Sure. But how long will that last? LLMs are getting better at programming much faster than I am.
Imagine a plot with time on the X axis and LLM skill on the Y axis. The line goes up and to the right. On the left is GPT3, or GPT3.5 with the very first glimmers of programming ability just a few short years ago. In the middle is Opus 4.7 now.
Where's the intersection point, where AI skill is higher than that of humans? Less than 10 years. I'd guess less than 5 years.
I asked it to look at the code and come up with better factorings, but it failed. I ended up manually reworking several thousand lines of code myself, via my IDE. It took days.
I'd like a claude-of-the-future to be able to come up with beautiful ways to factor the code itself. Amongst the correct solutions, pick one which is conceptually simple. Write the code in a way that it makes subsequent changes easier to write. If I were doing RL with claude, I'd consider directing it toward solutions which allow subsequent changes to be implemented with as little effort as possible.
I have no doubt they will be better programmers than almost every human that has ever existed. But the role of a SWE will expand to fill the gaps that the LLM paradigm hasn't filled:
- Accountability
- Long term architectural vision, goal setting
- Everchanging business context
- Mercurial executives, people problems, relationships etc...
Tokenmaxxing an army of juniors will destroy your business through slop induced tech debt and API costs. A senior that uses AI but is token efficient will be like rocket fuel.
Did you write this comment with AI, or can you explain why so many people use the exact same terrible metaphor?
I've spoken with some people (now in their 60s & 70s) that worried about skill atrophy in their line of work.
First they worried about atrophy. Then they watched skill dry up. Now they know it's not available to buy anywhere. In the better cases the skills still exist, but entirely overseas.
These are people I could recognize as sharp engineers, even if I don't know their domains at all. I had to take them at their word about the value in what was lost. The problem is that it's easy to assume that business (or at least society) would prevent degradation of valuable knowledge over time.