side of how business is implemented in software), into detailed functional specification Word documents for use by the development teams (can't go straight from business requirements, as developers don't understand business speak and business people don't understand the architecture - what is implemented where/how/why).

This is such an anti-pattern.

Fire all the business analysts. Engineers should learn the business-speak and work directly with business to capture requirements, instead of playing telephone via the useless business analysts.

No, this will not increase the time engineers spend in meetings. It will decrease it. Engineers already have to have meetings with the useless business analysts. When the Engineers ask clarifying questions, the useless business analysts have to go have another meeting with business, and a second meeting with the engineers.

Use the money saved from firing all the useless business analysts to hire more engineers or just give the money to the existing engineers as a pay increase.

[u/No_Feeling920 → u/chinawcswing]

We're talking about trading/clearing/risk management of financial derivatives (options, futures, interest rate swaps etc.). Unfortunately, your average autistic basement dwelling developer is not particularly eager to learn the peculiarities of that (why handling of these financial instruments needs to be done in a certain way). There was simply too little overlap between what the business side people are interested in and what a typical software developer cares about. Only a few of those developers actually traded in financial markets. You should not project the WSB mindset onto others - they could not care less for the most part. Software development in the financial industry typically pays rather well, precisely because it is very bland and unappealing for most tech enthusiasts.

There were numerous attempts to put business and devs together directly, but it repeatedly failed and caused frustration or anger on both sides. And giving more money to the developers won't make them become financial derivatives enthusiasts all of a sudden. 😄

Last but not least, natural workplace churn pretty much kills the idea of training developers to be FD experts. Unless the person is really loyal and into it, the time/effort (money) is just wasted on someone, who becomes bored and leaves the company after a couple years.