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

Post by necovek » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 11:22 AM UTC

RivieraKid wrote: post #303

necovek wrote: post #296

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Ideas are obviously a prerequisite, but they aren't "worth anything" because there is so many of them and without them being executed well (or sometimes, executed at all), they don't really bring any value. So really, they are comparatively cheap. I, for one, have hundreds of ideas, but always lacked the time to execute on 5% of them.

Good ideas (and the ability to recognize them) are very valuable in my opinion. It also depends on what you mean by an idea: - A todo app better than the existing ones - A todo app with these 3 features - A todo app with these 3 features, here's how the UI would look I have tens of ideas, but maybe 1 - 3 that I believe have a meaningful chance to become successful and generate income ($20k annually or more) with grea…

Post by necovek » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:42 PM UTC

danans wrote: post #293

necovek wrote: post #266

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You think there won't be students or academics anymore? Arguably, most non-corporate-supported (when that became a thing) FOSS was created by students and academics. So what is really changing?

> So what is really changing? Higher education is less affordable and accessible to more families, and the value proposition is eroding. CS academics survive by joint ventures with corporations, not by their University salaries. Escalating cost of living and reduction in institutional support systems push more people toward allocating their scarce spare time toward fundamental needs rather than contributing to the so…

Post by nunez » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #297

nunez wrote: post #265

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It's not about "best" or "traditional," though your bias is clearly set. "Write me a feature that does _x_" isn't satisfying for me, and, like the author said in the post, it sucks that people that think otherwise are telling me that my way is the "old way", as you put it. (It's doubly-ironic for me, as I actually like writing documentation!)

> "Write me a feature that does _x_" isn't satisfying for me, and, like the author said in the post, it sucks that people that think otherwise are telling me that my way is the "old way", as you put it. Ya, no. It’s not that easy. Programming with prompts is much more intellectually challenging, maybe it will be like that in 5-10 years? Right now we are in a productivity increase that is more similar to interactive t…

Post by ihaveajob » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 11:46 PM UTC

hypfer wrote: post #69

ihaveajob wrote: post #67

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Ironically I had a very smart and otherwise reasonable math professor who, shortly after Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, said in class that chess was no longer interesting.

I mean I would too be concerned if such a major event _wouldn't_ make people question their assumptions/beliefs/ideas/visions. If you have no reaction at all, you probably weren't paying attention. Eventually though, people _should_ recover and return after having processed the changes. So maybe the professor was still recovering at the time?

Post by RevEng » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 5:35 AM UTC

timmytokyo wrote: post #268

RevEng wrote: post #169

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LLMs write this way because people write this way. Maybe not everyone, but enough for it to train the models to do it. Much of my writing reads like an LLM wrote it, but that doesn't make me an LLM.

Yes and no. LLMs take all the writing on the Internet (good and bad) and average it out. It's similar to the way generative AI images always have an identifiable, artificial "look". They've averaged out the personality and thereby erased the individuality that went into the efforts the original artists used to create them.