Comment by simonw
5 hours ago
The more time I spend accelerating my work with AI tools the more I realize how incredibly hard the craft of shipping useful software actually is.
Sure, Claude Code and Codex can write (most of) the code for me - but the amount of technical knowledge I need to decide what and how to build remains enormous.
As an example: I'm working on a system right now that works like Claude Artifacts, allowing custom HTML+JS apps to safely run in an iframe sandbox inside a larger application.
Just understanding why that's a useful thing that can be built requires deep knowledge of sandboxing, security threats, browser security models, and half a dozen different platform features that have been evolving over a couple of decades.
A vibe coded without that technical understanding would have zero chance of prompting such a thing into existence, no matter how much guidance the LLMs gave them.
It really saddens me to see some developers talk about literally quitting their careers over AI, right when the benefits of existing deep technical experience have never been more valuable.
> It really saddens me to see some developers talk about literally quitting their careers over AI, right when the benefits of existing deep technical experience have never been more valuable.
1. Because the experience of interacting with AI is miserable. I like writing code. I don't like finding the magic incantation that gets the machine to write the correct code. I don't like correcting the machine when it gets things wrong. I don't like any of this, it's awful and I would never have gone into this field if someone had told me that it would be like this one day.
2. I cannot condone the means by which these tools were created, which is, as far as I am concerned, theft. I think it's unethical to use them at all, because they were created unethically. I dislike using stolen work, I think it's wrong, and I think everyone who uses it is making the world worse and normalizing theft. If continuing in my career means that I have to compromise my ethics, I wouldn't do it even if I loved this stuff, and see point (1).
3. Is anyone going to pay me more for my "more valuable" skills? Doesn't seem like it, engineering salaries on the whole are going down right now. You can believe they'll go up eventually if you like, but there's no evidence that will happen, or that it's happening. If my employer captures all the value, why should I care whether I'm creating more of it?
> Because the experience of interacting with AI is miserable. I like writing code.
I'm your exact opposite.
I've felt like code is 1960's punch card tech my entire career. I've always wanted to do more.
So much of coding is plumbing. Or paying attention to tiny little details. Or hunting down stupid bugs. Or changing requirements and refactoring. That shit sucks. All of it.
I've never had so much fun with software. It's starting to feel like magic. And because we possess deep understanding, we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this.
The AST is not the objective. The finished product is. Our DNA is by all accounts filled with garbage. Let your feelings about code purity and sanctity go. It's the job to be done that matters.
Code is not holy. In 100 years people will look at our ephemeral artifacts as silly little things. Treat it that way today. Means to an end.
I can’t just quit the “career” that I’ve spent years building (for what else?). I’ll just fade somewhat gradually into unemployment, I imagine.
> can’t just quit the “career” that I’ve spent years building
One, I think the talk about AI replacing developers is tripe. We’re still correcting the post-Covid hiring binge.
Two, even if that level is breached, I’d consider your skillset more broadly than what you can literally do right now. Organizing people and technical systems is hard. And the article highlights how that doesn’t seem to be something AI is focused on improving on right now. (Would take larger context windows. Which would make inference more expensive.)
I firmly believe that your existing skills and experience are more valuable in a world where the AI tools can speed up the bit where you type the code.
It's great that you believe this, but are you hiring?
I don't intend this to read as pure snark, but someone's abstract value isn't much good to them if the job market itself can't / won't recognize it.