[HN Gopher] Now might be the best time to learn software develop...
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Now might be the best time to learn software development
Author : nathanfig
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-06-17 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (substack.com)
| nathanfig wrote:
| Hi all - I write a lot for myself but typically don't share,
| hence the stream-of-consciousness style.
|
| But I thought this might be worth blogifying just for the sake of
| adding some counter-narrative to the doomerism I see a lot
| regarding the value of software developers. Feel free to tear it
| apart :)
| randfish wrote:
| Thought it was great. Thanks for writing and submitting!
| nathanfig wrote:
| Thanks!
| layer8 wrote:
| The humor was refreshing. :)
| waffletower wrote:
| This call for arms reminds me of https://www.braveclojure.com/
| which was also a definite inspiration for me.
| nathanfig wrote:
| I also remember this! Maybe a subconscious influence
| karczex wrote:
| It's like "we invented Fortran so there will be no need for so
| many developers"
| nathanfig wrote:
| An interesting parallel because there were undoubtedly some
| people who worried we would lose something important in the
| craft of instruction-level programming, and almost certainly we
| have in relative terms. But in absolute numbers I am confident
| we have more low-level programmers than we did before Fortran.
|
| And if I were to jump into instruction-level programming today
| I would start by asking an LLM where to begin...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Fortran was a much larger jump in productivity than agentic
| coding...
| freekh wrote:
| Nice article! Reflects my views as well!
| SeanDav wrote:
| >> "ChadGPT"
|
| There actually is a ChadGPT but I assume the OP meant ChatGPT
| nathanfig wrote:
| Oh I should have known - yeah I was just being facetious
| dehrmann wrote:
| The farming quote is interesting, but one of the Jevons paradox
| requirements is a highly elastic demand curve, and food is
| _inelastic_.
|
| The open questions right now are how much of a demand is there
| for more software, and where do AI capabilities plateau.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Reported numbers vary but household food waste seems to be
| fairly high in developed economies, so food demand might be
| more elastic than intuition would expect.
| kwk1 wrote:
| Perhaps we should say something like "food demand has an
| elasticity floor."
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| For sure.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I've seen consistent values for food waste reported for at
| least the past 40 years, if not the past 80, in various
| sources. I suspect it's something of a constant. One
| observation I've seen is that food wastage now occurs far
| later in the processing cycle, which is to say, after far
| more resources (transport, processing, refrigeration,
| cooking) have been invested in it.
|
| In the _long_ term, food demand is elastic in that
| populations tend to grow.
| 9rx wrote:
| Either way, as quite visibility seen by all the late-1800s
| mansions still lining the country roads, the era of farmers
| being "overpaid", as the link puts it, came about 50-75 years
| _after_ the combine was invented. If the metaphor is to hold,
| we can assume that developers are currently poor as compared to
| what the LLM future holds for them.
|
| But, there is a key distinction that we would be remiss to not
| take note of: By definition, farmers are the owners of the
| business. Most software developers aren't owners, just lowly
| employees. If history is to repeat, it is likely that, as
| usual, the owners are those who will prosper from the
| advancement.
| slt2021 wrote:
| demand for food is very elastic. if beef becomes more
| expensive, cheaper protein options get more demand (chicken,
| pork, tofu, beans).
|
| fruits and all non-essential food items are famously very
| elastic, and constitute large share of the spending.
|
| for example: if cheap cereal becomes abundant, it is only at
| the cost of poor quality, so demand for high quality cereal
| will increase.
|
| the LLM driven software engineering will continuously increase
| the bar for quality and demand for high quality software
| psunavy03 wrote:
| "Great news, boss! We invented this new tool that allows
| nontechnical people to write code in English! Now anyone can
| deploy applications, and we don't have to hire all those
| expensive developers!"
|
| "Wow, show it to me!"
|
| "OK here it is. We call it COBOL."
| glimshe wrote:
| You're joking but it's true. I'm sure you know that. SQL had
| similar claims... Declarative, say what you need and the
| computer will do for you. Also written in English.
| ako wrote:
| And compared to what we had before SQL, it is much easier to
| use, and a lot more people are able to use it.
| ameliaquining wrote:
| Is that really because of the English-esque syntax, rather
| than because it was a step forward in semantic
| expressivity? If SQL looked like, say, C#'s LINQ method
| syntax, would it really be harder to use?
