I use it every day and I'm taking off weekends for the first time in a decade. It's done wonders for my mental health. I think teams should pay more attention to the value of pumping the brakes vs. incessant redlining. We may actually be able to have a healthy relationship with AI then.
> Programming is a tricky skill and takes a long time to get good at. Lots of people aren't good at it.
This is a good thing. It's a filter for the careless, lazy, and incompetent. LLMs are to programming what a microwave is to food. I'm not a chef because I can nuke a hot pocket. "Vibe coders" (not AI-assisted coding) are the programming equivalent of the people on Kitchen Nightmares. Go figure, it's a community rife with narcissism, too.
Just pull a tarball from a signed URL, install deps, and run from systemd. Rolls out in 30 seconds, remarkably stable. Initial bootstrap of deps/paths is maybe 5 minutes.
It's not about software, it's about money. They're chasing what they see making money and being mimetic. Simple as. It's a shame and sad to see so many get caught up in this, but it makes sense relative to where the world is at. People are desperate and this is what desperation manifest looks like.
This is the most rational take. I'm a quality guy (Deming, Juran, etc), but nothing about incorporating an LLM into my own work has lowered its quality. That isn't to say that I haven't encountered slop. The difference is that, self-identifying as a craftsman, I have the ability to decide whether or not something stays or goes on the scrap heap. It seems a lot of people are missing that point: just because you can churn out shit doesn't mean you have to (and sorry, sunk-cost bias re: tokens isn't an excuse—that's the cost of doing business). It's a choice. AI-assisted coding is a tremendous boon on productivity, if (and I'd argue only if) you treat it like a power tool and not a genie lamp.
No, you won't be rewarded magic beans for churning out crappy dashboards any more. But if you're serious about shipping quality, nothing is stopping you here.
The big problem here is determining how vigilant those in command are about vetting the AI's responses. This feels like one of those systems that works great until someone vaporizes a hallucinated target that was actually civilians or unintended targets. This should be mitigated by having a MITM, but still. Risky. Humans make mistakes, too, and they're inclined to just "believe what the computer says," so as much as I'd love to believe this ends with a white picket fence scene, my instincts are screaming "dig a bunker, homie."
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