Comment by fauigerzigerk
8 hours ago
I agree. The article's logic is incoherent. It conflates the choice of tools with the decision what product to make and what level of quality to aim for.
If AI can be used to make bad (or good enough) software more cheaply, I have no problem with that. I'm sure we will get a huge amount of bad software. Fine.
But what matters is whether we get more great software as well. I think AI makes that more likely rather than less likely.
Less time will be spent on churning out basic features, integrations and bug fixes. Putting more effort into higher quality or niche features will become economically viable.
I wonder if that's only really true for "pre-LLM" engineers though. If all you know is prompting maybe there's not a higher quality with more focused that can really be achieved.
It might just all meld into a mediocre soup of features.
To be clear not against AI assisted coding, think it can work pretty great but thinking about the implications for future engineers.
>If all you know is prompting maybe there's not a higher quality with more focused that can really be achieved.
That's true of any particular individual but not for a company that can decide to hire someone who can do more than prompting.
>It might just all meld into a mediocre soup of features
I don't think the relative economics have changed. Mediocre makes sense for a lot of software categories because not everyone competes on software quality.
But in other areas software quality makes a difference it will continue to make a difference. It's not a question of tools.