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Is that really because of the English-esque syntax_
|
| Well, what we had before SQL[1] was QUEL, which is
| effectively the same as Alpha[2], except in "English".
| Given the previous assertion about what came before SQL,
| clearly not. I expect SQL garnered favour because it is
| tablational instead of relational, which is the quality
| that makes it easier to understand for those not heavy in
| the math.
|
| [1] Originally known as SE _QUEL_ , a fun word play on it
| claiming to be the QUEL successor.
|
| [2] The godfather language created by Codd himself.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| But software developers often struggle to use sql and
| prefer using ORMs or analytical APIs like polars; the
| people who excel at sql are typically not programmers,
| they're data engineers, DBAs, analysts, etc.
|
| Maybe a similar bifurcation will arise where there are vibe
| coders who use LLMs to write everything, and there are real
| engineers who avoid LLMs.
|
| Maybe we're seeing the beginning of that with the whole
| bifurcation of programmers into two camps: heavy AI users
| and AI skeptics.
| nathanfig wrote:
| Claude made this point while reviewing my blog for me:
| the mechanization of farms created a whole lot more
| specialization of roles. The person editing CAD diagrams
| of next year's combine harvester may not be a farmer
| strictly speaking, but farming is still where their
| livelihood comes from.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Strictly speaking, farming is where _all_ our livelihoods
| come from, in the greatest part. We 're all living off
| the surplus value of food production.
|
| (Also of other food, energy, and materials sourcing:
| fishing, forestry, mining, etc.)
|
| This was the insight of the French economist Francois
| Quesnay in his _Tableau economique_ , foundation of the
| Physiocratic school of economics.
| lipowitz wrote:
| Removing jobs that could only be performed by those
| living near the particular fields with those that can be
| done anywhere makes jobs for the person willing to take
| the least satisfactory compensation for the most skill
| and work.
|
| Working the summer fields was one of the least desirable
| jobs but still gave local students with no particular
| skills a good supplemental income appropriate for
| whichever region.
| veqq wrote:
| Er, have you heard of datalog or Prolog? Declarative
| programming really does work. SQL was just... Botched.
| glimshe wrote:
| Yes. And I think SQL is actually pretty good for what it
| does. My point, as the parent's (I suppose) is that we've
| heard this "XYZ, which uses natural language, will kill
| software development" before.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'd long ago (1990s-era) heard that the original intent was
| that office secretaries would write their own SQL queries.
|
| (I'd love for someone to substantiate or debunk this for me.)
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Early on, programming was considered secretarial work.
| bitpush wrote:
| Bravo. This is the exact sentiment I have, but you expressed in
| a way that I could never have.
|
| Most people miss the fact that technical improvements increases
| the pie in a way that was not possible before.
|
| When digital cameras became popular, everybody become a
| photographer. That only made the world better, and we got soo
| many more good photographers. Same with YouTube & creativity.
|
| And same with coding & LLMs. World will have lots more of apps,
| and programmers.
| 20after4 wrote:
| And now the business of wedding / portrait photographer has
| become hyper-competitive. Now everyone's cousin is an amateur
| photographer and every phone has an almost acceptable camera
| built in. It is much more difficult to have a profitable
| photography business compared to 20 years ago.
| bachmeier wrote:
| That's good to hear. Back when I got married there were
| some real jerks in the wedding photography business, and
| they weren't worried about running out of customers. Here's
| an actual conversation I had with one of them:
|
| Me: "I'm getting married on [date] and I'm looking for a
| photographer."
|
| Them, in the voice of Nick Burns: "We're already filling up
| for next year. Good luck finding a photographer this year."
|
| Me: "I just got engaged. You never have anything open up?"
|
| Them: "No" and hang up the phone.
|
| The faster guys like that struggle to make a living, the
| better.
