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We might all be AI engineers now

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Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#11

Post by pydry »

noemit wrote: post #3

Not a day goes by that a fellow engineer doesn't text me a screenshot of something stupid an AI did in their codebase. But no one ever mentions the hundreds of times it quietly wrote code that is better than most engineers can write. The catch about the "guided" piece is that it requires an already-good engineer. I work with engineers around the world and the skill level varies a lot - AI has not been able to bridge…

>But no one ever mentions the hundreds of times it quietly wrote code that is better than most engineers can write.

Are you serious? I've been hearing this constantly. since mid 2025.

The gaslighting over AI is really something else.

Ive also never seen jobs advertised before whose job was to lobby skeptical engineers over about how to engage in technical work. This is entirely new. There is a priesthood developing over this.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#14

Post by duggan »

Very much on the same page as the author, I think AI is a phenomenal accelerant.

If you're going in the right direction, acceleration is very useful. It rewards those who know what they're doing, certainly. What's maybe being left out is that, over a large enough distribution, it's going to accelerate people who are accidentally going in the right direction, too.

There's a baseline value in going fast.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#15

Post by kolinko »

pydry wrote: post #11
noemit wrote: post #3

Not a day goes by that a fellow engineer doesn't text me a screenshot of something stupid an AI did in their codebase. But no one ever mentions the hundreds of times it quietly wrote code that is better than most engineers can write. The catch about the "guided" piece is that it requires an already-good engineer. I work with engineers around the world and the skill level varies a lot - AI has not been able to bridge…

>But no one ever mentions the hundreds of times it quietly wrote code that is better than most engineers can write. Are you serious? I've been hearing this constantly. since mid 2025. The gaslighting over AI is really something else. Ive also never seen jobs advertised before whose job was to lobby skeptical engineers over about how to engage in technical work. This is entirely new. There is a priesthood developing o…

you’ve been hearing that since mid 2025 bc that’s when it became true.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#16

Post by kdheiwns »

noemit wrote: post #3

Not a day goes by that a fellow engineer doesn't text me a screenshot of something stupid an AI did in their codebase. But no one ever mentions the hundreds of times it quietly wrote code that is better than most engineers can write. The catch about the "guided" piece is that it requires an already-good engineer. I work with engineers around the world and the skill level varies a lot - AI has not been able to bridge…

Engineers will go back in and fix it when they notice a problem. Or find someone who can. AI will send happy little emoji while it continues to trash your codebase and brings it to a state of total unmaintainability.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#18

Post by theshrike79 »

input_sh wrote: post #9
noemit wrote: post #3

Not a day goes by that a fellow engineer doesn't text me a screenshot of something stupid an AI did in their codebase. But no one ever mentions the hundreds of times it quietly wrote code that is better than most engineers can write. The catch about the "guided" piece is that it requires an already-good engineer. I work with engineers around the world and the skill level varies a lot - AI has not been able to bridge…

Quite frankly, if AI can write better code than most of your engineers "hundreds of times", then your hiring team is doing something terribly wrong.

The "most engineers" not "most engineers we've hired".

But also "most engineers" aren't very good. AIs know tricks that the average "I write code for my dayjob" person doesn't know or frankly won't bother to learn.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#19

Post by [deleted] »

input_sh wrote: post #9
noemit wrote: post #3

Not a day goes by that a fellow engineer doesn't text me a screenshot of something stupid an AI did in their codebase. But no one ever mentions the hundreds of times it quietly wrote code that is better than most engineers can write. The catch about the "guided" piece is that it requires an already-good engineer. I work with engineers around the world and the skill level varies a lot - AI has not been able to bridge…

Quite frankly, if AI can write better code than most of your engineers "hundreds of times", then your hiring team is doing something terribly wrong.

[deleted]
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