I don't know if we're there yet, but I have no doubt that LLMs will increasingly crank out better and better code, along with better and better logs, fuzzers, unit tests, and analyzers that, taken together, will maybe--just maybe--produce more solid code per dollar than working with human engineers.
What I'm not convinced of, and what I fear most, is the lack of accountability. When something does go wrong, who will take responsibility? I don't mean who will be tasked with fixing it; I mean who will stand up and say, "yeah, that was me, I screwed up, lesson learned, I will do better next time?" Who will then look into the code for similar issues, to find them before they wreak more havoc? Who will prioritize the different pieces of the giant puzzle in a way that makes it work better for humans, not just machines producing a sterile end result?
This trend concerns me because I see an increasing lack of ownership and a disconnect between what are ultimately human processes at either side of the computation equation: a human being (e.g. customer) trying to accomplish a goal that affects another human (e.g. business owner).
As an analogy, I'm reminded of an aspect of Japan that is in stark contrast to the US: people in Japan take deep responsibility for that which is assigned to them, especially things that aren't necessarily someone's official responsibility. Every public place is immaculately attended to. Not so much in the US, and it's not for lack of budget; anybody with five minutes to spare can sweep up the cigarette butts; they just don't care to.
So sure, your LLM steam engines may be faster and more powerful than John Henry the developer, but what happens when something goes wrong? How do I know the LLMs aren't just spitting out logs and test results that they think will please us? At a certain point, you have to dig into the code, otherwise you're no better than a CSR who is reading from a script and pretending to give a damn.
What I'm not convinced of, and what I fear most, is the lack of accountability. When something does go wrong, who will take responsibility? I don't mean who will be tasked with fixing it; I mean who will stand up and say, "yeah, that was me, I screwed up, lesson learned, I will do better next time?" Who will then look into the code for similar issues, to find them before they wreak more havoc? Who will prioritize the different pieces of the giant puzzle in a way that makes it work better for humans, not just machines producing a sterile end result?
This trend concerns me because I see an increasing lack of ownership and a disconnect between what are ultimately human processes at either side of the computation equation: a human being (e.g. customer) trying to accomplish a goal that affects another human (e.g. business owner).
As an analogy, I'm reminded of an aspect of Japan that is in stark contrast to the US: people in Japan take deep responsibility for that which is assigned to them, especially things that aren't necessarily someone's official responsibility. Every public place is immaculately attended to. Not so much in the US, and it's not for lack of budget; anybody with five minutes to spare can sweep up the cigarette butts; they just don't care to.
So sure, your LLM steam engines may be faster and more powerful than John Henry the developer, but what happens when something goes wrong? How do I know the LLMs aren't just spitting out logs and test results that they think will please us? At a certain point, you have to dig into the code, otherwise you're no better than a CSR who is reading from a script and pretending to give a damn.