Technology

That’s the problem. This is one of those things that you gain momentum in, not simply experience. You can lose that momentum.

Tech bros are going to end up enslaving us to this shit.

Software Engineers

Oftentimes I wonder what civil or mechanical engineers think about webdevs-turned-prompt-writers calling themselves "engineers".

Solution is simple, learn to code.

ha

You still need to review and verify the code, actually implement it, and improve it if you use AI.

If you just blindly accept it then you're just lazy to begin with.

Loudly announcing your increasing incompetence to the world seems like a weird career move, maybe consider lying about that?

is this much different than IT guys not knowing how to solder anymore? I started my career learning about individual components and doing math by hand, and shortly after I was told that all we did was swap cards. My job eventually turned into a more or less normal IT job (compared to what it was), and by the time I moved on, we weren't even using command prompts anymore.

I remember asking one of my instructors about how layer 1 can generate layer 2, and he had an idea, but couldn't really point at components and give an explanation. One could say that I represent that first step in the death of knowledge due to convenience and optimization, but it hasn't really negatively affected me outside of curiosity. Even when I'm working on legacy equipment and actually do have to bust out a soldering iron, that's usually because I'm being cheap and don't want to buy new cards.

So, this makes me wonder: is it really all that bad if someone can't sit down and write lines and lines of code, but can understand it well enough to direct AI? I've used AI to help me code in some unfamiliar languages and all of the outputs I got were utterly unusable. So, in my anecdote, it didn't make up for my lack of skill in the slightest.

I say this as someone who taught himself blacksmithing on principle, so it's not like i'm some techbro or something. Obligatory I think AI is overpromised, but this seems like one of the few things it can actually assist with, assuming the person using it is capable enough to be using it.

Oh no... who could have... possibly... foreseen this...

We use it at work and I now have disabled it for all the typeahead stuff. Far too many times it guesses what I am doing incorrectly and it made using my TAB key (which inserts the propper two spaces) impossible.

The only place I still use it is for reading and identifying compiler errors. Even then it is only about 50% correct as most times it falls into the "Oh you are right, X isn't the solution. Have you tried X?" I have had few bad interns and even they were smart enough to not forget what they said in their previous sentence.

Things I've realized while working with AI (Claude code):

• It's fantastic for very small macros and medium length scripts. Think dev ops stuff, pre-commit hooks, transforming data. Keep it small enough to manually review and something you can run without destroying anything important. This can massively boost your codebase QoL. [Double bonus for not wasting tokens to solve the same problem over and over]
• It's decent-to-good at debugging but not consistent with fixes. It can find some utf encoding edge case that might have taken you 1hr+ but suggest the dumbest bandaid fix you've ever seen. Also very good at spinning up unit test suites for basic edge cases.
• Due to obvious training bias, it's pretty good with common libraries and cloud platform infrastructure. It could probably help with writing a complex cron call, debugging regex or fixing an IaC config. On the flip side it won't bother to use the latest package version or know your niche/new library.
• It does better with greenfield because exploring your codebase introduces a ton of bias. It might try to fit in an ugly hack when a refactor to simplify everything is way easier.
• It's absolutely garbage with UI, just throws the most disorganized HTML together that isn't reactive or reusable. OK enough for ugly internal stuff but God help anyone relying on it for that.
• This is setting up to be the biggest rug pull in history. People that buy into it heavily just to save a couple bucks on engineer payroll are going to be fucked when they start ratcheting up the token price.

All in all it can be useful when used with care but will never be a magic bullet.

Nah, AI isn't that good. When you don't properly review every single line twice, you get the most absurd bullshit you've ever seen.
I use Claude Code Opus daily btw.

I want to become a software entomologist, you know, so I can study all their bugs.

that happens across all technological industries. when cars first became available, hsnds were needed to build them. nowadays most of it is done by robots. clerical workers were replaced by computers. and now "artificial intelligence" machines are trying to replace artists and writers, editors, and managers. unfortunately, the people that do those jobs are not just going to keel over and disappear. at what technological point do we stop and say thats enough? there has even been talk of replacing ceos with ai. are shareholders next? nobody will be able to buy those products anymore either

Lol! Losers. I've been programming for almost two decades and extensive use of AI hasn't compromised my skills AT ALL! These slop machines can't hope to compete with the quantity and magnitude of subtle bugs I write. My code was terrible long before I made bots have mental breakdowns trying to work with it.

I weap for the environment and our future water and electricity availability.

We have been interviewing for entry level positions and the new grads know less than ever before. I don't really care what they know, I am looking for evidence that they can think, but I usually ease them into thinking scenarios by asking easy foundational questions like how many bits in a byte. You would think I was asking for them to explain the Shrodinger wave equations... One candidate was waivering between 13 and 17...