> It really saddens me to see some developers talk about literally quitting their careers over AI, right when the benefits of existing deep technical experience have never been more valuable.
1. Because the experience of interacting with AI is miserable. I like writing code. I don't like finding the magic incantation that gets the machine to write the correct code. I don't like correcting the machine when it gets things wrong. I don't like any of this, it's awful and I would never have gone into this field if someone had told me that it would be like this one day.
2. I cannot condone the means by which these tools were created, which is, as far as I am concerned, theft. I think it's unethical to use them at all, because they were created unethically. I dislike using stolen work, I think it's wrong, and I think everyone who uses it is making the world worse and normalizing theft. If continuing in my career means that I have to compromise my ethics, I wouldn't do it even if I loved this stuff, and see point (1).
3. Is anyone going to pay me more for my "more valuable" skills? Doesn't seem like it, engineering salaries on the whole are going down right now. You can believe they'll go up eventually if you like, but there's no evidence that will happen, or that it's happening. If my employer captures all the value, why should I care whether I'm creating more of it?
> Because the experience of interacting with AI is miserable. I like writing code.
I'm your exact opposite.
I've felt like code is 1960's punch card tech my entire career. I've always wanted to do more.
So much of coding is plumbing. Or paying attention to tiny little details. Or hunting down stupid bugs. Or changing requirements and refactoring. That shit sucks. All of it.
I've never had so much fun with software. It's starting to feel like magic. And because we possess deep understanding, we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this.
The AST is not the objective. The finished product is. Our DNA is by all accounts filled with garbage. Let your feelings about code purity and sanctity go. It's the job to be done that matters.
Code is not holy. In 100 years people will look at our ephemeral artifacts as silly little things. Treat it that way today. Means to an end.
"the sand doesn't matter, only the beach does"? Makes no sense.
Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away.
> In 100 years people will look at our ephemeral artifacts as silly little things
Whereas they'll totally admire the hamster wheels in which people shoveled product? Well, I don't care either way. Craftsmanship and care have their own rewards, and shape the person engaging in them for the better.
>Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away.
But using the DNA example- perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of good. Our bodies are far from perfect but they’re functional and effective. If the biological imperative was perfect genomes and not functional genomes, there would be no life at all.
I’m not a developer, I’m a consumer of digital products. I couldn’t care less, or even have the ability to notice, if code is perfect. I’m here to achieve a goal through software. If it achieves that goal, what is the problem from my end?
> Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away.
Perfection in glue and plumbing?
That's what 99% of software is. Even active-active distributed systems are glue and exist only to bridge ephemeral infrastructure. Everything will eventually be thrown out and rewritten.
Nobody lauds the half-century old banking code written in COBOL. They want it ripped out and replaced.
Nothing is "perfect". Not even close.
> "the sand doesn't matter, only the beach does"? Makes no sense.
The code isn't the sand, it's the sandcastle.
> > In 100 years people will look at our ephemeral artifacts as silly little things
> Whereas they'll totally admire the hamster wheels in which people shoveled product?
They'll hear about "You Tube" and "Face Book", I'm sure. But none of the code that runs either of those things will likely be running or capable of running.
> So much of coding is plumbing. Or paying attention to tiny little details. Or hunting down stupid bugs. Or changing requirements and refactoring. That shit sucks. All of it.
No offense, but this sounds like you just don't like anything about writing code and you don't have any LLM superpowers, because those are the technical skills that make you good at being a software engineer regardless of whether you're using an agent.
> Code is not holy. In 100 years people will look at our ephemeral artifacts as silly little things. Treat it that way today. Means to an end.
I don't give a shit about code as an artifact. Writing code to solve problems is fun. Prompting an AI to solve problems makes me want to eat a gun. That's a real difference and it's not something I can just change about myself.