"I personally don’t touch LLMs with a stick. I don’t let them near my brain. Many of my friends share that sentiment."
Any software engineer who shares this sentiment is doing their career a disservice. LLMs have their pitfalls, and I have been skeptical of their capabilities, but nevertheless I have tried them out earnestly. The progress of AI coding assistants over the past year has been remarkable, and now they are a routine part of my workflow. It does take some getting used to, and effectively using an AI coding assistant is a skill in and of itself that is worth mastering.
I feel AI now is good enough to follow the same pattern as with internet usage. The quality ranges from useless to awesome based on how you use it. Blanked statements that “it is terrible and uesless” reveals more about the person than the tech at this point.
It’s some mixture of luddites, denial, ignorance, and I don’t know what else.
I’m not sure what these people are NOT seeing. Maybe I’m somehow fortunate with visibility into what AI can do today, and what it will do tomorrow. But I’m not doing anything special. Just paying attention and keeping an open mind.
I’ve been at this for 40 years, working professionally for more than 30. I’ve seen lots.
One pattern I’ve seen repeating is folks who seem to stop leaning at some point. I don’t understand this, because for me learning everyday is what fuels me. And those folks eventually die on the vine, or they become the last few greybeards working on COBOL.
We are alive at a very interesting time in tech. I am excited about that. I am here for it.
it already tells me enough to stay away from using AI tools for coding. and that's just one reason, if i consider all the others, then that's more than enough.
I've used AI assitance in coding for a year before I quit. The hardest part was a day when the services where unexpectedly down, and working felt like I was amputated in some way. Nothing works, my usual movement does not produce code. That day I realised these AI integrations take away my knowledge and skill of the matter and is just maximising the easiest and fastest part of software development: writing code.
Any software engineer who shares this sentiment is doing their career a disservice. LLMs have their pitfalls, and I have been skeptical of their capabilities, but nevertheless I have tried them out earnestly. The progress of AI coding assistants over the past year has been remarkable, and now they are a routine part of my workflow. It does take some getting used to, and effectively using an AI coding assistant is a skill in and of itself that is worth mastering.