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Comment by acron0 | Hacker News Reader

This feels similar to articles with titles such as "Why every developer should learn Assembly" or "Relying on NPM packages considered harmful". I appreciate the core of truth inside the sentiment, and the author isn't _wrong_, but it won't matter over time. AI coding ability will improve, whether it's writing, debugging or planning. It will be good enough to produce 90% of the solution with very little input, and 90% is more than enough to go to market, so it will. And yes, it won't be optimal or totally secure, or the abstractions might be questionable but...how is that really different than most real software projects anyway?

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Software is the connective tissue of the world, generating mediocre quality results (which will be the best outcome if you don’t really understand what you are looking at) is not just lazy it can be dangerous, do the worlds best engineers make mistakes? Of course they do, but that’s why building high quality software is collaborative process you have to work with others to build better systems. If you aren’t, you are wasting your time.

As of now (and this could change, but that doesn’t change the moral and ethical obligations), software engineers are richly rewarded specifically because they should be able to write and understand high quality code, the code written is the foundation of how our entire modern world is built.

>It will be good enough to produce 90% of the solution with very little input, and 90% is more than enough to go to market, so it will.

What backs up this claim? And when will it reach it?

We could be very well reached a plateau right now, which means looking at previous trends in improvements does not allow us to predict future improvements. If I understand it correctly.

That is a hellish look toward the future. To be clear I don’t think you’re wrong, if companies can squeeze more out of devs by forcing them to use AI I bet they will, move fast and break stuff and all that, but it’s still quite the bummer.

I don't think it's really any different than how most products are made currently, do you think most startups are caring about security and things that would slow down their initial release? All the rest is tech debt that can be solved once product market fit is solved.

The only thing I'd worry about is when no one knows how to solve these when everyone relies on AI.

> All the rest is tech debt that can be solved once product market fit is solved.

Even then, it's mostly never.

Indeed, most startups fail, so it doesn't really matter in the end how well their code is created.

I don't have a real opinion of the value at this point but, to the degree that there are significant productivity enhancement tools available for developers (or many other functions), and they refuse to use them, companies should properly mark those folks down as low performers with the associated consequences.

"I don't want to use the web."

“It would enhance productivity” is not a sufficient justification for requiring someone to do something. Ignoring safety regulations would often enhance productivity, but I’m sure you understand why we shouldn’t do that.

Ignoring safety regulations would not enhance productivity in the long term, so that example doesn't quite prove the point. Productivity enhancement in general is sufficient justification for a company, as otherwise they can simply fire you, hence, to them, it is sufficient.

I was assuming that other requirements associated with the software were otherwise met. If you're simply less productive all other things being equal, you should probably be at least eased out especially if you're simply refusing to use appropriate tools (assuming those tools actually do enhance productivity).

It depends on the nature of those tools, whether they increase national security or not, which I'm sure you'll agree affects the outcome.

I'd argue it's a hell many other people see daily, and we've been privileged to have the space to care about craft. Corporations have never cared about the craft. The business is paying me to make, and the moment they can get my level of quality and expertise from someone much cheaper, or a machine itself, I'm gone. That dystopia has always been present and we just haven't had to stare it down as much as some other industries have.

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