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Engineers who dismiss AI

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#231

Post by jaredcwhite »

edanm wrote: post #230
jaredcwhite wrote: post #190

That opening caricature was so off-putting and dismissive (and extremely wrong, that's not at all what the discourse is about generally speaking), I failed to conclude the reading session. One does not need to embrace a tool to recognize its horrendous effects and side-effects. I can critique assault rifles without ever having handled one. I can critique street narcotics without taking drugs, and I can critique nucle…

I didn't love the opening caricature either. But, to be fair, that wasn't the kind of critique it was talking about. If your critique guns is moral, strategic, etc, then yes, you can do it without actually trying out guns. If your critique is that guns physically don't work, don't actually do the thing they are claimed to do, then some hands-on testing would quickly dispel that notion. The article is talking about th…

I don't know any engineers, any reports, or any public community voices who claim GenAI is bad because "AI doesn't work because I tried ChatGPT in 2022 and it was dumb." So it's a critique of a fictional movement which doesn't exist vs. an attempt at critiquing an actual movement.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#233

Post by eudamoniac »

> The gap is widening between engineers who’ve integrated these tools and engineers who haven’t.

This is kind of the fundamental disagreement in the whole discourse isn't it? If you could prove this is true, a lot of arguments stop making sense from the anti AI people, though not all of them. But nobody has proved this. And what is the gap? If the gap is in skill, the AI users are falling behind. If it's productivity, 1. Prove it, 2. is it more in my self interest to be highly productive or to be highly skilled?

Personally, I am already able to work 5 hours a week and convince my boss it's 40, with glowing performance reviews; I am just that productive. And I don't want to use AI. So if you lads can go ahead and gain 8x productivity and make me work a full job to compete, oh well, I should do that anyway.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#234

Post by eudamoniac »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #231
edanm wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't love the opening caricature either. But, to be fair, that wasn't the kind of critique it was talking about. If your critique guns is moral, strategic, etc, then yes, you can do it without actually trying out guns. If your critique is that guns physically don't work, don't actually do the thing they are claimed to do, then some hands-on testing would quickly dispel that notion. The article is talking about th…

I don't know any engineers, any reports, or any public community voices who claim GenAI is bad because "AI doesn't work because I tried ChatGPT in 2022 and it was dumb." So it's a critique of a fictional movement which doesn't exist vs. an attempt at critiquing an actual movement.

AI doesn't work for programming because I've tried all the best models in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and they were dumb.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#235

Post by eudamoniac »

halfcat wrote: post #86
ericlamb89 wrote: post #10

> "The engineers refusing to try aren’t protecting themselves; quite the opposite, they’re falling behind. The gap is widening between engineers who’ve integrated these tools and engineers who haven’t. The first group is shipping faster, taking on bigger challenges. The second group is… not." Honest question for the engineers here. Have you seen this happening at your company? Are strong engineers falling behind when…

No. The opposite. The people who “move faster” are literally just producing tech debt that they get a quick high five for, then months later we limp along still dealing with it. A guy will proudly deploy something he vibe coded, or “write the documentation” for some app that a contractor wrote, and then we get someone in the business telling us there’s a bug because it doesn’t do what the documentation says, and now…

This is exactly what I've seen. A perfect description. I am the tech lead for one part of a project. I review all PRs and don't let slop through, and there is a lot trying to get through. The other part of the project is getting worse by the day. Sometimes I peek into their PRs and feel a great sadness. There are daily issues and crashes. My repo has not had a bug in over a year.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#236

Post by legsrunny »

hu3 wrote: post #66
plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #6

> The engineers refusing to try aren’t protecting themselves; quite the opposite, they’re falling behind. The gap is widening between engineers who’ve integrated these tools and engineers who haven’t. For me, however, there is one issue: how can I utilize AI without degenerating my own abilities? I use AI sparingly because, to be honest, every time I use AI, I feel like I'm getting a little dumber. I fear that excess…

I worry about that too. But at this point, it's like refusing to use vehicles to travel long distances in fear of becoming physicaly unfit. We go to the gym.

Incidentally I have been knocking people for years who take the car to drive to the gym and take an escalator up, only to pay money to make the equivalent physical exertions to cycling + taking the stairs, which would be... free!

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#237

Post by legsrunny »

eudamoniac wrote: post #234
jaredcwhite wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know any engineers, any reports, or any public community voices who claim GenAI is bad because "AI doesn't work because I tried ChatGPT in 2022 and it was dumb." So it's a critique of a fictional movement which doesn't exist vs. an attempt at critiquing an actual movement.

AI doesn't work for programming because I've tried all the best models in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and they were dumb.

I wanted to post that! :D

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#238

Post by rkomorn »

legsrunny wrote: post #236
hu3 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry about that too. But at this point, it's like refusing to use vehicles to travel long distances in fear of becoming physicaly unfit. We go to the gym.

Incidentally I have been knocking people for years who take the car to drive to the gym and take an escalator up, only to pay money to make the equivalent physical exertions to cycling + taking the stairs, which would be... free!

I guess your username is fitting, at least.

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#239

Post by thefz »

> My coworker uses Claude Code now. She finished a project last week that would’ve taken me a month.

Does she have a clear understanding of its architecture? The intricacies of the interaction between its components? Don't think so. Will she be able to debug it then?

But most importantly: did she have fun while writing prompts?

Re: Engineers who dismiss AI

#240

Post by rsynnott »

Tripping5292 wrote: post #107
emp17344 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there’s evidence of productivity improvements through AI use, please provide more information. From what I’ve seen, the actual data shows that AI use slows developers down.

The sheer number of projects I've completed that I truly would never have been able to even make a dent in is evidence enough for me. I don't think research will convince you. You need to either watch someone do it, or experiment with it yourself. Get your hands dirty on an audacious project with Claude code.

It is, at this point, rather suspect that there are mountains of anecdata, but pretty much no high quality quantitive data (and what there is is mixed at best). Fun fact; worldwide, over 200 million people use homeopathy on a regular basis. They think it works. It doesn't work.
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