Spot on. AI is nowhere close to being as good at reasoning and problem scoping & solving as a human dev. But it's also true that some CEOs won't care or understand that and replace devs or neglect to hire new devs anyway. A lot of business decisions are based purely on hype and snakeoil.
The only thing I would add is about the phrase "AI won't replacr developers. Developers who use AI will" - I think that plays a little into a narrative being pushed by AI hype merchants that is not true. In reality, if you are a great software engineer you can refuse to use AI crutches and be just fine and just as kick ass as ever. These tools are nowhere newr good enough to be considered essential or advantageous for anyone except for perhaps very junior developers while they learn or experienced devs who for some reason are trapped in a job where they only have to write very mediocre, repetitive code solving problems that have already been solved by thousands of other developers on github (where the LLM model is sourced).
I totally agree with that too. We could use the tools as engineers, it can make our lives a lot easier. But it's hard for us to be 100% replaced by them.
Fully agree that engineers will not get replaced by AI. In the end, we all are problem solvers, it's been a long time since we stopped wanting to be coding monkeys.
As you said it should become a support tool, for parts of our mental processes. But first, we need to have good bases for tools to be helpful.
Spot on. AI is nowhere close to being as good at reasoning and problem scoping & solving as a human dev. But it's also true that some CEOs won't care or understand that and replace devs or neglect to hire new devs anyway. A lot of business decisions are based purely on hype and snakeoil.
The only thing I would add is about the phrase "AI won't replacr developers. Developers who use AI will" - I think that plays a little into a narrative being pushed by AI hype merchants that is not true. In reality, if you are a great software engineer you can refuse to use AI crutches and be just fine and just as kick ass as ever. These tools are nowhere newr good enough to be considered essential or advantageous for anyone except for perhaps very junior developers while they learn or experienced devs who for some reason are trapped in a job where they only have to write very mediocre, repetitive code solving problems that have already been solved by thousands of other developers on github (where the LLM model is sourced).
A great read, Jade!
I totally agree with that too. We could use the tools as engineers, it can make our lives a lot easier. But it's hard for us to be 100% replaced by them.
Really enjoyed the post, Jade.
Fully agree that engineers will not get replaced by AI. In the end, we all are problem solvers, it's been a long time since we stopped wanting to be coding monkeys.
As you said it should become a support tool, for parts of our mental processes. But first, we need to have good bases for tools to be helpful.
Thanks a lot also for the mention.
An apt saying is going around, “engineers should not be scared of AI, they should be scared of other engineers effectively using AI”.
This is a very important message, I agree, AI in its current form cannot replace SWE. Predicting next word isn’t what we do.
I think a lot of the push/hype is because people are trying to sell their product.
I had many conversations with industry veterans and they said when computer was invented, they were having the same conversation.
I believe AI will make a lot of work trivial and humans will move onto do better things, harder and complex problems than we do today.
I watched the video "Debunking Devin: "First AI Software Engineer" Upwork lie exposed!" now thank you