yeah sorry I was arguing with an imaginary critic not you. and I agree we're all still going to be programming in 12 months. or most of us. I think there'll be job losses but mostly ill-thought. the thing is people hire and fire programmers for lots of bad reasons. the labor market is very .. moody. - ThreadSky

graydon-pub.bsky.social • 6 days ago

yeah sorry I was arguing with an imaginary critic not you. and I agree we're all still going to be programming in 12 months. or most of us. I think there'll be job losses but mostly ill-thought. the thing is people hire and fire programmers for lots of bad reasons. the labor market is very .. moody.

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graydon-pub.bsky.social•6 days ago

like capital already does and will continue to use LLMs as a tool for labour discipline, to put pressure on wages, and to replace people at the margins. and since 90% of software never needed to be written anyways, maybe their delusional "business needs" will actually be met by that? who knows.

graydon-pub.bsky.social•6 days ago

I especially think: for the part of the software industry that never ships a finished thing at all -- the "investor storytime" model of just getting rounds for a while then getting acqui-hired -- you might find even today's LLMs perfectly fit your needs for "crappy prototypes that change rapidly"?

graydon-pub.bsky.social•6 days ago

Just as call centers with the common business model of "make the customer go away, at low cost" may be quite happy with chatbots RAGing up existing FAQs. Not a satisfying simulacrum of concierge-level customer service but the existing bar being cleared may be so low it's actually underground.

steveklabnik.com•6 days ago

i've been joking that a lot of the CRUDdy react code in the world only needs to be 80% correct anyway... and you know what's great at 80% react? llms.

graydon-pub.bsky.social•6 days ago

yeah, exactly. there is already a lot of code shipping at quality levels we don't care to discuss in polite company. not because the coders are necessarily bad, but the businesses are intensely cost sensitive. and if you replace those jobs with LLMs, you just move that wage pressure elsewhere.

graydon-pub.bsky.social•6 days ago

(part of me, darkly, thinks FOSS people are so critical of this because deep in our hearts we know we did a similar wage pressure commodification routine to proprietary people 20 years ago, and are either displacing guilt or can't stand the thought of being next. capitalism is terrible: news at 11.)

mitsuhiko.at•6 days ago

(which is why I'm baffled that OSS people are not completely embracing LLM stuff. I came into Open Source via software piracy. I thought the whole point of sharing and not caring about copyrights all that much was foundational to some people.)

steveklabnik.com•6 days ago

i've been phrasing this as "oh, the profession that automates away other jobs is suddenly very concerned about the effects of automation when it might automate away *their* jobs? funny" but that's so petty

steveklabnik.com•6 days ago

it's chill, i am arguing with imaginary critics all the time :)

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