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Top stories from https://news.ycombinator.com (with 100+ score) Contribute to the development here: https://github.com/phil-r/hackernewsbot Also check https://t.me/designer_news Contacts: @philr
Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs? (Score: 155+ in 8 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/c/6jCkh
LLMs are becoming a part of software engineering career.
The more I speak with fellow engineers, the more I hear that some of them are either using AI to help them code, or feed entire projects to AI and let the AI code, while they do code review and adjustments.
I didn't want to believe in it, but I think it's here. And even arguments like "feeding proprietary code" will be eventually solved by companies hosting their own isolated LLMs as they become better and hardware becomes more available.
My prediction is that junior to mid level software engineering will disappear mostly, while senior engineers will transition to be more of a guiding hand to LLMs output, until eventually LLMs will become so good, that senior people won't be needed any more.
So, fellow software engineers, how do you future-proof your career in light of, the inevitable, LLM take over?
--- EDIT ---
I want to clarify something, because there seems to be slight misunderstanding.
A lot of people have been talking about SWE being not only about code, and I agree with that. But it's also easier to sell this idea to a young person who is just starting in this career. And while I want this Ask HN to be helpful to young/fresh engineers as well, I'm more interested in getting help for myself, and many others who are in a similar position.
I have almost two decades of SWE experience. But despite that, I seem to have missed the party where they told us that "coding is not a means to an end", and realized it in the past few years. I bet there are people out there who are in a similar situations. How can we future-proof our career?
Popeye and Tintin enter the public domain in 2025 along with Faulkner, Hemingway (Score: 150+ in 12 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jBRy
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jBRy
Silicon Valley Tea Party a.k.a. the great 1998 Linux revolt take II (1999) (❄️ Score: 150+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jxu3
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jxu3
Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced) (🔥 Score: 162+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jCWW
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jCWW
figured this might be interesting... I run just over 300 forums, for a monthly audience of 275k active users. most of this is on Linode instances and Hetzner instances, a couple of the larger fora go via Cloudflare, but the rest just hits the server.
and it's all being shut down.
the UK Online Safety Act creates a massive liability, and whilst at first glance the risk seems low the reality is that moderating people usually provokes ire from those people, if we had to moderate them because they were a threat to the community then they are usually the kind of people who get angry.
in 28 years of running forums, as a result of moderation I've had people try to get the domain revoked, fake copyright notices, death threats, stalkers (IRL and online)... as a forum moderator you are known, and you are a target, and the Online Safety Act creates a weapon that can be used against you. the risk is no longer hypothetical, so even if I got lawyers involved to be compliant I'd still have the liability and risk.
in over 28 years I've run close to 500 fora in total, and they've changed so many lives.
I created them to provide a way for those without families to build families, to catch the waifs and strays, and to try to hold back loneliness, depression, and the risk of isolation and suicide... and it worked, it still works.
but on 17th March 2025 it will become too much, no longer tenable, the personal liability and risks too significant.
I guess I'm just the first to name a date, and now we'll watch many small communities slowly shutter.
the Online Safety Act was supposed to hold big tech to account, but in fact they're the only ones who will be able to comply... it consolidates more on those platforms.
Modelica (Score: 153+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jCmL
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jCmL
Xiaomi has provided official support for Home Assistant (🔥 Score: 156+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jCEZ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jCEZ
Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far (🔥 Score: 154+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jCk4
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jCk4
Nokia 5110 – Back from the Dead (Score: 151+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jBJf
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jBJf
I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper (❄️ Score: 152+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jv9u
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jv9u
US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19 (Score: 154+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jB5n
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jB5n
Show HN: @smoores/epub, a JavaScript library for working with EPUB publications (❄️ Score: 150+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jwah
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jwah
Howdy! I've just written a blog post about this, and I figured I would share it here: https://smoores.dev/post/announcing_smoores_epub/. As I've been working on Storyteller[1], I've been developing a library for working with EPUB files, since that's a large amount of the work that Storyteller does. After a friend asked for advice on creating EPUB books in Node.js, I decided to publish Storyteller's EPUB library as a standalone NPM package. I really love the EPUB spec, and I think the Node.js developer community deserves an actively maintained library for working with it!
[1]: https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller
In-Depth Ruby Concurrency: Navigating the Ruby Concurrency Landscape (Score: 150+ in 14 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jzJy
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jzJy
SVC16: Simplest Virtual Computer (Score: 151+ in 8 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jAc4
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jAc4
Map of GitHub (🔥 Score: 152+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jANe
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jANe
Ask HN: How do you find part time work? (Score: 150+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/c/6jAvm
I have a project that I'm working on turning into a small business. I've done some part-time work (retainers and project-based) over the past year and it's gone well. It's relatively high pay for part-time work, leaving me time and flexibility to work on my own project.
The thing, I haven't really put much work into finding this kind of work. I've had a few opportunities land in my lap pretty nicely. Now, I need to seek out more work like this. I have ideas, but I'm curious to see how others are finding part-time work. Ideally, I would get 10-15/hr a week retainers, but project-based work is ok too. The key is that I can keep getting the work with consistency.
My corporate career was a cross between engineering and product management. I truly believe my best utility is the cross-over of the two. I'd be happy to do part-time leadership for small teams, take on independent projects, do things like build and maintain small apps/integrations, etc.
So:
1) How are you finding part-time work?
2) How do you sell yourself if you're more of a generalist like me?
"Nvidia is so far ahead that all the 4090s are nerfed to half speed" (Score: 151+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jC3S
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jC3S
In Search of a Faster SQLite (Score: 151+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jCRk
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jCRk
What did Ada Lovelace's program actually do? (2018) (Score: 152+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jCTM
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jCTM
Wishing for a more orderly disruption may misunderstand government reform (❄️ Score: 151+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jwMk
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jwMk
Veo 2: Our video generation model (🔥 Score: 155+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jCUC
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jCUC
Why is it so hard to buy things that work well? (🔥 Score: 156+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jC8C
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jC8C
Should you ditch Spark for DuckDB or Polars? (Score: 151+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jyya
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jyya
Added sugar intake and its associations with incidence of cardiovascular disease (❄️ Score: 150+ in 6 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jhBD
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jhBD
25 Years of Dillo (Score: 150+ in 8 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jATF
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jATF
OpenERV (🔥 Score: 162+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jBiS
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jBiS
Phi-4: Microsoft's Newest Small Language Model Specializing in Complex Reasoning (❄️ Score: 150+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ju7V
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ju7V
Dumb TVs deserve a comeback (Score: 154+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jAwq
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jAwq
Fast LLM Inference From Scratch (using CUDA) (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jy7K
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jy7K
Preferring throwaway code over design docs (Score: 152+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jxYY
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jxYY
Show HN: SmartHome – An Adventure Game (Score: 150+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6jAew
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6jAew
SmartHome is a free, browser-based game written in vanilla JavaScript and no libraries. I don't want to spoil anything about the gameplay, but if you like text adventures, point-and-click adventure games, puzzle games, escape room games, art games, incremental games, cozy games, and/or RPGs, then this might be your speed.
If you find it too hard and don't mind some mild spoilers, then check out the hints page: https://smarthome.steviep.xyz/help
Enjoy!