Although the media narrative and previous HN discussions focus on developer layoffs supposedly due to AI adoption, I'm wondering about the inverse perspective. Since LLM tools improve software developer productivity significantly, why haven't we seen much better software? Why haven't we seen startups making new useful applications? Is there something about the wider business context that precludes improved productivity being applied to increase capacity and/or improve quality? After all when Walmart discovered how to optimize retail they didn't use that capability to make one super-efficient store. They built stores everywhere. Are we somehow stuck in some crappyness equilibrium where there's no overall benefit to improving software. Was that always the case but we never realized because by chance we had just enough developers to get by?
verdverm•3mo ago
2. LLMs & Agents do not automatically create better software. They more often prefer to write from scratch rather than use the library sitting right next to the code they reimplement. While they are good at writing narrowly scoped tasks, they are not good at large perspective work. They also make lots of mistakes, just like us.
3. Why haven't we seen the things you expect? Because of (1) hype and, similar to stock market trades, people only share their wins and not their losses. (2) They are not as capable as the proffers would have you believe.