I see where you’re getting at, but AI still requires someone to prompt it to do something. It has no free will so the meat proxy, as you put it, is still relevant and necessary.
Not sure why the author is so arrogantly proud of not doing the absolute bare minimum expected of a developer (of any rank), though? Maybe a click-bait strategy? So weird.
Never thought I’d see “I’m bad at my job” used as a badge of honour.
I think what some engineers don't realize is that mostly we will all move to abstraction level of product managers. If you are not slowly moving up to that level of abstraction as the model capabilities improve, it is likely that you are in for a bad time.
There are certainly mission critical systems with a low tolerance for failure, but even there the essential work will be specification. I'm not sure how long even that is primarily human driven. Cost of formal verification of software drops dramatically.
There is no need for as many product managers as there are currently developers and the vast majority of developers are not going to become good product managers even if they embrace AI so it is likely that everyone is in for a bad time anyway. The existing product managers have access to AI too, have years of experience, and aren't going to take kindly to ex-developers trying to take their jobs.
I understand the “one more abstraction” aspect, and thoroughly agree with you, though it seems counter-productive and rather illogical to me to never read code and be proud of it. It’s one thing to leave the grunt work to the AI, but to not even review code? That sounds like a bad idea.
A company I am consulted at last month is working on a process to have Figma drawings and business requirements written by BA's to be translated to Angular.
Their goal is to have the software engineering steps entirely done by AI.
Disagree or debate me all you want, but soon you'll realize and admit I was right.
Right about what? Your own irrelevance? Fine, I won't disagree. Your mind, your skills and your talents no longer matter to anyone. Not even to you, apparently.
I don't know why you're so proud of that, or why you think anyone would care.
I am really sorry if I upset you,I do not mean to be proud of that. I think we should accept that read/write code it is over now. People will not care how good my code is anymore. "I don't read code anymore" is for those who are still surprised when I say that.
Agents write my code but I still read and make sure I understand it, like I would read the code written by a junior dev. If I don’t understand it, or if I don’t agree with the approach, I ask questions and those questions often lead to better code. More importantly, it helps ensure I remain “connected” with the codebase which in turn informs future requests and discussions with an agent.
Exactly. And there is architectural things missed by agents or just wrong. There is equally things I learn all the time from agents doing things, or things I have missed. Together we’re a better team.
Just curious what if your teammate gets 10x better every month and is now an expert in everything? My point is that agents will get much much better soon and we need to pivot. Also things like prompting are being automated.
First one need to define what they mean by "read" and clarify the context its being used in; then we can talk about agreeing/disagreeing part. Otherwise, we all will be playing/participating in some sort of a language game.
Then the software you're writing isn't at all critical to justify keeping your job.
You're just standing in the way of business margins by being an unnecessary expense.
Or for lack of a better word, a meat proxy.
I see where you’re getting at, but AI still requires someone to prompt it to do something. It has no free will so the meat proxy, as you put it, is still relevant and necessary.
Not sure why the author is so arrogantly proud of not doing the absolute bare minimum expected of a developer (of any rank), though? Maybe a click-bait strategy? So weird.
Never thought I’d see “I’m bad at my job” used as a badge of honour.
I think what some engineers don't realize is that mostly we will all move to abstraction level of product managers. If you are not slowly moving up to that level of abstraction as the model capabilities improve, it is likely that you are in for a bad time.
There are certainly mission critical systems with a low tolerance for failure, but even there the essential work will be specification. I'm not sure how long even that is primarily human driven. Cost of formal verification of software drops dramatically.
There is no need for as many product managers as there are currently developers and the vast majority of developers are not going to become good product managers even if they embrace AI so it is likely that everyone is in for a bad time anyway. The existing product managers have access to AI too, have years of experience, and aren't going to take kindly to ex-developers trying to take their jobs.
I understand the “one more abstraction” aspect, and thoroughly agree with you, though it seems counter-productive and rather illogical to me to never read code and be proud of it. It’s one thing to leave the grunt work to the AI, but to not even review code? That sounds like a bad idea.
Prompting is being automated.
A company I am consulted at last month is working on a process to have Figma drawings and business requirements written by BA's to be translated to Angular.
Their goal is to have the software engineering steps entirely done by AI.
I can see some of the process being automated, but entirely? Sounds like a ticking time bomb to me.
One might wonder what value he's bringing to the business, then, but it's hard to parse out much information from three sentences.
Right about what? Your own irrelevance? Fine, I won't disagree. Your mind, your skills and your talents no longer matter to anyone. Not even to you, apparently.
I don't know why you're so proud of that, or why you think anyone would care.
I am really sorry if I upset you,I do not mean to be proud of that. I think we should accept that read/write code it is over now. People will not care how good my code is anymore. "I don't read code anymore" is for those who are still surprised when I say that.
Agents write my code but I still read and make sure I understand it, like I would read the code written by a junior dev. If I don’t understand it, or if I don’t agree with the approach, I ask questions and those questions often lead to better code. More importantly, it helps ensure I remain “connected” with the codebase which in turn informs future requests and discussions with an agent.
Exactly. And there is architectural things missed by agents or just wrong. There is equally things I learn all the time from agents doing things, or things I have missed. Together we’re a better team.
Just curious what if your teammate gets 10x better every month and is now an expert in everything? My point is that agents will get much much better soon and we need to pivot. Also things like prompting are being automated.
First one need to define what they mean by "read" and clarify the context its being used in; then we can talk about agreeing/disagreeing part. Otherwise, we all will be playing/participating in some sort of a language game.