Essay predicting AI turns coders into "product engineers" ignites hype debate
A widely shared blog post arguing AI agents will absorb the full software lifecycle draws both agreement and accusations of industry hype.
What to know
- Seldo's essay argues agents already write code well but remain weak at review, testing and deployment, and predicts that gap closes within a decade, turning developers into "product engineers."
- The forecast rests on two flagged assumptions: agent weaknesses are temporary, and software demand is effectively infinite, so there's no lasting developer glut.
- Lobsters commenters split between calling the "singularity" framing AI-industry hype and defending the incremental-improvement thesis with cited data.
- A parallel strand of commenters worries the shift is hollowing out computer science as an academic and craft discipline, separate from the jobs question.
The dispute Whether agents' current weakness at review, testing and deployment is a temporary gap that will close (the essay's thesis) or a structural limit exposed by AI-industry marketing. · positions read across 27 posts and comments
The essay's assumption that agents will inevitably master review, testing and deployment is unproven AI-industry hype dressed as forecasting.
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“This singularity view about AI/LLM capabilities is just advertising, knowingly or not.”
Halkcyon · Lobsters ↗
Agents are already improving steadily at review and maintenance, and the essay's trajectory is backed by real data, not just hype.
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“The linked article addresses that: > For reviewing and maintenance, agents are clearly not there yet, but the data shows them on an upward trajectory.”
simonw · Lobsters ↗
This shift is hollowing out computer science as an academic discipline and craft, not just changing what programmers do day to day.
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“It does seem like the entire field of Computer Science is dying (and no one cares) unless you've managed your way into a PhD and academia.”
dysoco · Lobsters ↗
“The demand for software, at least inside my 10 year horizon, is for practical purposes infinite, or software developers wouldn't be as highly paid as they are.”
seldo, Author · seldo.com · Sep 13
seldo Author of the essaytante Mastodon criticHalkcyon Lead skeptic in the Lobsters threadsimonw Lobsters commenter
How it unfolded 5 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump postscomments
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Lobsters commenters challenge the essay's "singularity" framing
Commenters argue the piece treats agents eventually mastering review, testing and deployment as inevitable, calling that assumption unproven hype, while others push back citing data on agent improvement and disputing claims about a researcher's stolen Navier-Stokes work.
“This article seems to be pushing the singularity as inevitable, like we're all just going to be managers over a fleet of agents, pushing slop straight into production by itself.”
— Halkcyon -
This article seems to be pushing the singularity as inevitable, like we're all just going to be managers over a fleet of agents, pushing slop straight into production by itself. This singularity view about AI/LLM capabilities is just advertising, knowingly or not.
2 more of the top 3 · 24 posts in this stretch
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Anecdotally, that matches my experience. Separately, I also find that a lot more of my time is spent on nailing down the requirements and design upfront before telling the agent to go and build it. And most devs on my team have to dip at least partly into project management skill set.
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> They stole the work of a researcher who did most of the work. That's not something it's safe to assert as established fact. I think the way they handled that Navier Stokes situation was bad in a whole bunch of ways. 1. They heard a rumor that a team had made progress, so they threw tens of millions of dollars of compute at getting there first as…
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Critic dismisses the essay as "slop" on Mastodon
Mastodon user tante posts a dismissive content-warning style reaction to the piece, rejecting its framing outright.
“Content warning: Source is slop post…”
— tante@tldr.nettime.org -
The perspective of things here is interesting. I’ve always identified as someone that wants to use my skills (usually computers, maths and physics) to solve people problems. Walking into a car parts factory and delivering software they call “good” sounds almost ideal - and whether I write the code, or some juniors, or Claude, is kinda incidental…
1 more of the top 2 · 2 posts in this stretch
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Content warning: Source is slop post https:// seldo.com/posts/we-are-all-pro duct-engineers-now/
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Post lands on Lobsters and draws a large comment thread
The essay is submitted to Lobsters, where it quickly accumulates 19 comments debating its central claims about agents and the future of programming.
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Essay surfaces on Hacker News
The post is submitted to Hacker News, beginning its spread beyond seldo's own audience.
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Seldo publishes essay forecasting AI's decade ahead for coders
Seldo posts "We are all Product Engineers now," arguing agents will eventually eat the whole software development lifecycle while software demand stays effectively infinite, so developers won't disappear but their jobs will look unrecognizable.
“It's good news, but not for everybody.”
