> Your "rational software engineer" instead sounds more like someone that's happy to go with substandard solution A grizzled software engineer was telling me a

> Your "rational software engineer" instead sounds more like someone that's happy to go with substandard solution A grizzled software engineer was telling me about how we were just moments away from AI that would pretty much do almost all the coding for us, leaving software engineers to make only the highest level decisions. My response touched on the low quality of such software and of the tendency of engineers who use AI assistance to develop "skill issues" to the point that they cannot function without the AI tool. "Yes," he told me, "but what I care about is my PAYCHECK. And AI helps me ship much faster." A rational software engineer cares about their paycheck. A rational software company cares about revenues vs. expenses. If you can get a lot of revenue out of very little effort investment by using solution X, you use solution X. Period. End of statement.