alt Hacker NewsWhich side of that argument has lots of marketing dollars behind it. I suspect what we are all seeing is marketing plus a few useful idiots against everyone else. I will change my mind when I start seeing actual apps created by LLMs which people actually use. What I do see is LLMs replacing search engines and lots of failed software projects. The basic problem here is that the powers that be think the economics of software are like manufacturing. They aren't; they are closer to music publishing, just a lot bigger. And AI isn't having any real impact there.
I agree its not a flat out replacement, but this doesn't stop the marketing from infecting C -suite and leading to them cutting engineering payroll. 400k layoffs in the USA in the last 16 months, and most of those were before this ramp up in "agentic marketing". The tools will 100% be leveraged as a weapon to devalue the expected salaries of tech workers.
Then when they do need to rehire everyone, they will have improved these tools and people will be desperate. They'll say SWE is vastly easier now, and they'll either hire less qualified or push down the value of SWE salaries, I expect the latter.
I think the lawyer money for SWE is gone, so glad I spent 100k in school, years of study and practice. Instead of getting to do the thing I love, I'm going to be expected to basically play project manager with a half literate bot.