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Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

manuel.kiessling.net

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Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#181

Post by nottorp »

noisy_boy wrote: post #92
nottorp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You "AI" enthusiasts always try to find a positive spin :) What if I had trusted the code? It was working after all. I'm guessing that if i asked for string manipulation code it would have done something worth posting on accidentally quadratic.

Depends on how toxic the culture is in your workplace. This could have been an opportunity to "work" on another JIRA task showing 600% improvement over AI generated code.

I'll write that down for reference in case I do ever join an organization like that in the future, thanks.

600% improvement is worth what, 3 days of billable work if it lasts 5 minutes?

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#182

Post by jjice »

johnfn wrote: post #114
necovek wrote: post #9

The premise might possibly be true, but as an actually seasoned Python developer, I've taken a look at one file: https://github.com/dx-tooling/platform-problem-monitoring-co... All of it smells of a (lousy) junior software engineer: from configuring root logger at the top, module level (which relies on module import caching not to be reapplied), over not using a stdlib config file parser and building one themselves,…

Not all code needs to be written at a high level of quality. A good deal of code just needs to work. Shell scripts, one-offs, linter rules, etc.

You’re objectively correct in a business context, which is what most software is for. For me, seeing AI slop code more and more is just sad from a craft perspective.

Software that’s well designed and architected is a pleasure to read and write, even if a lower quality version would get the job done. I’m watching one of the things I love most in the world become more automated and having the craftsmanship stripped out of it. That’s a bit over dramatic from me, but it’s been sad to watch.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#183

Post by blatantly »

quantadev wrote: post #159

As of 2025, it's no longer the case that older developers (like me at 57) are at a disadvantage just due to potentially lessened sheer brain power, as we had in our 20s. The reason is simple: We know what all the terminologies are, how to ask for things with proper and sufficient levels of detail and context, we know what the pitfalls and common error patterns are, and on and on, from decades of experience. Working w…

I think with AI my productivity had increased 1% at most. If I measure time saved per week.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#184

Post by nottorp »

bongodongobob wrote: post #131
nottorp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You "AI" enthusiasts always try to find a positive spin :) What if I had trusted the code? It was working after all. I'm guessing that if i asked for string manipulation code it would have done something worth posting on accidentally quadratic.

Why would you blindly trust any code? Did you tell it to optimize for speed? If not, why are you surprised it didn't?

So, most low level functions that enumerate the files in a directory return a structure that contains the file data from each file. Including size. You already have it in memory.

Your brilliant AI calls another low level function to get the file size on the file name. (also did worse stuff but let's not go into details).

Do you call reading the file size from the in memory structure that you already have a speed optimization? I call it common sense.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#185

Post by carpo »

dmamills wrote: post #55
conductr wrote: post #37

As a long time hobby coder, like 25 years and I think I’m pretty good(?), this whole LLM /vibecoding thing has zapped my creativity the past year or so. I like the craft of making things. I used tools I enjoy working with and learn new ones all the time (never got on the JS/react train). Sometimes I have an entrepreneur bug and want to create a marketable solution, but I often just like to build. Im also the kind of…

I can echo your sentiment. Art is the manifestation of creativity, and to create any good art you need to train in whatever medium you choose. For the decade I've been a professional programmer, I've always argued that writing code was a creative job. It's been depressing to listen to people pretend that LLM generated code is "the same thing". To trivialize the thoughtful lessons one has learned honing their craft. I…

I agree, but only to an extent. For me, the passion changed over time. I used to love getting an O'Reilly tome and learning something new, but now I don't really want to learn the latest UI framework, library/API or figure out how a client configures their DI container. If the AI can do most of that stuff, and I just leverage my knowledge of all the frameworks I've had to use, it's a huge timesaver and means I can work on more things at once. I want to work on the core solution, not the cruft that surrounds it.

