Posted by saigrandhi 1 day ago
I literally just today watched my entire team descend into "Release Hell" where an obscure bug in business logic already delivered to thousands of customers broke right as we were about to ship a release. Obscure bug, huge impact on the customer, as they actually ended up charging people more than they should have. The team-members, and yes, not leads, used AI to write that bug and then tried to prompt their way out of the bug. It turned into a giant game of whack-a-mole as other business logic had errors introduced that thankfully got caught by tests. Then it was discovered that they never understood the code, they could only maintain it with prompts.
Let that sink in. They don't understand what they're doing, they just massage the spec into prompts and when it appears to work and pass tests they call it good.
We looked at the prompts. They were insane. They actually just kept adding more specification to the end, but if you read through it all it had contradictory logic, which I would have hoped the AI would have pointed out, but nope. It was actually just easier for me and another senior to rewrite the logic as pseudo-code, cut the size down by literally 3/4, and eventually got it all working as expected.
So that's the future, girls and boys. People putting together code they don't understand with AI, and can only maintain with AI, and then not being able to fix with AI because they cannot prompt accurately enough because English sucks at being precise.
Anyone who has lived through the dotcom bubble knows that this AI mania is a obvious bubble and the whole point is you have to prepare before it eventually pops, not after someone tells you that it is too late when it pops.
Just as those who live in earthquake-prone areas build earthquake-resistant buildings.
Has to be done before the eventual collapse of the bubble and still proves my whole point:
>> the whole point is you have to prepare before it eventually pops.
That doesn't mean there will be a crash, though. Not all bubbles pop.
We know for certain it was a bubble as non-bubbles have sustainable growth. As all the software developers now struggling to find work will be happy to tell you, the growth wasn't sustainable. The proof is in the pudding.
Stock prices are at all time high and continuously growing.
By looking at the software development market. How else would you do it? Salaries rose sharply from 2020-2023, but then plateaued and are now starting to decline. Slowly, however. It did not crash. It ticks the boxes: Rapid price appreciation, speculation, a disconnect from fundamentals, widespread media attention, and an eventual correction.
> Stock prices are at all time high and continuously growing.
If we're sharing random facts: Global average temperature is also at an all time high and continuously increasing.
2. definition of bubble is that the market cap must precipitously reduce, which it hasn't.
How can the very market we're talking about not indicate whether there is a bubble in that market or not? Do you think we should be looking at the price of soybeans instead?
> definition of bubble is that the market cap must precipitously reduce, which it hasn't.
Incorrect. It has, just not by very much. Which isn't surprising as we already established that there wasn't a crash.
- Rapid price appreciation
- Speculation
- A disconnect from fundamentals
- Widespread media attention
- An eventual correction
If market cap, how do you explain housing bubbles? Market cap is not applicable to housing.
that didn't happen for tech stocks. you are making your own definitions of bubble - the sufficient thing to happen is for the market cap to go down precipetously which it didnt.
Traditionally, market cap only refers to companies. I accept your pet definition that includes any kind of market, but then we can apply it to the software development market just the same. Individual software developers have fallen in price. There was not a significant drop, but a slow decline.
> that didn't happen for tech stocks.
Nor gold. But what does that have to do with the software development market? Are you under the impression that stock certificates write code?
Yes.
...it is a bubble and we all know it.
(I know you have RSUs / shares / golden handcuffs waiting to be vested in the next 1 - 4 years which is why you want the bubble to continue to get bigger.)
But one certainty is the crash will be spectacular.
I would love to see your portfolio, if you wouldn't mind showing the class. Let us see what your allocation reveals about what you really think...
Off--topic: how many get overpaid for absolute bullshit?
Remember 2019-2021 when y’all were sure the fed would be dissolved and the dollar would crash and everyone would be poor if they didn’t have a bored ape and 80% bitcoin portfolio?
Relax.
AI is a tool. Just ride the wave. It’s gonna crash some people out. It’s entertaining watching them. You’re not being crashed out, right? Ride the wave dawg.
I don't know which "y'all" you're talking about because it's certainly not the HN crowd, who is famously anti-cryptocurrency in general. Perhaps you're thinking of the bros on Twitter back then.
It was doomer AF on one end, and optimistic AF on the other end.
So, it reminds me of the same FOMO many spread here.