> Professional software developers are in the business of solving practical problems for people with code.
Are we? Is that our job? You might think it is, and it might even feel like it. But it is not. Our job, in 99% of cases, is to make stock price go up. That means making software that people will buy, making people want to keep buying it, and doing whatever makes your investors happy.
So what happens as you use these tools? Your job changes from coder to "LLM manager", but let's assume you're happy with that. You're more "productive", which is an artificial metric and nothing to do with your real job as described above. That's fine for now, but what happens down the road? Now your company is paying more and more money to these LLM services, and paying you less and less.
> "but they take-rr jerbs" So does open source.
This is a gross misunderstanding of open source. Most open source developers are paid to be, full time, by companies. Why? Warm fuzzy feeling? Goodness of their heart? No. It's because it's good for business. These open source techs are a baseline, there' not worth being competitive on. Build the open base in the direction you want, and build the "business value" ontop for profit.
> We used to pay good money for databases.
We still do. Have you looked at managed PostgreSQL prices lately? Also if you haven't noticed, Oracle hasn't gone anywhere.
> LLMs really might displace many software developers. That’s not a high horse we get to ride. Our jobs are just as much in tech’s line of fire as everybody else’s have been for the last 3 decades.
This isn't the same thing as replacing punch cards, or moving away from Java 6, or replacing artisans with factory machines. This is centralisation and rent-seeking. As companies become more and more dependant on a handful of companies with the upfront capital to build massive server farms... what do you think is going to happen? Once they've convinced enough people that LLMs are essential to their work it's going to cost a lot more than $20/month. Once these companies are entrenched they will wring every last dollar out of every company that's grown to depend on them, many will simply fold.
Maybe we are in a seismic shift in our industry. But the beneficiaries are not going to be whole-hearted LLM adopters, no amount of saying "you need to change how you work" is going to save any of us. The only people that will benefit are going to be the people that own the data centres.
> Professional software developers are in the business of solving practical problems for people with code.
Are we? Is that our job? You might think it is, and it might even feel like it. But it is not. Our job, in 99% of cases, is to make stock price go up. That means making software that people will buy, making people want to keep buying it, and doing whatever makes your investors happy.
So what happens as you use these tools? Your job changes from coder to "LLM manager", but let's assume you're happy with that. You're more "productive", which is an artificial metric and nothing to do with your real job as described above. That's fine for now, but what happens down the road? Now your company is paying more and more money to these LLM services, and paying you less and less.
> "but they take-rr jerbs" So does open source.
This is a gross misunderstanding of open source. Most open source developers are paid to be, full time, by companies. Why? Warm fuzzy feeling? Goodness of their heart? No. It's because it's good for business. These open source techs are a baseline, there' not worth being competitive on. Build the open base in the direction you want, and build the "business value" ontop for profit.
> We used to pay good money for databases.
We still do. Have you looked at managed PostgreSQL prices lately? Also if you haven't noticed, Oracle hasn't gone anywhere.
> LLMs really might displace many software developers. That’s not a high horse we get to ride. Our jobs are just as much in tech’s line of fire as everybody else’s have been for the last 3 decades.
This isn't the same thing as replacing punch cards, or moving away from Java 6, or replacing artisans with factory machines. This is centralisation and rent-seeking. As companies become more and more dependant on a handful of companies with the upfront capital to build massive server farms... what do you think is going to happen? Once they've convinced enough people that LLMs are essential to their work it's going to cost a lot more than $20/month. Once these companies are entrenched they will wring every last dollar out of every company that's grown to depend on them, many will simply fold.
Maybe we are in a seismic shift in our industry. But the beneficiaries are not going to be whole-hearted LLM adopters, no amount of saying "you need to change how you work" is going to save any of us. The only people that will benefit are going to be the people that own the data centres.