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I think we'll get there. We need to get at least some AI bust going first though. It's impossible to talk sense into people who think AI is about to completely replace engineers, or even those who think that, while it might not replace engineers, it's going to be doing 100% of all coding within a year. Or even that it can do 100% of coding right now.

There's a couple unfortunate truths going on all at the same time:

- People with money are trying to build the "perfect" business: SaaS without software eng headcount. 100% margin. 0 Capex. And finally near-0 opex and R&D cost. Or at least, they're trying to sell the idea of this to anyone who will buy. And unfortunately this is exactly what most investors want to hear, so they believe every word and throw money at it. This of course then extends to many other business and not just SaaS, but those have worse margins to start with so are less prone to the wildfire.

- People who used to code 15 years ago but don't now, see claude generating very plausible looking code. Given their job is now "C suite" or "director", they don't perceive any direct personal risk, so the smell test is passed and they're all on board, happily wreaking destruction along the way.

- People who are nominally software engineers but are bad at it are truly elevated 100x by claude. Unfortunately, if their starting point was close to 0, this isn't saying a lot. And if it was negative, it's now 100x as negative.

- People who are adjacent to software engineering, like PMs, especially if they dabble in coding on the side, suddenly also see they "can code" now.

Now of course, not all capital owners, CTOs, PMs, etc exhibit this. Probably not even most. But I can already name like 4 example per category above from people I know. And they're all impossible to explain any kind of nuance to right now. There's too many people and articles and blog posts telling them they're absolutely right.

We need some bust cycle. Then maybe we can have a productive discussion of how we can leverage LLMs (we'll stop calling it "AI"...) to still do the team sport known as software engineering.

Because there's real productivity gains to be had here. Unfortunately, they don't replace everyone with AGI or allow people who don't know coding or software engineering to build actual working software, and they don't involve just letting claude code stochastically generate a startup for you.

by Wowfunhappy5 hours ago|

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> Or even that [AI] can do 100% of coding right now.

I don't actually think the article refutes this. But the AI needs to be in the hands of someone who can review the code (or astrophysics paper), notice and understand issues, and tell the AI what changes to make. Rinse, repeat. It's still probably faster than writing all the code yourself (but that doesn't mean you can fire all your engineers).

The question is, how do you become the person who can effectively review AI code without actually writing code without an AI? I'd argue you basically can't.

by silver_silver4 hours ago|

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My boss decreed the other day that we’re all to start maximising our use of agents, and then set an accordingly ambitious deadline for the current project. I explained that being relatively early in my career I’ve been hesitant to use any kind of LLM so I can gain experience myself (to say nothing of other concerns), and yeah in his words I’ve “missed the opportunity”

by Warwolt3 hours ago|

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Unfortunately in the majority of organizations, the idiots are at the wheels. It's not people with actual experience of how engineers do things, that dictates what those engineers should do.

by iugtmkbdfil8344 hours ago|

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Interesting, we only have generic 'use AI' in our goals. Though its generic framing probably indicates more company's belief in this tech than anything else.

by bluefirebrand4 hours ago|

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> The question is, how do you become the person who can effectively review AI code without actually writing code without an AI? I'd argue you basically can't.

I agree, and I'd go a step further:

You can be the absolute best coder in the world, the fastest and most accurate code reviewer ever to live, and AI still produces bad code so much faster than you can review that it will become a liability eventually no matter what

There is no amount of "LLM in a loop" "use a swarm of agents" or any other current trickery that fixes this because eventually some human needs to read and understand the code. All of it.

Any attempt to avoid reading and understanding the code means you have absolutely left the realm of quality software, no exceptions