Comment by x3haloed

I think this blog post is underbaked. I think it misplaces where the tension is, and also the skiing metaphor is attempting to simplify an explanation that's already simple.

The post describes the tension as being between leaders and developers. I don't really think that's where the tension is. I'm on a small team of all senior devs, and I've seen both sides -- skepticism and full embrace, and leadership was not pushing AI on us at all. On our team, no matter where we're each individually at on adoption, we're all pretty clear-eyed about the upsides and downsides. The upside is absurdly fast code production. The downside is losing touch with every line of code in the codebase.

There's no need to introduce the skiing metaphor, because the problem is simple: it's the devs' necks on the line when the system goes down or a customer record goes missing. When you get a call at 4 in the morning from the CEO, "Let me ask someone (AI)" isn't an acceptable answer. It's your job to know the failure modes like the back of your hand and be able to diagnose and rightsize in minutes. We've spent our whole careers guarding against those failures by agonizing over every line of code that goes into the product. With that understanding, it's pretty obvious why senior devs are hesitant to adopt something new without a clear picture of how they can be sure that the program isn't going to go down under load, isn't going to drop or mangle customer records, and when one of those things inevitably does happen, how to recover quickly. In a nutshell, job #1 for a senior dev is to account for every failure, and this becomes much harder when an automated system is pushing through 10x as much code.

I'm one of the devs who has chosen to adopt AI. As I reflect on that, I think the reason I'm willing to do so is because I have a level of certainty that I can work the pipeline to safely introduce more changes, faster. So far, I am getting mixed results, but that's not deterring me from continuing to try to reach an optimal point on the tradeoff curve.