Comment by aprdm

1 day ago

lol same. I just wrote a bunch of diagrams with mermaid that would legit take me a week, also did a mock of an UI for a frontend engineer that would take me another week to do .. or some designers. All of that in between meetings...

Waiting for it to actually go well to see what else I can do !

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aprdm

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nonethewiser  1 day ago

The more I have this experience and read people maligning AI for coding, the more I think the junior developers are actually not the ones in danger.

  • daxfohl  1 day ago

    Oh I've thought this for years. As an L7, basically my primary role is to serve as someone to bounce ideas off of, and to make recommendations based on experience. A chatbot, with its virtually infinite supply of experience, could ostensibly replace my role way sooner than it could a solid junior/mid-level coder. The main thing it needs is a consistent vision and direction that aligns with the needs of nearby teams, which frankly sounds not all that hard to write in code (I've been considering doing this).

    Probably the biggest gap would be the ability to ignite, drive, and launch new initiatives. How does an AI agent "lead" an engineering team? That's not something you can code up in an agent runtime. It'd require a whole culture change that I have a hard time seeing in reality. But of course if there comes a point where AI takes all the junior and mid-level coding jobs, then at that point there's no culture to change, so staff/principal jobs would be just as at risk.

    • nonethewiser  14 hours ago

      I dont think it's a replacement for that but it's definitely provides some of it. Whereas senior+ level people were required before.

      I think that's sort of a theme with LLMs. It's not that it's better than "the real thing" (in this case a senior+ software engineer) or that its without flaws... but it's a fucking service. Having just a semblance of an advanced software engineer in your pocket is a game changer. It doesn't need to be perfect or better than the real thing to fundamentally change things.

    • TACIXAT  1 day ago

      I have the complete opposite impression w.r.t. architecture decisions. The LLMs can cargo cult an existing design, but they do not think through design consequences well at all. I use them as a rubber duck non-stop, but I think I respect less than one out of every six of their suggestions.

      4 replies →

wombat-man  1 day ago

I have been able to prototype way faster. I can explain how I want a prototype reworked and it's often successful. Doesn't always work, but super useful more often than not.