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We might all be AI engineers now

yasint.dev

371–380 of 384 posts

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve all been waiting for the reliability shoe to drop for, what, a year now? It’s only slop of you don’t understand the code, prompt, and result, and skip code reviews. You can have large productivity gains without reducing quality standards.

> It’s only slop of you don’t understand the code, prompt, and result, and skip code reviews. You can have large productivity gains without reducing quality standards. So essentially like delegating all work to a beginner programmer only 10x more frustrating? Well, that's not what I would classify under "Pocket PhD" or "Nation of PhDs in a datacenter", which is the bullshit propaganda the AI CEOs are relentlessly pus…

I’m not here to defend bs propaganda. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone defend that stuff. I don’t know if you’re shifting goalposts or that’s what you’ve always been worried about.

I’m just saying the productivity gains are real, even in serious production level and life critical systems.

If you are only able to think in binaries, no-AI or phd-AI, that’s a you problem.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s only slop of you don’t understand the code, prompt, and result, and skip code reviews. You can have large productivity gains without reducing quality standards. So essentially like delegating all work to a beginner programmer only 10x more frustrating? Well, that's not what I would classify under "Pocket PhD" or "Nation of PhDs in a datacenter", which is the bullshit propaganda the AI CEOs are relentlessly pus…

I’m not here to defend bs propaganda. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone defend that stuff. I don’t know if you’re shifting goalposts or that’s what you’ve always been worried about. I’m just saying the productivity gains are real, even in serious production level and life critical systems. If you are only able to think in binaries, no-AI or phd-AI, that’s a you problem.

> I’m just saying the productivity gains are real, even in serious production level and life critical systems.

Again, neither serious studies (See that METR study on dev productivity), nor the ever increasing rate of major incidents caused by AI support your statement. Not to mention the absolute lack of well known AI-produced products that we know of.

> If you are only able to think in binaries, no-AI or phd-AI, that’s a you problem.

No, you see if I were a CEO of a public ompany and I lied through my teeth to the investors and the general public, about the capabilities of my product, then I would normally go to jail. The CEOs of major AI companies are making claims that do not seem to be confirmed in reality. They have burned several hundred billion dollars so far, in pursuit of "god-level intelligence". What came out instead is "your prompting sucks" or similar level of nonsense.

I am only holding them to the standards they have repeatedly, boldly and insistently set themselves. You should be too.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#375
post #304

Sounds like the author is confused or trying too hard to please the audience. I feel software engineering has higher expectation to move faster now, which makes it more difficult as a discipline. I personally code data structures and algorithms for 1 - 2 hrs a day, because I enjoy it. I find it also helps keeps me sharp and prevents me from building too much cognitive debt with AI generated code. I find most AI gener…

"I personally code data structures and algorithms for 1 - 2 hrs a day" What does this mean? You do leet code problems a few hours a day? Or go through a text book? Genuinely curious.

I am taking a course through a website called neetcode.io

It is a clone of leetcode, designed to help you build intuition in a programmatic way, to learn the top 75 - 150 coding questions, common in interviews.

Each lesson comes with detailed video explanation, with practice problems. The practice problems too come with video solutions.

If you go to the main site, you will see a link to the different courses they offer and also a roadmap. The roadmap organizes the algorithms in a hierarchy, from simple complex, to help you reduce your blindspots, as you build your intuition.

I'm nearly complete with the beginner course and will move to advanced soon. For me personally, it works quite well, because I need a human to explain things to me in detail in order to understand the complexity.

Hope this helps

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not here to defend bs propaganda. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone defend that stuff. I don’t know if you’re shifting goalposts or that’s what you’ve always been worried about. I’m just saying the productivity gains are real, even in serious production level and life critical systems. If you are only able to think in binaries, no-AI or phd-AI, that’s a you problem.

> I’m just saying the productivity gains are real, even in serious production level and life critical systems. Again, neither serious studies (See that METR study on dev productivity), nor the ever increasing rate of major incidents caused by AI support your statement. Not to mention the absolute lack of well known AI-produced products that we know of. > If you are only able to think in binaries, no-AI or phd-AI, tha…

> METR

Yes I’ve seen it. It was certainly interesting at the time. If you refresh yourself on the study, it admits to reflecting a narrow point in time on a narrow task type and toolset.

