Another software engineer of 25 years here. I’m really surprised to see how badly you’ve been downvoted here for simply telling the truth. I suspect anyone who downvoted you either hasn’t used a paid frontier AI model to write code (so they think the free browser-based models are as good as it gets), assumes you’re pro-AI, or simply jumps on the AI-bad-downvote train.
For anyone that downvoted, tell us, why? Let’s have a conversation about it. Us software engineers are on the bleeding edge of this seismic shift. We’re seeing firsthand what it’s capable of, and how fast it’s improving. It doesn’t mean we’re in favour of the AI companies, or ram shortages, or data centers being rolled out in your backyard, or being turned into engineering team leads overnight. It’s been thrust into our lives just like yours, but if we don’t use it we’re throwing away a massive productivity boost and one of the most transformative technologies of the last few decades.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and the TLDR is that his comment is one huge doompost, and your comment is one large concern troll. I’m engaging with it anyway, not because you’ll read this, but someone else may.
First, the guy above us has basically suffered a depressive episode. “Might as well give the kids an A” and “the ship has sailed” and “no one will write software anymore.” These are defeatist attitudes. Maybe the guy just needs a place to vent his frustrations and doesn’t have anyone close to him. But in my opinion, sharing these thoughts out loud sets a bad example both as a senior engineer and as a role model for children and students of any kind. It’s giving up, it’s quitting, and it’s demoralizing. I believe he should have kept that to himself, unless this was a cry for help, in which case this is all the help I can provide and the only way I know how.
Second, the person I’m replying to leveled a lot of logical fallacies, real “Flood The Zone With Shit” shit. We got to start with the Appeal To Authority. Tenure is not the mark of an effective leader, but it’s all they can offer. 25 and 30 year engineers also puts them at about 55 to 65 years old, nearing retirement. They are not invested in the future of the industry, they are on the cusp of leaving it behind. So even if they were who they say they were, why should I believe them?
We also have a lot of Strawmen. “Downvoters have never used an AI before,” has the same energy as “Cryptocurrency haters have never minted an NFT before,” implying that AI resistance is founded on ignorance. “He’s just telling the truth,” is also really sneaky, because it primes us to take it at face value as fact. But it’s just like, an opinion maaan. “We’d be throwing away a massive productivity boost” is just straight up propaganda, may as well have just copy pasted Sam Altman for that one.
So now here’s from my experience. If you’re willing to take my word for it, I’m a 10-year engineer who’s been using Opus and Fable at work. Here’s how AI changed our company:
Productivity is not up, we are still beholden to clients who demand time to preview the releases. Management has forced us to cram more features into a given release, causing the clients to delay so they can reevaluate it. End result, we ship fewer features in a given month, not more.
Despite all this extra work being done, we still are working 40 plus hours a week.
Team morale is way down, as everyone believes that the only reason we’re using it this much is because management wants to lay people off.
Engineers are starting to snap at each other for trying to ask questions about new features, and the new favorite catch phrase of all is “I don’t know, have you asked Claude?”
32,000 line merge requests are now the norm. The bulk of that is unit tests that failed to account for basic UX: is it “nice” to use the software? These code reviews will inevitably let some large vulnerability through, so most code reviewers are taking longer to review so that they don’t get the blame.
Engineers are getting lazier writing their skill files and prompts, leading to increased churn. They’re using AI to write the skills that AI will ingest, leading to generational decay.
I now have to scrutinize the output of engineers that I used to value and respect, and after multiple iterations of code reviews with them, they begin to take it personally. This destroys our team cohesion and camaraderie.
Engineers are burning through their token allotments so fast that they are now twiddling their thumbs for an entire sprint until it can replenish. Management cannot decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing and are now so confused that they are hitting people with the carrot.
So… I said it before and I’ll say it again. THIS is the trillion dollar technology? It makes a bunch of people more tired, more angry, more scared, and more alone.
I think it’s worth remembering that most of humanity hasn’t been involved in anything resembling meaningful productive work for many decades.
