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The divide is a matter of perspective. I'm a 23+ year dev; among the highest level ICs in my org. It's still craft, its just that the craft is different. I d

The divide is a matter of perspective. I'm a 23+ year dev; among the highest level ICs in my org. It's still craft, its just that the craft is different. I don't write *.ts, *.cs files anymore; I write *.md files that other devs are using, that we're using as guardrails, that ensures that we minimize the slop while increasing speed and basically lift every developers level up by several notches. I went from building one kind of framework/platform level artifact to another type of framework/platform level artifact. If one's perspective is that it's just a shift in what "craft" means, then it's still craft. I'm still building systems; just a different kind of system.

jacquesm 7mo ago
You're using it as a 'super compiler', effectively a code generator and your .md file is the new abstraction level at which you code. But there is a price to pay: the code that you generate is not the code that you understand and when things go pear shaped you will find that that deterministic element that made compilers so successful is missing from code generated from specs dumped into an AI. If you one-shot it you will find that the next time you do this your code may come out quite different if it isn't a model that you maintain. It may contain new bugs or revive old ones. It may eliminate chunks of the code and you'll never know and so on. There is a reason that generated code always had a bit of a smell to it and AI generated code is no different. How much time do you spend on verifying that it actually does what's written on the tin? Do you write your own tests? Do you let the AI write the tests and the code? Are you familiar with the degree to which AIs can be manipulated to do stuff that you thought they weren't supposed to? (A friend of mine just proved this to his boss by bribing an AI with a 'nice batch of pure random data' to put a piece of unreviewed code into production by giving itself the privileges required to do so...)
- CharlieDigital 7mo ago
  We have human reviews on every PR. Quality and consistency are going up, not down. Partially because the agents follow the guidance much more closely than humans do and there is far less variance. Shortcuts that a human would make ("I'll just write a one-off here"), the agent does not...so long as our rules guide it properly ("Let me find existing patterns in the codebase."). Part of it is the investment in docs we've made. Part of it is that we were already meticulous about commenting code. It turns out that when the agents stumble on this code randomly, it can read the comments (we can tell because it also updates them in PRs when it makes changes). We are also delivering the bulk of our team level capabilities via remote MCP over HTTP so we have centralized telemetry via OTEL on tool activation, docs being read by the agents, phantom docs the agent tries to find (we then go and fill in those docs).
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    > We have human reviews on every PR. There are some studies about maintaining attention over longer periods of time when there is no action required. It will be difficult to keep that up forever so beware of review fatigue and bake in some measures to ensure that attention does not diminish over time.
    - CharlieDigital 7mo ago
      The point of reviews is that the process of reviews is a feedback cycle where we can identify where our docs are short. We then immediately update the docs to reflect the correction. Over enough time, this gap closes and the need for reviews goes down. This is what I've noticed as we've continued to improve the docs: PRs have stabilized. Mid-level devs that just months ago were producing highly variant levels of quality are now coalescing on a much higher, much more consistent level of output. There were a lot of pieces that went into this. We created a local code review skill that encodes the exact heuristics the senior reviewers would use and we ask the agent to run this in AGENTS.md. We have an MCP server over HTTP that we use to deliver the docs so we can monitor centralized telemetry. The objective is that at some point, there will be enough docs and improved models that the need for human reviews decreases while quality of code reaches a steady state that is more consistent than any human team of varying skill level could produce. One thing we've done is to decouple the docs from the codebase to make it easier to update the docs and immediately distribute updates orthogonal to the lifecycle of a PR. (I'll have a post at some point that goes into some of what we are doing and the methodology.)
      - g-b-r 7mo ago
        > The objective is that at some point, there will be enough docs and improved models that the need for human reviews decreases while quality of code reaches a steady state that is more consistent than any human team of varying skill level could produce There will never be a point when human reviews will be less needed; you're doomed to ship something horribly insecure at some point, if you ever remove them; please don't.
- operatingthetan 7mo ago
  >A friend of mine just proved this to his boss by bribing an AI with a 'nice batch of pure random data' to put a piece of unreviewed code into production by giving itself the privileges required to do so... Okay that's pretty hilarious. Everyone has a vice!
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    There is a chapter two to the story but I don't want to out my friend. You never know who reads HN.
tern 7mo ago
Came here to say something similar. For me, the craft aspect is now even more exciting because I can craft more ambitious things without getting bogged down in the details. For me, refining my conceptual model, drawing diagrams, finding the right way to think about something was the craft. Maybe that's another way of saying: I was trained as a designer, and now the distinction between design (read: architecture, service-design, product, ux, cx) and programming is blurring.
- sockgrant 7mo ago
  Heck yeah! Love that way of putting it. Agree. Now there’s more time to focus on making the right architecture and carrying it out. It’s no longer a days long task to do a big refactor to remove code smells.
sifar 7mo ago
You are building a system that has a shaky mental model and which may or may not adhere to the *.md files.
wiseowise 7mo ago
> I write *.md files that other devs are using, that we're using as guardrails, that ensures that we minimize the slop while increasing speed and basically lift every developers level up by several notches. > > among the highest level ICs in my org. Checks out. Real straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
- CharlieDigital 7mo ago
  If the whole team of junior and mid level devs are all using agents to code, then the only answer is to make sure they are doing it well. I don't think it's hard to grasp that this is how senior ICs can have the biggest impact now.

