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Engineers who dismiss AI

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#91

Post by TimorousBestie »

cjpartridge wrote: post #70
TimorousBestie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be fantastic. I’ve seen so many claims like the author’s > [Claude Code and Cursor] can now work across entire codebases, understand project context, refactor multiple files at once, and iterate until it’s really done. But I haven’t seen anyone doing this on e.g. YouTube? Maybe that kind of content isn’t easy to monetize, but if it’s as easy to use AI as everyone says surely someone would try.

I don't mean to sound rude, but when I read comments like this, I wonder if I'm using the same model and tools? I've done this many times over, and it's by far one of the least impressive things I've seen CC achieve with a good agent/skills/collab setup.

Link to your Youtube channel or Twitch stream?

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#92

Post by djaouen »

I am neither pro- nor anti-AI. I just don't like the manipulative and blackmailish tactics its proponents use to get me to use it. I will use it whenever I find it useful, not because you tell me I'm getting "left behind" by not adopting it.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#93

Post by shash »

As one of those on the skeptical side, one train of thought I have not seen people even mention is, the way we’re using LLMs to code now is largely to use a less precise language (mostly English) to specify what’s often a very precise problem and solution. Why would we think that spoken language is the best interface for doing this?

I’m wondering if we can do something better…

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#94

Post by Tripping5292 »

japhyr wrote: post #52

> I copy from Stack Overflow constantly. I'm so tired of this kind of reference to Stack Overflow. I used SO for about 15 years, and still visit plenty these days. I rarely, if ever, copied from Stack Overflow. But I sure learned a great deal from SO.

That's great, but millions of others copy from it.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#95

Post by pwillia7 »

harimau777 wrote: post #85
pwillia7 wrote: post #47

Just normal Luddite things, which attracts those most threatened in their personal identity by the new technology. You see it obviously with the artists and image/video generators too. We did this with Dadaism and Impressionism and photography before this too with art. Ultimately, it's just more abstraction that we have to get used to -- art is stuff people create with their human expression. It is funny to see every…

I mean, luddites have consistently been correct. Technological advancements have consistently been used to benefit the rich at the expense of regular people. The early Industrial Revolution that the original Luddites objected to resulted in horrible working conditions and a power shift from artisans to factory workers. Dadism was a reaction to WWI where the aristocracy's greed and petty squabbling led to 17 million d…

I don't disagree with that, just that there's anything that can be done about it. Which technology did we successfully roll back? Nukes are the closest I think you can get and those are very hard to make and still exist in abundance, we just somewhat controlled who can have them

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#96

Post by baq »

omnicognate wrote: post #54
baq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t and that’s the new normal. We’re probably the only generation which was given an opportunity to get properly good at coding. No such luxury will be available in a few years optimistically; pessimistically it’s been taken away with GPT 5.2 and Opus 4.5.

If that's the case (and I'm not convinced it is), shouldn't retaining that skill be the priority for anyone who has already acquired it? I've yet to see any evidence AI can turn someone who can't code into a substitute for someone who can. If the supply of that skill is going to dry up, surely it will only become more valuable. If using AI erodes it, the logical thing would be not to use AI.

That's the correct diagnosis IMHO, but getting good as software engineering is ~3 years of serious studying and ~5-10 years of serious work and that's after you've learned to code, which is easier to some and more difficult to others.

Compare ROI of that to being able to get kinda the software you need in a few hours of prompting; it's a new paradigm, progress is (still) exponential and we don't know where exactly things will settle.

Experts will get scarce and very sought after, but once they start to retire in 10-20-30 years... either dark ages or AI overlords await us.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#97

Post by hulitu »

nottorp wrote: post #27

Some engineers don't dismiss LLMs. They dismiss the religion like hype machine. You want to market to engineers, stick to provable statements. And address some of their concerns. With something other than "AI is evolving constantly, all your problems will be solved in 6 months, just keep paying us." Oh by the way, what is the OP trying to sell with these FOMO tactics? Yet another ChatGPT frontend?

> You want to market to engineers, stick to provable statements.

And that's where the "AI" is lacking.

"AI can write a testcase". Can it write a _correct_ test case (i.e. one that i only have to review, like i review my colleague work) ?

"AI can write requirements". Now, that i'm still waiting to see.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#98

Post by nottorp »

jennyholzer2 wrote: post #81
nottorp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, LLMs have fixed search. For now. I use them daily for that. Fully expect them to include youtube levels of advertising in 1-2 years though. Just to compensate for the results being somewhat not spammy.

[flagged]

The other option is traditional search engines, which are chock full of spam.

Or perhaps Kagi, but apparently they only give you the tools to exclude the content farms, they don't exclude them themselves.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#99

Post by gordonhart »

ericlamb89 wrote: post #10

> "The engineers refusing to try aren’t protecting themselves; quite the opposite, they’re falling behind. The gap is widening between engineers who’ve integrated these tools and engineers who haven’t. The first group is shipping faster, taking on bigger challenges. The second group is… not." Honest question for the engineers here. Have you seen this happening at your company? Are strong engineers falling behind when…

As before, the big gap I still see is between engineers who set something up the right way and engineers who push code up without considering the bigger picture.

One nice change however is that you can guide the latter towards a total refactor during code review and it takes them a ~day instead of a ~week.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#100

Post by emp17344 »

Tripping5292 wrote: post #88
TGower wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might even be true this time, but there is no real mystery why many aren't inclined to invest more time figuring it out for themselves every few months. No need for the author of the original article to reach for "they are protecting their fragile egos" style of explanation.

The productivity improvements speak for themselves. Over time, those who can use ai well and those who cannot will be rewarded or penalized by the free market accordingly.

If there’s evidence of productivity improvements through AI use, please provide more information. From what I’ve seen, the actual data shows that AI use slows developers down.
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