Why AI is making software dev skills more valuable, not less

[ricko]

You’re absolutely right! I was using Cursor to make minor Tailwind adjustments for the UI, but it ended up editing 4 different components and causing a mess. I had to go back and fix everything manually, and it turned out I only needed to change a single line in one of the components

[dm]

Head up about "the pit of death" usually its caused by the LLM reaching it "workable" context length. This context length is far below the advertised context length of the model. The solution to the problem is simple, once you notice the model is no longer as useful as when it started out, simple start a new chat session. But before you do that have the agent summarize everything you are doing on the project and the most recent thing you are working on. Then use that summary to feed the new session. You will find that all of a sudden the model becomes useful once again. Rince and repeat every time. I am sure this feature will be automated in future agentic workflows of tomorrow once the devs understand it importance.

[higon]

Like many other engineers, I already knew this and nothing too new is said here. But the verbalization of the problem we are facing is a hard skill and it not something everyone can do. Thank you for making it easier to explain.

[gassandrid]

I’ve found the best way to address the pit of death is to containarize your project. If you can structure your code so that the language model doesn’t need to have full context of the project to address the needed input/output signature. Obviously we already do this, and it won’t work for every case, but I mean specifically to structure your stuff so that you don’t need to understand the project architecture to work on one of these containers

[JohannSiemens]

From my experience AI is trash in generating actual complex code. I personally only use it to brainstorm with myself, meaning that i have a "sparring partner" to have a discussion on how to implement stuff or how to build an architecture. So it's more on the abstract level of a discussion, rather than generating actual code.

[jurrie_]

I see ai as a great assistant with endless patience and inspiration, but you still need to give direction, make the right choices and add ‘taste’ to the project to make it complete. That still needs skill, experience and intelligence.

[VoloBuilds]

100% nailed it! So many people are falling for the "Look it built a whole game of snake in 5 seconds!". Many people don't look beyond that and assume that "coding is dead". The ones who try to take it a step further typically either know how to code and let the AI multiply their skills, or don't know how to code and end up in the pit or plateau of death.

[nousquest]

People often retort "You just aren't prompting it right", which we can expand a bit to mean "You aren't telling the LLM exactly what it needs to do". I would actually agree with this assertion because if I knew exactly how to fix all my bugs I could task the LLM with generating the code to match my perfect description. Of course, these AI futurists mean it in the sense that with the right prompting loop any problem can be solved, and therefore one day we will move away from using code entirely. On the contrary, as you highlighted, upon encountering a novel case that requires REAL reasoning, suddenly the "artificial" in AI hits you like a ton of bricks and you realize the intervention of true intelligence is necessary.

[simasjanusas]

You got me subscribed at "Pit of Death" followed by "Plateau of death".
All of those tools literally always got me there, and to find myself trying to fix a code, which then I have not written myself, it takes extra cognitive load.

[haroldpierre]

Has a non-coder who has been using Llama to code, you are absolutely correct. It's been exciting and frustrating. I'm almost ready to give up.

[meok]

I think this applies more to people who are just pasting in the whole codebase/whole file and asking for new features.

There are many "developers" nowadays on social media that are basically "coding" by just asking the AI for a "calendar app" etc.

Obviously real developers do not code like that.

[cybergwen]

I agree so much with the first minutes (only). I use LLMs to get things off the ground, but after a bit, I have to take a step back, ditch the model for a bit, and refactor everything into a proper architecture

From that point forward, LLM can still help with individual bits and pieces, but have lost track of the thing as a whole. There's no way LLMs can build architecture at all. They're building disconnected pieces, not DRY and not expandable. And overengineered everywhere at the same time, building entire factories when a single line of code would suffice.

So yeah. Prototype, then refactor.

I don't see your tool helping though, to be honest. It has the very same flaws. It's a non sequitur here.

[peterchinoko]

As a begginer I love this kind of information, we need more people like you to be in the spot light other than those fear mongering Ai hype tech bros

[DarpaProperty]

Finally someone explained it very precisely. Thank you.

[eliotcamel]

The further back you push the "pit of death", the easier it is to gaslight project managers into believing it doesn't exist at all.
Drawing out progress doesn't necessarily require improving the model.
Slow down iteration time by making the UI more tedious to use under the guise of "workflow improvement" ( hire inexperienced feature-creep loving frontend devs ).
Throttle text generation output speed under the guise of a calculated tradeoff which improves quality. Your proprietary backend is a black box: clients can't find out.
Hopefully, you can design the tool such that software development progresses for the duration of a full fiscal quarter before reaching the pit of death.
Then, you can start scamming short-sighted executives directly, which is where the real money is at.

[SatyaJanghu]

If anything, it's great for beginners to help get unstuck and help explain code. For example, in my learning journey, I cannot build frontend react page to connect to my backend python API yet. I build simple enough tools and share the API documentation with Cursor and it is able to generate a usable interface for my simple backend tools. This made me my learning journey so much more rewarding and enjoyable.

[kyoungd]

He’s missing the core problem (from developers view) about AI. AI isn’t intended to replace software developers outright, but rather to lower the total number needed. The real issue is that AI doesn’t just offer a slight boost in efficiency—it provides a substantial leap. If AI can increase a programmer’s productivity by 100%, then the company can hire 50% fewer developers. Do you see the problem here?

[moru]

I 100% agree. Things can unravel real quick after what we would think is a 'simple prompt'. That's why it's probably really important to use a Git Repo before changes and branches. However, that won't help when you bugger up the database, then you gotta roll up your sleeve and fix it manually.

[寺内宏之]

I like to generate a complicated advance type for type script. LLM does a fatastic job for the Well-defined problem. If the users do not know what to do, good luck.

[jonwatte]

I tried Devin for a month. I knew exactly what I wanted it to do, but by the time I broke the instructions down, it didn't save much time anymore.
And at one point it just added code to the Web service "if the request has no authorization, give it admin powers."
I mean, it made the test pass...

The more concrete tools that use more of my context, like Augment, actually hit the sweet spot right now.