5 ms·

The hell with with whatever speed boost I might get. I still write all my code by hand every day, and own what it does. I know it. And I don't have to worry abo

The hell with with whatever speed boost I might get. I still write all my code by hand every day, and own what it does. I know it. And I don't have to worry about atrophy. Could've outsourced a long time ago to humans, if I wanted to deal with reading code most of the time instead of writing it.

marginalia_nu 8mo ago
If programmer speed and efficiency was truly such a significant competitive factor, we wouldn't be packing them like sardines them in noisy and stuffy open floor plan offices.
- wiseowise 8mo ago
  This. And there would be huge investments in productivity and reducing bureaucracy.
- dehrmann 8mo ago
  I've worked places that actively acknowledged they were paying a productivity tax for people to have unexpected encounters, and they'd recover the losses at a higher level.
jnovek 8mo ago
Do you have management pressure to use these tools? I don’t have any data but me and virtually every software engineer I talk to regularly is feeling or has felt pressure to use these tools.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- 9dev 8mo ago
  FWIW, I'm responsible for our engineering team, and I'm the one starting to put some gentle pressure on the developers right now. Velocity used to be one of the bigger issues we had: Features used to be in development over weeks, while customers, product management, and engineers iterated on the feature, until it was finally deemed stable enough and shipped. With AI, we can shorten that cycle considerably, and get stuff out of the door in days or even hours instead. Doing so requires adapting your processes accordingly, give up some control over the details, take good care of tests, and do proper code reviews. Given all that, I just cannot ignore AI as a development tool. There is no good justification I can give the rest of the company for why we would not incorporate AI tools into our workflows, and this also means I cannot leave it up to individual developers on whether they want to use AI or not. This pains me a lot: On the one hand, it feels irresponsible to the junior developers and their education to let them outsource thinking; on the other hand, we're not a charity fund but a company that needs to make money. Also, many of us (me included) got into this career for the joy of creating. Nobody anticipated this could stop being part of the deal, but here were are.
  - lstodd 8mo ago
    > it feels irresponsible And it is. You are going to end up with a wreck of a product and not a single person you can call upon to fix it. It is your choice and you will pay for it.
    - ako 8mo ago
      A wreck of a product is still better than being out of business by not being able to release fast enough. Unfortunately, the market in general does not reward slow high quality.
      - lstodd 8mo ago
        and_then("complain about enshittification") ookay..
        ako 8mo ago
        Yes, market dynamics are a bit of a catch 22: customers looking for the best deal, companies looking to reduce costs to still make profit. Customers always looking for the newest features, companies releasing faster before the product is done.
      - slopinthebag 8mo ago
        You better not ever complain about software again given your view on the importance of quality.
        ako 8mo ago
        Who says that is my view of the importance of quality? My second sentence starts with "unfortunately"... I'm just recognizing that businesses have challenges to deal with besides quality. Being able to generate revenue is just as important as software quality. And seeing how easily consumers switch to a competing product if it has a few more features, you can't neglect time to market if you want to survive as a company. Many customers are pretty shallow: "meh, the new version looks just like to old one, nothing has changed" even if under the hood the product has significantly improved.
- empath75 8mo ago
  You are feeling that pressure because the people that use them are more productive and the next pressure you are going to get is to remove yourself from the loop completely.
- noduerme 8mo ago
  I personally do not. But I don't work in the software industry. I write custom software in an industry that's as far away from tech as you can imagine. My management tells me what features they want, and doesn't care how it gets done. They only care that it works, and the priority is never to get a feature out fast. The priority is to never break their logistics software that's used 24/7. The deployment cycle is still fast, but bugs can be catastrophic, and it's on me to fix any bugs that crop up whenever something goes into production. Usually, when a bug filters up to me, it's within a few hours, because edge cases arise quickly. I know almost immediately what lines of code in which files are the most likely culprits. Because I wrote them, and I tested them manually, and I thought long and hard before hitting the button. If someone else (or something else) wrote them, I'd have to go hunting at the exact moment when time is critical and there's an open bug in a live deployment, and my phone is ringing and people are yelling. The term "vibe coding" is new, but I've described what I do as "jazz coding" for a couple decades.
lstodd 8mo ago
yup. no effort - no bliss. and for rare bouts of wanting to shepherd cats I just got meself some actual cats. At least they don't pretend to be engineers.
adampunk 8mo ago
Real quick, how does paging work?
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
josefrichter 8mo ago
This mentality never worked in IT world. We've always had high pace of change and endless learning and adaptation to new tools and approaches.
bdbdbdb 8mo ago
Am I alone in thinking atrophy might not happen? I use a keyboard all day but it doesn't mean I can't write by hand anymore. Predictive text didn't make me forget how to spell. If i buy coffee it doesn't mean I forget how to make it
- whaleidk 8mo ago
  Counterpoint: my handwriting is way harder to read and my hand tired faster than when I was in high school. And I am worse at spelling and my vocabulary has stopped expanding much since I started typing more and reading less
  - bdbdbdb 8mo ago
    My hand probably tires faster but my vocab is definitely better than when I started using keyboards. Maybe I'm the odd one out
- fatata123 8mo ago
  [dead]
stavros 8mo ago
Nobody has to worry about atrophy. That's the good thing about it: Things only atrophy when you don't need them any more.

