I sometimes wonder if people get into this to create an actual working something or they just enjoy sorting colored blocks for the heck of it.
I am on the other extreme end: I don’t give a rat’s ass about the code itself. The spec, the intent, the architecture, the contracts are what I find interesting. All the “file handling” and “logging” and syntax wrangling and caring if some “variable” is on the “stack” or the “heap” I can live without very happily. It’s not that they are uninteresting in and of themselves but I find it hard to justify keeping my focus on these microscopic issues again and again and again and again.
There is nothing in the AI photo worth re-looking at later, because there is nothing there. There is nothing to take from any of the 'details' in the image.
I am not a proponent of AI images, believe me, but I find it interesting to think that people would not like AI images. People don't really care if something is real or not. They just want to be told a good story.
i.e. we are fucked, but we have already been fucked for years without knowing. Call me a luddite but selfies is the fakest shit ever. I would rather take pictures of plants, rocks and animals than people.
I am becoming a better architect with AI, because I am spending more mental energy in that lane, getting less embroiled in the nitty-gritty of the code.
If your goal is to become better at writing code, it almost certainly is a net negative.
If you define growth as shipping stuff and getting things done that you previously wouldn’t have had the time for, then it might be a positive.
Hell, it’s probably both at the same time and what each person cares more about is the deciding factor.
I don't believe this, every architect ive ever worked with that was not regularly in the weeds on various things in the codebase were universally terrible and out of touch.
Be careful with that claim. Abstractions more or less leak especially in CE where the OS and hardware you built on are already full of leaky abstractions, e.g. performance traits. It is still important to look through and comprehend code.
When you are good at it there can be craft in it still.
A programming language is a formal intermediate language for turning human comprehensible instructions into machine instructions by means of an interpreter or compiler. We've now allowed that intermediate language to be English, because that's preferable to most people, and the "compiler" has become very complicated indeed as a result of that.
You still have to be able to express what it is you want in a way the machine can understand, it's just both simpler and less deterministic now.
On the other hand, it feels like what people who weren't great software engineers say.
It's kind of a craft. I can't imagine an exceptional artist saying "screw the craft, I just want the painting that vaguely resembles what I requested".
I _can_ imagine artists that were not exceptional saying "it's so great that I can just prompt and get the damn painting, who care about how it's put together".
Up next, an architect who doesn't understand how concrete pours or how steel bends under stress? Hope the AI gets it perfect?
Interesting times we live in - and I realize this is an elitist take.
> I sometimes wonder if people get into this to create an actual working something or they just enjoy sorting colored blocks for the heck of it.
So yes, to be honest, some people write software for the "heck of it". Will my implementation of Lisp interpreter matter at all in the grand scheme of things? No. It is in fact a waste of time, because you _could_ have learnt how it works and implement it in less than an hour with LLM.
> The spec, the intent, the architecture, the contracts are what I find interesting.
To me, this is like saying the financial of the company is what determines the company's success, not whatever the engineering team is doing. So instead of thinking about the "The spec, the intent, the architecture, the contracts", just give the right monetary incentives and you will come up with a successful project.
From this perspective, can you empathize with the "low level" developers?
That said, I wouldn't let AI build my Lego sets for me because the point of that is the building. But for work? As long as my boss is happy enough to keep funding my Lego hobby, I'm happy.
