It's interesting how there's an increasing split of software engineers into those who're very happy with AI and leaning more into it, and those who're increasingly skeptical or dejected.

I don't know how this will play out, but I haven't seen anything like this before.

I have leaned heavily into it… and became good at “agentic thinking”, but now I’m going to reverse. I have become dumber, sloppier, lazier, more distracted. I’m less happy than before. It’s hard to escape the productivity addiction and expectations though.

I find AI autocomplete and chat (asking specific questions, getting general code I can adapt, etc.) to be useful. I'm not sold on agents and agentic workflow.

When I tried using agents for something as a test it immediately started doing things instead of being part of a conversation. I want to be actively involved in the process, not sit back and let AI agents write/generate stuff that I'd have to/end up rewriting/modifying anyway when it goes against the design I have in mind.

The other thing I don't like about agents is their ability to run any command [1]. That seems like a nightmare w.r.t. the potential for leaking secrets (signing/access keys, etc.) or doing damage (deleting files, database tables, etc.).

[1] You can set the option to review every command it runs, but you're then just hand-holding the agent.

Right now I'm leaning towards using it at work because I'm being paid to ship stuff, but it really forces me to NOT use it after work in order just to keep my personal skills sharp. That last step used to be optional, now it's not imo.

For my social circle, the distinction falls almost perfectly along the line of people who see software engineering as a craft / passion, versus those who see it as something that needs to be done to get paid.

The first group is generally disillusioned, for two reasons. First, it's an attack on their hobby. Second, they sort of can't let go: they want to own the product, they want to understand if the code is good or bad, and they spend a lot of time cleaning up after LLMs. Which, frankly, is not fun. You're no longer doing anything clever, you're just a janitor.

The second group is over the moon about it because they feel it gives them the elite powers previously only reserved for greybeards.

I don't think this is unique to coding. It's the same thing with writing. If you like writing, you probably hate LLMs. If you see writing as a boring chore that needs to be done, you are delighted to have a button you can press. Haha, take that all the influential bloggers, tech writers, etc. I can now do your job at 10x the speed.

I haven't really seen this, personally. Basically everyone I know is both at once. We acknowledge that it's really good at what it does and use it, but it's not enjoyable to use, and we end up dejected about the future of our craft and our jobs.

> but I haven't seen anything like this before

Just a bunch of controversial ideas: structured programming, null, intellisense, microservices, cloud first, serverless, OOP, "Clean Code", exceptions, SaaS.

I think it's a useful tool, but peak workflow is basically the rough existing development paradigm, if that can be defined, but let AI do the grunt work (typing, some researching) and help you understand things in your own brain, from which you make well thought out decisions and are able to validate output, later define feature requirements, debug, etc....a maintained understanding of a complex system.

The approach currently being foisted upon me is to offload almost everything to LLMs (have it write a complex tech spec -> one shot into tickets -> one shot implementation of said tickets), with humans reviewing throughout, and repeating this iteration until it 'looks good'...throwing sh*t at the wall until something sticks, basically. However, we're being expected to review at a far faster pace than one reasonably can while maintaining an understanding of the system.

Meaning, with this paradigm, humans will largely be rubber stampers and will atrophy their abilities as a result, which will seemingly result in compounding adverse effects.

TLDR in my experience the AI can help with some 'busy work' eg translating a well defined solution in my head into code. The time it takes to understand an implementation and ensure correctness will not change. LLMs cannot reliably do this. This traditionally has occurred during implementation by the implementer, and during code review by code reviewers. I don't think simply shifting the implementer's comprehension 'duties' to code reviewers provides any benefit.

It's a bit like the reality distortion field and how some engineers are not susceptible to it.

Can I be both?

To me, doesn't feel much different than when infra-as-code became popular in the 2010s

It was a huge shift in the world of system administration, gave birth to devops, and, along with the rise of containers & cloud computing, it radically altered how companies ran their infrastructure

Some people leaned into it, others didn't and a huge rift opened up between them

I used to say "automate all the things" - I still do, but I used to too

AI tools are just an acceleration of that mindset and in my world of cloud/devops/sre I'm heavily leaning into AI-driven development and daily workflow

I'm very happy with the performance and ability of AI. I think the best software ever will come out of this. It's very clear to me that AI empowers one to make "just ok" software effortlessly, and "incredibly excellent" software with the same level of effort we previously used to make "just ok" software. So there will be a lot of slop, but there will also be some real diamonds created by those who put the extra work in. The extra work might not involve manually writing or even reading much code, but it is work nonetheless.

I still count myself as "dejected" overall. I'm dejected by the economic shape of AI which seems destined to keep concentrating outsized rewards to the top few who own it or have enough capital to shackle it to their will. I'm fearful that intelligence, once it becomes a commodity you can rent any time you may need it, will be socially devalued in our already anti-intellectual society. I worry that in a couple decades we may resemble the world of "The Machine Stops" (1909), where nobody really knows how things work.

Of course we already live in such a complex world, no one person has complete knowledge of the "stack" they rely on. I can write software in C or assembler but I can't design a CPU and don't really understand how one is manufactured. (I may someday study that field, but I haven't yet!) But I take solace in the fact that somebody out there, has put the time in to study each of those things and is an expert in them. At every layer and in every niche of our engineering world there are masters of their craft, and there are students learning the fundamentals to keep that knowledge alive and growing. What if in 30 or 40 years that is not the case, and there are whole corners of knowledge the modern world depends on where everybody is reduced to "I dunno how it works, but Claude said..."?