Comment by negamax

18 hours ago

I keep on wondering how much of the AI embrace is marketing driven. Yes, it can produce value and cut corners. But it seems like self driving by 2016 Musk prediction. Which never happened. With IPO/Stock valuations closely tied to hype, I wonder if we are all witnessing a giant bubble in the making

How much of this is mass financial engineering than real value. Reading a lot of nudges how everyone should have Google or other AI stock in their portfolio/retirement accounts

No need to wonder, just look at the numbers - investments versus revenue are hugely disparate, growth is plateauing.

Maybe we haven't seen much economic value or productivity increase given all the AI hypes. I don't think we can deny the fact that programming has been through a paradigm shift where humans aren't the only ones writing code and the amount of code written by humans I would say is decreasing.

What you are saying may have made sense at the start of 2025 where people were still using github copilot tab auto completes(atleast I did) and was just toying with things like cursor, but unsure.

Things have changed drastically now, engineers with these tools(like claude code) have become unstoppable.

Atleast for me, I have been able to contribute to the codebases i was unfamiliar with, even with different tech stacks. No, I am not talking about generating ai slop, but I have been enabled to write principal engineer level code unlike before.

So i don't agree with the above statement, it's actually generating real value and I have become valuable because of the tools available to me.

  • These are definitely valuable but how much idk.

    I've just spent some time with Opus to extend basic metrics in a static language, with guides, where to look, what set of metrics etc, it's making quite a few mistakes for not a hard task...

    • I have replied to a comment adjacent to yours, for my parent comment. Please check i think if you follow the "process", it is avoidable.

  • > Things have changed drastically now, engineers with these tools(like claude code) have become unstoppable

    I’ve spent the last week unwinding my coworkers slop who said the same thing.

    • To be honest, what you have described only shows lack of process.

      I am not talking about vibe coding here, which is totally different and understandable. But I am talking about the professional context where the structure is already in place.

      Here is my workflow, if it helps:

      1. I have a system level prompt i execute(command/skill) before I start anything which says things like

          i) follow SOLID principles
          ii) follow TDD
          iii) follow these testing principles like, don't test the implementation details etc
          and 20 other things
      

      2. I give it the context of what I need to accomplish, and toggle the plan mode ask it follow the above things I have set at system level, and generate me a document to review step by step

      3. I review everything, add feedback to the generated plan, prompt again, and finally finalize the plan

      4. now that the plan is finalized, I would have a small alignment with co-workers and ask it implement step by step, and then before proceeding with next step, i will tell it to ask me for feedback

      each steps code is reviewed and commited, before proceeding to next step

      5. once all steps are done, manual testing is done, i do a local review

      6. I have a specific skill which reviews everything, and gives me feedback

      7. we have human reviewers who will review the code, and coderabbit

      8. then we take it to the staging and uat before taking to prod

      so see we have not skipped any process of "software engineering", claude code is just an accelrant

      but if you are not doing most of the above steps, i see what you are saying would happen by default

There's nothing to wonder about. It's obviously marketing.

The whole narrative of "inevitability" is the stock behavior of tech companies who want to push a product onto the public. Why fight the inevitable? All you can do is accept and adapt.

And given how many companies ask vendors whether their product "has AI" without having the slightest inkling of what that even means or whether it even makes sense, as if it were some kind of magical fairy dust - yeah, the stench of hype is thick enough you could cut it with a knife.

Of course, that doesn't mean it lacks all utility.

I realize many are disappointed (especially by technical churn, star-based-development JS projects on github without technical rigour). I don't trust any claim on the open web if I don't know the technical background of the person making it.

However I think - Nadh, ronacher, the redis bro - these are people who can be trusted. I find Nadh's article (OP) quite balanced.