We might all be AI engineers now • Hacker News Board

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#301

Post by godelski » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:09 AM UTC

tern wrote: post #294

godelski wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that knowledge was never hidden or out of reach. Why not read books, manuals, or take online classes? There is free access to all these things, the only cost is time and energy. Everyone has tons of ideas. But every good engineer (and scientist) also knows that most of our ideas fall apart when either thinking deeper or trying to implement it (same thing, just mental or not). Those nuances and details don't go aw…

I hear you, but I have subtle disagreements: > Why not read books, manuals, or take online classes? There is free access to all these things, the only cost is time and energy. Sure, but it's just way faster now . I can get the exact right piece of knowledge I need to advance my understanding on demand, rather than having to spend minutes or hours tracking down the right information, then scanning around the text to f…

  > I can get the exact right piece of knowledge I need to advance my understanding on demand

This is where I disagree. It would be different if these LLMs were acting as instructors and pushing you through courses designed for learning things, but this is more akin to looking at the section of a textbook that contains the exact paragraph you need. Or doing the same thing with a manual. I do not think this is the best way to learn and I actually think it is a good way to perpetuate misunderstandings. There are plenty of bad textbooks and docs, I don't want to dismiss that, but that extra information in the chapter, the previous chapters, or leading up to that paragraph are important. They are designed to be learned in order for a reason. Skipping that other information more often harms you than helps you. It gets you done with a task faster, but doesn't make you learn faster. Two different things. For review, that's different though, but the other knowledge is already there.

I think there's this belief that there are shortcuts to learning. That's a big mistake. You can't learn programming by reading, yet so many people try to do something similar with different domains. It is exactly the same thing that leads people to conspiracy theories. They have such "swiss cheese knowledge" that they don't understand how things actually are connected. How people use LLMs is typically to take the direct route to the information they want, which is only logical, but misses all that other important stuff that you wouldn't know is important to understanding those things until you have mastery of that knowledge.

If there was a shortcut, people would be writing manuals and textbooks very differently. We've been doing it for thousands of years and iterating it for just as long. It's converged to the place it has for a reason.

  > Most people have profoundly bad ideas

Yes, and why? One of the most common reasons is people are missing the surrounding context. All those little details. It's exactly what I said before about figuring it out as you go. This is part of why the "doing" matters. Why that stuff that doesn't seem important to the novice actually is, and why experts include it in their teachings.

  > you can implement and get that feedback ten times faster,

You can, but you can also dig yourself into a 10x deeper hole 10x faster. The LLM doesn't make you an expert. The LLM doesn't make context appear. I'm sorry, but all that nuance doesn't go away. The LLM only makes it less visible as it does some things for you and every time it does something you don't know how to do you're that much deeper into the water. It's okay to be in a little over your head (that's how we learn) but these tools also make it very easy to get into much deeper waters than you can handle. When that happens, you are unable to do anything and are at the mercy of the LLM. So good luck.

  > I don't think this is a coherent statement

Because complexity is complex. There are many different types. Sit with the idea longer, I promise it is coherent. But I'm not going to give you a shortcut. Maybe the LLM will, I'm fairly confident it will be able to figure it out.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#302

Post by bandrami » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:10 AM UTC

prescriptivist wrote: post #255

archagon wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new technology comes out — admittedly one that’s extraordinarily capable at some things — and suddenly conventional software engineering is “more or less obviated at this point”? I’m sorry, but that’s really fucking dumb. Do you think LLMs are actually intelligent? Do you think their capabilities exceed the quality of their training corpus? Is there no longer any need to think about new software paradigms, build ne…

> Is there no longer any need to think about new software paradigms, build new frameworks, study computer science, because the regurgitated statistical version of programming is entirely good enough? All I'm saying is you're gonna have to figure out how to do this with an agent. It's not that I don't see value in the craft; it's just that value is less important. As far as the new paradigms, the new frameworks, new s…

> you're gonna have to figure out how to do this with an agent

I'm really not, though, any more than I "had to" learn JavaScript 20 years ago or blockchains 5 years ago (neither of which I did). Hell, I still use Perl day-to-day.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#303

Post by _zagj » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:15 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #291

overgard wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Claude every day, and it definitely makes me faster but.. I'm also able to give it a lot of very specific instructions and correct a lot of mistakes quickly because I look at the code and understand what it's doing; and I'm also asking it to write code in domains I understand. So I don't think these skills are obsolete at all. If anything, keeping them sharp is the only differentiator we have. "Agentic Engi…

>I'm using Claude every day, and it definitely makes me faster but.. I see a lot of posts about this, and I see a lot studies, also on HN, that show that this isn't the case. Now of the course the "this isn't the case" stuff is statistically, thus there can be individual developers whom are faster, but there can also be that an individual developer sometimes is faster and sometimes not but the times that they are fas…

> I see a lot of posts about this, and I see a lot studies, also on HN, that show that this isn't the case.

