It’s easy to overestimate how much of software engineering is about coding, when in truth it’s mostly about the code you don’t write.
This article is quite interesting! There are a few standout quotes for me:
On one hand, we are witnessing the true democratisation of software creation. The barrier to entry has effectively collapsed. For the first time, non-developers aren’t just consumers of software - they are the architects of their own tools.
The democratisation effect is something I’ve been thinking about myself, as hiring developers or learning to code doesn’t come cheap. However, if it allows non-profits to build ideas that can make our world a better place, then that is a good thing.
We’re entering a new era of software development where the goal isn’t always longevity. For years, the industry has been obsessed with building “platforms” and “ecosystems,” but the tide is shifting toward something more ephemeral. We’re moving from SaaS to scratchpads.
A lot of this new software isn’t meant to live forever. In fact, it’s the opposite. People are increasingly building tools to solve a single, specific problem exactly once—and then discarding them. It is software as a disposable utility, designed for the immediate “now” rather than the distant “later.”
I’ve not thought about it in this way but this is a really good point. When you make code cheap, it makes it easier to create bespoke short-lived solutions.
The real cost of software isn’t the initial write; it’s the maintenance, the edge cases, the mounting UX debt, and the complexities of data ownership. These “fast” solutions are brittle.
Though, as much as these tools might democratise software development, they still require engineering expertise to be sustainable.
what a load of bull.
AI doesn’t “democratise” coding. One still needs to understand the basics of computer science, as well as higher level software design, to make use of AI tools and get actually usable results.
LLMs can write good code but they require constant guidance to do so. This is something that people need to understand. AI in coding is like Photoshop to an “analog” artist - super useful IF you know what you’re doing, but as a complete stranger to the topic, all you’ll do is basic tinkering.
I think you are vastly overestimating the level that statement is pitched at. The overwhelming majority of people dont even know how a for loop works. However they can ask an LLM to write a script to change this list of files with inconsistent numbering conventions and put them in a consistent order. That’s the level of spreading out the ability to program that we are dealing with.
Basic scripting is hardly programming, and it’s been available in various user-friendly forms for quite a while…
Problem is that most people do seem to treat LLMs as if they could replace a well trained engineer. Including middle managers who want to cut costs at all price.
And those people who think LLMs will replace software engineers any time in the near future are wrong. But it can still be the case that LLMs are democratizing coding ability to those who otherwise wouldnt have it while at the same software engineering as a discipline isnt going anywhere.
Its not just basic scripting either, often when people start coding in earnest their programs are just a huge pile of statements connected together with if statements and mutating global variables. and LLM can help show best practices like encapsulating logic into functions and isolating side effects.
The bespoke short-lived solutions angle is an interesting one, to be sure.
I wonder how many orgs will back themselves into a corner thinking their product will be short lived but it ends up hanging out for a while, as you mentioned.
Honestly this feels like an extension of this Agile/Scrum madness we’ve been dealing with since the mid-2000’s. Instead of the next quarter, we’re only building things with a view of the next two weeks.
Now it’s measured in hours, and even then we can give a prompt to an LLM and have a half working thing to throw away after it converts that PDF to a CSV.
I worry about the craftsmanship leaving this field. Engineers used to push back and for good reason.
While I (almost) agree with the conclusion, there is a lot of bullshit and unproven assumptions in this blog post. I always cringe about the “AI is democratising software development” argument in particular. This is just wrong on so many levels. Software development is not an ivory tower. Everyone with an internet connection had access to all the resources to learn the necessary skills for free, for decades. Everyone who had an interest in actually learning that stuff and putting a bit of effort into it was able to do so. What LLMs provide is not democratising anything but advertising the illusion that everyone can produce software, effortless and without any skills whatsoever. Software development is much more than just churning out lines of code that seem to work. The Vibecoding approach is like trying to build your own car without having the skills and asking an AI to construct it as the sum of individual parts which all come from different car models from a Lada to a Ferrari. The end result might be drivable, but it will be neither secure nor efficient nor fast nor stable nor maintainable etc. A Frankenstein car. Everyone with half a brain would agree that’s not a good idea, however with LLMs people just do pretend its fine.
Everyone could always learn woodworking, weaving, sewing, smithing, … that is not an argument. The point is that better tools make it easier to learn/perform/perfect these skills. Today anyone with a little torch and a hammer can play around with steel. 300 years ago you had to at least take on an apprenticeship to ever get to do that. Sewing with a sewing machine is so much faster, there is not much time to invest before you can make your own clothes.
Not everyone has 100s of hours free time to sink into this and that skill “the purist way”. Any tool that makes the learning curve more shallow and/or the process itself easier/cheaper/… helps democratizing these things.
You argue as if everyone needs to be a super duper software architect, while most people just want to create some tool or game or whatever they think of, just for themselves.
300 years ago you had to at least take on an apprenticeship to ever get to do that. Sewing with a sewing machine is so much faster, there is not much time to invest before you can make your own clothes.
And four years ago a person needed a $100.00 Raspberry Pi 400 and a $25 Python or Java book, or an Internet connection and the URL for https://scratch.mit.edu/.
I am also a fan of how AI is making coding more accessible. But it was hardly out of reach before AI hit the scene.
Many of us in the community pirated our first proprietary code editors and books; and we worked hard for our whole careers to make sure the next generation of developers didn’t have to steal their entry to the profession.
Then AI slurped up and regurgitated our years of hard work, and newbies are thanking AI tech bro assholes for welcoming them to the coding community; instead of thanking the folks who tirelessly wrote and published the materials that the AI is regurgitating.
It’s fine to agree that AI made a difference. But AI only did the final easy part.
No question, but ethics are a different topic where we seem to agree.
In any case, I find it appalling how much people argue against what they think who I am or more generally that they argue about me at all instead of the topic. Simply because I am not “on their side”. You too do this kind of gatekeeping around “we did the hard work” and “those thanking AI are only noobs”, in both cases I am implicitly excluded/meant the way you phrase it. Mind you, both are very much incorrect. I learned to code MCUs 10+ years ago with Arduino and built a potent simulation tool for the chemical industry just prior to the launch of GPT3. I am also absolutely not a professional software engineer. But why do I need to say that? It should be completely irrelevant to the discussion. Instead, people want to show/see authority as if it meant anything.
I don’t mean to argue with you. I’m just trying to answer your implied question - “Why are so many programmers angry at this new tool?”
Like artists, this new tool steals our work without giving due credit. And then it tries to replace us with a low quality mass regurgitation of our past work.
I’m not angry that you have this new tool, I’m still happy if it helps you.
I’m angry at how this tool was created and how it is being sold and monetized by scam artists.
Edit: I guess I am arguing one point: People keep unjustly crediting AI for making an on-ramp for new developers. AI didn’t do shit. People like myself built that on-ramp. I am happy that AI made the on-ramps I have helped build more discoverable. But I wish folks would not lose site of the fact that AI is just regurgitating guides that I, and my peers, wrote.
It is annoying (and a little insulting) to constantly hear about how helpful AIs answers are. I wrote many of those answers. AI copied and pasted them.
Edit: I’m not mad at AI users for having easy access to something I wrote. I wrote it for them.
I’m mad at AI Tech Bro’s for stealing my work and taking credit for it, while charging people for something I gave away for free.
