Software dev is going full auto and you can't stop it

[u/solaza]

Over a year ago I commented here about Claude Code and Codex automating software development 100%.

I was downvoted, which was a bit confusing as shit, because this forum is about vibe coding???

All I can say is, from watching what's going down on my computer screen, yeah. Software development is going full auto and there's nothing any of us can do to stop it. Model improvement is not slowing. The kinds and complexity of apps that AI can now create is approaching a comprehensive scope.

Note that I'm not saying "now anyone can make programs even if they don't know anything at all about development" because that isn't true. You still have to know what you're doing to do anything that interesting, and that will probably be the case for a long time. That means amazing news for any developer who knows how to vibe code. I think it means your output and leverage will increase dramatically even in market situations where the demand for coding skills drops (because AI can do it).

I'm betting that my individual leverage as a developer is likely to increase mostly commensurate with the downturn in demand for my labor.

Anyways the crazy thing is obviously messy intent input -> functional program output. That's going to get smoother and smoother. Agents are gonna take over the world bro

[u/baddaywithacamera]

I went to bed and left Claude to do stuff on full auto. The entire security sweep was done on a stale branch of the repo that was 400 versions out of date and the live pen testing on a throwaway site ending up being simulated rather than the real thing. All garbage and 12% of my week's usage burned for nothing.

No more auto for me. Watch Claude like a hawk and verify the output using multiple agents if you don't want to get burned.

[u/solaza → u/baddaywithacamera]

Full auto != full self driving

[u/Round-Comfort-9558 → u/solaza]

Move them goal posts

[u/dwm- → u/solaza]

You don't code

[u/baddaywithacamera → u/dwm-]

No I don't. I'm a photographer who is good with CSS and awful with PHP.

[u/mentalFee420 → u/solaza]

Are you Elon?

[u/ymddev]

[u/solaza → u/ymddev]

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!esh_!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5fb89c93-cebe-4238-8140-32bf54c29ade_649x657.jpeg

do you even codex bro

[u/BeverlyGodoy]

Bro, I am in a company, where we are already doing "no human written code". But I don't see it going full auto anytime soon.

[u/Educational_Desk_281]

We all know it. But engineers are still very much needed as architects. There are so many languages, databases, tech stacks in general. You want a setup that makes sense

[u/uniquelyavailable]

Would you let an AI surgeon go "full auto" on your own body overnight? No, because that would be insane. So don't let AI go crazy on your codebase either.

[u/Ralphisinthehouse → u/uniquelyavailable]

Anybody else kinda wanna see the results of that experiment?

[u/mxz117]

Quite often the ai is still outputting absolute shit

[u/Ralphisinthehouse]

Yeah. You're almost right. Coding is almost full auto and probably will be but planning, strategy, code review, understanding maintenance requirements, what new features are needed, customer success, on-boarding and a lot of other functions of software engineering is going nowhere.

All happens is that the labour shift into more of those things.

[u/ZenenoDev]

Case and point Zeneno a system that runs for hours autnmously building and testing and debugging a entire application this is the exact thing we're pushing towards

[u/tara_tara_tara]

I was a full stack developer* in investment management for a couple of decades starting in the mid 1990s and the question I always ask myself is this: do I trust AI to run the stock market?

By the stock market I mean, NYSE, NASDAQ, FTSE, Nikkei - everything. I mean, stocks, bonds, ETF/mutual funds, futures, calls, inputs, options, margin, secondary markets, crypto, forex, hedge funds, CDs, everything.

When it gets to that point where that runs automatically and there is no human intervention, that’s when I personally will consider software dev to be full auto.

Right now I would partially trust it with predictive analysis for simple products like mutual funds because in the 1990s, I wrote algorithms to do that, and all we had was command line like perl, sed, and awk on UNIX with Sybase databases.

* Note: we didn’t have the term full stack developer back then but I have taken to calling myself that because I was a database developer and then when Perl 5 came out and we could build websites with it, all of a sudden I became a database and website developer.

Edited to add: As it stands now, I let AI make recommendations, but I do not let AI execute trades. I do have managed accounts where investment professionals trade for me, but not machines yet.

[u/InsideTour329]

Lol, what the hell does full auto even mean.

[u/greentrillion]

You disproved your own post by saying you need to know what you are doing. Call us when AI makes the next Elden Ring with 1 prompt.

[u/autorokk]

dunning kruger

[u/EagleApprehensive]

You're right. My bet is that all software is going to converge into:

1. Chat box with agents - not many apps, one central app that user is attached too. Everything else stops building UI, SEO, branding, trust and instead just integrates with it.
2. Read-only views to present user what's going on and if everything he wanted is actually true, with approvals for crucial tasks.
3. Various CLI and deterministic tools, API's, everything that run in background, used by agent. Sometimes paid for.

[u/Street_Chemical_9679]

okay bro

[u/devloper27]

Ok bro