wrote this on a different HN thread somewhere, let me reiterate again...
- it is going to be so bad that vast majority of these "i dont write code anymore" guys are going to be unable to write even a c++ hello world program without an LLM
- the argument these guys come up with all the time is "I dont need to"
- Big assumption there buddy, big assumption. Lets play both cases shall we.
- Case 1: LLMs infinitely improve and nobody has to code anymore. Yea well, writing a paragraph spec isnt that hard for me bro, I already do it for every project while not using an LLM
- Case 2: LLMS go bust completely for whatever reason. We have a whole generation of mass programmers and 99% of them cant add 2 numbers in c++. Guess what? I am now one of the most sought after programmers in the entire world and part of an absolute minority
Case 3: nothing changes, the people who are currently getting good at directing LLMs get pretty good at directing LLMs, the people choosing to do things the old way get or remain good at that, the job market adjusts salary expectations for each group according to how useful they turn out to be in the new normal
Case 4: LLMs continue to improve incrementally, the people who are currently getting good at directing LLMs get pretty good at directing LLMs, the people choosing to do things the old way get or remain good at that, the job market adjusts salary expectations for each group according to how useful they are likely to become in the new normal
Case 5: any number of things that you and I haven't foreseen because the future has a habit of completely bucking expectations
And what does LLMs going bust even mean? These are programs that we run, they aren't going anywhere, even when the current AI investment bubble completely implodes. The models, and their impact on programming culture, are here to stay.
Case 6: Tokens become very expensive for some reason and some devs who can't code without LLMs are hostages because can't pay or must learn the old way. Others become partly junk removal beginners because production issues. Less delivery.
case 2: how can LLM 'go bust'? Do they just magically disappear and can never write code or write code as good as todays (24 augh 2026) models?
Even if is true (that LLM apocalypse starts exactly today). I'd still be very comfortable with letting SOL, Opus, Fable, and some other SOTA open sourced models to write code for me.
- there could be a multitude of reasons, maybe chinese models become so cheap that frontier SOTA industry completely collapses as nobody wants to pay 200$ a month anymore
- maybe we hit an architectural limitation that was not previously anticipated
- maybe there just isnt enough power to run anymore data centers
- could be any of the 4654545246541365456 reasons here
Comments
wrote this on a different HN thread somewhere, let me reiterate again...
- it is going to be so bad that vast majority of these "i dont write code anymore" guys are going to be unable to write even a c++ hello world program without an LLM
- the argument these guys come up with all the time is "I dont need to"
- Big assumption there buddy, big assumption. Lets play both cases shall we.
- Case 1: LLMs infinitely improve and nobody has to code anymore. Yea well, writing a paragraph spec isnt that hard for me bro, I already do it for every project while not using an LLM
- Case 2: LLMS go bust completely for whatever reason. We have a whole generation of mass programmers and 99% of them cant add 2 numbers in c++. Guess what? I am now one of the most sought after programmers in the entire world and part of an absolute minority
Case 3: nothing changes, the people who are currently getting good at directing LLMs get pretty good at directing LLMs, the people choosing to do things the old way get or remain good at that, the job market adjusts salary expectations for each group according to how useful they turn out to be in the new normal
Case 4: LLMs continue to improve incrementally, the people who are currently getting good at directing LLMs get pretty good at directing LLMs, the people choosing to do things the old way get or remain good at that, the job market adjusts salary expectations for each group according to how useful they are likely to become in the new normal
Case 5: any number of things that you and I haven't foreseen because the future has a habit of completely bucking expectations
And what does LLMs going bust even mean? These are programs that we run, they aren't going anywhere, even when the current AI investment bubble completely implodes. The models, and their impact on programming culture, are here to stay.
Case 6: Tokens become very expensive for some reason and some devs who can't code without LLMs are hostages because can't pay or must learn the old way. Others become partly junk removal beginners because production issues. Less delivery.
Agreed it's a corner case, but still.
case 2: how can LLM 'go bust'? Do they just magically disappear and can never write code or write code as good as todays (24 augh 2026) models?
Even if is true (that LLM apocalypse starts exactly today). I'd still be very comfortable with letting SOL, Opus, Fable, and some other SOTA open sourced models to write code for me.
- there could be a multitude of reasons, maybe chinese models become so cheap that frontier SOTA industry completely collapses as nobody wants to pay 200$ a month anymore
- maybe we hit an architectural limitation that was not previously anticipated
- maybe there just isnt enough power to run anymore data centers
- could be any of the 4654545246541365456 reasons here
-did you stop using the internet once it got cheaper (post ADSL)
-Even if that limitation is hit exactly today, 99.9% of code will still be wrote by the current SOTA AI in the future.
-Nuclear energy, idk much about the energy sector but its not a bleak outlook.
anyway, im super bullish on AI and LLM to solve coding.
thats the point i am trying to make https://larsfaye.com/articles/ai-coding-will-prevent-experti...
Local LLMS are already amazing.