Last July most people I know weren’t automating Jira tickets, pull requests, comment addressing, design docs, multi repo research, and customizing rule sets. Now everyone I know does, each of these incrementally speed up productivity.

> Not to mention the absolute lack of well known AI-produced products that we know of.

This is a strange comment. We have a well known example in openclaw, which is notoriously vibe coded, which again if you follow the thread, I’m not defending. whereas I know senior and staff engineers at most FAANG companies and every single one uses AI to code, so many many products you know are being written with AI.

I don’t wanna dox myself but last year my company developed a greenfield product with a pretty large headcount of eng (multiple teams)that was built with an AI first development workflow, now that doesn’t mean the 20 engineers just stood around and twiddling their thumbs. They were doing real engineering and software development work with heavy agentic AI use. They shipped it in six months and it’s been in prod for months. If you can’t see how AI is being used I don’t know what to tell you.

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue is that developers have been trained for the past few decades to look for solutions to problems online by just dumping a few relevant keywords into Google. But to get the most out of AI you should really be prompting as if you were writing a formal letter to the British throne explaining the background of your request. Basic English writing skills, and the ability to formulate your thoughts in a clear manne…

> But to get the most out of AI you should really be prompting as if you were writing a formal letter to the British throne explaining the background of your request. Basic English writing skills, and the ability to formulate your thoughts in a clear manner, have become essential skills for engineering (and something many developers simply lack). That's probably why spec driven development has taken off. The develope…

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Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m just saying the productivity gains are real, even in serious production level and life critical systems. Again, neither serious studies (See that METR study on dev productivity), nor the ever increasing rate of major incidents caused by AI support your statement. Not to mention the absolute lack of well known AI-produced products that we know of. > If you are only able to think in binaries, no-AI or phd-AI, tha…

> METR Yes I’ve seen it. It was certainly interesting at the time. If you refresh yourself on the study, it admits to reflecting a narrow point in time on a narrow task type and toolset. Last July most people I know weren’t automating Jira tickets, pull requests, comment addressing, design docs, multi repo research, and customizing rule sets. Now everyone I know does, each of these incrementally speed up productivity…

> This is a strange comment. We have a well known example in openclaw, which is notoriously vibe coded, which again if you follow the thread, I’m not defending. whereas I know senior and staff engineers at most FAANG companies and every single one uses AI to code, so many many products you know are being written with AI.

Oh it's a product? What does it do? Leak data and delete inboxes? I would not call that a "product" at least not in the commercial sense.

> I don’t wanna dox myself but last year my company developed a greenfield product with a pretty large headcount of eng (multiple teams)that was built with an AI first development workflow

Yeah you sure are not "doxxing" yourself with this generic statement. I am sure you guys built something with the "AI first" workflow. The point being, based on what he AI CEOs and AI boosters are saying, this should have been a project with one person organising a "fleet of agents" . Why wasn't it? If it still requires a large engineering headcount, what's the point of using the AI?

Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m just saying the productivity gains are real, even in serious production level and life critical systems. Again, neither serious studies (See that METR study on dev productivity), nor the ever increasing rate of major incidents caused by AI support your statement. Not to mention the absolute lack of well known AI-produced products that we know of. > If you are only able to think in binaries, no-AI or phd-AI, tha…

> METR Yes I’ve seen it. It was certainly interesting at the time. If you refresh yourself on the study, it admits to reflecting a narrow point in time on a narrow task type and toolset. Last July most people I know weren’t automating Jira tickets, pull requests, comment addressing, design docs, multi repo research, and customizing rule sets. Now everyone I know does, each of these incrementally speed up productivity…

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Re: We might all be AI engineers now

#380
post #5

> Building systems that supervise AI agents, training models, wiring up pipelines where the AI does the heavy lifting and I do the thinking. Honestly? I’m having more fun than ever. I'm sure some people are having fun that way. But I'm also sure some people don't like to play with systems that produce fuzzy outputs and break in unexpected moments, even though overall they are a net win. It's almost as if you're deali…

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