You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
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Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
#2If you can't be bothered to write it, why should I bother reading it?
Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
#3TBH writing shell scripts (and automation tools generally) is the grunt work I most love it for.
Git commits and PR descriptions? Those are probably best at least edited/tuned by humans. Because they're meant to be read by humans.
Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
#4If you can't be bothered to write it, why should I bother reading it?
Hmm, if you read his previous blog posts pre-ai the tone is not much different. I hate the idea that this dude may just sound like AI at this point by accident.
Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
#5I don't disagree with any of the points in the post. They're even framed better than the average "I love using AI because X" post.
Unfortunately, you won't become a better writer letting AI do it for you.
Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
#6Similar arguments have been made about Git UIs and automated tools, and of course most people who depend on such things also depend on others to bail them out in difficult situations with git.
So it just becomes a question about whether or not it's part of your core value proposition. For many developers, the answer is obviously no. And then outsourcing those things to automation, including LLMs, seems fine.
But if you can outsource your job, so can everyone else. If the LLM (or ide or any other tool) just needs someone to vaguely press the "next" button to do your job, well, your boss and everyone else can press that button too.
Outsource carefully. Know the value you provide.
Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
#7Commit messages now do double duty: log of the changes, but also signing off that you've read and understand the code, are taking responsibility for it under your own name.
The second part is an emerging convention but it's fairly common from what I've seen. IDK maybe no one will be reading or writing code in 18 months but if they are we'll need to separate these two things.
Secondarily but probably more importantly: it's real easy to read something and say "yep I understand that." It's a lot harder to fool yourself when you have to actually write down, with your own brain, what that thing you read does. If you're not doing this you must have incredible discipline elsewhere to make up for it.
Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
#8All above comes at a cost of author slowly starting to understand less and less code in their own projects.
Then in other projects as well.
After the initial boost is over they will have to pay money just to stay afloat because they have already outsourced their thinking.
I’m not anti AI, but I’m very worried about this bragging “you are not better engineer if you do things yourself”. Yes, you are, it all comes in small details.
Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
#9If you can't be bothered to write it, why should I bother reading it?
Hmm, if you read his previous blog posts pre-ai the tone is not much different. I hate the idea that this dude may just sound like AI at this point by accident.
"We are highly confident this text was AI generated" from gptzero, which is not perfect but is pretty spot on quite often. Just another small hint.
I put his older blog posts there: "We are highly confident this text is entirely human"
Re: You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
#10I'd much rather use an AI to tell me what the cosebase does than read someone's AI generated comments. By the time I'm asking an AI to do it it'll probably be a more capable model than the one generating comments