aryehof

The industry has vast (and increasing) oversupply of “programmers” versus diminishing demand. Add to this, the adoption of AI.

> Overall, I'd like to understand those who have a positive outlook on design and software engineering as a career.

I think until the market better achieves some equilibrium, there is no way general software programming (sorry “engineering”) should be considered as a career. That said, there will always be opportunities in particular markets or specialties.

Sadly interviews are really aptitude and personality tests, perhaps knowledge of leetcode, tools, frameworks and languages.

In an industry that loves calling itself "engineering", it seems nothing further of value can be established?

Thanks for writing all that. Sounds like a new project for me!

Interesting. What apps have you built? How/where is state maintained?

If quality isn't valued, then your only alternatives are to try to change that (good luck), accept it, or look for somewhere that does?

Real management is about making decisions, most typically about how to apply limited resources amongst competing options.

But a lot of Managers (and the managed) think it is about managing people. Their real role is “Overseer” not Manager, and in that role their real task is to ensure you’re working harder.

It strikes me that a problem with this analysis is with the modeled example system itself. The assumption that stock should follow immediately preceding demand is valid but typically wrong.

Pursuing the intellectual mechanics of a system is obscuring the error of the wrong system!

Instead stock levels should take into account lead time, historical seasonal demand, and a subjective value. The observation and order frequency should be in months not days. While computing allows near “real time” everything, that doesn’t mean it should necessarily be applied.

Just-in-time thinking needs to take the reality of the system (in this case the supply chain) and other factors like hedging opportunities?

Lines of code, functions and modules, are insufficient for producing quality representational systems i.e. those that model external systems. There is a lack of sufficient abstractions.

Unlike transformational software that can use mathematics as a conceptual framework, representational systems have no such thing.

Yet it is complex representational systems that allow the operation of our modern world.

Human coding effort without such a framework is problematic, and that is just exacerbated with AI generated code. Should we be surprised that for this type of software AI makes thing worse?

Wow, that Blondiehacks video opened my eyes to a whole unknown world. Thanks!

Does this support new programming abstractions, or just another remix of existing ones?

Probably one that annoys me the most also, but then again I’m also annoyed by humans using “strawman” all over the place.

Not looking forward to the inevitable “wanna”, “gonna” and “lemme” appearing as AI output based on their popular use.

They do, it’s just that these days they are your users or customers.

Curious what industry your in and what your facing AI wise?

This makes me fear for the ability to easily dismiss or silence a particular human viewpoint just by insinuating it is “AI-generated”.

Quality software meets its requirements. Both functional and non-functional. Of course our industry still cannot quantify non-functional requirements, or discover a way to predictably implement functional requirements.

So all that remains for our so called “engineering” discipline, is an answer that says something that doesn't break a lot.

> OpenAI has a $8B PR budget

No. It is the primarily the cost of providing their free service.

Sure it wasn't Sanitation Team Lead?

> pretty fluent in consultant

Thanks, gave me a chuckle. One to remember.

All I see is disgusting popups - “k-ll j——“, “r-pe n——“ Very upsetting, no thanks to you.

Who wants that on their web site? In some jurisdictions you’re going to be in trouble for facilitating hate and calls for violence (or worse). This is why what you have implemented will not work in its current form. I suggest you move to a system that characters can trigger only standard phrases and emoticons.

They may be getting 3 times the work done, but what work? Quality effective code that meets requirements? Or something else?

Nice, I don’t think your foolish. Now you just need to ignore the jokes that say that Actuaries make Accountants look exciting!

A couple of decades ago I was leading a project migrating one of the main applications widely used by actuaries.

Those were the days - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48641095

Frankly I’m sad to hear it. There are just too many programmers - simple.

30 years ago or so, I was a contractor working on back-to-back 3 to 12 month C++ projects. I would typically get a call one day from a recruiter followed by a phone call (or maybe a quick meet or coffee) with someone technical on the project, and arrive and be in the codebase the next. That day I would get 2 calls about my availability.

There was no sh*t-show of continuous deployment, code reviews (even for trusted internal projects), and scrum-like ceremonies. There was instead version control, periodic tested releases, a weekly update meeting, a Friday team lunch at the pub, and trust.

Too many programmers (sorry err Engineers) - too few jobs, and the enshitification of an industry.

What concerns me the most is that improvements in software design are at an end. The “big ball of mud”, which really is a problem of modularity and dependencies, will never improve through innovation because the way it is done now is all there will ever be.

Email them because most people these days never receive a personal email from another real human being, instead of newsletters, solicitations, marketing, announcements, notifications and spam.

The solution would seem obvious - decide what you want, then hire the first applicant that qualifies.

Of course, the real issue is that a prospective employer doesn’t know what they want. Our “engineering” industry runs on vibes, heroic effort, fashion and hype-cycles. Someone very smart, enthusiastic, quick learning, flexible and affable is the only real job description.

Combine this with the “supply” side entirely overwhelming demand, having to compete with AI, and experience having no value, and for most software developers the future is bleak until a new more equitable equilibrium is found.

Nevertheless in the meantime, at least one can have solace in collecting the authors “failure stamps”.

> Accenture is in trouble with their main consulting business due to AI

Is this something being seen across all outsourcers like Accenture, Wipro, Infosys etc?

My fear is that durable workflows are increasingly being seen as required for everything, because we need to solve the distributed transaction problem in a micro-services world.

It questions the initial wisdom of creating lots of little independent distributed apps, without regards to interaction between them. Let’s build ever more necessary plumbing and schemes just to enable their interaction.

I am arguing that durable workflows should be a last resort for boundaries you must cross, not a default pattern for every business process.

Just looked at it for the first time. My first impression - grey, gray and more grey. Please help brighten our day by adding some color to the page?

To me “clanker” is a derogatory word that just sounds ugly. I recoil when I hear them use it. Perhaps it my anglo background, and it sounds different/better to German speakers.

The assumption here is that the profitable price (variable costs) is only the api price. I question that.

Subscriptions can be equally profitable depending on the total actual tokens used across users. Few subscriptions use 100% of their potential, but these memes that subscriptions are unsustainable always seem to assume it to be so.