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I'm a software engineer, I do software development but also system maintenance, and I do handle networking and telephony systems, and work with some juniors. Wo

I'm a software engineer, I do software development but also system maintenance, and I do handle networking and telephony systems, and work with some juniors. Working with AI is problematic. It can speed up you but at the same time delay you. For the system maintenance part sometimes you need to do a lot of stuff fast and in various machines and you can't just count on a cloud based AI oracle (that takes time) to do your job for you. And the same time, the more you use it as a oracle, the less competent you get. If you are an expert, I would say in any area, you do benefit from using AI as a tool but it easily can become a double edged sword and make you less proficient. For juniors, it can make them rapidly produce stuff that is impressive and works ok for sites and some visual stuff, but it's impossible for a junior to become an expert if they get stuck in the AI using loop. For AI to cause a clean impact, I would say that we would have to live in a world where software engineering didn't matter. That is, the choice of databases, high availability systems, the programming languages themselves.

user43928 10d ago
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henitchobisa 10d ago
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bigfishrunning 10d ago
> we would have to live in a world where software engineering didn't matter. As an engineer who works very hard to do the right thing, I'm beginning to worry that software engineering doesn't matter. I write code that i think about a lot, understanding every line. It's not perfect, but I try to make sure my code is maintainable and well structured. I work much slower then my colleagues who produce unmaintainable slop at an alarming rate. In my career, no customer has ever complained about code structure or quality. It feels like I'm sinking in quicksand in an industry that's dying.
- duendefm 10d ago
  It's not about what the customer complains or notices at short term, is about having a quality system that can be augmented without accumulating same kind of debt. I can give a simple example. I have a coder here that filled the crontab of a server with periodic tasks. One of them was doing +200 failed requests per second and shutdown one of our routers. The router wrote so much logs that it changed the health of its internal disk from 15% to 85%. He doesn't even know what the crontab is. This kind of stuff is bound to happen more and more because the more you use AI to vibe, the more disconnected you get from the technology. And that's why I say, the only way that yolo vibecoding could work is if the base stuff didn't matter.
  - bigfishrunning 10d ago
    > It's not about what the customer complains or notices at short term, is about having a quality system that can be augmented without accumulating same kind of debt. I agree with this wholeheartedly, but convincing nontechnical management of this fact has been extremely difficult. It was hard in the days of the stackoverflow copy-paste monkeys, and it's even harder in the age of LLMs.
    - juvvel 10d ago
      Some people cannot be convinced of this, but some can, as long as you don't use technical language to describe the issue. Essentially, instead of saying "we need to prevent technical debt and have a maintainable software architecture" one needs to say stuff like "software quality enables a faster time-to-market for new features and less customer churn". i.e. put it in business-y terms.
      - sanderjd 10d ago
        Yes, but then it's really important to demonstrate that this is true. If they invest in what you propose, time to market for new features needs to actually become faster, or customer churn needs to actually decrease. It's not enough to put the proposal in business-y terms, it has to actually effect the claimed improvements to the business.
throwaway219450 10d ago
I think it's more about inertia than anything else. I know the dishwasher will take less than 5 minutes to unload, but I put it off anyway. Problem is the AI can take action immediately, and that's very alluring. I'm sure there's research on exactly where that breakpoint lies. My current goal is to try and spend 15-30 minutes attempting to solve a task when I feel myself reaching for the AI. One of three things tends to happen. Often it's something that is resolved in a matter of minutes, in which case it was laziness. Or, it's something that will take more time, say up to an hour, but the act of starting has conferred a sense of ownership that I don't want to give up to an LLM. Else, it looks like a much more complex problem and worth re-assessing, and potentially brainstorming with a model.

user43928 10d ago

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henitchobisa 10d ago

[dead]

bigfishrunning 10d ago

> we would have to live in a world where software engineering didn't matter. As an engineer who works very hard to do the right thing, I'm beginning to worry that software engineering doesn't matter. I write code that i think about a lot, understanding every line. It's not perfect, but I try to make sure my code is maintainable and well structured. I work much slower then my colleagues who produce unmaintainable slop at an alarming rate. In my career, no customer has ever complained about code structure or quality. It feels like I'm sinking in quicksand in an industry that's dying.

duendefm 10d ago
It's not about what the customer complains or notices at short term, is about having a quality system that can be augmented without accumulating same kind of debt. I can give a simple example. I have a coder here that filled the crontab of a server with periodic tasks. One of them was doing +200 failed requests per second and shutdown one of our routers. The router wrote so much logs that it changed the health of its internal disk from 15% to 85%. He doesn't even know what the crontab is. This kind of stuff is bound to happen more and more because the more you use AI to vibe, the more disconnected you get from the technology. And that's why I say, the only way that yolo vibecoding could work is if the base stuff didn't matter.
- bigfishrunning 10d ago
  > It's not about what the customer complains or notices at short term, is about having a quality system that can be augmented without accumulating same kind of debt. I agree with this wholeheartedly, but convincing nontechnical management of this fact has been extremely difficult. It was hard in the days of the stackoverflow copy-paste monkeys, and it's even harder in the age of LLMs.
  - juvvel 10d ago
    Some people cannot be convinced of this, but some can, as long as you don't use technical language to describe the issue. Essentially, instead of saying "we need to prevent technical debt and have a maintainable software architecture" one needs to say stuff like "software quality enables a faster time-to-market for new features and less customer churn". i.e. put it in business-y terms.
    - sanderjd 10d ago
      Yes, but then it's really important to demonstrate that this is true. If they invest in what you propose, time to market for new features needs to actually become faster, or customer churn needs to actually decrease. It's not enough to put the proposal in business-y terms, it has to actually effect the claimed improvements to the business.

throwaway219450 10d ago

I think it's more about inertia than anything else. I know the dishwasher will take less than 5 minutes to unload, but I put it off anyway. Problem is the AI can take action immediately, and that's very alluring. I'm sure there's research on exactly where that breakpoint lies. My current goal is to try and spend 15-30 minutes attempting to solve a task when I feel myself reaching for the AI. One of three things tends to happen. Often it's something that is resolved in a matter of minutes, in which case it was laziness. Or, it's something that will take more time, say up to an hour, but the act of starting has conferred a sense of ownership that I don't want to give up to an LLM. Else, it looks like a much more complex problem and worth re-assessing, and potentially brainstorming with a model.