If I have to spend this much time thinking about any of this, congratulations, you’ve designed a product with a terrible UI.
I definitely get value out of it- more than any other tool like it that I've tried.
"please fix the authorization bug in /api/users/:id".
You'd start by grepping the code base and trying to understand it.
Compare that to, "fix the permission in src/controllers/users.ts in the function `getById`. We need to check the user in the JWT is the same user that is being requested"
This may be a quick quip or a rant. But the things we say have a way of reinforcing how we think. So I suggest refining until what we say cuts to the core of the matter. The claim above is a false dichotomy. Let's put aside advertisements and hype. Trying to map between AI capabilities and human ones is complicated. There is high quality writing on this to be found. I recommend reading literature reviews on evals.
If you give a junior an overly broad prompt, they are going to have to do a ton of searching and reading to find out what they need to do. If you give them specific instructions, including files, they are more likely to get it right.
I never said they were replacements. At best, they're tools that are incredibly effective when used on the correct type of problem with the right type of prompt.
> they're tools that are incredibly effective when used on the correct type of problem with the right type of prompt.
So, a junior developer who has to be told exactly what to do.
As for the "correct type of problem with the right type of prompt", what exactly are those?
You'll be prompting and evaluating and iterating entirely finished pieces of software and be able to see multiple attempts at each solve at once, none of this deep in the weeds fixing a bug stuff.
We're rapidly approaching a world where a lot of software will be being made without an engineer hire at all, maybe not the hardest most complex or novel software but a lot of software that previously required a team of 3-15 wont have a single dev.
My current estimate is mid 2026
our current popular stack is quicksand.
unless we're talking about .net core, java, Django and more of these stable platforms.
VIM, Emacs and Excel are obvious power tools which may require you to think but often produce unrivalled productivity for power users
So I don't think the verdict that the product has a bad UI is fair. Natural language interfaces is such a step up from old school APIs with countless flags and parameters
I guess "context length" in AIs is what I intuitively tracked with people already. It can be a struggle to connect the Zabbix alert, the ticket and the situation on the system already, even if you don't track down all the zabbix code and scripts. And then we throw in Ansible configuring the thing, and then the business requriements by more, or less controlled dev-teams. And then you realize dev is controlled by impossible sales-terms.
These are scope -- or I guess context -- expansions that cause people to struggle.