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| Definitely. What matters more is that the ability to take
| photos is available to more people, which is a net
| positive.
| LargeWu wrote:
| In the same breath, those photographers will complain
| about all the "amateurs" devaluing their services.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > That only made the world better
|
| Did it?
|
| people now stand around on dance floors taking photos and
| videos of themselves instead of getting on dancing and
| enjoying the music. to the point where clubs put stickers on
| phones to stop people from doing it.
|
| people taking their phone out and videoing / photographing
| something awful happening, instead of doing something
| helpful.
|
| people travel to remote areas where the population has been
| separated from humanity and do stupid things like leave a can
| of coke there, for view count.
|
| it's not made things _better_ , it just made things
| _different_. whether that's better or worse depends on your
| individual perspective for a given example.
|
| so, i disagree. it hasn't _only_ made things better. it made
| some things easier. some things better. some things worse.
| some things harder.
|
| someone always loses, something is always lost. would be good
| if more people in tech remembered that progress comes at a
| cost.
| thangalin wrote:
| > people now stand around on dance floors taking photos and
| videos of themselves instead of getting on dancing and
| enjoying the music. to the point where clubs put stickers
| on phones to stop people from doing it.
|
| There are other types of dances where dancers are far more
| interested in the dance than selfies: Lindy Hop, Blues,
| Balboa, Tango, Waltz, Jive, Zouk, Contra, and West Coast
| Swing to name a few. Here are videos from the Blues dance I
| help organize where none of the dancers are filming
| themselves:
|
| * https://www.facebook.com/61558260095218/videos/7409340551
| 418...
|
| * https://www.facebook.com/reel/3659488930863692
| munificent wrote:
| _> That only made the world better, and we got soo many more
| good photographers._
|
| I disagree with the "only" part here. Imagine a distribution
| curve of photos with shitty photos on the left and
| masterpieces on the right and the height at the curve is how
| many photos there are to be seen at that quality.
|
| The digital camera transition massively increased the height
| of the curve at all points. And thanks to things like better
| autofocus, better low light performance, and a radically
| faster iteration loop, it probably shift the low and middle
| ends to the right.
|
| It even certainly increased the number number of
| breathtaking, life-changing photos out there. Digital cameras
| are game-changes for photographic journalists traveling in
| difficult locations.
|
| _However..._ the curve is so high now, the sheer volume of
| tolerably good photos so overwhelming, that I suspect that
| average person actually _sees_ fewer great photos than they
| did twenty years ago. We all spend hours scrolling past nice-
| but-forgottable sunset shots on Instagram and miss out on the
| amazing stuff.
|
| We are drowning in a sea of "pretty good". It is possible for
| there to be too much media. Ultimately, we all have a finite
| amount of attention to spend before we die.
| pipes wrote:
| I thought photographers don't get paid well anymore due
| market saturation and few skills required to get a good
| photo?
| flashgordon wrote:
| I would add one thing though. The pie definitely gets bigger
| - but i feel there is a period of "downsizing" that happens.
| I think this is becuase of lack of ideas. When you have tool
| that (say) 10xes your productivity, its not that bosses will
| have ideas to build 10x the number of things - they will just
| look to cut costs first (hello lack of imagination and high
| interest rates).
