alt Hacker News> Who likes typing code, writing boilerplate, reading bad documentation for nights looking for that small thing, asking around in forums, reading dependency source code, writing trivial unit/ui tests.
I, for one, liked it. I decided to pursue a career as a software engineer because, for all the downsides, I actually enjoyed working with code so closely. It really allowed me to learn and know the code that I wrote.
Whenever I'm using LLMs for code generation, the one huge downside I notice, is that even if I review everything line by line, I don't get the same "I know precisely how it works, because I wrote it" feeling.
I really wonder what the implications of this will be. For instance, if the young devs who are just entering the field will actually be able to write code on their own? Or maybe it will truly not be needed a few years from now?
I think there will be a divide. The SaaS of the future can probably absorb much more LLM use with less knowledgeable devs, because the product not being trash was never critical; it just has to be good enough that Sales can keep convincing people who won't use it to buy it for their orgs. But for things that actually need to be right, there will always be a need for devs who can understand and write code. There has already been some pullback among a few of my colleagues who were riding high earlier this year because what we're working on is more of the second type.