Comment by ivraatiems

This investigation aligns with my experience in a lot of ways. I'm con-the influence and behavior big AI companies, but lukewarm-to-pro the actual use of the technology itself.

I use Claude and other models frequently (mostly via Cursor, with a smattering of other tools) in my work now. It is not at the "I never write code myself" point, but the AI tools are absolutely capable of generating highly effective and usable code, usually nearly as good or as good as what I'd do myself, with guidance.

It hasn't eliminated the need for my existence as an engineer, but it has changed it drastically. It is much more like "tell the computer what I want and mostly get it" than it was a year ago.

And yet, I have friends and colleagues who reject it out of hand as useless, and are so skeptical of it that they suggest it must only be good because my skills are poor, or our codebase is bad, or I'm getting lucky.

I just can't totally credit any of those explanations anymore.