marginalia_nu 8mo ago

If programmer speed and efficiency was truly such a significant competitive factor, we wouldn't be packing them like sardines them in noisy and stuffy open floor plan offices.

wiseowise 8mo ago
This. And there would be huge investments in productivity and reducing bureaucracy.
dehrmann 8mo ago
I've worked places that actively acknowledged they were paying a productivity tax for people to have unexpected encounters, and they'd recover the losses at a higher level.

jnovek 8mo ago

Do you have management pressure to use these tools? I don’t have any data but me and virtually every software engineer I talk to regularly is feeling or has felt pressure to use these tools.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
9dev 8mo ago
FWIW, I'm responsible for our engineering team, and I'm the one starting to put some gentle pressure on the developers right now. Velocity used to be one of the bigger issues we had: Features used to be in development over weeks, while customers, product management, and engineers iterated on the feature, until it was finally deemed stable enough and shipped. With AI, we can shorten that cycle considerably, and get stuff out of the door in days or even hours instead. Doing so requires adapting your processes accordingly, give up some control over the details, take good care of tests, and do proper code reviews. Given all that, I just cannot ignore AI as a development tool. There is no good justification I can give the rest of the company for why we would not incorporate AI tools into our workflows, and this also means I cannot leave it up to individual developers on whether they want to use AI or not. This pains me a lot: On the one hand, it feels irresponsible to the junior developers and their education to let them outsource thinking; on the other hand, we're not a charity fund but a company that needs to make money. Also, many of us (me included) got into this career for the joy of creating. Nobody anticipated this could stop being part of the deal, but here were are.
- lstodd 8mo ago
  > it feels irresponsible And it is. You are going to end up with a wreck of a product and not a single person you can call upon to fix it. It is your choice and you will pay for it.
  - ako 8mo ago
    A wreck of a product is still better than being out of business by not being able to release fast enough. Unfortunately, the market in general does not reward slow high quality.
    - lstodd 8mo ago
      and_then("complain about enshittification") ookay..
      - ako 8mo ago
        Yes, market dynamics are a bit of a catch 22: customers looking for the best deal, companies looking to reduce costs to still make profit. Customers always looking for the newest features, companies releasing faster before the product is done.
    - slopinthebag 8mo ago
      You better not ever complain about software again given your view on the importance of quality.
      - ako 8mo ago
        Who says that is my view of the importance of quality? My second sentence starts with "unfortunately"... I'm just recognizing that businesses have challenges to deal with besides quality. Being able to generate revenue is just as important as software quality. And seeing how easily consumers switch to a competing product if it has a few more features, you can't neglect time to market if you want to survive as a company. Many customers are pretty shallow: "meh, the new version looks just like to old one, nothing has changed" even if under the hood the product has significantly improved.
empath75 8mo ago
You are feeling that pressure because the people that use them are more productive and the next pressure you are going to get is to remove yourself from the loop completely.
noduerme 8mo ago
I personally do not. But I don't work in the software industry. I write custom software in an industry that's as far away from tech as you can imagine. My management tells me what features they want, and doesn't care how it gets done. They only care that it works, and the priority is never to get a feature out fast. The priority is to never break their logistics software that's used 24/7. The deployment cycle is still fast, but bugs can be catastrophic, and it's on me to fix any bugs that crop up whenever something goes into production. Usually, when a bug filters up to me, it's within a few hours, because edge cases arise quickly. I know almost immediately what lines of code in which files are the most likely culprits. Because I wrote them, and I tested them manually, and I thought long and hard before hitting the button. If someone else (or something else) wrote them, I'd have to go hunting at the exact moment when time is critical and there's an open bug in a live deployment, and my phone is ringing and people are yelling. The term "vibe coding" is new, but I've described what I do as "jazz coding" for a couple decades.

lstodd 8mo ago

yup. no effort - no bliss. and for rare bouts of wanting to shepherd cats I just got meself some actual cats. At least they don't pretend to be engineers.

adampunk 8mo ago

Real quick, how does paging work?

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

josefrichter 8mo ago

This mentality never worked in IT world. We've always had high pace of change and endless learning and adaptation to new tools and approaches.

bdbdbdb 8mo ago

Am I alone in thinking atrophy might not happen? I use a keyboard all day but it doesn't mean I can't write by hand anymore. Predictive text didn't make me forget how to spell. If i buy coffee it doesn't mean I forget how to make it

whaleidk 8mo ago
Counterpoint: my handwriting is way harder to read and my hand tired faster than when I was in high school. And I am worse at spelling and my vocabulary has stopped expanding much since I started typing more and reading less
- bdbdbdb 8mo ago
  My hand probably tires faster but my vocab is definitely better than when I started using keyboards. Maybe I'm the odd one out
fatata123 8mo ago
[dead]

stavros 8mo ago

Nobody has to worry about atrophy. That's the good thing about it: Things only atrophy when you don't need them any more.