AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
blog.florianherrengt.com
AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
1–10 of 430 posts
Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
#2>AI makes projects with weak engineering culture fail much faster.
>There used to be a time when people sat down and talked about how they'd do something. Now they can just prompt an agent for a few hours and open a PR.
>The most tragic aspect of this way of working is that, to the untrained eye, it works.
>If you pull the branch and test it, you'll probably get something somewhat functional. So what do they do? They keep going. Again and again. Until the project reaches a point where no one knows how anything works.
Isn't this the opposite of failing faster, it lets people who would have never made it past the first few hurdles and give up get deep in and then the false hope that they can then prompt their way out of whatever mess resulting in deeper and deeper spaghetti.
Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
#3In the words of Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap".
Any apparent short term gain is really a prescription for long term pain.
Ignore what AI fanboys say and instead look at what they do.
https://northeasttimes.com/2026/08/07/oracle-bans-ai-code-fr...
Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
#4>AI makes projects with weak engineering culture fail much faster. >There used to be a time when people sat down and talked about how they'd do something. Now they can just prompt an agent for a few hours and open a PR. >The most tragic aspect of this way of working is that, to the untrained eye, it works. >If you pull the branch and test it, you'll probably get something somewhat functional. So what do they do? They…
But now they can now move so fast that nobody has a realistic chance to stop them before the damage compounds.
They get into a much deeper mess much faster.
Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
#5In the words of Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap". Any apparent short term gain is really a prescription for long term pain. Ignore what AI fanboys say and instead look at what they do. https://northeasttimes.com/2026/08/07/oracle-bans-ai-code-fr...
Oracle banned AI code for copyright reasons, you cannot interpret that as a assessment of the practical output of the models.
Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
#6I saw close some companies getting completely lost with AI code
Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
#7In the words of Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap". Any apparent short term gain is really a prescription for long term pain. Ignore what AI fanboys say and instead look at what they do. https://northeasttimes.com/2026/08/07/oracle-bans-ai-code-fr...
Is it long term pain if a small startup in a very competitive vertical gets to market quicker with code gen and finds market fit? Whether that results in a rewrite or a refactor, that is still a huge win and one that a lot of people will gamble on.
Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
#8In the words of Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap". Any apparent short term gain is really a prescription for long term pain. Ignore what AI fanboys say and instead look at what they do. https://northeasttimes.com/2026/08/07/oracle-bans-ai-code-fr...
Oracle banned AI code for copyright reasons, you cannot interpret that as a assessment of the practical output of the models.
It strongly argues against a position that many people including myself have taken, that all code will soon be AI code and the only people still writing code by hand are those who haven’t gotten the memo. (I don’t mean to rule out the possibility that Oracle, despite their involvement in AI infrastructure, is just being dumb and the lawyers made them create a policy that’s not compatible with the modern practice of software development.)
Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
#9> Fixing it would require such a colossal amount of work that it would be impossible to even start justifying it to anyone in management.
Bad news: by delegating the thinking to somebody else (Claude) you have become the management.
Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
#10>AI makes projects with weak engineering culture fail much faster. >There used to be a time when people sat down and talked about how they'd do something. Now they can just prompt an agent for a few hours and open a PR. >The most tragic aspect of this way of working is that, to the untrained eye, it works. >If you pull the branch and test it, you'll probably get something somewhat functional. So what do they do? They…
But now they can now move so fast that nobody has a realistic chance to stop them before the damage compounds. They get into a much deeper mess much faster.
We always talk about damage, what's the damage here?