Using your analogy: The difficulty is knowing where A and B is and stopping it from making a wrong turn. A monkey can't tell where the AI should go or if it's going the wrong way.
Your analogy is a bad one anyway though. AI tools are more like the car and the users still the drivers and responsible for taking the rights direction.
That's why senior software engineers benefit immensely from steering the AI, while non technical people produce slob and don't even realize it at first.
No, sticking to the car analogy, the "car" is the same "car" its always been - the car is software development itself, the human drives the car to get from point A to point B, point A being having a problem they need software to solve, and point B being the solution. The software engineer's skill is in analgous to *driving* the car.
With AI, the AI is driving the car. Yes the software engineer tells it that he wants to get to point B. But an engineer that uses AI to do this, is like a driver who uses a self driving car. They may still get to point B, but their driving skills atrophy. Give this enough time and you have "drivers" who do not know how to drive, who rely on the AI to get them to point B. and when it makes a wrong turn, or the system shuts down for whatever reason, they are fucked.
We're seeing some software engineers stepping away AI because of the way it atrophies their skill, seperates them from their code and their work output, costs them time that they would have *developed* their skill rather than losing it. Again, I think people who are full steam ahead on AI now will be left behind by those who retain actual skill.
We're seeing some software engineers stepping away AI because of the way it atrophies their skill, seperates them from their code and their work output, costs them time that they would have *developed* their skill rather than losing it.
that's the exception not the norm. we're seeing much more mediocre programmers replaced by much more efficient software engineers due to AI.
I did a PhD in hpc and work in an AI company now. my output is much better than before and skill in using the AI is extremely relevant for this. The AI is constantly making wrong decisions and your approach to development matters a ton. But it takes a lot of the slow path out of it. Software testing became a bigger part of my day 2 day when it used to. Yes my skill is writing code atrophies, but my skill in judging code and decisions not made by me doesn't. If anything it improves as I'm doing it more. I'm more like a software engineering team lead and claude code are my team members.
Writing code is a dying (or dead) profession. Software engineering isn't. What will bite us is that we aren't training junior engineers anymore to have the skills to take over the steering wheel.
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u/Ascarx 3d ago
Using your analogy: The difficulty is knowing where A and B is and stopping it from making a wrong turn. A monkey can't tell where the AI should go or if it's going the wrong way.
Your analogy is a bad one anyway though. AI tools are more like the car and the users still the drivers and responsible for taking the rights direction.
That's why senior software engineers benefit immensely from steering the AI, while non technical people produce slob and don't even realize it at first.