— seldo -
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For the last 2 years I have been tracking a generational change in the nature of software development, and I think I've finally decided where all of this turmoil is going to end up. It's good news, but not for everybody. https:// seldo.com/posts/we-are-all-pro duct-engineers-now/
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What people are saying 18 voices from 2 sites · best of 27 · verbatim
- Will agents actually reach parity on code review, testing, debugging and deployment, or is that a permanent limitation?
- Is there sustainable profit behind current AI investment, or is it a speculative bubble?
- Sep 15
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Sure, something definitely has been happening, but to call that the "singularity" is misleading I think. The singularity would be, well, singular. It's not a process but a single moment at the end of a process. To stay with the metaphor, maybe we've crossed the event horizon, i.e. we cannot escape and are forced to encounter the singularity in…
- Sep 14
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I mean less "understanding how code actually works" and more "understanding how this specific codebase code actually works" and I do think there may be injection molded, AI generated components. I'm suggesting that if those bits become too much of the codebase then it's going to spiral and if the singularity doesn't/can't happen that's going to…
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> Or perhaps you're less into science fiction, and you figure that humans will totally keep control of the machines. In this case, then the billionaires may wind up with an army of tens of millions of PhD-level workers that never sleep and that work for, say, $1/hour. I can't imagine that doing good things for the labor market, especially once…
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Content about AI and LLMs is considered off-topic with the sole exclusion of deeply technical content about implementation. See the AI policy .
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Yeah, I agree. I'm not convinced that any level of AI will get us to a point where it's not worth professionally understanding how code actually works. Kind of like how we still require our airline pilots to know a whole lot about flying planes despite the existence of autopilot mode.
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I personally feel like we should be pushing against generative models. We shouldn't just be accepting them. They're wildly unethical for many, many reasons (devaluing humanity, eroding trust in one-another, destroying communities, being big plagiarism machines, training data taken without consent and regurgitated soullessly, destroying the web…
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> unless you've managed your way into a PhD and academia Nope, it feels like we're dying too. A lot of the problems that are academically important are getting obviated (either truly or at least in perception).
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Before the mid/late-90s, CS was a maths offshoot for many programs. Somewhat niche, mostly maths or engineering majors that wanted to do something different. When dot-com rolled around and big tech popped up, the whole academic landscape changed. The industry money was (is) good, tons of perks at big, prestigious companies, fun/hip lifestyles, and…
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Agents can get arbitrarily better at "fixing bugs", but if the developer doesn't know what is or is not a bug it's all kinda moot.
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> It does seem like the entire field of Computer Science is dying (and no one cares) unless you've managed your way into a PhD and academia. It seems most of them were just here for the pay, desperately not wanting to actually write code or go beyond the bare minimum in their learning.
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Counterpoint: The Singularity started about a century ago and merely provoked specialization since it was no longer possible for generalists to understand the breadth of a culture's discoveries; in particular, scientists switched from publishing in unified journals to publishing in domain-specific journals. It happened during the period that we…
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> Except they can't. They stole the work of a researcher who did most of the work. The OpenAI result is considerably more general than anything the researchers had. Whether or not their conversations contaminated the training data, and no matter how much opaque AI proofs suck, this is still a pretty substantial result. And it's not like there's a…
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This seems to be the general consensus and a big part of my circle seems stoked by the fact that now they can focus on the important and not "writing code". My issue with this is that I've studied over 6 years of functional programming, automatas, operating systems theory, etc. because THAT is what I enjoyed. If I had enjoyed thinking about cool…
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“The Singularity” isn't agents taking over coding; that's already happening, as the article says. The Singularity is AI recursively improving itself to superintelligence.
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The linked article addresses that: > For reviewing and maintenance, agents are clearly not there yet, but the data shows them on an upward trajectory. It then backs that up with some actual numbers that illustrate that trajectory.
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> If they can solve Navier Stokes, this isn't totally implausible. Except they can't. They stole the work of a researcher who did most of the work. > they need lots of humans in the loop to extract the maximum profit. **_THERE IS NO PROFIT._** There is only a circular investment scheme that is going to end in disaster for the rest of us. > their…
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> This singularity view about AI/LLM capabilities is just advertising, knowingly or not. I think of the "singularity" sort of like a pack of chihuahuas who have an elaborate plan to chase and catch a Humvee. Like, my first reaction is to doubt that they can pull it off. Chihuahuas are kind of tiny and they don't run that fast, and Humvees are big…
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I do agree with your point but things might change in a way that the slop becomes the most cost-efficient way to create software. Right before AI what moved tech was development experience/DX. That's why JavaScript got bigger than Java and every week there was a new framework. The game changed tho and we have no idea what's going to happen next.