alt Hacker NewsI've been thinking about this too, since my livelihood depends heavily on this answer.
As far as I can tell, agentic software development (aka vibe coding) simply doesn't scale for lay people. At $WORK, I'm seeing the 5th version of the same small project being rewritten by execs. The 5th version is marginally better than the previous 4, but it still has major problems. 5th version has no CI and accesses 6 databases directly. These VPs are slowly becoming software engineers. It's hilarious to watch, but seems rather inefficient.
I've been asked this question by non-software people and the best answer I've come up so far is this. You can go to the hardware store and purchase a chainsaw. You can now prune small trees. This does not make you an arborist though. For reference check out YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=arborist+fails+...
Thoughts?
Replies
> These VPs are slowly becoming software engineers. It's hilarious to watch, but seems rather inefficient.
Tell me you weren't around for the dot com bubble without telling me.
At that point in time if you told any one you could build on the web they spent an hour pitching you their bad idea and then wanted you to build it for nothing. They thought the value was in the idea, not the implementation.
Now, if you have an idea, then go use AI to prototype, to validate, to iterate.
IF that results in a viable product then you need an engineer to go in and do the needed work to operationalize it. To attach testing, monitoring, deployment and more over cost metrics (something we have not really done in the last 30 years) - because a good idea that costs more to run than it makes is not a good idea.
The nuance is here - the "tweak this and we can save $0.50 a user a month" is how you move the needle at scale.
Programing is dead, Software development has a narrow place - engineering for sustainability, reliability and cost are what the field is going to become. Someone has to be responsible, or be on the hook for the 3am on a holiday weekend phone call.
When I was becoming a self-taught software engineer it also was hilarious, no doubt about it - and very inefficient. I did enjoy it and did build some stuff, and not all of it was bad.
So, if anything, if the intent is "I can do it all myself and I will fire you now" - I love to see them stumble, if the intent is "I want to get my hands dirty and let's work together" - I will be happy to assist. It's not a pipe dream: it does happen.