11–20 of 113 posts
Engineers are not going anywhere, they are going to fill the spaces outside of coding that are still critical to shipping new product. Here is a post that summarizes what I mean: https://substack.com/home/post/p-200064883
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Once upon a time there were engineers that used software. Just like any other tool, and usually in combination with electronic, electrical and mechanical equipment, all of them being very well aware of the laws governing it all. But it was so great as a tool that some engineers didn't want to deal with the burdens and limitations of the physical world, and started focusing on software more and more. Then the software…
I appreciate your comment but the entire world I happened to experience in my coming of age was at the dawn of the consumer internet. And so “web stuff” was how I cut my teeth. And its my profession. And i never went to school for it, im basically a dumb untrained web dev, borne from the script kiddie days.
There’s a stigma to it sure, but im well past it. All to say I just dont think CS principles down to the physics level is the root and all is an abstraction. Theyre just different things now.
Understanding of product and business has always differentiated me though, and this is why I've never really stressed about any of this.
Another thing I've noticed - most developers are really bad at reviewing code - whether AI wrote it or not. Its really hard to make your brain sink in deep enough to really evaluate what you are looking at. I think a lot of developers never - or almost never - find bugs based on code inspection alone. Once they are written - there is often no other practical way to confirm that tests actually test what they claim to other than inspection. And bugs in design are still very costly in this new world.
As long as any human still has an edge in any aspect of the software development process - people who can force themselves to really think through proposed designs, test plans and cases and code will be really valuable.
I've definitely noticed a distinct lack of pride now that Claude Code is writing 90% of the code I'm delivering these days. For simple problems (which most are) it works well enough and you are definitely shipping code faster - and with actual test coverage to boot. But it just doesn't feel the same - there's little craftsmanship and honestly it's boring as fuck. You spend a lot of time setting up guardrails and havi…
On the other hand, I notice the AI-fundamentalists(I am not sure how to refer to people within that group) just say that you won't be doing any hand coding anymore and you'd "just" ask something like claude to maintain it or re-write.
I've definitely noticed a distinct lack of pride now that Claude Code is writing 90% of the code I'm delivering these days. For simple problems (which most are) it works well enough and you are definitely shipping code faster - and with actual test coverage to boot. But it just doesn't feel the same - there's little craftsmanship and honestly it's boring as fuck. You spend a lot of time setting up guardrails and havi…
But immediately, I hate AI work in a company setting. Mandates intentionally want humans managing more “features”. When you get stuck owning someone else’s AI “feature”, it’s game over.
The new hope is that as a founder, the stimulating and creative parts of working with AI are persevered. Fingers crossed so far so good.
I've been thinking about this since ChatGPT arrived. My thoughts are distilled in a single page: https://devarch.ai/trio-paradigm.html I doubt we will ever need a large team to build software again. PMs will be fractional. Product owners and subject matter experts will become more valuable. And engineers that have deep experience with things like Domain-Driven Design will thrive and vibe coders will eventually be shu…
but that seems to contradict what you say here:
> vibe coders will eventually be shut out of bigger roles.
Isn't vibe coding driving that greater productivity and negating the need for large teams to build software?
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The difference, and I think we as an industry will have to reconcile this depending on how advanced llms get, is that you don’t see the quality in handmade code like you do in a high end watch or a luxury automobile or appliance. The veneer might be identical. It’s going to be tough to convince people that handmade software has added value or quality over slop. I still believe it does right now, but that might not al…
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