It's very interesting that this has become such a dichotomy.
On one hand you have AI enthusiasts who are shipping more than they ever have, they are super excited about being able to use the models and build everything they've ever wanted to. Utopia, amazing.
The other side is this complete, absolute disconnect from the job function, absolute dissatisfaction, empty feeling where the whole world is burning.
> On one hand you have AI enthusiasts who are shipping more than they ever have, they are super excited about being able to use the models and build everything they've ever wanted to. Utopia, amazing.
You can't ship faster than you can comprehend, unless you stop caring about comprehension.
Up until the last year the best developers were generally those who valued comprehension and wanted to really understand the libraries, code and infrastructure of their projects because that comprehension was what led to quality software.
Those who didn't care tended to ship buggy crap and weren't great devs.
In my experience those who didn't really care about deeply understanding the systems they were working on are loving AI. But those who did care are now literally unable comprehend the state of the codebase and are being forced to work in a way that's extremely unnatural to them.
I say this because I've personally struggled with this over the last year as I've was one of those people who spent a lot of time building comprehensive mental models for the systems I worked on. Now I just assume the AI understands and just do what I need to do to get whatever functionality I'm working on over the line. I don't like it and I've lost all technical interest in coding at this point, but it is what it is ultimately. Coding is no longer about comprehension, it's just about asking Claude to do something.
>You can't ship faster than you can comprehend, unless you stop caring about comprehension.
Of course you can. "You can't ship a nuclear aircraft carrier because no one human comprehends it all." Again, obviously wrong. Humans have been shipping systems that no one person understands for a long time. If it all had to fit in one human's brain, it would quickly stunt the growth of civilization.
The fact that AI agents are really fast at generating code suddenly moves the bottleneck to the review step. The fact that AI agents are great at attacking computer systems moves the bottleneck to log analysis and triage. Neither of these are going to block forward progress for long. AI agents have to be reading the logs, because there are not enough human eyeballs to keep up. AI agents will be reviewing code soon enough, and they already are in high performing organizations.
> Humans have been shipping systems that no one person understands for a long time
Systems of humans have been shipping systems that no one persons can understand. Take the nuclear aircraft, there’s no part on it that you can’t find someone that is accountable for that part. That is why we can still build them and improve on the design.
NichoPaolucci · · focus · HN ↗
On one hand you have AI enthusiasts who are shipping more than they ever have, they are super excited about being able to use the models and build everything they've ever wanted to. Utopia, amazing.
The other side is this complete, absolute disconnect from the job function, absolute dissatisfaction, empty feeling where the whole world is burning.
kypro · · focus · HN ↗
You can't ship faster than you can comprehend, unless you stop caring about comprehension.
Up until the last year the best developers were generally those who valued comprehension and wanted to really understand the libraries, code and infrastructure of their projects because that comprehension was what led to quality software.
Those who didn't care tended to ship buggy crap and weren't great devs.
In my experience those who didn't really care about deeply understanding the systems they were working on are loving AI. But those who did care are now literally unable comprehend the state of the codebase and are being forced to work in a way that's extremely unnatural to them.
I say this because I've personally struggled with this over the last year as I've was one of those people who spent a lot of time building comprehensive mental models for the systems I worked on. Now I just assume the AI understands and just do what I need to do to get whatever functionality I'm working on over the line. I don't like it and I've lost all technical interest in coding at this point, but it is what it is ultimately. Coding is no longer about comprehension, it's just about asking Claude to do something.
tacon · · focus · HN ↗
Of course you can. "You can't ship a nuclear aircraft carrier because no one human comprehends it all." Again, obviously wrong. Humans have been shipping systems that no one person understands for a long time. If it all had to fit in one human's brain, it would quickly stunt the growth of civilization.
The fact that AI agents are really fast at generating code suddenly moves the bottleneck to the review step. The fact that AI agents are great at attacking computer systems moves the bottleneck to log analysis and triage. Neither of these are going to block forward progress for long. AI agents have to be reading the logs, because there are not enough human eyeballs to keep up. AI agents will be reviewing code soon enough, and they already are in high performing organizations.
skydhash · · focus · HN ↗
Systems of humans have been shipping systems that no one persons can understand. Take the nuclear aircraft, there’s no part on it that you can’t find someone that is accountable for that part. That is why we can still build them and improve on the design.