Comment by iforgotmypasswo

I think there’s a critical difference between AI automation for software development and previous rounds of similar automation, like CNC machines automating manual machining.

The barrier to software development has only ever been computer access and knowledge.

With AI, it’s roughly computer and internet access.

This means we’re getting a lot of people who aren’t good at either software development or AI automation playing with both. It’s the majority of what people seem to talk about.

I don’t think this is bad, but I do think it’s making real progress in AI automated software development on teams which are good at both much less visible.

A conservative team member of mine estimated we’re working at 200x speed these days, compared to 2 years ago. And we still see ways we can improve. A parallel team is only seeing an 1.2x increase, but they are unable to modify their architecture around AI.

Some of this is shifting roles. You can have a mildly technical domain expert vibe code the frontend for a new module. The more AI automation you’ve architected for, the faster they can go and the higher quality the outcome. We’re experimenting with mixing vibe coding with specifying formal requirements to push this further.

This works well. And now you’ve cut dozens of rounds of the PM not knowing the right shape for the new software out of the process. Even if we threw the end code away, this would save us tons of time.

This is just one example.