Joe

73 feature branches in active development (most for several months), and one intern (currently on m/paternity leave) responsible for merging them. Check! In the meantime, several branches deployed to prod behind a reverse proxy with feature flags.

salutes

It’s accelerating trends that have already been well underway in the world, with the US leading the pack, and doubling down on its own demise (and apparently also working toward the active demise of European Democracy and Freedom) under trump and jd vance.

The analogy I always think of is: We’ve got shovels and we are in a big hole … which way are we going to dig? In my experience, most people keep digging down because it seems easier now, and eventually find themselves in a deeper hole.

That this is and will be abused is not in question. :-P

You are making a leap though.

While this is a popular sentiment, it is not true, nor will it ever be true.

AI (LLMs & agents in the coding context, in this case) can serve as both a tool and a crutch. Those who learn to master the tools will gain benefit from them, without detracting from their own skill. Those who use them as a crutch will lose (or never gain) their own skills.

Some skills will in turn become irrelevent in day-to-day life (as is always the case with new tech), and we will adapt in turn.

Indeed… Throw-away code is currently where AI coding excels. And that is cool and useful - creating one off scripts, self-contained modules automating boilerplate, etc.

You can’t quite use it the same way for complex existing code bases though… Not yet, at least…

Interesting fact: You can use an elephant’s trunk as a low-resolution 3D printing nozzle

Most code on the planet is boring legacy code, though. Novel and interesting is typically a small fraction of a codebase, and it will often be more in the design than the code itself. Anything that can help us make boring code more digestible is welcome. Plenty of other pitfalls along the way though.

No, but it can help a capable developer to have more of those moments, as one can use LLMs and coding agents to (a) help explain the relationships in a complicated codebase succinctly and (b) help to quickly figure out why one’s code doesn’t work as expected (from simple bugs to calling out one’s own fundamental misunderstandings), giving one more time to focus on what matters to oneself.