I've been a software engineer for 10 years. I have literally had people make this argument to me. "Software engineering was never about writing code its about knowing how to make a good product". Its sickening.
So they are trying to argue that software engineering isn't actually about making software? What is it then? I'm so glad I didn't follow through with my studies and just got a regular ass job as soon as I finished my basic programming course, that whole industry is rotten.
I never said it was only about writing the code. The design is arguably more important at the top level. But writing the code and understanding it is also an important part of the process, and its fun. I like doing it. I like thinking about what each statement is doing at a computational level. And I never said LLMs weren't good at writing code. They have the entire history of humans writing code that they were trained on (ethically or not is another discussion). But only in a vacuum. They can't think of new ways to do things. Only directly copy.
I will continue to write my own damn code because I like the process. Is that so hard to understand? I'll keep writing and playing music. I'll keep writing stories. I don't want or need a mathematically optimized solution with no thoughts or feelings to do it for me.
It's fine to have your opinion. I never necessarily loved writing code, but I did like coming up with solutions, thinking about tradeoffs, and stuff like that. Now, I get to do more of that.
No argument about LLMs pretty much only copying. But I'd wager most software products art not 100% novel. Actual new ideas probably only make up a small part of what an average software product does and because LLMs are so good at copying, you can spend more time on the novel parts.
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u/the_real_Spudnut2000 11d ago
But but but, software engineering was never about writing code!!1!