Comment by falloutx
20 days ago
Its only revolutionary if you think engineers were slow before or software was not being delivered fast enough. Its revolutionary for some people sure, but everyone is in a different situation, so one man's trash can be other man's treasure. Most people are treading both paths as automation threatens their livelihood and work they loved, also still not able to understand why would people pay to companies that are actively trying to convince your employer that your job is worthless.
Even If I like this tech, I still dont want to support the companies who make it. Yet to pay a cent to these companies, still using the credits given to me by my employer.
Of course software hasn’t been delivered fast enough. There is so so so much of the world that still needs high quality software.
I think there are four fundamental issues here for us...
1. There are actually less software jobs out there, with huge layoffs still going on, so software engineering as a profession doesn't seem to profit from AI.
2. The remaining engineers are expected by their employers to ship more. Even if they can manage that using AI, there will be higher pressure and higher stress on them, which makes their work less fulfilling, more prone to burnout etc.
3. Tied to the previous - this increases workism, measuring people, engineers by some output benchmark alone, treating them more like factory workers instead of expert, free-thinking individuals (often with higher education degrees). Which again degrades this profession as a whole.
3. Measuring developer productivity hasn't really been cracked before either, and still after AI, there is not a lot of real data proving that these tools actually make us more productive, whatever that may be. There is only anecdotal evidence: I did this in X time, when it would have taken me otherwise Y time - but at the same time it's well known that estimating software delivery timelines is next to impossible, meaning, the estimation of "Y" is probably flawed.
So a lot of things going on apart from "the world will surely need more software".
I don't see how anything you're saying is a response to what I said.
Do you have this same understanding for all the people whose livelihoods are threatened (or already extinct) due to the work of engineers?
Yes, but who did we automate out of a job by building crappy software? Accountants are more threatened by AI than any of the software we created before, same with Lawyers, teachers. We didnt automate any physical labourers out of a job too.