zlacker

>>tablet+(OP)
> "For art, music, and writing? I got nothing. I’m inclined to believe the skeptics in those fields."

You've already lost me, because I view programming as an art form. I would no more use AI to generate code than I would use it to paint my canvas.

I think the rest of the article is informative. It made me want to try some things. But it's written from the perspective of a CEO thinking all his developers are just salt miners; miners go into the cave and code comes out.

I think that's actually what my hangup is. It's the old adage of programmers simply "copying and pasting from stack overflow" but taken to the extreme. It's the reduction of my art into mindless labor.

>>TheCra+U3
Woodworking is also an art form. But most people just need furniture, fixtures, and structures. Nobody would take seriously the idea that new construction all be done with sashimono joinery in order to preserve the art form, but somehow we're meant to take seriously the idea of hand-dovetailed CRUD apps.

>>tptace+o4
> Woodworking is also an art form. But most people just need furniture, fixtures, and structures. Nobody would take seriously the idea that new construction all be done with sashimono joinery in order to preserve the art form, but somehow we're meant to take seriously the idea of hand-dovetailed CRUD apps.

How many furniture makers did you talk to forming this opinion? The metaphor does not line up with either my software of furniture experience. I work with production furniture shops that choose not to use CNCs to avoid the soul being sucked out of the work. This is not a rare stance to take and this is not "japanese joinery" woodworking. This is real work, balancing the means of production with optimal quality. There is all sorts of arguments on whether cncs or using a domino or whatever is "real" woodworking, but the idea that this choice of quality does not exist in woodworking and so we shouldn't have it in software is not my experience.

>>bradly+sq
You don't need to talk to furniture makers to know that mass produced furniture has replaced cabinetmakery almost completely. Most of us are sitting on the evidence.

>>pvg+Sw
It is not about being mass produced or not–it is this reoccurring theme by people who do not spend their days writing code saying that mediocre code is good enough. It is not for me. Code decays. Mediocre code today is bade code tomorrow. Not everyone shares this pov–totally fine–but the tone of the article is tough.

>>bradly+Kz
I'm a professional software developer and I'm saying mediocre code is often good enough. Mediocre code does not in fact decay. The belief that every line of code you write on every problem definition has to be crystalline and formally rigorous is an early-career thing you get over. Fretting over literally every line of code is a way of doing your job badly. The skill is in knowing when you need really interesting (and "interesting" is the distinction here) code, and when you should just whip our your shop jig and repeat the exact same pocket hole joint you've been using for the last 10 years.

I don't want to step on the cabinetry discussion, just, I think it's important to call out this idea that there's a universal quality/intricacy/interestingness threshold for all production software. That was a common fallacy long before LLMs (you used to see a lot of it in Rails culture with people ceaselessly grooming unit test suites and designing ever-more-seamless mocking systems). Part of growing in this profession is getting a sense for when extra exertion is needed, and when it's wasted.

>>tptace+Xz
> Mediocre code does not in fact decay.

That's okay. I think all code does. Some much faster than others. I could be wrong, but I think I'm sticking to this opinion (for now at least)

> The belief that every line of code you write on every problem definition has to be crystalline and formally rigorous is an early-career thing you get over. Fretting over literally every line of code is a way of doing your job badly.

I agree. I do not think this is a debated topic. That being said, I don't see writing quality software to be a waste of time the same I don't see a quality weld. It needs to be relible to what the stakeholders have defined as adaquate.

> The skill is in knowing when you need really interesting (and "interesting" is the distinction here) code, and when you should just whip our your shop jig and repeat the exact same pocket hole joint you've been using for the last 10 years.

Ahh alright so this is where is gets interesting! I think you are close, but not "whip out". As a woodworking you need to be able to make that jig! The is real knowledge/wealth.

I'm still under the belief great devs will use the tools at their disposal as they see fit to write high quality software. Poor devs will write poor quality software with the tools at their disposal. I don't think any of this changes with AI.

I think where I struggle is even as someone who use AI to help write code everyday and would have a hard time going back, these articles do not sit with me.