I have been a lead engineer for a few decades now, responsible for training teams and architecting projects. And I've been working heavily with AI.
I know how to get Claude multi-agent mode to write 2,500 lines of deeply gnarly code in 40 minutes, and I know how to get that code solid. But doing this absolutely pulls on decades on engineering skill. I read all the core code. I design key architectural constraints. I invest heavily in getting Claude to build extensive automated verification.
If I left Claude to its own devices, it would still build stuff! But with me actively in the loop, I can diagnose bad trends. I can force strategic investments in the right places at the right times. I can update policy for the agents.
If we're going to have "software factories", let's at least remember all the lessons from Toyota about continual process improvement, about quality, about andon cords and poke-yoke devices, and all the rest.
Could I build faster if I stopped reading code? Probably, for a while. But I would lose the ability to fight entropy, and entropy is the death of software. And Claude doesn't fight entropy especially well yet, not all by itself.
What I've found out is that a lot of people don't actually care. They see it work and that's that. It's impossible to convince them otherwise. The code can be absolutely awful but it doesn't matter because it works today.
That's been my experience, too.
I have been able to write some pretty damn ambitious code, quickly, with the help of LLMs, but I am still really only using it for developing functions, as opposed to architectures.
But just this morning, I had it break up an obese class into components. It did really well. I still need to finish testing everything, but it looks like it nailed it.
[dead]