I'm a software engineer, I do software development but also system maintenance, and I do handle networking and telephony systems, and work with some juniors. Working with AI is problematic. It can speed up you but at the same time delay you. For the system maintenance part sometimes you need to do a lot of stuff fast and in various machines and you can't just count on a cloud based AI oracle (that takes time) to do your job for you. And the same time, the more you use it as a oracle, the less competent you get. If you are an expert, I would say in any area, you do benefit from using AI as a tool but it easily can become a double edged sword and make you less proficient. For juniors, it can make them rapidly produce stuff that is impressive and works ok for sites and some visual stuff, but it's impossible for a junior to become an expert if they get stuck in the AI using loop. For AI to cause a clean impact, I would say that we would have to live in a world where software engineering didn't matter. That is, the choice of databases, high availability systems, the programming languages themselves.
> we would have to live in a world where software engineering didn't matter.
As an engineer who works very hard to do the right thing, I'm beginning to worry that software engineering doesn't matter. I write code that i think about a lot, understanding every line. It's not perfect, but I try to make sure my code is maintainable and well structured. I work much slower then my colleagues who produce unmaintainable slop at an alarming rate. In my career, no customer has ever complained about code structure or quality. It feels like I'm sinking in quicksand in an industry that's dying.
Of course customers do not care about code quality in and of itself. Just like they don't inherently care about the type of seam used for a garment. But they do care if their clothes fall apart after two washes. People care if software is buggy or slow or becomes harder to use or more expensive over time. And the way we know how to mitigate that is by ensuring code quality (it's definitely not the only factor, but an important one).
duendefm · · focus · HN ↗
bigfishrunning · · focus · HN ↗
As an engineer who works very hard to do the right thing, I'm beginning to worry that software engineering doesn't matter. I write code that i think about a lot, understanding every line. It's not perfect, but I try to make sure my code is maintainable and well structured. I work much slower then my colleagues who produce unmaintainable slop at an alarming rate. In my career, no customer has ever complained about code structure or quality. It feels like I'm sinking in quicksand in an industry that's dying.
juvvel · · focus · HN ↗