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The post is right superficially. It made being an engineer harder because it took away the easy parts that anyone can do and it forces engineers to think of the

The post is right superficially. It made being an engineer harder because it took away the easy parts that anyone can do and it forces engineers to think of the hard ones. No jobs get easier with automation - they always move a step up in abstraction level. An accountant who was super proficient in adding numbers no longer can rely on those skills once calculator was invented.

jghn 8mo ago
> it took away the easy parts This is the key. I haven't found that things have become harder. The hard parts are still hard, and those have been the most important and prominent parts of my job once I reached a certain level.
- RevEng 8mo ago
  Exactly. I'm a principal software engineer. My job is a lot less about writing code and a lot more about planning, designing, reviewing, and training. However, I do wonder how we will train juniors to become seniors. Perhaps the answer is that the curriculum changes from coding and data structures to architecture and design which was typically a last minute addition in college.
mads_quist 8mo ago
Yes
RevEng 8mo ago
I disagree on making it easier. I'm very capable of writing code in multiple languages but it's boring and monotonous. It's getting in the way of me building the system I have in mind. I prefer the engineering (design) to writing. If I can describe my system design to something (a junior developer or an AI) and see it come to life quickly, that's great; it lets me spend more time on designing the system, or perhaps designing more systems. That said, there are plenty of amateurs who find coding to be approachable and system design to me daunting. For them, eliminating coding and moving the focus to system design would be a nightmare.
- _zagj 8mo ago
  To be frank, this just sounds like self-serving BS, likely from someone who's only ever done front-end stuff and hasn't ever cracked open Godbolt (or doesn't even know what that is). Describing system constraints at a high-level, whether to an AI prompt or subordinate devs, and letting them figure out the details is much more akin to system architecture than actual engineering.
  - RevEng 8mo ago
    For what it's worth, I'm a principal engineer. I've been building software professionally for 18 years. I've done very little front end work; I appreciate it but I'm not good at it. My work has mostly been with databases, cluster management systems, machine learning models, parsers and generators, network file systems, and a bunch of other back and work, tying that all together into applications used in custom integrated circuit design. I've never heard of Godbolt before but I have written assembly for x86, AVR and PIC. I've optimized PTX based on analyzing the SASS assembly instructions for building GPU-accelerated linear system solvers. System architecture is part of engineering. It's literally part of the design documents we had to produce in my engineering capstone project. Engineering is about choosing among a bunch of alternatives to meet the intended goal. That requires understanding the problem that's to be solved, details of all the alternatives and their trade-offs, and how those alternatives would be implemented into a solution. You apply the same engineering principals at the system architecture level, module level, function level, and even each line of code. I work with some very capable developers. I can discuss with them and come up with a plan at a system or module level and trust them to make their own design decisions. We can discuss them ahead of time if I think it might be too much for them. I can review their work and iterate with them if I have concerns. These are all things I can do with modern AI tools. If that's self-serving, so be it, but me and fellow engineers of all different levels of experience are seeing benefits from using AI at times where it makes sense for us. This hasn't cost us our jobs - we are hiring madly - but it has helped us to learn things and build things faster. It's another tool in the toolbox. Use it when it suits you.
383toast 8mo ago
The post is 100% AI generated according to Pangram
lelanthran 8mo ago
> The post is right superficially. It made being an engineer harder because it took away the easy parts that anyone can do and it forces engineers to think of the hard ones. I dunno about that. Look at blogging as an example - AI took away the "easy"[1] part of blogging, and now we are left with 90% crap AI-generated "articles" like the one you just read. I feel it's the other way around - AI took away the hard parts, of both blogging and programming, and now what have to look forward to every single damn day is a deluge of AI slop of absolutely poor quality. Continuing with the literature analogy (because this article was written by an AI), adding AI as a tool for authors isn't producing the next Terry Pratchett quicker, it's delaying the production of the next Terry Pratchett because the next Terry Pratchett will be drowned out by an unstoppable volume of AI slop. After all, if you can't recognise obvious AI blog posts, what makes you think you can recognise poor code? --------------------- [1] I am using the term as you are using it. I don't really believe that it took away the easy part.
johnnyanmac 8mo ago
It made it harder because no one can find a job anyomre. New grads can't even get a foot in. How are they supposed to have a career if they can't start?

jghn 8mo ago

> it took away the easy parts This is the key. I haven't found that things have become harder. The hard parts are still hard, and those have been the most important and prominent parts of my job once I reached a certain level.

