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AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder

ivanturkovic.com

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Re: AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder

#251

Post by layer8 »

apt-apt-apt-apt wrote: post #213
Spide_r wrote: post #11

Its worth mentioning that this essay has some signs of being either partially AI generated or heavily edited through an LLM. Some of the signs are there (It's not X, it's Y), With the blog having gone from nearly zero activity between 2015 and 2025 to have it explode in posts and text output since then also raises an eyebrow.

Why is this sentiment expressed so often ("It was written/edited by AI"? It seems to bother people, perhaps since it may have been low-effort. Doesn't it not matter as long as the content is good? Otherwise, it seems to be no different than a standard low-quality post.

The formulaic style/cadence/structure/tone is annoying, for one due to its LLM-induced prevalence, but also because it is padded and stretched without adding substance while being dyed in superficialities, and has a weird tendency of meandering through its thematic territory, like the author was slightly distracted or is writing the same thing for the 20th time, or is missing a good editor. Pre-LLM, it might have been an okay-ish, but not great, article. Now it’s just grating and makes you feel like you’re wasting your time reading it.

Re: AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder

#252

Post by jmull »

rnimmer wrote: post #240
hackersk wrote: post #6

[flagged]

My immediate reaction was, "Only 7?" but that may not be a fair thing to think, depending on what the constraints were. The shift I've experienced is something akin to being able to finally focus on the aspects I've always enjoyed most: architecture and user experience. I review all the code, but through iteration my prompts have gotten better, and for the most part my automated codemonkey 'employee' produces good co…

> My immediate reaction was, "Only 7?"

Anyone could ship thousands of projects, depending on the definition of "ship" and if you don't care what value the project has beyond notionally increasing your tally.

Re: AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder

#253

Post by gambiting »

zozbot234 wrote: post #187
sarchertech wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I vibe coded an addition game for my 4 year old that lets him do addition problems where the answer is always 10 or less. It’s very “juicy”. There’s a lot of screen shake and spinning and flashy rainbow insanity going on. If I had done all that stuff myself it would have take a week because I would have been picky about each little animation. The thing that saved me the most time was just being ok with the good…

> I dug into the code and it was thousands of lines of absolute madness Ask the AI to assess the code itself and to propose ways to gradually refactor it for better cleanliness. It can be good at that stuff, but you need to make it an explicit goal.

"feed me even more coins and I'll make my code not suck the second time around, pinky promise" vibe.

Re: AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder

#255

Post by rsynnott »

apt-apt-apt-apt wrote: post #213
Spide_r wrote: post #11

Its worth mentioning that this essay has some signs of being either partially AI generated or heavily edited through an LLM. Some of the signs are there (It's not X, it's Y), With the blog having gone from nearly zero activity between 2015 and 2025 to have it explode in posts and text output since then also raises an eyebrow.

Why is this sentiment expressed so often ("It was written/edited by AI"? It seems to bother people, perhaps since it may have been low-effort. Doesn't it not matter as long as the content is good? Otherwise, it seems to be no different than a standard low-quality post.

LLM prose is typically _painful_ to read, overly long, and bullshit-heavy.

Re: AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder

#256

Post by nunez »

> Here is something that gets lost in all the excitement about AI productivity: most software engineers became engineers because they love writing code.

> Not managing code. Not reviewing code. Not supervising systems that produce code. Writing it. The act of thinking through a problem, designing a solution, and expressing it precisely in a language that makes a machine do exactly what you intended. That is what drew most of us to this profession. It is a creative act, a form of craftsmanship, and for many engineers, the most satisfying part of their day.

> Now they are being told to stop.

Yeah, so what I've been realizing from witnessing the Rise of the Agents™ is that there are tons of developers that actually don't like writing code and were in it for the money all along. Nothing wrong with money --- I love the green stuff myself --- but it definitely sucks to have their ambivalence (at best) or disdain (at worst) for the craft imposed on the rest of us.

Feel free to replace `writing code` for most work functions that are enjoyable for some that are being steamrolled by Big AI atm (writing, graphic design, marketing copy, etc.).

Re: AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder

#257

Post by rsynnott »

nz wrote: post #98
skydhash wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the good book about writing I read was William Zinsser's "On Writing Well". Striving for simplicity and avoiding clutter was the two first principles described in the book. AI writing feels more like ramblings than communication.

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about florid and elaborate writing (e.g. Faulkner, Lispector, Mieville, Mossman, Joyce, Austen, etc)?

There's an art to it. Most human attempts, and every LLM attempt I've ever seen, are awful, sometimes bordering on unreadable, but, as you say, there are a relatively small number of authors who do it well. That doesn't mean that most people should do it.

Re: AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder

#258

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nunez wrote: post #256

> Here is something that gets lost in all the excitement about AI productivity: most software engineers became engineers because they love writing code. > Not managing code. Not reviewing code. Not supervising systems that produce code. Writing it. The act of thinking through a problem, designing a solution, and expressing it precisely in a language that makes a machine do exactly what you intended. That is what drew…

Or maybe people who liked writing code also like writing prompts to write code?

And yes, there are also traditionalists who think the old ways are the best ways.

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