> No one hires me anymore because AI can do my job cheaper.
As someone who thinks AI is an incredible tool, I think your job is safe. Are there incompetent companies that are replacing people with AI? Yup... But also, I'm pretty sure most people don't want to work at companies with such poor management anyway? So in a way, I think AI is prefiltering incompetent management for us.
On you other two points: I kinda feel you, but I'm finding ways of enjoying my work with AI. It's been a bit of a shift and I'm still adjusting probably, but it feels like it's getting better. I never really enjoyed "typing" code, but the creative process of designing solutions and building the. And I never thought typing was the "building" part, it was just an unavoidable mechanical "obstacle" (not using the word obstacle as a bad thing necessarily, but idk it's just typing you know?)
Yes--I very much agree with you, and that's what I mean about finding a new intersection.
The job-part of the Venn diagram is, I think, hardest for people because we can't control what companies pay for. I agree that software engineering, as a profession, will continue, but I don't think there will be many jobs that pay you to (e.g.) write C++ by hand.
The trick is finding that new intersection. I actually agree with you that the creative process is the important part--as long as I'm creating, I don't care whether I'm typing code or not.
But I also get that for some people, the typing (or the thinking about what to type) is the important part. They are having a hard time finding the new intersection.
I miss the emotional and problem-solving nature of software development. I am reading classic literature and feel good about it after long hours watching AI generated content. Knowing a person chose every word changes how it feels to read.
>> But also, I'm pretty sure most people don't want to work at companies with such poor management anyway?
Well, I think the issue is that most people, even software developers, don't have the luxury of choosing. Everyone needs to put food on the table, and often times that involves working for companies one dislikes or even hates. The problem is now those companies are turning to AI.
But historically, I don't think people engaged as much intellectually or mentally as much as we do today. And I'm not just talking about people who need to do it at work, but even "mundane" things like watching TV or Film.
Heck, I have non-stem friends for which "pop culture" activities like wordle, pub quizzes, and film/TV are the most engaging thing intellectually. I'm not sure what they would have done if they live in the past. Would they find something else?
These are the cultural projections previous western generations were built upon. My reading is that that is what’s happening, that is why they are so predominant.
It appears obvious to me that there is a hegemonic world order that is more culturally western oriented that has driven globalisation. Your mileage appears to vary.
none of them specifically, but something they share on a different level.
life is measured by individual achievement, self-actualization through work, being ordinary is failure as you're supposed to present and perform. none of those cultures differ much on that, though maybe on how much you're allowed to express preferences vs. that.
why does this thread read as escapism to so many? because it's a cultural norm people are not aware of, and it gets violated.
I think it honestly not even a signal of how good anymore. It's become noise in my experience..
I've worked with an absolute leetcode beast and had a masters in CS. He insisted we use Redis for a project with a lot of relational data. We ended up building a mini relational database on top of redis. Whatever you're imagining about the dev experience, it was worse. He was a lead/senior engineer at the company. Turns out he never bothered to properly learn SQL because he didn't like it. C'est la vie, ggs I guess.
One of the best engineers I worked with was a biochemist who fell in love with programming through chance.
Most of the people I admired in the industry are self taught and passionate about the craft; a lot of them are also immigrants who didn't have access to prestigeus unis. Some went to uni but admit they've been programming since before that.
You can't really learn to be passionate about the craft and to enjoy learning at any uni.
Gosh, I must be doing something wrong. I spent 15 minutes (of which a lot was waiting while it was thinking about "backwards rationalising" it's decision and "gaslighting"[1]) arguing with it over why it keeps using `node -e "console.log(require('fs').readdirSync('…'))"` instead of `ls -l …`.
Like it did everything:
- this is not a Linux system (true, it was macOS)
- it is not an available command
- the binary is corrupted
- node/js is more precise
- V8 JavaScript is faster than bash (true technically??? But not in this context lol)
- JavaScript is more versatile
I forgot what else we went through but there were a few more things. I indulged it because it was incredulous and funny. The prompts from my side were all questions, never instructions. I assume an instruction would've helped here, but also I don't think Opus ever did this (but on the other hand Opus wrote python scripts to format/indent, instead of just running cargo fmt, so I guess potato potato)
Gosh, that seems like a conclusion someone came to using AI lol.
I agree that intuition is important, and that it's sometimes easier to develop correct intuition without a conflicting bias/habit, BUT... I don't think traditional engineering skills conflict with using AI tools. If anything it's more important, but maybe that's just the recently sprouted gay hair on my head talking
Totally agree. They even vibe-wrote the paragraph I quoted.
I'd go so far as to say people who prompt AI to do something they can't do themselves are essentially non-technical management. I'm not a fan of non-technical managers of humans and similarly not a fan of this approach to AI either when quality really matters. (IMHO it's actually great for prototyping.)
The idea you can only learn to prompt well if you learned prompting before learning how to do the work yourself is strange, maybe even completely backwards. I've never heard teachers say to learn how to do math with a calculator then memorize multiplication facts later. Or anyone say the best managers are ones who first started in management and then developed technical expertise. Why are they so committed to the idea that this skill is so different than all the others?
It's probably a very convenient fantasy though for management types to think these expensive later-career people are useless or even harmful. And maybe said managers are non-technical themselves and don't understand the problems this creates.
Lol... I noticed it does weird stuff sometimes. I'll see it generate a python script inline on the CLI to edit files. Like... Yo what the fuck? It literally used the edit tool until 5 turn ago.
Also, it'll run a formatter, read, edit to undo auto formatting and then continue on its merry way. What is the point of that??? Lol
The achievements of thousands of of agents vibe coding in parallel. Marvellous, simply marvellous. And the news fearmonger how AI will replace jobs. Lol
As someone who thinks AI is an incredible tool, I think your job is safe. Are there incompetent companies that are replacing people with AI? Yup... But also, I'm pretty sure most people don't want to work at companies with such poor management anyway? So in a way, I think AI is prefiltering incompetent management for us.
On you other two points: I kinda feel you, but I'm finding ways of enjoying my work with AI. It's been a bit of a shift and I'm still adjusting probably, but it feels like it's getting better. I never really enjoyed "typing" code, but the creative process of designing solutions and building the. And I never thought typing was the "building" part, it was just an unavoidable mechanical "obstacle" (not using the word obstacle as a bad thing necessarily, but idk it's just typing you know?)
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