From this, we can conclude that the general state of our society, including education, will not be impacted by the introduction of AI, it already sucks.
We didn’t ‘start failing our children’ in 2027, we started failing them in 1927, and more likely we have never NOT failed to educate people in how to not suck.
I wish more people of good conscience would take changes and work towards applying them meaningfully instead of letting the absolute worst people take maximum advantage of whatever advantage could be had of whatever change is coming.
It’s a rare opportunity for someone to actually ask for a conversation, so let’s have one.
First of all, “no one writing software” taken literally, is simply not true. People still write in all sorts of obsolete / obscure programming languages, mostly for fun, though occasionally there’s reasons why one might want to in a real world scenario. To me, code is art. You cannot stop art.
If we’re talking figuratively, when it comes to the “professional” software development. I’m not familiar with this side of things, but here’s my opinion: A lot of the industry has been churning out slop long before AI became a thing. Keeping the gears turning. Making changes nobody’s asked for. Buying up and destroying smaller companies. All in the name of profit and infinite growth. This is bad, AI or not.
From what I’ve seen, you at the very least still need experienced programmers to review and guide the AI, otherwise you’ll quickly run into unmaintainable, possibly insecure code. But proliferating AI coding will lead to nobody building that experience.
“Insecure code? But just let AI write test cases and review it for security flaws!” It might be good at catching some errors humans make when writing code, but if you spin this to its extreme, you will end up with AI cheating to satisfy the security tests, rather than actually writing secure code.
And you say productivity, but all I see is waste. Many people on your side of the fence desperately want to avoid having to label your “work” as being made with AI, because it’s not a good look. People don’t want slopware. AI is good at creating things quickly. To make a lot of noise, drowning out the signal. But in the end it’s just something flashy without substance or longevity.
AI is great if you want people further driven away from their fellow humans and into content addiction, with a short attention span, that can barely think for themselves. In the end, it’s the perfect tool for fascism.
So, ask yourself: Who actually benefits from this?
I’m not rejecting all that (generative) AI can do. There’s certainly some cases where it appears to be useful as a tool, in the right hands, for the right context. But the post you’re defending is pushing things to an extreme. And would you know, AI companies themselves are just as extreme. It’s a figurative suicide cult, if not a literal one.
I could go on. And I’m a bit all over the place. But anyway, this is why you’re experiencing a lot of pushback in some online spaces.
I see this sentiment constantly and I’ve yet to actually see a single example of AI generated codebase that I’d consider on par with anything but a mediocre one written by humans. You want me to appraise the quality of a product? Show me something that’s high quality, 'cause all I can see right now is billions being poured into products racing from incoherence towards mediocrity.
Another software engineer of 25 years here. I’m really surprised to see how badly you’ve been downvoted here for simply telling the truth. I suspect anyone who downvoted you either hasn’t used a paid frontier AI model to write code (so they think the free browser-based models are as good as it gets), assumes you’re pro-AI, or simply jumps on the AI-bad-downvote train.
For anyone that downvoted, tell us, why? Let’s have a conversation about it. Us software engineers are on the bleeding edge of this seismic shift. We’re seeing firsthand what it’s capable of, and how fast it’s improving. It doesn’t mean we’re in favour of the AI companies, or ram shortages, or data centers being rolled out in your backyard, or being turned into engineering team leads overnight. It’s been thrust into our lives just like yours, but if we don’t use it we’re throwing away a massive productivity boost and one of the most transformative technologies of the last few decades.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and the TLDR is that his comment is one huge doompost, and your comment is one large concern troll. I’m engaging with it anyway, not because you’ll read this, but someone else may.
First, the guy above us has basically suffered a depressive episode. “Might as well give the kids an A” and “the ship has sailed” and “no one will write software anymore.” These are defeatist attitudes. Maybe the guy just needs a place to vent his frustrations and doesn’t have anyone close to him. But in my opinion, sharing these thoughts out loud sets a bad example both as a senior engineer and as a role model for children and students of any kind. It’s giving up, it’s quitting, and it’s demoralizing. I believe he should have kept that to himself, unless this was a cry for help, in which case this is all the help I can provide and the only way I know how.
