One size never fits all. I am old enough to remember what a game changer Spreadsheets (VisiCalc) where. They made the personal computer into a SwissArmy knife for many people that could not justify investing large sums of money into software to solve a niche problem. Until that time PCs simply were not a big thing.

I believe AI will do something similar for programming. The level of complexity in modern apps is high and requires the use of many technologies that most of us cannot remotely claim to be expert in. Getting an idea and getting a prototype will definitely be easier. Production Code is another beast. Dealing with legacy systems etc will still require experts at least for the near future IMHO.

▲

hungryhobbit 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I remember when my dev team included some people using Emacs, some using Eclipse (this was pre-VS Code), and some using IntelliJ.

Developers will always disagree on the best tool for X ... but we should all fear the Luddites who refuse to even try new tools, like AI. That personality type doesn't at all mesh with my idea of a "good programmer".

▲

tovej an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I will try anything reasonable. And have tried LLM tools for programming. But there's no way I would use it daily. It's too inefficient, too error prone, and will actively make me a worse programmer (as I will be writing less code and making fewer decisions. I will also understand less of the systems I'm building).

All the excellent developers around me are _not_ using AI except for very small, contained tasks.

▲

rsoto2 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Flat out wrong. The most impressive engineers I've met in my career did not care for fancy tools with bells and whistles.

▲

hext an hour ago | parent [-]

Sure, I bet they didn't outright dismiss them as useless to the entire field though! I'm sure they still understood the value those fancy tools provided to their peers.

	▲	skydhash 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Unless someone is trolling, it’s rare for people to deem it as “useless”. Most counterpoints have been about ethics and issues that surround LLM usage. Things like licensing, coding vs review time, correctness and maintainability of the generated code, etc… Unless you believe we’re in a software engineering utopia, I think it’s fair to call those out.

▲

_se an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you implying that someone who prefers Eclipse is more likely to be a good software engineer than someone who prefers Emacs? If so, that is so hilariously backwards that I can't even begin to understand the types of experiences that you must've had.

I am sure that you're objectively wrong if that is what you're saying.

	▲	altruios 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm reading it as: those unwilling to try both and make an honest evaluation and instead have preconceived notions and bigotry tend to make bad programmers. That preferences are fine, but dogmatism should be avoided.