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0 pointsJeremyNT2mo ago0 comments

Cards on the table: this stuff saps the joy from something I loved doing, and turns me into a manager of robots.

I feel like it's narrowly really bad for me. I won't get rich and my field is becoming something far from what I signed up for. My skills long developed are being devalued by the second.

I hate that using these tools increases wealth inequality and concentrates power with massive corporations.

I wish it didn't exist. But it does. And these capabilities will be used to build software with far less labor.

Is that trade-off worth the negatives to society and the art of programming? Hard to say really. But I don't get to put this genie back in the bottle.

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grayhatter2mo ago

> Cards on the table: this stuff saps the joy from something I loved doing, and turns me into a manager of robots.

Pick two non-trivial tasks where you feel you can make a half-reasonable estimate on the time it should take, then time yourself. I'd be willing to bet that you don't complete it significantly faster with AI. And if you're not faster using AI, maybe ignore it like I and many others. If you enjoy writing code, keep writing code, and ignore the people lying because they need to spread FUD so they can sell something.

> But I don't get to put this genie back in the bottle.

Sounds like you've already bought into the meme that AI is actually magical, and can do everything the hype train says. I'm unconvinced. Just because there's smoke coming from the bottle doesn't mean it's a genie. What's more likely, magic is real? Or someone's lying to sell something?

JeremyNTOP2mo ago

> Sounds like you've already bought into the meme that AI is actually magical, and can do everything the hype train says. I'm unconvinced. Just because there's smoke coming from the bottle doesn't mean it's a genie. What's more likely, magic is real? Or someone's lying to sell something?

There are a lot of lies and BS out there in this moment, but it doesn't have to do everything the hype train says to have enough value that it will be adopted.

After my (getting to be long) career, there's a constant about software development: higher level abstractions will be used, because they enable people to either work faster, or they enable people who can't "grok" lower level abstractions to do things they couldn't before.

The output I can get from these tools today exceeds what I could've ever gotten from a junior developer before their existence, and it will never be worse than it is right now.

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