I really love using AI to code but more and more I wonder ... Are things really that different? So I guess I'm the business as usual type.<p>I think on the frontend side we're going to see a lot more scope for teams.<p>On a backend infra side it seems as hard as ever. Still have to think really hard problems, think deeply about data structure and flow, and deal with second- and third-order effects. Or even harder because the models like to confidently lie.<p>The harder question is how we train people but that doesn't seem insurmountable either. Most of us cut our teeth as junior engineers somewhere, implementing tasks that Claude can now do without breaking a sweat but was that really the most efficient way to train and learn?
I've been both types on and off and on for my whole career. At times, very engrossed in the technology itself - but I got started because I needed tools for my job that didn't exist so I learned how to build them. I've also developed and maintained open source software - some of it very much for its own sake as a technology - some of it quite utilitarian.<p>Understanding of product and business has always differentiated me though, and this is why I've never really stressed about any of this.<p>Another thing I've noticed - most developers are really bad at reviewing code - whether AI wrote it or not. Its really hard to make your brain sink in deep enough to really evaluate what you are looking at. I think a lot of developers never - or almost never - find bugs based on code inspection alone. Once they are written - there is often no other practical way to confirm that tests actually test what they claim to other than inspection. And bugs in design are still very costly in this new world.<p>As long as any human still has an edge in any aspect of the software development process - people who can force themselves to really think through proposed designs, test plans and cases and code will be really valuable.
There are people who make handmade watches in Switzerland and people who push buttons and trigger automations on assembly lines for mass manufactured watch companies in Vietnam.<p>The guy in Switzerland enjoys his life more, their labor has more leverage and is generally more valued across the world.<p>You all have a choice. Handmade software isnt going anywhere.<p>In fact this is all a trick to decrease the bargaining power of your labor, turn you into a de-skilled button pusher and a slave to anyone willing to pay you a morsel. Dont fall for it.
I’m glad mass manufactured watches exist so the common man can afford them.
Its like telling animals dont get domesticated, dont get exploited, dont get eaten, think about the farmer, be more like him.<p>Its not going to happen. For the first time in history we have tools that talk back. Adults arent mentally prepped for that. They will cling to old models of reality they know, when reality has changed. The kids on the other hand can learn and adapt better, but learning takes time and happens through trial and error.<p>All anyone in a position of responsibility can do, just like parents, protect the kids as much as you can as they keep falling and trust with time they will learn to adapt to the new reality.
The difference, and I think we as an industry will have to reconcile this depending on how advanced llms get, is that you don’t <i>see</i> the quality in handmade code like you do in a high end watch or a luxury automobile or appliance. The veneer might be identical. It’s going to be tough to convince people that handmade software has added value or quality over slop. I still believe it does right now, but that might not always be true. And this is an industry that has pumped out a lot of sloppy code for decades, even before it was actual slop.
well this is not exactly unique to software. It is not a given that the 'handmade' nature of a product (luxury or otherwise) manifests in anything tangible or self-evidently superior. Luxury products in general overwhelmingly treat the crafted nature of the product as almost solely an investment in narrative (read: marketing) and market positioning, not an actual material outcome.
Once upon a time there were engineers that used software. Just like any other tool, and usually in combination with electronic, electrical and mechanical equipment, all of them being very well aware of the laws governing it all.<p>But it was so great as a tool that some engineers didn't want to deal with the burdens and limitations of the physical world, and started focusing on software more and more.<p>Then the software engineers came, for whom the physical and mathematical aspect of the whole thing was just a distant history lesson (and preferably a problem in someone else's computer).<p>And after software engineers, the only constant in the entire ordeal will remain: engineering, in a shape or form that very likely nobody can predict right now.
As someone not old but young enough to not have experienced a world before software, Im not sure that engineering rooted in the physical is a necessary prerequisite.<p>I appreciate your comment but the entire world I happened to experience in my coming of age was at the dawn of the consumer internet. And so “web stuff” was how I cut my teeth. And its my profession. And i never went to school for it, im basically a dumb untrained web dev, borne from the script kiddie days.<p>There’s a stigma to it sure, but im well past it. All to say I just dont think CS principles down to the physics level is the root and all is an abstraction. Theyre just different things now.
That's why I drink Genesee Light, to get drunk not for the flavor. I find the IPA drinkers to be of that same ilk<p>That is to say, somewhere along the way software got really complex, and really artistic, and really full of hubris.
I've been thinking about this since ChatGPT arrived.<p>My thoughts are distilled in a single page:<p><a href="https://devarch.ai/trio-paradigm.html" rel="nofollow">https://devarch.ai/trio-paradigm.html</a><p>I doubt we will ever need a large team to build software again. PMs will be fractional. Product owners and subject matter experts will become more valuable. And engineers that have deep experience with things like Domain-Driven Design will thrive and vibe coders will eventually be shut out of bigger roles.
Engineers are not going anywhere, they are going to fill the spaces outside of coding that are still critical to shipping new product.<p>Here is a post that summarizes what I mean:
<a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-200064883" rel="nofollow">https://substack.com/home/post/p-200064883</a>
Nothing. There will be of us than ever as the amount of money each engineer can generate goes up. I’m not sure why everyone comes to the conclusion that there will be less engineers as productivity increases. We aren’t that expensive relative to the value we generate and AI, when wielded by an expert, will exponentially increase the amount of return a single engineer can generate.
I've definitely noticed a distinct lack of pride now that Claude Code is writing 90% of the code I'm delivering these days. For simple problems (which most are) it works well enough and you are definitely shipping code faster - and with actual test coverage to boot. But it just doesn't feel the same - there's little craftsmanship and honestly it's boring as fuck. You spend a lot of time setting up guardrails and having it produce plans that you then have to refactor multiple times. It's impressive that LLMs can do this, but it's not particularly enjoyable. I guess I was a "writing code was the fun part" guy.<p>Semi-related, but I really want to see the long term maintenance outcomes of all code being produced by these software engineers that were apparently just closeted project managers. I feel like having 50% of the engineers in this industry just telling Claude Code, "yeah that looks good to me" 150 times a day is going to result in an incredible amount of software rewriting.
AI made working for a company unbearable to me. Time will tell if there will be new approaches that new companies take, and lessons learned.<p>But immediately, I hate AI work in a company setting.<p>The new hope is that as a founder, the stimulating and creative parts of working with AI are persevered. Fingers crossed so far so good.
I wonder that too. I've been on the receiving end of "it's 90% done, we just need someone to get it over the line for us" way too many times to know that there's going to be a lot of pain trying to maintain or re-write parts of anything that is vibe-coded.<p>On the other hand, I notice the AI-fundamentalists(I am not sure how to refer to people within that group) just say that you won't be doing any hand coding anymore and you'd "just" ask something like claude to maintain it or re-write.
My feelings about front-end code are that I have a stronger feeling of craftsmanship, in the sense that I can ship a much more polished product because all the small nagging annoyances are things that I can eliminate (second-hand), where I’d previously have just lived with a lot of them as fixing them took too long to be worthwhile. I hate shipping some of the resulting working slop.<p>For me, part of craftsmanship is the quality of the shipped product. (I’m also willing to use CNC tools while doing hobby woodworking; others think that takes away the craftsmanship; I think it changes how the craftsmanship is experienced and applied.)