Second, the person I’m replying to leveled a lot of logical fallacies, real “Flood The Zone With Shit” shit. We got to start with the Appeal To Authority. Tenure is not the mark of an effective leader, but it’s all they can offer. 25 and 30 year engineers also puts them at about 55 to 65 years old, nearing retirement. They are not invested in the future of the industry, they are on the cusp of leaving it behind. So even if they were who they say they were, why should I believe them?
We also have a lot of Strawmen. “Downvoters have never used an AI before,” has the same energy as “Cryptocurrency haters have never minted an NFT before,” implying that AI resistance is founded on ignorance. “He’s just telling the truth,” is also really sneaky, because it primes us to take it at face value as fact. But it’s just like, an opinion maaan. “We’d be throwing away a massive productivity boost” is just straight up propaganda, may as well have just copy pasted Sam Altman for that one.
So now here’s from my experience. If you’re willing to take my word for it, I’m a 10-year engineer who’s been using Opus and Fable at work. Here’s how AI changed our company:
So… I said it before and I’ll say it again. THIS is the trillion dollar technology? It makes a bunch of people more tired, more angry, more scared, and more alone.
I think it’s worth remembering that most of humanity hasn’t been involved in anything resembling meaningful productive work for many decades.
From this, we can conclude that the general state of our society, including education, will not be impacted by the introduction of AI, it already sucks.
We didn’t ‘start failing our children’ in 2027, we started failing them in 1927, and more likely we have never NOT failed to educate people in how to not suck.
I wish more people of good conscience would take changes and work towards applying them meaningfully instead of letting the absolute worst people take maximum advantage of whatever advantage could be had of whatever change is coming.
For the down voters
It’s a rare opportunity for someone to actually ask for a conversation, so let’s have one.
First of all, “no one writing software” taken literally, is simply not true. People still write in all sorts of obsolete / obscure programming languages, mostly for fun, though occasionally there’s reasons why one might want to in a real world scenario. To me, code is art. You cannot stop art.
If we’re talking figuratively, when it comes to the “professional” software development. I’m not familiar with this side of things, but here’s my opinion: A lot of the industry has been churning out slop long before AI became a thing. Keeping the gears turning. Making changes nobody’s asked for. Buying up and destroying smaller companies. All in the name of profit and infinite growth. This is bad, AI or not.
From what I’ve seen, you at the very least still need experienced programmers to review and guide the AI, otherwise you’ll quickly run into unmaintainable, possibly insecure code. But proliferating AI coding will lead to nobody building that experience.
“Insecure code? But just let AI write test cases and review it for security flaws!” It might be good at catching some errors humans make when writing code, but if you spin this to its extreme, you will end up with AI cheating to satisfy the security tests, rather than actually writing secure code.
And you say productivity, but all I see is waste. Many people on your side of the fence desperately want to avoid having to label your “work” as being made with AI, because it’s not a good look. People don’t want slopware. AI is good at creating things quickly. To make a lot of noise, drowning out the signal. But in the end it’s just something flashy without substance or longevity.
AI is great if you want people further driven away from their fellow humans and into content addiction, with a short attention span, that can barely think for themselves. In the end, it’s the perfect tool for fascism.
So, ask yourself: Who actually benefits from this?
I’m not rejecting all that (generative) AI can do. There’s certainly some cases where it appears to be useful as a tool, in the right hands, for the right context. But the post you’re defending is pushing things to an extreme. And would you know, AI companies themselves are just as extreme. It’s a figurative suicide cult, if not a literal one.
I could go on. And I’m a bit all over the place. But anyway, this is why you’re experiencing a lot of pushback in some online spaces.
I see this sentiment constantly and I’ve yet to actually see a single example of AI generated codebase that I’d consider on par with anything but a mediocre one written by humans. You want me to appraise the quality of a product? Show me something that’s high quality, 'cause all I can see right now is billions being poured into products racing from incoherence towards mediocrity.