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > World will have lots more of apps, and programmers.
|
| This is actually bad for existing programmers though?
|
| Do you not see how this devalues your skills?
| bitpush wrote:
| In the current state, yes. But that is also an opportunity,
| isn't it?
|
| When online flight bookings came about, travel agents were
| displaced. The solution isn't "let's stop online flight
| bookings sites and protect travel agents" because that's an
| inefficient system
| platevoltage wrote:
| I see your point, but I'm having personally having a
| different experience.
|
| A client of mine has gotten quite good at using Bolt and
| Lovable. He has since put me on 3 more projects that he
| dreamed up and vibe coded that would just be a figment of
| his imagination pre-AI.
|
| He knows what's involved in software development, and knows
| that he can't take it all the way with these tools.
| veqq wrote:
| In more words: https://alexalejandre.com/languages/end-of-
| programming-langs...
| platevoltage wrote:
| Fast forward a couple decades and "Ok here it is. We call it
| Dreamweaver"
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > What do you do while awaiting the agents writing your code?
|
| I browse the web. Eventually, I review the agent code and more
| often than not, I rewrite it.
| abalashov wrote:
| I'm not sure if I agree with every aspect of the framing here;
| specifically, I don't think the efficiency gains are anywhere on
| par with a combine harvester.
|
| However, I do agree that the premium shifts from mere "coding"
| ability -- we already had a big look into this with the
| offshoring wave two decades ago -- to domain expertise,
| comprehension of the business logic, ability to translate fluidly
| between different kinds of technical and nontechnical
| stakeholders, and original problem-solving ability.
| nathanfig wrote:
| Yeah I think the combine-harvester analogy is tempting because
| it's so easy to visualize how wheat can scale over a big square
| field and project that visual onto lines of code generated on a
| big square screen... forgetting that lines-of-code-generated is
| not inherently useful.
| prisenco wrote:
| Upwork is already filling up with people who have vibe-coded
| their way into a pit and need experienced developers to pull them
| out.
| billy99k wrote:
| You can find good contract on Upwork, but you need to go
| through lots of bad ones. I find around 5 good contracts there
| per year. I find that even when a client agrees on a rate,
| Upwork has the reputation of finding inexpensive workers, and
| you will get many clients trying to pay you less.
|
| I'm also a bit tired of running into people that are 'starting
| a contracting firm' and have 0 clients or direction yet and
| just want to waste your time.
| nathanfig wrote:
| Really! That could make for some really interesting stories.
| Fascinating to think of LLMs as a customer acquisition pipeline
| for developers.
| platevoltage wrote:
| I've snagged at least one of them.
| alganet wrote:
| > and now with far greater reach and speed than ever before
|
| I heard that before. Borland Delphi, Microsoft FrontPage,
| Macromedia Flash and so on. I learned how in 5 years or so, these
| new technologies would dominate everything.
|
| Then I learned that two scenarios exist. One of them is "being
| replaced by a tool", the other is "being orphaned by a tool". You
| need to be prepared for both.
| nathanfig wrote:
| Yes, if you built your career on FrontPage you have probably
| had a bad time. Many such cases.
|
| That said, even if the specific products like Cursor or ChatGPT
| are not here in 5 years, I am confident we are not going to
| collectively dismiss the utility of LLMs.
| alganet wrote:
| I can see it being useful for summarization, or creative
| writing. What makes you so sure that LLMs will be useful _for
| programming_ in the long run?
| temporallobe wrote:
| Essentially it's the same as it always was. Back in the day, Low-
| code or No-code solutions implemented by non-technical people
| have always resulted in engineers having to come in behind them
| to clean up their mess. I've had quite the lucrative career doing
| just that.
| nathanfig wrote:
| Yeah, with current-state AI I foresee more such opportunities.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think I will have good while in security. That is pointing
| all the mistakes and faults... And telling why something AI
| came up might not fully solve the problem.
|
| So much room left. As I doubt every developer will double
| check things every time by asking.
| mirkodrummer wrote:
| > LLMs really are like combine harvesters; allowing one to do the
| work of many.
|
| Heck I'm so tired of statements like this, many who? It's already
| a lot an LLM that automate/help the boring/tedious part of my
| job, I have yet to see taking over 2, 5 or 10 of my collegues,
| just knowing what a hawful lot these tiredlessly dudes do I
| couldn't ever imagine doing also their job. imo such statements
| have very short shelf life
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