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I suspect that lots of developers who are sour on relying on AI significantly _would_ agree with most of this, but see the result of that logic leading to (as t

I suspect that lots of developers who are sour on relying on AI significantly _would_ agree with most of this, but see the result of that logic leading to (as the article notes) "the skill of writing and reading code is obsolete, and it's our job to make software engineering increasingly entirely automated" and really don't like that outcome so they try to find a way to reject it. "The skillset you've spend decades developing and expected to continue having a career selling? The parts of it that aren't high level product management and systems architecture are quickly becoming irrelevant, and it's your job to speed that process along" isn't an easy pill to swallow.

nancyminusone 9mo ago
Remains to be seen if that pill needs swallowing at all. At least for reading code.
- eikenberry 9mo ago
  If one is not writing code your ability to read code will degrade quickly and be reduced to a basic sanity check as to whether you need to add more constraints (prompts, tests, etc.). Anyone who thinks they can read code without writing code at a level needed to understand what is going on (for anything non-trivial) is fooling themselves.
  - llmslave2 9mo ago
    Yep. I'd say it's an order of magnitude more effort to read code you haven't written too, compared to reading code you wrote. So there is approximately zero chance the people using AI to generate code are reading it at a level where they actually understand it, or else they would lose all of their supposed productivity gains.
    - falloutx 9mo ago
      Yeah if people were good at reading code we wouldn't have the whole LGTM meme where the reviewer gives up as soon the PRs is bigger than 500 lines.
  - gjadi 9mo ago
    As if reading books was enough to make you an author.
somebehemoth 9mo ago
You are essentially making a character attack on anyone who disagrees with this article. You dismiss outright reasonable objections you have not heard and instead you presume fear and loathing are the only possible motivations to disagree.
- somekyle2 9mo ago
  Certainly not my intention. Some of my post is projection: I don't like the implications of the AI enthusiast stance, and I know I want "actually, AI can't fully take over the task of programming" to be true even though my recent experience with uses it to handle even moderately complex implementation has been quite successful. I've also seen the opposition narrow in scope but not firmness over the last year from some coworkers while watching others outsource nearly all of their actual code interaction, and I think some of the difference is how invested they are in the craft of programming vs being able to ship something. So, if you like the part AI is expected to take over and see it as part of your value, it makes sense that your threshold are higher for accepting that outcome as accurate. Seems like typical psychology rather than an attack.
llmslave2 9mo ago
I actually don't think they would agree with most of this. Why would you think that?
hollowturtle 9mo ago
> "the skill of writing and reading code is obsolete, and it's our job to make software engineering increasingly entirely automated" This simply is a mediocre take, sometimes I feel like people never actually coded at all to have such opinions
zero_shift 9mo ago
> The parts of it that aren't high level product management and systems architecture are quickly becoming irrelevant Embedded in this, is the assumption that many SWEs can actually do those roles better than existing specialists. If they can't - end of the line

nancyminusone 9mo ago

Remains to be seen if that pill needs swallowing at all. At least for reading code.

eikenberry 9mo ago
If one is not writing code your ability to read code will degrade quickly and be reduced to a basic sanity check as to whether you need to add more constraints (prompts, tests, etc.). Anyone who thinks they can read code without writing code at a level needed to understand what is going on (for anything non-trivial) is fooling themselves.
- llmslave2 9mo ago
  Yep. I'd say it's an order of magnitude more effort to read code you haven't written too, compared to reading code you wrote. So there is approximately zero chance the people using AI to generate code are reading it at a level where they actually understand it, or else they would lose all of their supposed productivity gains.
  - falloutx 9mo ago
    Yeah if people were good at reading code we wouldn't have the whole LGTM meme where the reviewer gives up as soon the PRs is bigger than 500 lines.
- gjadi 9mo ago
  As if reading books was enough to make you an author.

somebehemoth 9mo ago

You are essentially making a character attack on anyone who disagrees with this article. You dismiss outright reasonable objections you have not heard and instead you presume fear and loathing are the only possible motivations to disagree.

somekyle2 9mo ago
Certainly not my intention. Some of my post is projection: I don't like the implications of the AI enthusiast stance, and I know I want "actually, AI can't fully take over the task of programming" to be true even though my recent experience with uses it to handle even moderately complex implementation has been quite successful. I've also seen the opposition narrow in scope but not firmness over the last year from some coworkers while watching others outsource nearly all of their actual code interaction, and I think some of the difference is how invested they are in the craft of programming vs being able to ship something. So, if you like the part AI is expected to take over and see it as part of your value, it makes sense that your threshold are higher for accepting that outcome as accurate. Seems like typical psychology rather than an attack.

llmslave2 9mo ago

I actually don't think they would agree with most of this. Why would you think that?

hollowturtle 9mo ago

> "the skill of writing and reading code is obsolete, and it's our job to make software engineering increasingly entirely automated" This simply is a mediocre take, sometimes I feel like people never actually coded at all to have such opinions

zero_shift 9mo ago

> The parts of it that aren't high level product management and systems architecture are quickly becoming irrelevant Embedded in this, is the assumption that many SWEs can actually do those roles better than existing specialists. If they can't - end of the line