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- Be willing to exclude AI from your thought process. If you rely AI on everything, including algorithms and designs, this might impact your understanding. Mos

by all2 2y ago

- Be willing to exclude AI from your thought process. If you rely AI on everything, including algorithms and designs, this might impact your understanding. Most of the time I'm using AI for problem space mapping (I'm doing dirt simple CRUD dev right now) and decomposition. It's ok at that, but even the deep research mode of Claude leaves some things to be desired. I feel like an editor now, more than an engineer. I know the kinds of things I'm looking for, and I use AI to walk a solution in. Either I use the output of the LLM as-is (for throwaway stuff) or I use it as a jumping off point for my own work _without_ the AI.

ferguess_k 2y ago
>I feel like an editor now, more than an engineer. I know the kinds of things I'm looking for, and I use AI to walk a solution in. I agree. I think it's fine to do so. I usually prefer to write my code without AI (except for bootstrapping it). In my work as a DE, I mostly use AI to write scripts for me. For example, how to do this in PySpark? I kinda refused to memorize any of these because I'm simply not very interested, and I can always spend a week to memorize the fundamentals if I need. In my side projects, I use AI extensively. Same as you, I use AI for problem space mapping, or sort of. For example, I have some source code, how do I structure them better? I have read the MIDI standard and thought this piece of binary code means blah, can you please confirm for me? Well AI is OK for these kinds of work.
mooreds 2y ago
> I feel like an editor now, more than an engineer. I have been using LLMs more and more and I think they are great for brainstorming and editing and getting to an 80% solution. But just like an editor needs to know the fundamentals of writing, you still need to know the fundamentals of software to be effective as an engineer. Side note: I remember when I first came upon a really sophisticated system that made me feel more like an assembler than a developer. It was drupal in the late 2000s. I ran away from that as fast as I could, even though the money was good.

by all2 2y ago

ferguess_k 2y ago

>I feel like an editor now, more than an engineer. I know the kinds of things I'm looking for, and I use AI to walk a solution in. I agree. I think it's fine to do so. I usually prefer to write my code without AI (except for bootstrapping it). In my work as a DE, I mostly use AI to write scripts for me. For example, how to do this in PySpark? I kinda refused to memorize any of these because I'm simply not very interested, and I can always spend a week to memorize the fundamentals if I need. In my side projects, I use AI extensively. Same as you, I use AI for problem space mapping, or sort of. For example, I have some source code, how do I structure them better? I have read the MIDI standard and thought this piece of binary code means blah, can you please confirm for me? Well AI is OK for these kinds of work.

mooreds 2y ago

> I feel like an editor now, more than an engineer. I have been using LLMs more and more and I think they are great for brainstorming and editing and getting to an 80% solution. But just like an editor needs to know the fundamentals of writing, you still need to know the fundamentals of software to be effective as an engineer. Side note: I remember when I first came upon a really sophisticated system that made me feel more like an assembler than a developer. It was drupal in the late 2000s. I ran away from that as fast as I could, even though the money was good.