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> AI is going to increase the rate of complexity 10 fold by spitting out enormous amounts of code.

This is true, and I am (sadly, I'd say) guilty of it. In the past, for example, I'd be much more wary about having too much duplication. I was working on a Go project where I needed to have multiple levels of object mapping (e.g. entity objects to DTOs, etc.), and with LLMs it just spit out the answer in seconds (correct I'd add), even though it was lots and lots of code where in the past I would have written a more generic solution to prevent me from having to write so much boilerplate.

I see where the evolution of coding is going, and as a late middle aged developer it has made me look for the exits. I don't disagree with the business rationale of the direction, and I certainly have found a ton of value in AI (e.g. I think it makes learning a new language a lot easier). But I think it makes programming so much less enjoyable for me personally. I feel like it's transformed the job more to "editor" from "author", and for me, the nitty gritty details of programming were fun.

Note I'm not making any broad statement about the profession generally, I'm just stating with some sadness that I don't enjoy where the day-to-day of programming is heading, and I just feel lucky that I've saved up enough in the earlier part of my career to get out now.

▲ aerhardt a day ago | parent | next [-]

I don't always programming in the small, and still feel that AIs provide plenty of chance for architecture, design, refactoring. For me it's been an absolute boon, I'm enjoying build more than ever. At any rate it's undeniably transformative and I can see many people not enjoying the end state.

▲ outside1234 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Really? I sort of feel the opposite. I am a mid-career as well and HIGHLY TIRED of writing yet another set of boilerplate to do a thing or chase down some syntax error in the code and the fact that AI will now do this for me has given me a lot more energy to focus on the higher level thinking about how it all fits together.

▲ codr7 a day ago | parent | next [-]

So instead of being creative and finding ways to avoid duplication, you look for a way to make copies faster.

That's one way to solve the problem.

Not the way I'm looking for when hiring.

▲ JohnBooty a day ago | parent | next [-]

    So instead of being creative and finding ways to avoid 
    duplication, you look for a way to make copies faster.

That's not at all how I read the parent post. It feels more like you're replying to a hybrid of the grandparent post (person who churned out a lot of duplicated code with AI) and the parent post (person who likes being "editor" and finds AI helpful)

▲ AnimalMuppet a day ago | parent | prev [-]

This has happened before.

When we went from assembler to compilers, this logic would have said, "So instead of being creative and finding ways to avoid hand-coding loops, you look for a way to spit out copies of loops faster." And the answer is, "Yeah, I do! I want the compiler to write the loop for me and get all the jumps right so I don't have to worry about it! Getting the jumps for the loop right is incidental to what I'm actually trying to write; I've got better things to spend my time on."

Note well: I am not arguing that AI will produce good code rather than multiple layers of garbage. I am merely saying that this particular argument is weak.

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codr7 a day ago | parent | next [-]

You're comparing an LLM to a compiler, which doesn't make much sense to me.

If my compiler occasionally output the recipe for vegan pancakes instead of working code I would definitely think differently of it.

	▲	AnimalMuppet a day ago \| parent [-]
		I'm comparing an LLM to a compiler to the degree that they automate much of the writing of the tedious parts of code, rather than finding ways to reduce the amount of such code written (and therefore to the degree warranted by the argument in your previous post). I will admit that compilers don't hallucinate much.

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xigoi a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The difference is that a high-level programming language abstracts away the duplication, whereas an LLM does not.

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player1234 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Comparing current AI to a compiler is a dogwhistle for white supremacy.

▲ hn_throwaway_99 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Right now you're getting downvoted, but I don't disagree with you. It's not hard for me to see how lots of people like how AI helps them code (again, I find it helpful in tons of areas), so I think it's more of a personal preference kind of thing. It's also probably that I'm older (nearing 50), and I think there is a lot of good research that a fundamental shift happens in most people's brains in their 40s that makes it more difficult to make major shifts to new ways of doing things (and I've found that in myself).

I think the only thing that perhaps I don't totally agree with is the idea that AI just lets you focus on a higher level of thinking while it "takes care of the details". AI is still the leakiest of abstractions, and while coding LLMs have gotten much better over the past 2 years I can't just trust it, so I still have to review every line that goes to prod. I just find that task much less enjoyable ("editing") than being the author of code. And heck, I'm someone that really enjoys doing code reviews. I think with code reviews my mind is in a state that I'm helping to mentor another human, and I love that aspect of it. I'm not so energetic about helping to train our robot overlords.