Simplify? It’s like saying a factory made chair building… what? It’s not simpler. It’s faster and cheaper and more consistent in quality. But way more complex.
Consistent in quality.. what?
AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier
31–40 of 119 posts
Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier
#32When I see this: "One of the longest-standing misconceptions about software development is that writing code is the difficult part of the job. It never was."
I don't think I can take this seriously.
Sure, 'writing code' is not the difficult often, but when you have time constraints, 'writing code' becomes a limiting factor. And we all do not have infinite time in our hands.
So AI not only enables something you just could not afford doing in the past, but it also allows to spend more time of 'engineering', or even try multiple approaches, which would have been impossible before.
Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier
#33> and ensuring that the system remains understandable as it grows in complexity.
Feel like only people like this guy, with 4 decades of experience, understand the importance of this.
Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier
#34Juniors that are relying too heavily on AI now will pay the price down the line, when they don't even know the fundamentals, because they just copy and pasted it from a prompt.
It only means job security for people with actual experience.
Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a bad analogy because the benefits of industrial machines were predictable processes done efficiently.
That came later than the beginning. Workhouses came before the loom. You can see this in the progression of quality of things like dinner plates over time. Making clay pottery can be simple. But to make “fine china” with increasingly sophisticated ornamentation and strength became more complex over time. Now you can go to ikea and buy plates that would be considered expensive luxuries hundreds of years ago.
Yeah... nah. As others have said, your analogy does not hold up to scrutiny.
Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier
#36I disagree with the premise. It made all engineering easier. Bad and good. I believe vibe coding has always existed. I've known people at every company who add copious null checks rather than understanding things and fixing them properly. All we see now is copious null checks at scale. On the other hand, I've also seen excellent engineering amplified and features built by experts in days which would have taken weeks.
In corporate app development, I would see tests to check that the mocks return the expected values. Like, what are we even doing here?
Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier
#37I’m seeing a real distinction emerge between “software engineering” and “research”. AI is simply amazing for exploratory research — 10x ability to try new ideas, if not more. When I find something that has promise, then I go into SWE mode. That involves understanding all the code the AI wrote, fixing all the dumb mistakes, and using my decades of experience to make it better. AI’s role in this process is a lot more limited, though it can still be useful.
Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier
#38"Coding was never the hard part. Typing syntax into a machine has always been the least interesting part of building a system." and I think these people are benefitting from it the most, people with expertise, who know their way around and knew what and how to build but did not want to do the grunt work
I think that captures a lot of the LLM debate.
There are people who just want an object produced that allows for some outcome to be achieved closer to the present.
And there are other people who want to ensure that object that is produced, will be maintainable, not break other parts of the system etc.
Neither party is wrong in what they want. I think there should naturally be a split of roles - the former can prototype stuff so other individuals in the organisation can critique whether it is a thing of value / worth investing in for production.
Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier
#39I disagree with the premise. It made all engineering easier. Bad and good. I believe vibe coding has always existed. I've known people at every company who add copious null checks rather than understanding things and fixing them properly. All we see now is copious null checks at scale. On the other hand, I've also seen excellent engineering amplified and features built by experts in days which would have taken weeks.
In corporate app development, I would see tests to check that the mocks return the expected values. Like, what are we even doing here?
Someone was asked to test untestable code so verifying mock contents was the best they could come up with.
Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a bad analogy because the benefits of industrial machines were predictable processes done efficiently.
That came later than the beginning. Workhouses came before the loom. You can see this in the progression of quality of things like dinner plates over time. Making clay pottery can be simple. But to make “fine china” with increasingly sophisticated ornamentation and strength became more complex over time. Now you can go to ikea and buy plates that would be considered expensive luxuries hundreds of years ago.
You’re not addressing any points I made.