Most of these studies were done one or more years ago, and predate the deployment and adoption of RLHF-based systems like Claude. Add to that, the AI of today is likely as bad as it's ever going to be (i.e., it's only going to get better). Though I do think the 10x claims are probably unfounded.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#304

Post by ryan_n » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:16 AM UTC

lazarus01 wrote: post #278

Sounds like the author is confused or trying too hard to please the audience. I feel software engineering has higher expectation to move faster now, which makes it more difficult as a discipline. I personally code data structures and algorithms for 1 - 2 hrs a day, because I enjoy it. I find it also helps keeps me sharp and prevents me from building too much cognitive debt with AI generated code. I find most AI gener…

"I personally code data structures and algorithms for 1 - 2 hrs a day"

What does this mean? You do leet code problems a few hours a day? Or go through a text book? Genuinely curious.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#305

Post by samiv » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:17 AM UTC

johnfn wrote: post #298

_dwt wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going to try to put this kindly: it is very glib, and people will find it offensive and obnoxious, to implicitly round off all resistance or skepticism to incuriosity. Perhaps to alienate AI critics even further is the goal, in which case - carry on. But if you are genuinely confused by the attitudes of your peers, try asking not "what do I have that they lack" ("curiosity"?) but "what do they see that I don't"…

Time and time again that I observe it is the AI skeptic that is not reacting with curiosity. This is almost fundamentally true, as in order to understand a new technology you need to be curious about it; AI will naturally draw people who are curious, because you have to be curious to learn something new. When I engage with AI skeptics and I "ask these people what they're really thinking, and listen" they say somethin…

AI will naturally draw people who are lazy and not interested in learning.

It's like flipping through a math book and nodding to yourself when you look at the answers and thinking you're learning. But really you aren't because the real learning requires actually doing it and solving and struggling through the problems yourself.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#306

Post by BloondAndDoom » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:17 AM UTC

rl3 wrote: post #17

roli64 wrote: post #13

Lost me at "I’m building something right now. I won’t get into the details. You don’t give away the idea."

Perhaps execution is cheap now and ideas aren't? Personally I'm quite pleased with this inversion.

While that’s theoretically correct, as soon as your idea is a product, that’s done deal now everyone can just execute at a stupid speed.

You might get head start but just like a bicycle race the one behind you will be more efficient because you already solved the domain problems and figured out the UX.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#307

Post by getnormality » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:18 AM UTC

samdixon wrote: post #177

> I’m shipping in hours what used to take days. Not prototypes. Real, structured, well-architected software. > If I don’t understand what it’s doing, it doesn’t ship. That’s non-negotiable. Holy LinkedIn

Everyone who is really into blogging about their AI use sounds exactly like this.

Hmm, I wonder why!

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#308

Post by ceroxylon » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:20 AM UTC

> Honestly?

oh no... this is one of my "uncanny valley" AI tropes

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#309

Post by johnfn » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:39 AM UTC

samiv wrote: post #305

johnfn wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time and time again that I observe it is the AI skeptic that is not reacting with curiosity. This is almost fundamentally true, as in order to understand a new technology you need to be curious about it; AI will naturally draw people who are curious, because you have to be curious to learn something new. When I engage with AI skeptics and I "ask these people what they're really thinking, and listen" they say somethin…

AI will naturally draw people who are lazy and not interested in learning. It's like flipping through a math book and nodding to yourself when you look at the answers and thinking you're learning. But really you aren't because the real learning requires actually doing it and solving and struggling through the problems yourself.

This is just completely inaccurate. There is more to learn now than ever before, and I find myself spending more and more time teaching myself things that I never before would have been able to find time to understand.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#310

Post by peteforde » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:48 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #291

overgard wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Claude every day, and it definitely makes me faster but.. I'm also able to give it a lot of very specific instructions and correct a lot of mistakes quickly because I look at the code and understand what it's doing; and I'm also asking it to write code in domains I understand. So I don't think these skills are obsolete at all. If anything, keeping them sharp is the only differentiator we have. "Agentic Engi…

>I'm using Claude every day, and it definitely makes me faster but.. I see a lot of posts about this, and I see a lot studies, also on HN, that show that this isn't the case. Now of the course the "this isn't the case" stuff is statistically, thus there can be individual developers whom are faster, but there can also be that an individual developer sometimes is faster and sometimes not but the times that they are fas…

It's incredibly frustrating arguing these same points, over and over, every time that this comes up. You're asking people who are experienced developers absolutely chewing through checklists and peeking at HN while compiling/procrastinating/eating a sandwich/waiting for a prompt to finish to not just explain but quantify what is plainly obvious to those people, every day. You want us to bring paper receipts, like we have some incentive to lie to you.

From our perspective, the gains are so obvious that it really does feel like you must just be doing something fundamentally wrong not to see the same wins.

So when someone says "I can't make it do the magic that you're seeing" it makes me wonder why you don't have a long list of projects that you've never gotten around to because life gets in the way.

Because... if you don't have that list, to us that translates as painfully incurious. It's inconceivable that you don't have such a list because just being a geek in this moment should be enough that you constantly notice things that you'd like to try. If you don't have that, it's like when someone tells you that they don't have an inner monologue. You don't love them any less, but it's very hard not to look at them a bit differently.