I agree though that the Studio Ghibli trend feels off. To me, art like this feels different to code. I know that's probably heresy around these parts of the internet, and I probably would have said something different 15-20 years ago. I know that coding is creative and fulfilling. I think I've just had the fun of coding beat out of me over 25 years :) AI seems to be helping bring the fun back.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#186

Post by nottorp »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #172
nottorp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You "AI" enthusiasts always try to find a positive spin :) What if I had trusted the code? It was working after all. I'm guessing that if i asked for string manipulation code it would have done something worth posting on accidentally quadratic.

> What if I had trusted the code? It was working after all. Then you would have been done five minutes earlier? I mean, this sort of reads like a parody of microoptimization.

No, it reads like "your precious AI generates first year junior code". Like the original article.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#187

Post by deergomoo »

jjice wrote: post #182
johnfn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all code needs to be written at a high level of quality. A good deal of code just needs to work. Shell scripts, one-offs, linter rules, etc.

You’re objectively correct in a business context, which is what most software is for. For me, seeing AI slop code more and more is just sad from a craft perspective. Software that’s well designed and architected is a pleasure to read and write, even if a lower quality version would get the job done. I’m watching one of the things I love most in the world become more automated and having the craftsmanship stripped out…

I feel exactly the same way, it’s profoundly depressing.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#188

Post by jstummbillig »

milicat wrote: post #24
necovek wrote: post #9

The premise might possibly be true, but as an actually seasoned Python developer, I've taken a look at one file: https://github.com/dx-tooling/platform-problem-monitoring-co... All of it smells of a (lousy) junior software engineer: from configuring root logger at the top, module level (which relies on module import caching not to be reapplied), over not using a stdlib config file parser and building one themselves,…

The more I browse through this, the more I agree. I feel like one could delete almost all comments from that project without losing any information – which means, at least the variable naming is (probably?) sensible. Then again, I don't know the application domain. Also… def _save_current_date_time(current_date_time_file: str, current_date_time: str) -> None: with Path(current_date_time_file).open("w") as f: f.write(…

> The scary thing is: I have seen professional human developers write worse code.

That's not the scary part. It's the honest part. Yes, we all have (vague) ideas of what good code looks like, and we might know it when we see it but we know what reality looks like.

I find the standard to which we hold AI in that regard slightly puzzling. If I can get the same meh-ish code for way less money and way less time, that's a stark improvement. If the premise is now "no, it also has to be something that I recognize as really good / excellent" then at least let us recognize that we have past the question if it can produce useful code.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#189

Post by taurath »

Henchman21 wrote: post #112
taurath wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really gets to an acceleration of enshittification. If you can't tell its an LLM, and there's nobody to verify the information, humanity is architecting errors and mindfucks into everything. All of the markers of what is trustworthy has been coopted by untrustworthy machines, so all of the way's we'd previously differentiated actors have stopped working. It feels like we're just losing truth as rapidly as LLMs c…

You know, things looked off to me, but thinking it was the output of an LLM just didn't seem obvious -- even though that was the claim! I feel ill-equipped to deal with this, and as the enshittification has progressed I've found myself using "the web" less and less. At this point, I'm not sure there's much left I value on the web. I wish the enshittification wasn't seemingly pervasive in life.

I believe in people, but I start to think that scrolling is the Fox News or AM radio of a new generation, it just happens to be the backbone of the economy because automation is so much cheaper than people.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#190

Post by wesselbindt »

lolinder wrote: post #83
nottorp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those small, quick-to-make dynamic codebases ended up becoming unmaintainable monstrosities In my experience, type checking / type hinting already starts to pay off when more than one person is working on an even small-ish code base. Just because it helps you keep in mind what comes/goes to the other guy's code.

And in my experience "me 3 months later" counts as a whole second developer that needs accommodating. The only time I appreciate not having to think about types is on code that I know I will never, ever come back to—stuff like a one off bash script.

> "me 3 months later" counts as a whole second developer

A fairly incompetent one, in my experience. And don't even get me started on "me 3 months ago", that guy's even worse.

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