ai software engineerin
i thought i would leave a few thoughts and impressions after basically exclusively using ai to not only code, but handle almost all aspects of the software development lifecycle.
firstly, i hate it.
i honestly don’t think i’ve learned a single new trick, technique, or had any new insight into software engineering since using ai. in the past, there would be incidents or bugs that would require careful inspection and reflection of what code is doing and how it is running. and in that process, i’ve learned so much. also, as someone who really enjoys puzzles and problem solving, it was very satisfying personally.
however, with ai, i don’t do any of that. i am just a cheerleader trying to get ai to find the solution. and, for the most part it does. i then read and understand what it does, but none of that sinks in and is truly absorbed the way it would’ve if i had done the work myself.it’s like listening to a math teacher explain a new concept to you. during the lecture, it’s very clear, very logical, and you understand it completely. then as soon as you leave the room, you have no idea how that worked. you need to put in the work, and ai simply won’t allow you to do that.
secondly, i am very productive.
i have a lot of experience engineering software, so generally, i know exactly what needs to happen and needs to exist for me to ship something. and in most cases, what i am asked to deliver are relatively simple. make service A that talks to service B, maybe do some minor transformations, retries, and caching, and it’s done. ai can get that right very easily, and there’s really not much for me to worry about.
it can also debug software issues really well. giving it access to
metrics, logs, even ssh and kubernetes, it is very fast to diving into
an issue. especially kubernetes. i rarely use the events api in
kubernetes, mostly because it’s pretty clunky, but ai doesn’t care.
it’ll slice and dice the output and find exactly what’s going on
quickly. i know exactly how it’s doing that, but the time it takes for
me to find field names, syntax for jq or sed or other cli tools,
before i even open the browser to search, ai already found the output i
needed. is that work i want to be good at? not really. am i capable of
learning it? sute, but i just don’t want to.
so, here i am. what am i trying to convey about ai… the one thing i do better than ai is out of the box thinking in problems. but, those happen so rarely. honestly, i don’t think i’ve ever had to implement something truly “creative” in my day job. i’m not a researcher and i’m not developing cutting edge software. most engineers in my position are not either. we just bang out solutions to business problems, and most business problems don’t hinge on a brand new algorithm or some exoctic data structure that hasn’t been seen before. they’re boring. and so, ai works well.
lastly, i am getting stupider.
well, maybe not more stupid, but i’m definitely not learning and getting better. unless you mean how to use ai, then yes, i’m getting better at that.