jacquesm 7mo ago

You're using it as a 'super compiler', effectively a code generator and your .md file is the new abstraction level at which you code. But there is a price to pay: the code that you generate is not the code that you understand and when things go pear shaped you will find that that deterministic element that made compilers so successful is missing from code generated from specs dumped into an AI. If you one-shot it you will find that the next time you do this your code may come out quite different if it isn't a model that you maintain. It may contain new bugs or revive old ones. It may eliminate chunks of the code and you'll never know and so on. There is a reason that generated code always had a bit of a smell to it and AI generated code is no different. How much time do you spend on verifying that it actually does what's written on the tin? Do you write your own tests? Do you let the AI write the tests and the code? Are you familiar with the degree to which AIs can be manipulated to do stuff that you thought they weren't supposed to? (A friend of mine just proved this to his boss by bribing an AI with a 'nice batch of pure random data' to put a piece of unreviewed code into production by giving itself the privileges required to do so...)

CharlieDigital 7mo ago
We have human reviews on every PR. Quality and consistency are going up, not down. Partially because the agents follow the guidance much more closely than humans do and there is far less variance. Shortcuts that a human would make ("I'll just write a one-off here"), the agent does not...so long as our rules guide it properly ("Let me find existing patterns in the codebase."). Part of it is the investment in docs we've made. Part of it is that we were already meticulous about commenting code. It turns out that when the agents stumble on this code randomly, it can read the comments (we can tell because it also updates them in PRs when it makes changes). We are also delivering the bulk of our team level capabilities via remote MCP over HTTP so we have centralized telemetry via OTEL on tool activation, docs being read by the agents, phantom docs the agent tries to find (we then go and fill in those docs).
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  > We have human reviews on every PR. There are some studies about maintaining attention over longer periods of time when there is no action required. It will be difficult to keep that up forever so beware of review fatigue and bake in some measures to ensure that attention does not diminish over time.
  - CharlieDigital 7mo ago
    The point of reviews is that the process of reviews is a feedback cycle where we can identify where our docs are short. We then immediately update the docs to reflect the correction. Over enough time, this gap closes and the need for reviews goes down. This is what I've noticed as we've continued to improve the docs: PRs have stabilized. Mid-level devs that just months ago were producing highly variant levels of quality are now coalescing on a much higher, much more consistent level of output. There were a lot of pieces that went into this. We created a local code review skill that encodes the exact heuristics the senior reviewers would use and we ask the agent to run this in AGENTS.md. We have an MCP server over HTTP that we use to deliver the docs so we can monitor centralized telemetry. The objective is that at some point, there will be enough docs and improved models that the need for human reviews decreases while quality of code reaches a steady state that is more consistent than any human team of varying skill level could produce. One thing we've done is to decouple the docs from the codebase to make it easier to update the docs and immediately distribute updates orthogonal to the lifecycle of a PR. (I'll have a post at some point that goes into some of what we are doing and the methodology.)
    - g-b-r 7mo ago
      > The objective is that at some point, there will be enough docs and improved models that the need for human reviews decreases while quality of code reaches a steady state that is more consistent than any human team of varying skill level could produce There will never be a point when human reviews will be less needed; you're doomed to ship something horribly insecure at some point, if you ever remove them; please don't.
operatingthetan 7mo ago
>A friend of mine just proved this to his boss by bribing an AI with a 'nice batch of pure random data' to put a piece of unreviewed code into production by giving itself the privileges required to do so... Okay that's pretty hilarious. Everyone has a vice!
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  There is a chapter two to the story but I don't want to out my friend. You never know who reads HN.

tern 7mo ago

Came here to say something similar. For me, the craft aspect is now even more exciting because I can craft more ambitious things without getting bogged down in the details. For me, refining my conceptual model, drawing diagrams, finding the right way to think about something was the craft. Maybe that's another way of saying: I was trained as a designer, and now the distinction between design (read: architecture, service-design, product, ux, cx) and programming is blurring.

sockgrant 7mo ago
Heck yeah! Love that way of putting it. Agree. Now there’s more time to focus on making the right architecture and carrying it out. It’s no longer a days long task to do a big refactor to remove code smells.

sifar 7mo ago

You are building a system that has a shaky mental model and which may or may not adhere to the *.md files.

wiseowise 7mo ago

> I write *.md files that other devs are using, that we're using as guardrails, that ensures that we minimize the slop while increasing speed and basically lift every developers level up by several notches. > > among the highest level ICs in my org. Checks out. Real straight shooter with upper management written all over him.

CharlieDigital 7mo ago
If the whole team of junior and mid level devs are all using agents to code, then the only answer is to make sure they are doing it well. I don't think it's hard to grasp that this is how senior ICs can have the biggest impact now.