RevEng 8mo ago
Exactly. I'm a principal software engineer. My job is a lot less about writing code and a lot more about planning, designing, reviewing, and training. However, I do wonder how we will train juniors to become seniors. Perhaps the answer is that the curriculum changes from coding and data structures to architecture and design which was typically a last minute addition in college.

mads_quist 8mo ago

Yes

RevEng 8mo ago

I disagree on making it easier. I'm very capable of writing code in multiple languages but it's boring and monotonous. It's getting in the way of me building the system I have in mind. I prefer the engineering (design) to writing. If I can describe my system design to something (a junior developer or an AI) and see it come to life quickly, that's great; it lets me spend more time on designing the system, or perhaps designing more systems. That said, there are plenty of amateurs who find coding to be approachable and system design to me daunting. For them, eliminating coding and moving the focus to system design would be a nightmare.

_zagj 8mo ago
To be frank, this just sounds like self-serving BS, likely from someone who's only ever done front-end stuff and hasn't ever cracked open Godbolt (or doesn't even know what that is). Describing system constraints at a high-level, whether to an AI prompt or subordinate devs, and letting them figure out the details is much more akin to system architecture than actual engineering.
- RevEng 8mo ago
  For what it's worth, I'm a principal engineer. I've been building software professionally for 18 years. I've done very little front end work; I appreciate it but I'm not good at it. My work has mostly been with databases, cluster management systems, machine learning models, parsers and generators, network file systems, and a bunch of other back and work, tying that all together into applications used in custom integrated circuit design. I've never heard of Godbolt before but I have written assembly for x86, AVR and PIC. I've optimized PTX based on analyzing the SASS assembly instructions for building GPU-accelerated linear system solvers. System architecture is part of engineering. It's literally part of the design documents we had to produce in my engineering capstone project. Engineering is about choosing among a bunch of alternatives to meet the intended goal. That requires understanding the problem that's to be solved, details of all the alternatives and their trade-offs, and how those alternatives would be implemented into a solution. You apply the same engineering principals at the system architecture level, module level, function level, and even each line of code. I work with some very capable developers. I can discuss with them and come up with a plan at a system or module level and trust them to make their own design decisions. We can discuss them ahead of time if I think it might be too much for them. I can review their work and iterate with them if I have concerns. These are all things I can do with modern AI tools. If that's self-serving, so be it, but me and fellow engineers of all different levels of experience are seeing benefits from using AI at times where it makes sense for us. This hasn't cost us our jobs - we are hiring madly - but it has helped us to learn things and build things faster. It's another tool in the toolbox. Use it when it suits you.

383toast 8mo ago

The post is 100% AI generated according to Pangram

lelanthran 8mo ago

> The post is right superficially. It made being an engineer harder because it took away the easy parts that anyone can do and it forces engineers to think of the hard ones. I dunno about that. Look at blogging as an example - AI took away the "easy"[1] part of blogging, and now we are left with 90% crap AI-generated "articles" like the one you just read. I feel it's the other way around - AI took away the hard parts, of both blogging and programming, and now what have to look forward to every single damn day is a deluge of AI slop of absolutely poor quality. Continuing with the literature analogy (because this article was written by an AI), adding AI as a tool for authors isn't producing the next Terry Pratchett quicker, it's delaying the production of the next Terry Pratchett because the next Terry Pratchett will be drowned out by an unstoppable volume of AI slop. After all, if you can't recognise obvious AI blog posts, what makes you think you can recognise poor code? --------------------- [1] I am using the term as you are using it. I don't really believe that it took away the easy part.

johnnyanmac 8mo ago

It made it harder because no one can find a job anyomre. New grads can't even get a foot in. How are they supposed to have a career if they can't start?